TUBI CONTINUED… GIRL IN CAPTIVITY 2 (2009) **

Here’s another Japanese nudie sequel that Tubi recommended to me.  Like Survive Girls 2 and Captive Factory Girls 2:  The Revolt, the original was nowhere to be found on Tubi (or any other streaming platforms for that matter).  It’s funny because they have it listed as Girl in Captivity 2:  Hitwoman in Chains, which pretty much spoils the twist ending.  

A serial rapist attacks a seemingly meek waitress who fends him off with surprising force.  Because of the ensuing media attention, she is recognized by her former underworld associates who show up to harass her and her husband (who has no idea about her secret past).  They think she has a disc than can bring down some corrupt politicians, so they kidnap her and try to beat the information out of her.  It’s only a matter of time before she snaps and shows them what she is really capable of.

Girl in Captivity 2 starts off kind of like a gender-swapped Japanese pink version of A History of Violence.  Then, it just kind of turns into your standard bondage flick.  I guess I should say “substandard” since this was apparently a cut version with all (well… most) the nudity awkwardly cropped out of frame and/or abruptly edited out.  

That’s the only real problem I have with Tubi.  They play a lot of Skinamax movies in which all the skin has been edited out.  I guess the fact that this was only fifty-nine minutes long should’ve been the tip-off that this was a heavily sanitized version.  However, both Captive Factory Girls 2:  The Revolt and Survive Girls 2 were about the same running time and they had scads of nudity.  Oh well.  

As it is, it’s a decent enough movie without the nudity.  Adding a bunch of nudity might not have made it necessarily “better”, but it couldn’t have hurt.  Right?  

Another debit is the fact that it takes a long time before the girl is put into captivity.  In fact, her husband was placed in captivity before she was, which is some bullshit if you ask me.  The odd stabs at humor (there’s a bumbling policeman who takes a shit in the wood) don’t land either.  

AKA:  Girl in Captivity 2:  Hitwoman in Chains.

DOCTOR DEATH: SEEKER OF SOULS (1973) ***

Fred (Barry Coe) is a grieving husband incapable of getting over the death of his wife.  Despondent, he turns to psychics and devil worshippers seeking to contact his beloved from beyond the grave.  Naturally, they all turn out to be charlatans and phonies.  He finally decides to give “Doctor Death” (John Considine) a try, and after witnessing the Doctor’s demented stage show, in which he transfers the soul of a deformed woman into the body of a hot babe, he knows he’s found his man.  However, Fred’s wife’s soul turns out to be too powerful for the good (bad) Doctor to control, so he sets out on a bloody rampage to find a soul capable of making the transference a success.  

Doctor Death:  Seeker of Souls is an offbeat, fun little flick.  Just when you think you know where it’s going, it zigs when you expect it to zag.  The Doctor’s magic show scenes are a lot of fun (this would make a great double feature with The Wizard of Gore) and the opening scenes of our hero obsessing over his wife’s corpse is reminiscent of Love Me Deadly.  The mid-movie flashback showing all the Doctor’s previous incarnations is also quite entertaining.  

The cast is great too.  Considine is a hoot as the smarmy Doctor Death, and he really chews the scenery during his stage shows.  The Queen of Blood herself, Florence Marly is also quite memorable as the doctor’s assistant/jealous lover.  The best performance though comes from the Three Stooges’ Moe Howard (!!!) as an audience member at the Doctor’s magic show who is brought on stage to verify the corpse is actually dead.  It’s definitely one of the strangest guest appearances in a movie, and it helps cement Doctor Death:  Seeker of Souls as a minor classic of WTF cinema.  

It's a shame this was director Eddie Saeta’s only film.  He shows a lot of flair, delivers a couple clever suspense scenes, and gives us at least one effective jump scare.  Add all that to the very snazzy ‘70s Made for TV sounding score and the crisp cinematography, and you have yourself ninety minutes of pure fun. 

AKA:  Doctor Death.

JANUA-RAY: NAZI BROTHEL (1970) ** ½

Nazi Brothel was part of the first wave of Nazi-themed adult films.  It’s much cheaper and grungy than something like the softcore roughie, Love Camp 7.  While a no-budget Nazi hardcore porno might not be up your alley, the fact that it was directed by Ray Dennis Steckler means it makes for a memorable experience.  

It starts off with still photos of Hitler, Nazis marching, and concentration camps, while audio of a teacher addressing her class about Nazis is heard.  Then, the opening credits (and by “opening credits”, I mean, “Ray Dennis Steckler wrote a bunch of words on a chalkboard”) begin.  If you thought this was going to fetishize Nazis (as some of these Naziploitation flicks tend to do), the opening titles let you know otherwise as there are messages like “Fuck Nazis in the Mouth” and “The Nazis Suck” featured prominently during the credits sequence.  

As the title implies, the film takes place at brothel that caters to Nazi officers.  Carolyn Brandt is Jane Bond, Agent 0088 who infiltrates the house of ill repute to get info on the Nazis.  When she is captured, she dons her skintight outfit and mask and kicks some Nazi ass.

Nazi Brothel is more Hogan’s Heroes than Ilsa.  The officers are portrayed as buffoons and/or pain freaks and have trouble getting hard.  The fast motion Benny Hill-style bedroom antics aren’t very funny (or sexy) either.  

I think all of this might’ve been intentional.  I have a feeling Steckler might not have wanted to make a Nazi porno and turned it into some weird subversive art piece.  The Nazis are all incompetent, impotent idiots and the women (save for Brandt) are not sexy.  That, along with the anti-Nazi scrawling in the opening credits, makes me believe Steckler made this as a big FU to people who would distribute and/or watch a Nazi porno, or at least to anyone who would take it seriously.

Brandt is by far the best actress in this.  As with The Mad Love Life of a Hot Vampire, she doesn’t get involved in the sexual shenanigans.  This time at least she’s in the same room looking on for a short period while a half-assed orgy is taking place.  

I’ve seen some unsexy pornos in my time.  While this one is no Bat Pussy (and honestly, what could be?), it does have an odd aura about it that makes it sorta entertaining.  It’s only fifty-four minutes long, but unfortunately, Ray reuses a LOT of footage in the third act to pad out the running time (and it’s not always the best footage).  Without all the excess padding, this might’ve skated by with *** just on the WTF factor alone.

Before we wrap up the review, let’s take a look at some of Steckler’s signature touches that he brought to the film:  Like The Mad Love Life of a Hot Vampire, the opening titles are done on a chalkboard.  Another similarity to that movie:  The male actors have trouble maintaining their erections.  The Batman influence is felt too as some of the music sounds like a riff on the TV theme and Brandt’s catsuit is similar (or the same one, not sure) to the one she wore in Body Fever.  If that wasn’t enough, during the fight scene there are Batman-style balloon bubbles (OK, scribbling on a chalkboard), but instead of words like, “Pow!” and “Bam!” they say, “Piss!” and “Jizz!”  Brandt, who is the most prolific member of Steckler’s Stock Players, appears yet again, and Hot Vampire’s Will Long also appears as one of the dim-witted Nazi officers.  Also, like many Steckler’s flicks, there’s a long chase scene as well.

Steckler followed this up the next year with another Nazi themed porno, Love Life of Hitler’s Nazis.  

TUBI CONTINUED… SURVIVE GIRLS 2 (2006) ***

The reason why I have so many movies on my Tubi watchlist is because of the “You Might Also Like” feature.  Every time I watch something on Tubi (even if I don’t like the movie), I will check out the You Might Also Like recommendations and inevitably add even more films to my watchlist.  It’s conceivable that for every movie I watch on Tubi, I add three or four more.  That’s why I had to start this column.  Their algorithm just knows me too well.  

After I watched Captive Factory Girls 2:  The Revolt, Tubi recommended Survive Girls 2 to me.  Tubi knew, just as I did, they don’t need to have the original Survive Girls in their library for me to watch it.  Tubi’s algorithm strikes again.  

The good news is, it probably didn’t matter that I didn’t see the first Survive Girls.  As it turns out, this is kind of like an anthology series.  This one contains two stories of two Japanese women who find themselves in a sticky sexual situation.  

The first segment is called “Bind” (***).  It’s sort of like a kinkier Japanese version of Gerald’s Game.  A single mom drops her kid off at school and then goes to her dominatrix’s house, begging to be punished.  She ties her submissive up and decides to have a little fun with her.  The domme interrupts playtime to step out to grab a pack of cigarettes, leaving her slave all tied up.  Tragically, the dominatrix gets hit by a car, and her sub is left all alone in bondage, with no hope of escape.  Problems arise when some visitors arrive at the house unexpectedly.  

There’s some pretty kinky stuff in this sequence.  I’ve seen women tied up before.  I’ve seen women gagged before.  I’ve never seen a woman’s mouth tied up in such a way that her tongue can still dangle out so she can French kiss her mistress.  

This tale is great because it wastes no time throwing our heroine into her precarious predicament.  Even though she is completely bound, the movie still finds ways to complicate her situation in unique and suspenseful ways.  I just wish the ending was better.  

The second story is “Hypnosis” (** ½).  A young patient visits a doctor who performs hypnotherapy on her.  Once she is under his spell, he keeps her imprisoned against her will and proceeds to play mind games with his paralyzed patient.  

This one is a lot artier than the first segment, but it’s sorely lacking in the suspense (not to mention skin) department.  Still, it’s not bad or anything.  I liked the metaphor of our heroine being locked in an attic to show how the hypnotist had imprisoned her in her own mind.  It’s just that some of the surreal touches don’t exactly work (like the talking turtle).  Again, it’s fairly decent.  It’s just that it suffers from comparison to the first story.

AKA:  Survive #2.

SHIN ULTRAMAN (2023) ***

When kaiju begin to terrorize the globe, the SSSP is mobilized to assess and neutralize the threat.  The latest monster might be too much for them to handle, but luckily, help arrives in the form of Ultraman, a giant robot man who kicks kaiju ass.  Little does the SSSP know, one of their own team members is actually Ultraman’s secret identity.  

While I’m not well-versed in Ultraman, I have seen a few episodes of the original TV series, which this is a reboot of.  I don’t know how die-hard fans will react to it, but for me, Shin Ultraman checked all the giant monster mashing boxes.  It was a good mix of old school kaiju battling and 21st century CGI.  I think the best thing about it was the fact that many of the monsters, while obviously CGI, were rendered to look like a guy in a clunky rubber suit.  Shit like that puts a goddamned smile on my stupid face.  

Also, most monster mashes make you wait till the very end to see the kaiju squaring off.  This one gives Ultraman a new foe to fight every half hour or so, so there’s always some big threat looming to help keep you invested.  (The monster battles are spaced so evenly that it almost feels like you’re binge watching four episodes of the series.)  The monsters include an invisible creature that shoots electricity from its horn, a lizard that has a drill for a head, an evil version of Ultraman, and a giant space weapon.  Each one is a little different than the last, which helps give every fight a little different flavor.  

The most impressive thing is that the human drama is fairly decent.  Let’s face it.  No one watches these things for the acting or plot.  However, I did appreciate the way director Shinji (Shin Godzilla) Higuchi used rapid-fire editing to keep the dialogue scenes flowing and used odd camera angles to make them more interesting from a visual standpoint.  Sometimes, little touches like that make all the difference and help separate the good monster mashes from the mediocre ones.  

JANUA-RAY: THE MAD LOVE LIFE OF A HOT VAMPIRE (1971) **

Once again, we see Ray Dennis Steckler has a knack for coming up with memorable titles, even when he’s working in the adult film world.  Steckler’s wife, Carolyn Brandt stars as Dracula’s wife, who acts as our narrator.  Dracula (Jim Parker) is awakened by his hunchbacked servant (Jason Wayne) so he can watch him get it on with three of Dracula’s love slaves.  Drac then sends his babes out to search for blood.  And by “search for blood” I mean, “have sex with a bunch of dudes and suck their blood out of their dick”.  Eventually, it’s up to Van Helsing (Will Long) to stop Dracula’s reign of terror.  

Parker, who kind of resembles John Astin, really hams it up as Dracula, and it often looks like the other actors are about a second away from cracking up at his antics.    Wayne barely showed a sign of a pulse in Blood Shack, but he gamely chews the scenery this time out as the hysterical hunchback.  It's Brandt who is the most memorable though.  She looks sexy as the vampire bride, staring directly into the camera and saying shit like, “Dracula is groovy!”  Too bad we only get to see her from the neck up. 

Steckler’s handling of the sex scenes is clumsy at best.  None of them are particularly hot, but that’s part of the charm.  Even though the actors have trouble staying hard, the actresses seem to really be into their roles.  Unfortunately, the sex scenes go on forever and quickly wear out their welcome.  Even at fifty minutes, it feels way too long.  At least the scenes where the vampire brides bite their lovers’ peckers with dime store vampire fangs are good for a laugh. 

As far as Steckler’s Stock Player Round-Up goes, Brandt, of course was in a ton of his films.  Wayne was also in Blood Shack, Parker went on to have a small role in The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher, and Long appeared in a few of his X-rated flicks.  There isn’t any of the director’s shameless self-promotion here (which makes sense since he was using his Sven Christian alias) nor are there any of his signatures on display, unless you count the use of psychedelic light, which is kind of like Sinthia:  The Devil’s Doll.  

AKA:  Hot Vampire.  AKA:  Love Life of a Red Hot Vampire. 

TUBI CONTINUED… CHEERLEADER NINJAS (2003) * ½

When I sat down to watch this, I had a sneaking suspicion I had seen it before.  As it turns out, the movie I was thinking of was Ninja Cheerleaders, not Cheerleader Ninjas.  That film was about Ninjas who are also Cheerleaders, whereas this one is about Cheerleaders who are also Ninjas.  I think.  I guess it all comes down to semantics.

Anyway, a Christian coalition of outraged mothers set out on a crusade against gay internet porn.  They think a bunch of high school cheerleaders are the cause of all the smut, so they send some delinquent Catholic high school girls to take them down.  The cheerleaders soon learn they aren’t strong enough to win the battle, so they turn to a Kung Fu master to train them to be Ninjas.

You would think a movie about high school cheerleaders squaring off against naughty Catholic high school girls would be a can’t-miss scenario, but somehow, the filmmakers manage to screw it up.  The best part is Skinamax legend Kira (Sexual Intrigue) Reed who plays a blow-up doll named “Fantasy Girl” who comes to life during one of the nerd’s sexual fantasies.   (Apparently, she was also the body double for the rest of the cast.)  If it wasn’t for her participation, Cheerleader Ninjas would’ve been virtually unwatchable.  

Cheerleader Ninjas aims for the kind of mix of sight gags, send-ups, and humor Zucker/Abrahms/Zucker was known for.  Unfortunately, it comes closer to approximating the painfully unfunny lows of the unbearable Friedberg/Seltzer comedy spoofs.  I just can’t help but think that this would’ve been a lot funnier had they just played the concept of Cheerleader Ninjas seriously (or at least tongue in cheek) instead of turning it into an all-out spoof with lots of dumb, obvious gags, and a bunch of painfully unfunny fart jokes and gay stereotypes.  (I think the only laugh came from the nerd’s bedroom, which is modeled after the bridge of the Enterprise.)  The fact that it’s an overlong ninety-six minutes and moves at a snail’s pace doesn’t help either.