GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE (2024) ***

The Spenglers (Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, and Mckenna Grace), the latest generation of Ghostbusters, try to dodge the vindictive Mayor (William Atherton) and keep the business afloat.  Meanwhile, legacy Ghostbuster Ray (Dan Aykroyd) discovers a brass ball containing an ancient evil.  Naturally, the thing cracks open, the ghost escapes, and it sets out to freeze New York and eventually the world. 

Ghostbusters:  Frozen Empire does a slightly better job at balancing the fan service nostalgia of the ‘84 original with the Spengler family plotline than Afterlife did.  Paul Rudd is once again the MVP of the movie, as his “Aw, shucks” demeanor and fanboy geek-outs offer up plenty of laughs.  Grace is also engaging, as her friendship with a (seemingly) harmless ghost girl (Emily Alyn Lind) presents an interesting wrinkle to the Ghostbuster canon.  Wolfhard gets noticeably less to do this time around as most of his screen time is spent trying to wrangle Slimer. 

Of the OG cast, Aykroyd has the most screentime and gets a satisfying character arc.  While he doesn’t have any big laughs, it’s still a lot of fun hearing him rattle off a lot of pseudoscientific gobbledygook.  Ernie Hudson is around for a bit too, although like in the other movies, he’s just sort of there.  Bill Murray is conspicuously absent for the most part, but he does at least deliver some laughs during his brief onscreen moments.  Although I certainly wish he was in it more, I’m still glad they were able to convince him to strap on a proton pack once again. 

As for the ghostbusting scenes, they’re mostly entertaining.  The stuff with Slimer is cute and the scenes with the mini-marshmallow men are once again amusing.  Surprisingly, the most fun comes from the “possessor” ghost who inhabits everyday objects (from a bag of trash to a pizza). 

Of course, none of this is a patch on the original, but I liked it just as much as (if not more than) Ghostbusters:  Afterlife. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: HIGH SCHOOL BIG SHOT (1959) **

FORMAT:  DVD

ORIGINAL REVIEW:  

(As posted on July 17th, 2007)

A nerdy kid named Marv is flat broke but the prettiest girl in school wants to go out with him. Of course, she just wants him to do her term paper for her and when they are caught cheating, Marv loses his scholarship and only chance to make some money. When Marv gets wind of a million-dollar heist, he wants in, but predictably it ends with a double cross and murder. This low budget teenie bopper caper movie suffers greatly from a claustrophobic setting and bad acting. When the heist finally does happen, I can’t guarantee you’ll give a shit, but it’s kinda worth it when the bitchy slut gets hers.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: WOMEN IN CAGES (1971) ** ½

FORMAT:  DVD

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on July 14th, 2011)

Women in Cages is pretty much like The Big Doll House and The Big Bird Cage, except its missing director Jack Hill’s trademark black humor.  Because another director, Gerald (The Mad Doctor of Blood Island) de Leon was at the helm, it plays more or less like a straightforward Made in the Philippines Women in Prison Movie.  Another difference is that Pam Grier plays a lesbian GUARD and not a lesbian inmate.  Big difference.

 

And Grier runs the place with an iron fist.  She plays favorites and gives the prisoners privileges in exchange for some kinky bedroom antics.  Whenever they cross her, she puts them in “The Playpen” where they are tortured.  Jennifer Gan is the latest hunk of meat to get thrown in the prison and it doesn’t take long for her to scheme up an escape plan.

 

Women in Cages was filmed on the same sets as The Big Doll House and features many of the same actresses (in addition to Grier, Judy Brown and Roberta Collins are also on hand to bare some skin).  It’s not as much fun as that flick but it does deliver on the Women in Prison goods.  There are strip searches, shower scenes, and catfights to keep you entertained.  For the first hour, Women in Cages is pretty sweet, but the flick goes right into the shitter once the girls escape the prison.  The ending pretty much sucks too, which further detracts from the overall Fun Factor.

 

Grier delivers a down and dirty performance and it’s cool seeing her playing a villain for a change.  Gan on the other hand is pretty annoying and makes for a shitty heroine.  To make matters worse, she resembles Gwyneth Paltrow after a six day drunk.  She and Grier do get the best dialogue exchange in the movie though:

 

Gan:  “What Hell did you crawl out of?”

 

Grier:  “It was called Harlem, baby!”

 

AKA:  The Bamboo Doll House.  AKA:  Women’s Penitentiary 3.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: SWAMP WOMEN (1956) **

FORMAT:  DVD

ORIGINAL REVIEW:  

(As posted on July 17th, 2007 under the title Swamp Diamonds)

This was one of director Roger Corman’s first films. While it’s not one of his best, this female filled crime melodrama is worth a look if only for a great hateful performance by Beverly Garland. A policewoman (Carol Matthews) infiltrates an all-girl gang serving time in prison. She gains their trust and organizes an escape in exchange for a cut on some diamonds that are stashed in a swamp. Mike “Touch” Connors plays a hapless guy that gets kidnapped by the gang and provides the meager sexual tension. The beginning is hopelessly filled with stock footage of Mardi Gras to pad the already brisk running time, and the ending is wrapped up way too conveniently, but Garland is a hoot at chewing up the scenery. She starred the next year in Corman’s The Gunslinger. Marie (Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy) Windsor and Jonathan (The Little Shop of Horrors) Haze co-star.

AKA: Cruel Swamp.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE HOT BOX (1972) ** ½

FORMAT:  DVD

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on June 19th, 2012)

Before taking the directorial reigns for the first time with Caged Heat, Jonathan Demme co-wrote and produced this somewhere-a-bit-up-the-road-from-middle-of-the-road exploitation picture for Roger Corman. It sorta plays like an amalgamation of a Corman Nurse movie and a Cirio H. Santiago Jungle Action flick. The results are admittedly mixed, yet mostly entertaining.

A bunch of nurses go deep into the jungle to do some relief work in a third world nation. They get kidnapped by some revolutionaries who force them to teach the guerillas first aid. (Yes, there is a mouth to mouth scene.) Whenever the girls get out of line they’re sent to the titular box where they’re locked in a cage and scalded with steam. Despite that, the girls still manage to sympathize with their captors and even wind up fighting for the cause!

The Hot Box is not a good movie really, but it has all the elements you’d want from a good movie. That is to say there’s lots of action and lots of T &A and… well… not much else. Because of that, I can give The Hot Box a more than passable recommendation.

BUT… everything else about the picture is lacking. The pacing is lethargic, and the flick feels a lot longer than it is due to the indifferent story structure. Plus, The Hot Box itself doesn’t even come into play until the movie’s about 2/3 of the way over! What’s up with that? And I would’ve liked a bit more nursing scenes at the start of the flick too before the action switched over to the jungle. That just might be a matter of preference though. Then again, what movie couldn’t benefit from a bunch of hot nurses getting in and out of uniform?

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE BIG BUST-OUT (1973) ***

FORMAT:  DVD

ORIGINAL REVIEW:  

(As posted on November 9th, 2021)

Convicts in a hellhole women’s prison (are there any other kind?) are subjected to abuse by horny, lecherous matrons who punish them, strip them bare, and give them body cavity searches.  The prisoners are given work release at a nearby convent where the nuns look over the “poor lost souls”.  The convent also has sheiks as armed guards (?) who the girls seduce and knock unconscious in order to perform their big bust-out.  Sister Maria (Monica Teuber) feels like they’ll need some guidance during their prison break, so she tags along with the prisoners who flee the convent disguised as nuns!  They shack up with a badass (Vonetta McGee) for a time, but her boyfriend sells the whole lot to a white slaver (Gordon Mitchell)!  When the boat captain (Tony Kendall) refuses to run girls on his boat, he blows up the dock and takes off with the convicts in tow.  

(All of this takes place in the first twenty minutes, by the way.)

This Italian-German co-production is a mix of Women in Prison, Nunsploitation, and drive-in action.  It opens up like your typical sleazy WIP movie before turning into a sort of ‘70s sexploitation version of Girls Town.  I guess you could say the plot is choppy, but it moves like lightning, so who cares, especially when it’s full of women taking showers, skinny-dipping, getting into fistfights and shootouts, and being stripped down and whipped by little people.  Because it’s all over the place, it often feels like a smorgasbord of exploitation cliches in search of a plot.  However, it never stays on one subgenre too long, which makes it perfect for late-night viewing.  

Director Ernst Ritter (Jungle Warriors) von Theumer doesn’t have much in the way of style, but he knows how to keep the movie going.  It certainly isn’t boring and von Theumer is never shy about pouring on the sleazy cliches.   In fact, it’s probably less successful once it settles down from all the genre-hopping and becomes a desert action movie in the third act.  Still, the scant seventy-minute running time coupled with the breakneck pace of the first forty-five minutes or so makes this well worth a watch for connoisseurs of Women in Prison flicks.

AKA:  Crucified Girls of San Ramon.  AKA:  3 Bastards and 7 Sins.  

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE SCREAMING DEAD (2003) ** ½

FORMAT:  DVD

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on April 18th, 2023)

A kinky photographer (Joseph Farrell) makes his sexy subjects pose for controversial pictures.  He brings his latest batch of models to a supposedly haunted mansion/former insane asylum for his next shoot.  Once on the grounds, the frantic photog sets about playing mind games with the models to mentally torture them so he can capture them in the appropriately frightened state of mind he wishes them to convey.  Unfortunately, the models’ fear awakens the malevolent spirit of the sadistic former owner of the house who sets out to torture and kill everyone unlucky enough to be trespassing on his property.  

Written and directed by Brett (A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell) Piper, The Screaming Dead boasts a solid set-up, and the haunted sanitarium makes for an atmospheric location.  The inclusion of Seduction Cinema starlets like Misty Mundae and A.J. Khan help add to the fun.  However, once the models begin being subjected to the photographer’s mental degradation, things sort of stall.  It also takes an inordinate amount of time before the supernatural elements start falling into place.  The scenes of the beefy security guard (Rob Monkiewicz) butting heads with the freaky photographer have a tendency to get repetitive too.  While there are still a number of neat moments (like when a face gets pushed through a wall), and some of the torture sequences are reminiscent of the old Corman/Poe movies from the ‘60s, the finale ultimately feels rushed and a little unsatisfying.  

Monkiewicz makes for a good upstanding square jaw hero.  Rachel Robbins is also quite strong as the secretary who puts up with Farrell’s increasingly cruel demands and manipulations.  Farrell is a bit grating as the human villain, although I guess that’s kind of the point.  Still, a little of his performance goes a long way.  Misty is the reason to watch it (of course) as she delivers yet another solid performance and looks great during her various nude scenes.