SUBSTITUTION (1970) ***

Meek radio salesman Henry (Chuck Sailor) is perpetually flustered by his co-workers’ low-cut tops.  After a hard day at work, he comes home to his nagging wife Alice (Patrice Nastasia) who complains about their nonexistent sex life.  Henry’s pal advises him to visit a sex guru to help with his problems.  He teaches Henry the art of “cosmic substitution” in which he can imagine his wife as any woman he wants.  

Substitution is the debut film from Walt (Evil Come Evil Go) Davis.  It has your typical nudie-cutie set-up, but what makes it interesting is that it spends more time with his characters than most softcore films of the day.  You really get to know Henry and sympathize with his plight before he goes off on his wild sex adventure.  The film makes some pointed, funny, and still relevant observations about married life too.  It also contains some very big laughs (like Henry’s misadventures at the beach).  Because of that, it’s much better than your average grindhouse flick.  

Some scenes go on a bit too long (like when Alice goes lingerie shopping and receives a mini-fashion show inside the store), and the whole thing gets a bit repetitive near the end.  It also takes quite a while before the softcore action kicks into gear.  However, since it works on levels that most skin flicks don’t even attempt to operate on, it’s an acceptable trade-off.  Not only that, but some scenes flirt with XXX as there are some near-hardcore close-ups that add to the overall titillation factor.

Naturally, it all ends in a predictable fashion.  I’m sure you probably already guessed how Henry will receive his eventual comeuppance.  The surprising thing is, Davis still manages to make the final punchline funny, even when you know exactly where’s it going.

In short, there’s no substitute for Substitution.  It is truly a lost gem.  I think viewers that normally would steer clear of early ‘70s sexploitation would even get a kick out of it.

BLUE DEMON: DESTRUCTOR OF SPIES (1968) ***

A mad villain kills a noted professor and steals his secret formula for a lethal gas, which he intends to turn loose on the entire world.  Meanwhile, some bad guys pay off Blue Demon’s opponents to kill him in the ring during a tag-team match.  Naturally, he gets the upper hand and handily defeats them.  He is then recruited by a duo of spies to help them take the megalomaniacal villain down.  

Blue Demon:  Destructor of Spies is a groovy Bond-influenced Lucha Libre movie.  It features plenty of cool gadgets you’d expect from a ‘60s spy flick.  There’s a false tooth that contains microfilm, a killer television set, a trumpet that shoots poisoned darts, and a flamethrower ring that also appeared in the sequel, Passport to Death.  I also liked the scene where the bad guy’s henchmen were running around in wetsuits, making them look like Diabolik rip-offs.  

There’s also plenty of Mexican wrestling to go around as Blue Demon has no less than three wrestling matches.  As with most of these films, the bad guys send an assassin to kill Blue Demon in the ring, not once but TWICE.  What makes one assassination attempt different than your typical Blue Demon flick is that the assassin uses a blow dart this time out instead of a sniper rifle.  The fights that take place outside the squared circle occur at a steady clip too (my favorite being the brawl in a funeral home), so there’s plenty of action to go around.

We also get FOUR completely unnecessary musical numbers.  Most of them feature a Beatles knockoff band that pays back-up to the lead singers.  Far and away the most bizarre dance sequence involves two Asian women in gold lame dresses dancing with a booty-shaking marionette.  It’s this level of WTF nuttiness that keeps me coming back to these Mexican wrestling flicks time after time.

It’s not all great.  Whenever Blue Demon isn’t on screen, the picture tends to drag a bit.  At least the scenes with the fetching Maura Monte provide enough eye candy to prevent the doldrums from setting in.  Still, as far as Blue Demon’s solo adventures go, this is one of his best outings.

AKA:  Blue Demon, Spy Smasher.  

SPACE THING (1968) ***

A neglected wife chastises her husband for reading too many sci-fi magazines before bed until he finally puts the books down and gives it to her good.  After she falls asleep, he grabs a magazine and imagines himself as the captain of a spaceship.  He winds up adrift in space and is taken in by an alien vessel populated mostly by sexy women.  They promptly throw him in the brig, but by using visibility pills, he spies on them to study their lovemaking habits.  Eventually, he gets in on the action himself.

The opening scene with the husband and wife goes on forever, but it’s not without its charms.  In fact, it takes such a long time for the opening credits to pop up that it makes me think this scene was added to the picture in post-production to pad out the running time.  (It would be only an hour long without this sequence.)  The credits sequence is very ‘60s as the titles are nothing more than nude women posing with the (fake) names of the cast and crew painted onto their naked frames.  

The direction by Byron (She Freak) Mabe is just inept enough to border on brilliance.  His use of jump cuts and continuity errors, along with the awkward line readings by the cast, and the snazzy sets and funny costumes makes for an entertaining romp.  What’s most important is that despite the technical limitations of the production, he still manages to deliver some steamy softcore action.  The highlight comes when Captain Mother (Cara Peters) makes like an out of this world dominatrix and whips a naughty crew member (Merci Montello) for having sex with a man.  

Once the crew lands on a mysterious planet, the fun begins to dry up.  That’s mostly due to the fact that a lot of precious screen time is spent on them endlessly wandering around and scoping out the planet’s surface.  The ending, unfortunately, sucks too.  Luckily, there’s still enough steamy sex scenes in the third act (including a great lesbian oil massage scene) to make it all worthwhile.  As a bonus, all of them take place outdoors in broad daylight, which adds to the fun.  Even though it gets spottier as it goes along, Space Thing gives you enough sexy sci-fi silliness to keep you engaged.  

AKA:  Erotic Space Thing.  AKA:  Erotic Space Women.

WHAM BAM THANK YOU SPACEMAN (1975) **

William A. (Blackenstein) Levey directed this silly softcore sci-fi sex comedy.  Two aliens named Sergeant Jerkoff and Private Asshole come down to Earth to find women to help them propagate the species.  Whenever they spy on couples making love, they beam the women up to their ship just as they’re about to achieve orgasm and impregnate them with their lizard tongues.  Their first stop is Hollywood, where they visit a house of ill repute and get it on with a hooker played by Ilsa herself, Dyanne Thorne.  Other couples are found necking on Lovers Lane, on a movie set, and in a sheik’s harem.  

If you thought Blackenstein looked cheap, wait till you see this.  The costumes and sets are terrible, and the aliens’ masks are lame.  It is amusing to see unsuspecting tourists’ reactions to the aliens walking past the porno shops on Hollywood Boulevard though.  

Sheltered 21^st century viewers are likely to have a conniption during the extended, unfunny jokes made at the expense of gays.  I mean, I hate political correctness and all, but just having dudes in chintzy alien costumes dropping slurs won’t garner any laughs from anyone.  In fact, most of the aliens’ dialogue is flat-out dumb.  (“Finger-lickin’ good!”)  The only laughs come from the breathless, satisfied Earth women who say the title after the aliens have their way with them.

All this wouldn’t matter if the sex scenes were any good.  As it stands, the film features the standard issue bumping and grinding you’d expect from a cheap sexploitation picture.  Nothing more, nothing less.  (There’s also a XXX version that awkwardly inserts hardcore footage into the action.)  It’s always fun seeing Thorne on screen, and Russ Meyer starlet Haji appears briefly as a harem girl, but even their enormous talents can’t save this one.

AKA:  Erotic Encounters of the Best Kind.  AKA:  Erotic Encounters of the Fourth Kind.  

AWESOME LOTUS: MISTRESS OF THE MARTIAL ARTS (1983) * ½

Emily Ann (Lorraine Masterson) is a young farmgirl who’s perpetually picked on by her three ornery brothers.  She finally has enough of their shit, slaps a Bruce Lee poster on her bedroom wall, and begins training to become a Kung Fu ass-kicker (she bench-presses her bed as part of her training).  Emily Ann proceeds to kick her brothers’ asses before leaving home for good.  She then goes on to become Awesome Lotus, the world’s leading lady Kung Fu secret agent.  After her retirement, she is lured back into action to stop a madman who’s been assassinating supermodels. 

The farmhouse scene where Lotus kicks the crap out of her brothers is great.  Then we get an equally fun James Bond-inspired opening credits sequence.  In fact, the first five minutes of Awesome Lotus:  Mistress of the Martial Arts is… well… awesome.  Sadly, the next eighty-five minutes are anything but. 

Sure, there is a stray laugh here and there (like the subtitles gag and the flashes of “gratuitous gore” and “needless nudity”).  That’s just due to the law of averages because the jokes fly so fast and furious.  For every fun bit there’s about fifteen or twenty jokes that land with a thud.  An Airplane-style spoof of Kung Fu movies wasn’t a bad idea, but the low budget and half-assed fight scenes often make it look like a sub-Troma effort.  

A Fistful of Yen this is not.

The big problem is the best jokes are weighted towards the beginning.  There’s a musical number halfway through that just stops the movie on a dime.  From there, it completely runs out of gas, and the longer it painfully sputters along, the worse it gets. 

Director David O’Malley went on to write the much better erotic thriller spoof, Final Instinct.  

AKA:  Awesome Lotus.  AKA:  Enter the Bassett.  

PASSPORT TO DEATH (1968) ** ½

Passport to Death is a sequel to Blue Demon:  Destructor of Spies, which unfortunately I have not seen.  I have to admit:  Grafting a Lucha Libre movie onto a James Bond knockoff is a great idea.  Although the film briefly flirts with achieving awesomeness (the only Bondish gadget is a ring that shoots flames), it never fully realizes its potential.

A spy sneaks into a megalomaniacal villain’s high-tech lair.  His android creation blasts the spy with a deadly ray, severely injuring him.  He then contacts Blue Demon and his team of secret agents to stop the nefarious villain before he can take over the world with his dreaded earthquake machine. 

The villain’s lair is really cool and surprisingly well done, considering the low budget.  Imagine if Dr. Seuss designed a Bond villain’s hideout and that might give you a hint of how badass it is.  I also loved the “android”, who is nothing more than a guy in an astronaut suit that shoots lasers from his silver oven mitts.  The finale, in which Blue Demon goes toe to toe with the evil android, is a blast too.

Unfortunately, the movie is poorly paced in the early going.  Blue Demon turns in a fine performance, but the members of his team just aren’t engaging enough to hold the screen on their own.  Because of that, Passport to Death often falters whenever he isn’t front and center.  Like most of these things, there’s a completely gratuitous nightclub performance smack dab in the middle of the action.  While it totally wasn’t necessary, it’s funnier than the typical musical numbers found in the genre.

The wrestling scenes are more entertaining than the spy stuff, if you can believe it.  The first wrestling contest finds Blue Demon defeating his opponent, who is forced to have his head shaved as a penalty for losing the match.  The disgruntled opponent even takes to beating up the barber and members of the TV crew!  He later shows up interrupting Blue Demon’s second match, causing pandemonium in the process.  This ultimately sets up a rematch between the duo in the third act.

In most of these movies, the wrestling scenes are unrelated affairs that are more or less a bonus attraction as it gives the audience a chance to see their favorite wrestler doing what they do best.  That’s why the wrestling scenes in Passport to Death are such a nice change of pace.  It’s rare you get to see a storyline running throughout the wrestling sequences.  Because of that, Passport to Death earns a slightly higher ranking than your typical Lucha Libre flick, although it’s not quite enough to make it a winner.

AKA:  Blue Demon Faces Death.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: BLUE DEMON VS. THE SATANIC POWER (1966) **

A killer is about to be executed for his crimes, so he puts himself in a trance to feign death.  He winds up being buried alive and rises from the grave fifty years later to take more victims with his hypnotic power.  One of his victims happens to be Blue Demon’s cousin, and the masked wrestler sets out to get revenge. 

Blue Demon vs. the Satanic Power is only seventy-seven minutes long, which makes it seem like it would move right along at a snappy pace.  I’m sad to report it does anything but.  This is one of the slowest Mexican wrestling movies I’ve watched lately.  It doesn’t help that the story is so thin that the filmmakers are forced to heavily pad the rest of the movie with four wrestling matches, two nightclub acts (one of which is a not-bad Lesley Gore impersonator), and even a dance sequence.  

The scenes with the killer are appropriately atmospheric.  I especially liked the use of shadows whenever he hypnotized his victims.  There’s even a moment of blatant sexuality when he makes a woman strip down to her bra and panties before some prolonged kissing in bed.  

Too bad the stuff with Blue Demon is so dull.  It’s not really his fault though.  I’d place the blame on the filmmakers for not giving him anything to do.  I mean, what can you say about a Mexican wrestling movie when your Mexican wrestler spends most of his time sitting alone in the dark reading?  The underwhelming action-free climax is a big letdown too, but at least the final shot is cool.  

Perhaps sensing Blue Demon wasn’t quite ready to topline his own solo feature, El Santo briefly shows up to give the movie a quick kick in the pants.  He’s shown wrestling in footage taken from (I think) Santo vs. the King of Crime and makes a cameo appearance when he stops by Blue Demon’s dressing room to say hi.  He should’ve stuck around longer because the picture really needed more of his swagger to make it come alive.