Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987): or, The Most Dangerous Gams

If you've been playing along at home this week, you may have noticed my last few entries have resulted in rather lackluster ratings. Trust me, I'm as concerned about it as you are. I know you come here for enthusiastic celebration of the most gleefully nonsensical stuff I can clap my eyeballs on, and to tell you the truth, that's why I keep coming too. (So to speak.) And yet every now and then I hit a lull. It's the nature of the game, I know--peaks and valleys, waves and trenches, smooth and crunchy. And yet whenever it happens, I can't help facing my deepest fear: have I run out of glee? Am I becoming jaded? Has the madnness well finally gushed its last gusher? What can I do to get back in the saddle and ride?

All I can say is, thank you, silly 80s sci-fi. It's not the first time you've pulled me back from the brink, and I'm sure it will not be the last.

Ken Dixon's 1987 sci-fi effort Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity opens on a dark, jungly planet, where bodaciously breasted babe is being stalked through the woods by a reject from the Mos Eisley Cantina sequence. We know this is a primitive world, because the girl is barefoot and wearing a beige suede bikini with jaggedly scissored edging, which is of course the universal indicator of "savagery."

Thanks to centuries of evolution, the Savage Girl is perfectly camouflaged among the Blooming Bazonga Bushes.

After she goes out of her way to trip over an easily avoidable root tendril, it looks like our savage sweetie is done for. Her pursuer fires a warning shot--or else needs to get his laser sights realigned--but before he can finish the job, is himself blown away by a Tall Dark Stranger who steps out of the mist in a nick of time. She's saved! Except--not.

Next we join another primitive swimwear model, Daria (Elizabeth Kaitan) chained in the cargo hold of a Space Slave Ship, along with similarly Savage Bikini-Clad captive Tisa (Cindy Beal). Despite Tisa's assurances that there's no way out, and "The only chance we've got is no chance at all!", Daria uses her prodigious upper body strength to yank the electronically-controlled chain out of its moorings. (Guess it's all muscle behind those beige suede triangles!) Then, showing she paid attention at Savage World Polytech, Daria theorizes, "If we can reverse the polarity on these cuffs...the only thing standing between us and freedom is stealing a starship!"

At this point, a little less than four minutes in, the Boom Mic Operator decides he's had enough of Daria's scene-hogging:

Maybe it's her curling iron.

After taking out two of the world's fattest stormtroopers, Daria and Tisa readily hotwire a life boat and blast out into the bleak nothingness of space. With nothing around for millions of light years and barely enough fuel for a three-hour tour, it looks like our Slave Girls (who were never really slaves, if you want to get technical, although they *were* chained...which is a cinematic device your ever-loving Vicar will never complain about) look like they've bought a one-way ticket back to the Infinity they hoped they'd moved beyond. But before you can say "Deus Ex Tractor Beam!" the girls' ship is yanked down to a seemingly deserted planet. They crash into the sea, and Daria washes up on the rocky shore, dazed but alive. Guess it was just as well she wore her Savage Bathing Suit.

She wanders into a cave, which leads to a door, which in turn leads into the British Museum of Natural History--wait, no, it's just the opulently decked-out mansion of Zed (Don Scribner), the owner and sole permanent resident of the island on which Daria finds herself. Non-permanent residents include Tisa, who washed up on a different beach long enough ago to have traded her Savage Bikini for a gauzy black negligee (again, no complaints), and siblings Rik and Shala (Carl Horner and DTV softcore legend Brinke Stevens), who are also castaways thanks to a mysterious shipwrecking. All of them are more than happy to accept Zed's hospitality, despite his Ominous Leather Pants, Sinister Leather Boots, and the fact he apparently shares his genetic code with Patrick Bateman.

"I like to dissect girls. Did you know that I'm quite insane?"

Zed is a hunter by avocation (hence the house full of gigantic stuffed hunting trophies), and if you've seen any jungle adventure movies since around 1940 you're already several steps ahead of the case. Yes, it's yet another version of that endlessly exploitable source text, The Most Dangerous Game: Zed is responsible for his guest's shipwrecks, and intends to make them all his prey, thereafter mounting their heads (not that way...well, okay, maybe) in his gruesome Private Trophy Room. Can Daria and company turn the tables on their insane host, and turn the Hunter into the Hunted? Are they truly alone on the island, or does something else lurk in the jungle shadows? And even if they survive, how will they ever get off this godforsaken space-rock?

Of course none of that really matters, because it's all just window dressing for what this movie is really all about:

"But..."

"But..."

"But me no butts!"

"Wait, you didn't give me time to turn around!"

As a 1980s Sexiness Time Capsule, Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity receives full marks. This flick has more cheesecake than a Pâtisserie Grand Opening. In addition to the aforementioned and formidable Savage Bikinis, Daria and Tisa also spend a lot of time wandering around Zed's castle in gauzy lingerie and slinky evening gowns, which would indicate that some of Zed's former victims must have hailed from the Petticoat Planet. There's a fair amount of nekkidity as well, as when Tisa goes skinny dipping in order to distract Zed's robot guards Vak and Krel (and it works!), or when Rik and Daria pretend to be making love to cover up their attempted escape (which ruse thankfully and hilariously segues into actual body-bonding). But the standout sequence is a bondage-tinged scene in Zed's trophy room, where the hunter takes a chained Shala for his spoils. (Brinke Stevens chained to a pillar and later held down on a stone altar by Vak the Mechano-Perv? You have my attention, sir!)

If T&A isn't your thing (wha?), fear not. For cheese connoiseurs, the flick likewise delivers the gouda. Listening to our Slave Girls deliver technobabble like "I'll lock the beam of the directional grid into the hyperdrive system!"--all with the cadence and intonation of a Valley Girl reading a Golden Book three divisions above comprehension level--is a joy not to be underestimated. Even the non-scientific dialogue has a similar charm, as when Daria observes, "She sacrificed herself for me...Life certainly weaves a twisted tapestry!" Best is after Rik and Daria's love scene, which boasts some of the most cheesetastic dialogue it's been my pleasure to gnosh in a while:

Rik: "Man and woman...what a great concept!"
Daria: "Now I know what I'm fighting for!"
Rik: "If I died today, I wouldn't complain!"
Daria: "You made me feel alive again!"

And it goes on, praise the powers that be.

Being a life-model for Frank Franzetta was lucrative, but demanding.

Cheese of the Sci-fi flavor is here in abundance as well. Vak and Krel are amazing androids. They seem to be envisioned as some sort of steampunk cyborgs--the cacaphony of creaking joints and valve pressure releases when either makes the slightest movement makes them the least stealthy hunting companions in the galaxy, but strangely this doesn't hinder their kill rate. Their personalities are a cross between the Terminator and C3P0--apart from the Horniness AI Chip, they are also extremely snippy with one another, getting into a hilarious argument about who should be checking the security measures at the castle and who should stay to watch Tisa play nude in the waves. The spaceship models, laser battles, and other effects are mid-range, and one hunt sequence even features a spider web trap right out of The Horrors of Spider Island--dissapointingly without a spider, however.

For all that, though, the movie is fairly well-made on a technical level. The lighting is extremely well-done: scenes in Zed's mansion have a warm, golden glow that lends a high-budget sheen to the proceedings, and the matte-painting sets and occasional Franzetta Fantasy Poses proudly fly the b-movie banner. I admit I didn't expect the movie to be as accomplished looking as it was, particularly after the afore-noted Boom Mike Cameo, but aside from that little gaffe, the flick looks great. And the bombastic, sometimes intrusive score by Carl Dante recalls the adventure flicks on which the film is partly based, and ups the fun level another notch.

Better quit while you're a head.

While perhaps not an out-and-out classic, Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity never forgets what it's there to do--i.e., entertain, divert, and titillate--and for me it achieves those modest goals with a certain amount of flair and elan. It's not 2001: A Space Odyssey, or even Galaxy of Terror, but what it IS is a whole lot of fun. 2.5 Thumbs--and thanks again.

Nota bene: according to imdb trivia, Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity holds the distinction of having been condemned as 'indecent' on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1992 by Senator Jesse Helms. Maybe he didn't actually watch the film, but...the very idea of Helms actually sitting down to screen Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity, a perma-shock look on his face the whole runtime, is just so goddamn beautiful it HAS to be true.


A few more images from Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987):

Domo Arigato


Joe Eszterhas' A Night at the Museum

Zed is challenged by Rubik's Hypercube

"Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to the GWAR auditions?"

Heavy Metal

A slow night at the Duchy

"Is that a telescope in your pants, or...what? It is? Oh."

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

Gargoyles (1972): or, Goyles Gone Wild!

The story is well-known: a long, long time ago--around six thousand years, according to the most reputable theological calculations--the archangel Lucifer, flush with devilish pride, rebelled against God and as a result was cast out of Heaven, taking with him a large number of similarly prideful angels. Ever since then, the Light Bearer has waged a war of revenge on God's favored creatures, Humankind, variably seeking either to lure them into iniquity and Hell after death, or else to destroy them completely and establish his infernal kingdom on Earth.

A lesser-known aspect of the story is presented in the opening credits of the made-for-TV movie Gargoyles: while viewing a Pernicious Powerpoint Presentation of devil-centered art through the centuries (paintings by Bosch and Blake, medieval woodcuts, stills from the 1922 silent classic Häxan), a Narrator informs us how Satan also branched out into the creation business himself, fathering a race of demonic humanoids for a predictably eeevil purpose:

[The Devil said,] "My offspring the gargoyles will one day rule the Lord's works, Earth and Man!" And so...while man ruled on earth, the gargoyles waited, lurking, hidden from the light. Reborn every 600 years in Man's reckoning of time, the gargoyles joined battle against man to gain dominion over the earth...

Obviously the Satan Spawn were really bad at this, since by this man's reckoning their first 10 or so attempts must have ended in abject failure. Still, in 1972, in the southern California desert, that time had apparently rolled around once again...

Not a Gargoyle. Probably.

We open with divorced professor Mercer Boley (Cornel Wilde) picking up his adult daughter Diana (Jennifer Salt) at the airport. The professor has apparently written a series of best-selling books about how religion is a load of bunk--much like Richard Moll's character in the recently reviewed The Nightmare Never Ends--and has recruited his daughter to take photos for his next book, 5000 Years of Demonology. As the Richard Dawkins of his day, Professor Boley doesn't believe in the supernatural, and hopes to show how man's conception of evil beings through the ages has really just been the result of ignorance, superstition, and one too many bowls of pre-sleepytime gruel.

On their way to Mexico for research, the pair stop at Uncle Willie's Desert Museum, a dust-covered roadside attraction whose owner claims to have found a valuable supernatural artifact. Crusty old Uncle Willie (Woody Chambliss) first comes off as a charlatan, but when the prof threatens to bolt he takes them out the the shed to show them what he's uncovered: the skeleton of a demonic humanoid beast, with horns, wings, and a saurian beak!

"I call it, 'Floopsy.'"

Intrigued, Mercer and Diana ply the old man with liquor and listen to his tales of ancient Indian rituals as night falls on the desert. Soon, though, the beating of leathery wings disturbs their symposium, and a marauding group of living gargoyles on a mission to retrieve their dead tear the shed apart and set it on fire! Diana and Mercer grab the skull and escape, leaving poor old Uncle Willie to perish in the fiery cataclysm.

On the run from the monsters, Mercer and Diana hole up in a local motel run by drunk dowager Mrs. Parks (the scene-stealing Grayson Hall). A pair of wingless gargoyles who look like the offspring of Lou Gossett and a Sleestak invade the Boleys ' room and grab the skull, but when one of them is struck on the highway by a passing semi (that keeps right on truckin', despite having just creamed a freakin' dinosaur-man!), the professor scoops up the body and throws it in his station wagon, hoping to get it back to L.A. in time for the next taping of That's Incredible!--which will be about 8 years later. Unfortunately this brings out the King Gargoyle (Bernie Casey), a winged nightmare who seems less interested in reclaiming his fallen subject's body than in staking a new claim on Diana's--emphasis on "stake."

"Please, just try to relax."

After some shenanigans, rigmarole, and assorted brouhaha, King G kidnaps Diana, taking her back to the Gargoyle HQ where a dozen other scaly horrors are tending to an Alien-style cache of eggs in preparation for exponential reproduction and the eradication of humanity. While Professor Mercer, the local police, and a group of recreational dirt-bike enthusiasts (led by a stonier-than-usual Scott Glenn) comb the desert and engage in periodic skirmishes with the wingless drones (only the winged gargoyles are "breeders"), the head gargoyle forces Diana to read to him from her father's books, passages about medieval women being raped by incubi. Of course this makes King G horny--well, hornier--and he starts putting the moves on his new little pink-skinned petunia. Unfortunately this puts him on the outs with his Muppet-reject winged old lady, whose jealousy leads her to allow the humans into the cave and sets up the final confrontation and another 600 years of thinking about what could have been.

Man, they just don't make TV movies like they used to!

Gargoyles is a fun movie from start to finish, helped along by very brisk pacing (the first gargoyle attack comes IMMEDIATELY after the first commercial break), some periodically excellent cinematography, a 60s monster movie-style score, and Emmy-winning monster make-up from Ellis Burman Jr. and future FX legend Stan Winston. While the man-in-a-suit aesthetic might seem a little cheesy to an audience weaned on ever more photorealistic CG creatures, there's a reason a whole generation was moved to nightmare by these guys:

"Did you know your Stretch Armstrong doll is under here?"

Miss Gargoyle New Mexico, 1971

Don't Break the Oath

Like the music, the acting has a kind of nostalgic 1960s monster-movie feel, with Cornel Wilde's Professor delivering all his occult knowledge in the deadpan earnestness of a slightly constipated news anchor, and King G himself (voiced by Vic Perrin, who also did narration duties for TV's "The Outer Limits") coming off more like a bumbling Alien Commander trying to overcome that famous Indomitable Human Spirit than like the offspring of a fallen angel. (In fact, opening narration aside, the gargoyles really come across more as cryptozoological entities, never evincing even the tiniest of supernatural powers.) Jennifer Salt, who would go on to greater fame on the soap opera spoof series "Soap", is okay in the acting department, but does most of her work here with her lungs--she's an excellent screamer, and does it often--and with her impressive encasements of those instruments:

"Check under the hood, please."

"I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. Franzetta."

"This isn't a cookbook...it's a sex manual!"

Director Bill L. Norton delivers a mixed bag from behind the camera. On the plus side, he does a good job keeping the gargoyles in shadow for much of the first act, adding to the menace and suspense while still showing them to be dangerous, frightening monsters. However, his penchant for showing the creatures only in slow-motion, even during battles with humans (sometimes on moving cars!) loses its effectiveness very quickly. He does manage some gorgeous compositions with the desert landscape, at times evoking an epic, huge-budget feel:

Vanishing Point

Storm's a-brewin'

No Country for Scaly Men

But at other times he produces some pretty tremendous gaffes--whether due to tight shooting schedules, inability to afford retakes, or basic sloppiness is unclear. Check out the shadows of the crew in the following snaps:

At least there's no lens flare

Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Director

(Note: I'm labeling the post "boom mike cameo," because there's bound to be a boom mike in there somewhere.)

There are perhaps a few other quibbles one could make--a cop car/dirt bike chase goes on a bit too long for my taste, for instance, and the Gargoyle Women somehow manage to lay eggs that are about 5 times the size of any conceivable aperture on their persons--but weighed against the entertainment value Gargoyles provides, they are small ones indeed. 2.75 thumbs for this piece of made-for-TV excellence.

Still yet MORE images from Gargoyles (1972):

Gargoyles Go Wild

Monster in the Bed

Toughest thing about being an elderly sheriff? Depends.

Reading is Sexy

"This way to Burning Man!"

Road Rash

"Get on my horse. My horse is amazing."

Keep watching the skies! Or the boobs. Either's good.

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

Killer Workout (1986): or, The Power is You, the Power is Me

Sometimes it takes a little bit of time before you know it's for real. Meeting at a friend's Scattergories party, you exchange phone numbers and send a few harmless texts. You agree to meet for coffee, share Cinnabuns and a good conversation. More texts, phone calls, emails, a few movies and a trip to the zoo--then, after a few weeks or even months, you look across the table in the food court in front of Sbarro's, your eyes lock, and you realize it: you're in love.

Other times, the feeling waylays you like a highwayman in a Naschy flick--you catch a glimpse, just the merest twinkling of an eye, the glint of a giant hoop earring, the *zwip* of a spandex bodysuit, the briefest flash of a neon headband, and BAM! You're heels over head over heels again in love.

Maybe it's the fact that I reached puberty and suffered from its ravages for most of the heyday of Wham! and Hall & Oates; maybe it's my taste for the absurd coupled with a love for the athletic and fitness fashions that were haute couture when Reagan was president and Harrison Ford ruled the box office. Whatever the reason, for David A. Prior's 1986 slasher opus Killer Workout (aka Aerobi-cide), I knew right from the start. I love this movie.

I can't fight this feeling anymore

In the middle of the 1980s, when aerobic exercise (or more properly "aerobicize") was taking the nation and the world by storm, health clubs all over the country sought to capitalize on its popularity by adding huge studio rooms with mirrored walls and parquet flooring to the regular free-weights and Nautilus machines. In doing so they drew in scores of women with huge breasts, huger hair, and a penchant for dressing like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance (thus boosting business, perpetuating the aerobicize craze, and feeding the sexual fantasies of maladjusted movie reviewers for decades to come). It is in one such flesh-molding factory, the accurately if uncreatively named "Rhonda's Workout," that our sad but beautiful story takes place.

Killer Workout starts off with the requisite flashback bang: a mysterious woman on the eve of signing the contract for a lucrative modeling job (in Paris!) celebrates her good fortune by catching a few rays on the tanning bed, giving the appreciative audience full nekkidity within three minutes of the opening shot. (Are you taking notes, budding young filmmakers of tomorrow? That's TEXTBOOK.) Of course it's the pre-credits sequence, so it comes as no surprise when tragedy strikes--a mechanical malfunction traps her in the UV-bed's deadly embrace, causing the machine to belch smoke and burst into flames like an ungrounded Easy-Bake Oven!

An indeterminate amount of time and an AWESOME credits song later, we find ourselves at the aforementioned gym, where proprietrix Rhonda (Marcia Karr, looking an awful lot like Jo from TV's Facts of Life--which is to say, hawt) is standing in as aerobicize instructor for irresponsible employee Jaimy (Teresa Van der Woude), who is running late, apparently because she couldn't find her cross-trainers--which is the only logical explanation for why she shows up wearing a spandex leotard, leg-warmers, and high-heeled red shoes. (Though when stumbles out of her Porsche and spills a purse-full of condoms onto the asphalt, another possible explanation presents.) Rhonda is a tough, no-nonsense businesswoman, and sets her slatternly subordinate straight: "Business is bad enough already! Just stop showing off your tits and your tight little ass!" Wait, what?

Let's get ready to sweat

Also present at the gym are: musclebound mullet-bearer Chuck (Ted Prior, later of Karate Warrior 2 and Surf Nazis Must Die!), a new employee hired by Rhonda's mysterious silent parter Mr. Ericson; roided-out perv Jimmy (Fritz Matthews), who has an unhealthy affection for Rhonda; and an assortment of gym regulars, including a gay weightlifting couple, dozens of side-ponytail-wearing lingerie models, and at least one fat guy in overalls who does nothing but ride a stationary bike and gawk at the beautiful ladies.

It's not long before someone starts killing the gym patrons, just like you probably knew they would, although you likely didn't guess that the murder weapon would be a giant safety pin. Seriously. After a couple of unnamed extras are offed, the LAPD send out Detective Lieutenant Morgan (crater-faced tough guy David James Campbell), who subscribes to the "treat everyone like a suspect and gargle with Dran-o before speaking" school of police work. His presence does nothing to stop the killings, however, and soon the gym is getting a reputation for people not surviving their workouts. Strangely, this does nothing to the attendance level of the aerobicize classes, as every time we see them in session (and we see them a LOT--not that I'm complaining) they seem absolutely packed.

It's easy enough to summarize the plot of Killer Workout, but this is one of those cases where a mere synopsis cannot begin to do justice to the awe-inspiring beauty of the thing itself. This movie is packed so absolutely chock-full of tasty 80s cheese from one end to the other, it really defies logical explanation. From the awesome extended workout footage to the laughably choreographed kung-fu fights to the crimptastic mousse-abusing hairstyles to the good 10-minutes Lt. Morgan spends tracking down and fighting an obvious red-herring, there's just nothing here that fails to put a huge stupid grin on the Vicar's face and fix it there. Add a boom mic cameo and a "cop goes rogue and takes the law in his hands" ending (that ends in complete COP-FAIL), and yes, my friends, it's love.

No pain, no gain, no brain.

Sure, there are some things I would have liked to have explained--the mysterious Mr. Ericson gives every sign of being a Big Baddie suitable for a last-reel reveal, but don't hold your breath for that one--but in the final tally the good far outweighs the bad. Because let's face it, when you've got a perfect 80s pop soundtrack written FOR THE FILM (with some of the most grin-inducing lyrics ever), plenty of gratuitous nudity, and a "break the fourth wall and wink at the camera" final frame, well, everything else is just details.

2.75 thumbs. And if anyone has a copy of the soundtrack, email me and NAME YOUR PRICE!

Because words fail me, here are a dozen more fantastic images from Killer Workout:

Nice and Brown

"Business is so bad, I had to sell my apostrophe!"

Roid-Fu

Not So Safe

The Queen of Crimp

Just Do It

"Be vewwy quiet..."

The Carradine Club

You'd Wear It

Shadow of the Boom Mic

"But Vicar, I haven't done my stretches!"

Work Them Thangs

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...