Gangsteroctopus

Play It As It Lays (1972)

Yayyyy - he's dead!

SO much wasted talent. Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld, together again, after their terrific pairing in "Pretty Poison" 4 years prior. Director Frank Perry, cinematographer Jordan Cronenworth ("Blade Runner'). But if it ain't on the page...

Insufferable. Awful. Joan Didion - one of the most overrated literary 'talents' of all time.

Why, in God's name, are we supposed to care one whit for any of these insufferable a-holes? What is their PROBLEM? Boo-hoo! "I grew up in a crappy ghost town in East Egypt, NV and now I'm married to a movie director and live in a big mansion on Hollywood, but I still feel BAD about myself - waaaaaaHHH! I'm a widdle whiny baby! Sit and listen to my pretentious musings for an hour and a half." The only character I liked was Earl Scheib, seen briefly in a commercial on TV. Everyone else in this movie can eff off and die.

And guess what? One of them actually did me that courtresy! I almost stood up and cheered when Anthony Perkins died at the end, except that he didn't deserve my huzzahs because he went out like a complete wanker. Maybe if he'd thrown himself in front of a speeding Greyhound bus and we got to see him explode across its frontside, traumatizing all of the passengers inside by the sight of his splattered intestines being whicked away by the bus's windshield wipers...there, I just wrote a better (and funnier!) movie. You're welcome.

Chano (1996)

Agustin Bernal - The Rondo Hatton of Mexico

With his blocky, pug-ugly features and slightly-going-soft bodybuilder physique, Bernal is most often relegated to villains' roles in low budget Mexican exploitation films, playing murderous cyborgs, bloodthirsty Satanists and the like. But here, for once, he gets to play the hero, the titular character, Chano. (It's likely not a coincidence that Bernal also directed the film.) At the risk of being un-PC or even offensive (and to quote from "Tropic Thunder") Bernal, in this role, goes "full-on retard." I'm not talking cuddly Sean Penn in "Sam I Am" mentally disabled. I mean, he is quite literally a drooling mental retardate. And not just a little bit of spittle every now and then - we're talking bulldog/St. Bernard quantities of slobber, almost literally foaming at the mouth at times, projectile drooling at bad guys, Old Yeller stuff. It must be seen to be disbelieved. He also talks in a high-pitched, sing-songy, 'huh-muh-muh-muh' stereotyped Downs Syndrome jabber that can be more than a little hard to take (some of his co-stars' discomfort is obvious at times).

So, Chano (Bernal) apparently makes his living picking through garbage, and it's in one of these huge Mexico City trash heaps (where we first see him thumbing through a back issue of the controversial - in this country, anyway - 'Memin') that he comes across a discarded pin-up poster of a scantily-clad Paty (Patricia) Munoz. Naturally, he instantly falls madly in love with her.

Not that I can blame him. Munoz is, indeed, a knock-out, looking like something the Hernandez Brothers ('Love & Rockets') might have drawn - except that she's a flesh-and-blood woman. She also disdains brassieres (despite her impressive mammarial qualifications - they look like 44DDs, by my eyeball estimate), spending the bulk of the film's running time in a tight white t-shirt and Daisy Dukes. Sadly, she does no actual nudity in this film, though she comes close in an egregious bubble bath scene. (I call it egregious because it is tastelessly intercut with her son's kidnapping; otherwise, pretty much any excuse to see this woman in the tub is a'ight by me.) The plot concerns Munoz's douche-bag gangster ex-husband kidnapping their son and taking him away to his large suburban compound. Chano and Munoz - alone! - then attempt a rescue.

The movie is by turns violent and somewhat lurid, unashamedly sentimental and loaded with bathos, laughable and titillating - on other words, pretty much what anyone looks for in a Mexican exploitation film.

Crime Doctor (1943)

Really, really lame

Let me start off by saying that I actually like a lot of the old B-movie cheapie film series, like 'Boston Blackie,' 'The Falcon,' 'The Saint,' et.al. - just so you know that I'm not some ADD-addled kid who can't sit still unless a movie is edited like it's been thrown into a blender by Michael Bay.

But, c'mon, let's be serious: this is a pretty terrible film, on almost every level.

First off, Warner Baxter looks awful. Every time one of the women in the film talks about how he's "good-looking," you have to laugh. I realize that in real life Baxter had had a nervous breakdown and was suffering terribly from arthritis (so much so that he eventually had a lobotomy - ! - to relieve the pain). But then the writers should have either cut the lines where women comment on his looks, or the producers should have cast a different actor in the role.

And to be honest, appearance aside, Baxter is a really underwhelming screen presence: his voice quavery, his manner hesitant, his whole demeanor uncommitted. He looks and acts a LOT older than 54. He seems to be barely able look any of the other actors in the eye. (Pretty everyone else in the entire film comes off better than Baxter, in terms of their performances - it's astonishing to think that he once won an Oscar.) I know I should feel sorry for the guy, but that's no reason to let him ruin what might have been a memorable recurring character.

The only reason that I didn't give this film a one-star rating is because it DOES have an initially intriguing premise, one that seems to anticipate "A History of Violence," among other more interesting films. But the writers quickly botch any sense of intrigue, completely throwing the story off the rails with all kinds of irrelevant tangents and sub-plots (how can a 64-minute film have this many sub-plots?), like the various criminals (female thief, disgraced Air Force officer) with whom Dr. Ordway deals with in the course of his work. These little side-stories have NO relevance whatsoever to the main story, adding nothing at all to it and, to boot, are uninteresting and insipid. Get back to the amnesia thread, you idiot writers!

This is not to mention all of the improbabilities and convenient 'coincidences' that occur throughout the story, further stretching credulity well past the breaking point. (Two of Ordway's former cronies just happening to be in a nightclub where Ordway is with his fiancé, then one of them breaks a glass accidentally, requiring medical attention and, of course, Ordway is the only doctor present - yeah, right.)

And why, for example, do Ordway's former partners in crime keep insisting to themselves that Ordway is faking the amnesia? For TEN YEARS he keeps up this charade, goes through medical school, gets a psychiatry degree, sets himself up in private practice, instead of just absconding with the loot and skipping town - say WHAT? How in the hell does that make any sense at all?

I'll only mention in passing how poorly directed this film is, especially in regards to the pacing in the dialogue. Actor A, for example, says something, Actor B ponders these words for what feels like an eternity, then eventually, slowly responds - aaaarrrgh!

Another reviewer has said that this is actually the least of the 'Crime Doctor' series, so maybe I'll give the next installment a chance (I recorded a bunch of them off of TCM), although I am not overly sanguine, and I still think that Warner Baxter is TERRIBLE.

The Girl in Black Stockings (1957)

Doing my duty and warning away any who would be foolish enough to make the mistake I made

It's astounding how many reviewers here have given this either high marks for being a well-made film noir(-ish) murder-mystery, or for it's high camp value. DO NOT BE FOOLED: this movie doesn't qualify on either the level of basic competence, or on the so-bad-it's-good scale. It's just plain bad, in every way imaginable.

But let's get something else out of the way first: for those who want to claim a 'Twin Peaks' connection for this film (which is the reason I was curious about it, initially), such an assertion is basically a bunch of garbage, grasping at less than even tenuous similarities and standard murder-mystery tropes. A girl is murdered. It occurs in a small town. There's an Indian/Native American. And a sawmill. THAT'S IT. David Lynch and Mark Frost did not rip this movie off - and I say that as someone who's not even much of a 'Twin Peaks' fan.

Okay, now that we've cleared that up, what about the film itself? You know it's gonna be bad from the very first lines of dialogue exchanged between Lex Barker and young Anne Bancroft. It's the kind of meaningless, pseudo-hip banter that has zero meaning and makes you want to slap the screenwriter, tell him, "Try writing some words that sound like they might come out of the mouth of an actual human being, you hack!"

But the main problem (one of MANY problems) is that no one seems to take the murder particularly seriously. Basically John Dehner just sort of wanders around, occasionally asking locals somewhat germane questions, but mostly just gossiping, catching up on their relationship woes, chitty-chat. This dumb-a** couldn't solve the mystery of who put the cookie in the cookie jar.

And then there's the guy who owns the motel, the psychologically paralyzed (say what..?) guy who basically sits around (well, he can't do much else, I guess) spouting off some of the most hate-filled, vile, misogynistic bile that you're likely to hear outside of a lockerroom. Now, initially, you think, 'Hunh. That's something of a twist: not romanticizing this character, or trying to make him this sympathetic type' - the way they almost always try to do with pretty much any disabled person in movies and on TV, even nowadays. But after about 30 seconds of this guy, you'll change your mind and start hoping that when Anne Bancroft and Marie Windsor take him in the pool for some hydrotherapy that they'll both get phone calls and leave him to make out on the bottom with the Creepy Crawly. (Okay, I know that they didn't have those back them, but you get the point.)

Who the hell would stay at this lodge? There's a common dining room, or restaurant, and every night the customers have to share it with this wheelchair-bound a-hole, watching him get drunk and rave about how much he despises the fairer sex. Yeah, THAT's what I want for dinner theater. How did this guy get into the lodging business, when all he does is bitch about how running this inn puts him into constant contact with the very species for which he is so overflowing with hatred? Like so much in this film (just wait until you hear Lex Barker's 'explanation' for the murderer's motives at the end of the film), it MAKES NO SENSE.

And not just that - IT'S BORING! Apparently director Howard Koch told all of his actors to pause for several seconds between each line of dialogue, to savor the 'richness' of drivel they're all spouting (I've never heard so many words used to express so little); or maybe the heat or the altitude made them all punchy. It's bad enough that we, the viewers, don't care what's being said, but when the actors all sound like they're on Quaaludes...Never has 74 minutes passed so slowly, so excruciatingly.

I will say that, as someone who loves the '50s as a design era, the Parry Lodge (and the adjoining boutique, the Pink Poodle) are pretty cool to look at; the fact that they shot this stinker on location is about the only thing this movie has going for it, although it also means that the Kanab Chamber of Commerce gets in a number of blatant promos for local businesses and sights. But apart from my interest in the era, this one is a complete and total loser.

Mr. Sycamore (1975)

Made me want to punch a hippy

Lame, pretentious, full of itself, amateurish, 'cute,' trite - I could go on and on and on about all the negative qualities of this film, but suffice to say that the original (1942?!) Broadway productions was one of the biggest flops of that season, and with good reason.

There's some real talent involved here, in front of the camera (Jean Simmons, Sandy Dennis, Jason Robards - Oscar winners or nominees all), as well as in post-production (Maurice Jarre - another multiple Academy Award winner), but the result suffers irretrievably from the fact that the story is utterly worthless, namely: a postman (Robards), tired of his limited dull, pedestrian existence and his small-minded wife, decides that the solution to his problems is...to become a tree. So, he literally plants himself, up to his knees, in the ground in his backyard. And hopes for the best. Need I say more?

Pancho Kohner (brother of Susan, the 'mixed' girl from the 1959 remake of "Imitation of Life", and uncle to the Brothers Weitz, they of "American Pie" fame), thank God, never went on to make another movie (so far, anyway - let us pray...).

Like Father, Like Son (1974)

Narcissistic, sentimentalized, racist GARBAGE

If any movie ever made Italians look bad, this is it.

Duke Mitchell - what an A--HOLE. Duke Mitchell, I s--t on your grave. Seeing as practically every person gunned down in this film by the cowardly Mimi is either black or of some other racial or ethnic minority, it's hard not to become convinced that the guy ultimately owes his allegiance to the Ku Klux Klan or skinheads. Awww, but he doesn't shoot the little black kid in the elevator in the opening sequence, so that means he can't be all bad, right? WRONG. Typical softheaded sentimental tripe.

While I do understand why some people might be struck by and even, to a certain extent, admire the film's audacious, totally un-PC verve (it's certainly unashamed of its own hatefulness and sense of self-involvement), this doesn't change the fact that the main character, Mimi (and, by extension, Duke Mitchell), is thoroughly loathsome human being who earns not one iota of empathy or interest, especially given that Duke Mitchell is such a COMPLETE BORE as a performer. But what do you expect from a guy whose main claim to fame (apart from this dog t--d of a movie) was being a second rate Dean Martin imitator?

Silent Hill (2006)

You people are ON CRACK

First off, how does a film this bloody awful rate a 6.5 out of 10?! I suppose if you're an attention span-deprived adolescent who does nothing but play video games endlessly, and whose neural cortex has been so totally overstimulated that the only thing that will prompt you to move or register a flicker of human emotion (other than ennui or blind anger) is either a can of Red Bull or a jolt in the testicles with a taser, then have at it. This movie is for you.

However, if you're actually interested in a film with recognizable human beings, something that vaguely resembles a story and any kind of connection to what is generally acknowledged as the real world, then you better fuggidabowdit. Where to begin...

Okay, the opening scene pretty much sets you up for what to expect for the next 2+ hours (?! and I thought "The Passion of the Christ" felt long): you've got a young couple lives in a house that's RIGHT NEXT to a two-lane blacktop that's busy with truck traffic in the middle of the night, which is also poised RIGHT NEXT to a waterfall with a sheer drop of what looks to be at least a hundred feet; they've got a nine-year-old daughter WITH A HISTORY OF SLEEPWALKING - and yet...this little girl is somehow able to leave the house in the middle of the night; there are no safety features whatsoever to prevent her from wandering off their property either into traffic, or to stand poised on the verge of this precipitous cliff; and - AND (this is the big one) the girl's mother's solution to her daughter's problem is to IMMEDIATELY head off to this abandoned, haunted town the name of which her sleepwalking daughter has been repeatedly crying out during her somnabulistic states. I think we have a winner for Parent of the Year...

This film takes place in a 'reality' that bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the one that you and I live in - and I'm not talking about the haunted town of Silent Hill here. I'm talking about a 'reality' where a young mother, alone with her young daughter at a gas station in the middle of the night, out in the middle of nowhere, as she is walking into said gas station to pay, blithely walks past a scary, dominatrix-looking bike cop WHO'S HEADING STRAIGHT FOR HER SUV WHERE THE DAUGHTER IS SITTING IN THE FRONT SEAT WITH THE WINDOW HALFWAY DOWN and doesn't even so much as turn her head as they pass one another. WTF..? And - oh, get this - she walks into said gas station/restaurant, whose parking lot outside is conspicuously empty of any other vehicles apart from her own and that of the scary bike cop, and...the place is FULL of people! Where are their cars and trucks parked? This movie can't be bothered with such 'mundane' details.

And that's a HUGE problem and here's why: look, I'm not one of these nigglers who demands that a movie adhere absolutely to some perfect resemblance to the real world. Far from it. BUT when you're making a movie with fantastical elements, like those in SILENT HILL, the more closely and rigorously you define a 'real world' to contrast with the fantastical you're going to create, the more impact that latter world will have on the audience. But if the 'real' world in which your characters live is, in and of itself, so totally disconnected from anything even vaguely resembling the waking world, then its bound to seem much, much less impressive when an armless, headless ghoul stumbles out of an auto graveyard and vomits black acid on someone.

Another thing: films with fantastic elements - sci-fi, horror, fantasy, etc. - need to establish, if only obliquely, what the 'rules of the game' are. That never happens in SILENT HILL. Basically, Rhada Mitchell gets to the haunted town, lose her daughter and then spends the next two hours running and stumbling from one lurid, horrific set-piece to another with absolutely no sense of progression or logic. And the fact that the viewer has only the vaguest sense of why she's doing what she's doing is only further infuriated by the fact that instead of at least attempting to lay out some ground rules or sense of purpose, the movie spends seemingly endless amounts of time and energy to fill in a totally absurd and utterly derivative backstory that supposedly makes this all make sense (which it most assuredly does not).

Oh, what a waste - of my time; of millions that could have financed 20 independent features (at least maybe 10% of which might have turned out good, giving viewers a 200% return on investment, so to speak); of the talents of a lot of good actors (Sean Bean, Rahda Mitchell, Kim Coates, etc.) and crew (Carol Spier's production design is, as always, top notch). Notice how I DON'T mention the director, Christophe Gans (go back to France, game-boy!) or credited writer Roger Avary (give back your Oscar now, Roger!). Yes, an utter waste.

I hated this film and if you liked it, chances are I hate you too.

Super Fly (1972)

Feet walking...hands passing telegrams...

To anyone out there who wants to see a seminal blaxploitation film: skip this one! This is one of the absolute DULLEST movies you will ever see. All the high ratings that people give this one, I gotta wonder what the heck they were smoking/snorting (some of Priest's blow, no doubt).

Just check under the 'Trivia' section where it's revealed that the script was only 45 pages long - thus all the footage of people driving, walking, etc. This recalls comments by notorious schlockmeister Herschell Gordon Lewis in an interview with John Waters in which Lewis recalls how he purchased an unfinished film called 'Monster A Go-Go' and filled out the continuity by shooting random, unrelated footage of 'feet walking...hands passing telegrams, etc.' This movie may as well have been directed by Lewis, for all the 'excitement' that it evokes. Gordon Parks Jr. could not hold a candle to his old man (R.I.P.).

So pass this one over and check out any number of GOOD blaxploitation pictures, like just about anything with Pam Grier ('Coffy', 'Foxy Brown'), or 'Black Shampoo', or 'Detroit 2000', or a Doris Day movie...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Coming Out of Their Shells Tour (1990)

...than Richard Simmons at a Judy Garland film festival

Sorry, no offense to all those TMNT fans out there and the kids who were five when they first saw this, but this has got to be one of the gayest children's programs I have ever seen, right up there with 'Creating Rem Lazar' and 'Sigmund and the Sea Monsters'.

And please, before anyone gets offended, let me clarify that I'm not using the term 'gay' here the way Eminem does, that is meaning 'lame,' 'stupid,' 'uncool,' etc. In other words not in the derogatory, homophobic, 8th- grader's slur of choice sense.

No, I mean 'gay' as in filled with homo-erotic imagery (watch how many shots there are in the opening crew-setting-up montage of muscular roadies' arms and backs), dance routines so effeminate and mincing they make George Balanchine look like Gene Kelly, a villain who references show tunes, and more bulging codpieces than a Chippendales show.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Who Made the Potatoe Salad? (2006)

Urkel's boner

Okay, to start, we've got a decent if overused basic concept: straight-laced boyfriend/girlfriend/fiancé/whatever goes to meet significant other's kooky/crazy/dysfunctional family, and humor (assumedly) ensues. Unfortunately, not here, for the most part anyway, basically because the writer (also the director in this case) has no clue how to structure a comedy (or even knows what's funny, for that matter).

First off, Jaleel White's character spends pretty much the entire film either being a) utterly inept, and/or b)obnoxious and annoying, not unlike the character he played on TV (and for which he will most likely go to his grave being remembered for unless he stays away from roles like this one). Also, as a protagonist, he's almost entirely inactive during the bulk of the action, basically just sitting around and acting as a punching bag (literal and metaphorical) for nearly everyone else in the movie. When he occasionally does take some kind of action (such as a more or less entirely unmotivated peewee football game, and later the climactic bungled staged burglary), he flubs it egregiously, and usually because of his own ego. Thus it becomes really, really hard to sympathize with or even like the character, which is pretty important in light romantic comedy. As an audience member, I kept wondering why in the world does his fiancée say she loves him and only find happiness with him, when the closest he can come to being charming is a half-assed paraphrasing of dialogue from 'Jerry Maguire' (this before he proposes to her)? I mean, what a freakin' lame-o.

Second big mistake: why reveal that White's character is a cop the minute he's introduced to her parents? Look, you've got a potentially really funny set-up, with Clifton Powell as a cop-hating former Black Panther and his future son-in-law as a policeman wanting to impress the old man favorably, so right out of the gate there's a terrific source of comic tension, where you could have White's character running around for the bulk of the film trying to conceal his job from Powell and getting into all kinds of trouble as a result (there are some hints as to how this might have developed in White's initial interactions with the character of June Bug, but that's quickly and inexplicably defused - good job, 'Coke'). Instead, first thing that comes out when he meets his fiancée's parents is that he's a cop - no warning from the fiancée that, "You know, uh, by the way, my dad's a former Black Panther and he hates policemen, so maybe you shouldn't mention that to him, okay?" And then the father's reaction to this is so implausibly and overtly negative that it goes way, way beyond any kind of risibility into outright unpleasantness, not to mention complete unbelievability.

Which is another of this film's greater weaknesses: all kinds of baffling incidents of "What the..?!" implausibilities. Like the fact that White's character, a uniformed beat cop, has his own desk at the police station and apparently is allowed to just kick back there whenever and yack with his fellow officers who also apparently have nothing better to do. Or that June Bug cannot recognize fellow gangstas as friendly until they're within five yards of him. Or that the guys with whom Powell and White are playing dominoes in the park would make such outrageously crude and grotesquely sexist remarks about Powell's wife and daughter when it's obvious to even the biggest idiot that they're just that: his wife and daughter. I could go on and on, but my point is that if your story is set in something at least resembling the real world and, more importantly, we're expected to have some kind of emotional involvement with the characters, then there has to be some level of believability as well as psychological consistency to said characters. That just ain't the case here.

As for Urkel's boner, let's just say that there's nothing quite so disturbing as a Jaleel White sex-dream followed by a Clifton Powell wake-up call.

The Return of October (1948)

Odd, obscure, contrived - but still interesting

When I came across this video (on the old GoodTimes budget label) in a Half Price Books in Tacoma, WA, my initial shock came from the fact that the film was directed by none other than cult auteur Joseph H. Lewis (GUN CRAZY, THE BIG COMBO). The fact that it was shot in Technicolor and starred one of Columbia's two contract leading men (the other being William Holden) makes me assume that this must have been a prestige picture for the studio that year. In all honesty, it's not very good, with a contrived courtroom finale that recalls the previous year's MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET for all the wrong reasons. A brief synopsis of the relevant plot points: greedy relatives are trying to cover up the fact that they've squandered a dead aunt's fortune by getting niece Terry Moore declared insane, based on the fact that she thinks her horse is her reincarnated uncle (isn't it funny how in films of this period people can be declared insane on the flimsiest of premises? maybe not so funny, though, if you were Francis Farmer). Glenn Ford is a doctor of philosophy who is researching the relationships between animals and humans (whatever) and his boss at the university thinks that a paper he's writing about Terry's 'delusion' will be a big seller and bring in lots of publicity and money for their foundering school (yeah, maybe in the Bizarro Universe). Terry Moore is cute but not a very good actress, over-emoting in her scenes with the horse to the point that you begin to think that, Yeah, this chick IS crazy. The late, great Glenn Ford is, as always, charming and essentially decent, though he hasn't at this point fully developed the comedic skills that would serve him much better in the '60s. There are some trademark Joseph H. Lewis shots here and there (early in the film there's a view of Terry and her uncle up in a stand observing a horse on a track shot from a ground level POV, framed by a white wooden railing; a lengthy automobile conversation between Moore and Ford recalls, if vaguely, similar scenes in GUN CRAZY between Peggy Cummins and John Dall), but is of interest on a stylistic level only for completists of the director's work. Still, that trained cat is pretty amazing (though it does look slightly narcotized in some of its scenes).

Sunburst (1975)

Kathrine Baumann - TOTAL '70s HOTTIE!

There's really only one good reason to see this film and it really only applies to heterosexual males with big breast fetishes, and that reason is '70s uber-hottie Kathrine Baumann, who appears here in her only nude scenes (to date), first skinny-dipping with future TV Dr. Strange Peter Hooten, then later getting (sort of) raped by James Keach. (I know it's totally politically incorrect for me to call it 'sort of' when, in fact, she is assaulted and the assault is sexual in nature, though apparently no actual penetration takes place as Keach has trouble getting it up.) This is a peculiar film. As several previous reviewers have mentioned, it's been misleadingly retitled (via cheap-looking video effects) as 'Slashed Dreams', with Robert Englund's participation played up in order to make a faux tie-in with the then-current 'Nightmare on Elm Street' series. To all you slasher movie fans out there, to avoid disappoint please note that this is NOT a horror movie, or a slasher movie; nor does it contain any notable violence other than some lame fisticuffs and an assumedly unintentionally comical hatchet-vs-knife showdown at the end. This film could, however, be grouped in that unpleasant subgenre of 'Deliverance'-inspired movies from the '70s where naive city-dwellers go into the wilderness where local inbred redneck perverts rape, sodomize and otherwise make them regret ever having left town.

It starts out on a college campus where students Baumann and Hooten receive a letter from mutual friend Englund, who has gone off into the woods and built himself a cabin, so that he can 'find himself'. Baumann's a-hole boyfriend (very convincingly played by Ric Carrot) senses the threat that the bulge in Hooten's pants represents to his relationship with Baumann, and he antagonizes them both to the point where they do run off together to look for Englund.

On the way there, they stop in a small town store to ask for directions, where they encounter proprietor Rudy Valee conducting one of his patented radio programs for a phantom audience. Instead of quietly backing out the door, they give him time to spot them and invite them in. Now, in an alternate universe, Rudy Valee would turn out to be the psychopathic killer, who would then proceed to stab Hooten to death and turn his pancreas into a hairnet while Baumann ran screaming into the night...but alas, this movie is nowhere near that interesting.

What follows next looks like a cigarette ad from Playboy Magazine circa 1973 come to life, with Hooten and Baumann wandering through the woods, climbing a steep gravel slope, encountering a bear, getting into a blueberry fight and generally bringing the film to a grinding halt (and it was only in first gear to begin with).

Eventually they find Englund's cabin, but he's not home, so they go skinnydipping. Since this is a PG-rated film, Baumann's strip-down is discreetly screened by a VERY INCONSIDERATE bush - but then she skips into the shallows and, because of how she's built, you can pretty much see everything anyway. Hooten soon joins her and then they are leered at and accosted by Keach and his microcephalic companion. Later, back at Englund's cabin (no, he's still not home), Baumann and Hooten finally get it on - and are awakened later by Keach and his buddy who've dropped by for some forced copulation. While a knife is held to Hooten's throat, Keach tries to accomplish the act, but has potency issues. His buddy then, in turn, is more interested in slapping the s--t out of Baumann rather than copulating with her.

The next morning Englund finally shows up, gives Baumann a little therapeutic pep talk (in which she actually displays more acting chops than she was generally credited with having). Later that morning the three of them run into Keach and his goon-buddy, there's the aforementioned fight, the bad guys are mildly wounded and flee. Baumann and Hooten head back into town.

That's it. It's taken me almost as long to type all of that as it probably would take to watch this entire movie, which runs under 80 minutes.

Oh, and be warned: far more horrific than anything you'll see on screen is the truly, TRULY awful soundtrack music by some unknown (and rightly so) female folk-style/soft 'vocalist' whose inane, excruciating, nails-on-blackboard screeching is enough to make one wish that Freddie Kruegher would show up and rip out her larynx with his patented claw-fingers. Now THAT would have made for a memorable movie.

The Hard Ride (1971)

Contains no Michael Beck

If you're looking for something a little different from the typical late '60s/early '70s AIP biker flick, then ignore any negatory comments about this film and track yourself down a copy. (As of April 2006 Sony/MGM has yet to release it onto DVD; it was only available about 10 years back on VHS from the now-defunct Orion, who then had the rights to the AIP library, which MGM then subsequently picked up.) Yes, this film is not so heavy on the exploitation elements as others of the genre (e.g. "Satan's Sadists", which I found to be abysmally dull and typical of the inept hackwork of the 'great' Al Adamson - the title's the best thing about that film). Not that it's lacking in violence, sex, drugs and general sleaziness (there's even some brief topless nudity); it's just that this film also has some other things on its mind - LIKE TELLING A STORY.

Gravelly-voiced Robert Fuller (soon-to-be of 'Emergency!' fame) stars as a returning Vietnam vet who, in accordance with a dying buddy's wishes, takes under his care his dead friend's chopper, named 'Baby'. And what a hog! This is the kind of motorcycle that I used to fantasize about when I was six years old, with high handlebars, big pipes, long forks and a throaty engine. VRROOOOM! Fuller also hooks up (not in the literal sense, mind you - at least, not initially) with his dead pal's old lady, one Sheryl, played by genre vet Sherry Bain, who is far more plausibly cast in the role than, say, Jocelyn Lane in "Hell's Belles". (Don't get me wrong: I LOVE Jocelyn Lane - she is an uber-fox of the highest degree, but she is nowhere near as believable as a 'motorcycle mama' as Bain is.) Ms. Bain, with her tousled mane of real red hair and curvy but not over-endowed body, is beautiful, but not TOO beautiful for the role, with hints of wear and tear, some frazzled edges, but still radiating a healthy sexiness, albeit one with more than a hint of sadness and cynicism underlying it.

The film also deals with some interesting racial angles, too, that - to my knowledge, anyway - were pretty atypical for a genre picture like this one, and deals with them in an interesting fashion, if perhaps a tad bit too cursorily. For example, Fuller's dead pal was black, and thus Sheryl, a white woman, was crossing the color line in her relationship with him. Later, encountering another black biker who makes an impertinent assumption in coming onto her, she is prompted to respond, "I wasn't into him because he was black!" Also, the film's MacGuffin (of a sort - he's the guy Fuller and Bain spend most of the running time looking for), a guy who goes by the sobriquet Big Red, is a Native American (tribe not specified) - just another interesting detail in film whose genre is all too often portrayed as being as lily white as many eastern prep schools.

As for the exploitation angles, like I said, there's plenty of substance abuse, some skinnydipping, a scene in a whorehouse (with the aforementioned nudity - hey, you could get away with more in the early '70s with a 'GP' rating) and some fairly brutal and well-directed fight sequences (much better than just about any from other films in this genre and period). Plus lots and lotsa hogs.

The Deathhead Virgin (1974)

Honestly, people...

I really don't understand why seemingly everyone who's commented on this film finds it to be so utterly awful. Look, it's no masterpiece - we're talking Filipino horror from the mid-'70s here - but it's a lot more interesting than a LOT of other so-called 'so-bad-they're-good' movies out there.

<>First off, you got '60s hottie Diane McBain in a bikini. Scratch that: several different bikinis. You also have any number of very hot Filipino women also in scanty swimwear, nude and/or wet. Also, there is (real) cockfighting, spear fu and various other forms of tropical debauchery. Not to mention Vic Diaz. Those are the film's exploitation bona fides.

<>Then there's the fact that it's the final directorial credit for Norman Foster, an interesting and underrated auteur ("Journey Into Fear", anyone? And don't tell me Orson Welles directed it - even he vociferously denied this). This films is very professionally put together, well-lit, well-miked, succinctly edited - far more so than a lot of comparable junk of the same pedigree.

<>And then there's it's odd, somewhat lopsided structure, what with the bulk of the first 40 minutes or so given over to a lengthy and involved flashback (I kept wondering what had happened to Diane McBain's character, if she was just a cameo or something) and then the curious denouement (did the Deathhead Virgin just wink at me?). This a highly atypical film, even for shot-in-the-Phillipines exploitation.

<>Ignore the naysayers and check it out if you're inclined.

The Crimson Permanent Assurance (1983)

Utterly dreadful

I hadn't seen "Monty Python's 'The Meaning of Life'" since it first came out, way back when I was still in high school, so it was with mildly delighted anticipation that I popped in the new Special Edition DVD into my player the other day. Boy, did I waste $15.00! I barely made it to the midway part of the feature ("Where are you, fishy?"), but I almost didn't even make it to the opening credits, thanks to this worthless trifle of an utterly insipid, humor-free ball of whimsy-snot. If one needs proof of the axiom that animators make lousy live-action film directors (Frank Tashlin, Tim Burton, Ralph Bakshi, et. al.), here is yet more. Terry Gilliam, get thee back behind an animator's desk and out from behind a camera!

Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives! (1989)

Eddie lives? Who freakin' cares?!

What is WITH you people?! Why does anyone LIKE this movie? This is SUCH a totally self-important, self-indulgent, badly made pile of cinematic horse dung. It might be funny in a 'so-bad-it's-good' way if it weren't for the fact that everyone involved seems to take this garbage SO seriously. Especially when Eddie is musing about music (his 'bedsheets' monologue is a real groaner) - you wanna punch the guy in the crotch, hard, just to shut him up. (Not the actor, Michael Pare, who's trying his best in this utterly joyless sequel - him, I feel sorry for.) What boggles my mind is that out-of-print VHS tapes of this piece of junk regularly sell on eBay for $10, $15, $20 and up - WHY?! Who ARE you people? I didn't know it was possible to have a credit card AND a lobotomy.

Konec srpna v Hotelu Ozon (1967)

Why couldn't you've been born a blonde?

I saw this last night at the American Cinematheque as part of their tribute to screenwriter Pavel Juracek, and I have to say WOW. I was thoroughly impressed, completely engrossed from the first frame. The Cinematheque's schedule described this as "MAD MAX directed by Andrei Tarkovsky", which isn't far from the mark.

The actress who played the Old Lady, the leader of the amazons, has one of the most beautifully expressive faces I have ever seen onscreen, and this quality was only emphasized by the razor sharp black-&-white cinematography that brought out every tiny detail of emotional nuance. I found myself imagining that the Old Lady had been the teacher at an all-girl elementary school, and that after the Apocalypse she had merely extended her role of den mother into chief of the amazons' little tribe.

The actresses who play her young charges, nearly all apparently amateurs (only a few have any other film credits), are all attractive to a greater or lesser degree, but not in a slick, Hollywood way. They're like healthy, athletic peasant girls and farmer's daughters. Many appear to be expert equestrians - how to describe the thrill of seeing one of them mount a galloping horse sans saddle or stirrups? Of particular note is the young woman who played Barboura, the Old Lady's heir apparent, a statuesque red(?)head, a Balkan Sophia Loren. What a shame that she and nearly all of the other amazons made only this film and no others. They're all completely believable in their roles as young women transformed by the rigors and loneliness of their post-apocalyptic environment into hardened, even cruel near-barbarians (all without any male influence, mind you).

A word of caution for animal lovers: there all several scenes in which real animals - a snake, a cow - are actually killed onscreen, and very graphically. By today's standards this may seem callous, even evil, but in the context of the film I can understand how the filmmakers might have felt justified in doing so as these killings make the point of who these women are and what they've become (unlike, say, some of the egregious mondo thrills of onscreen animal slaughter in nearly every Italian cannibal film ever made). As for the dog mentioned by a previous reviewer, I'm uncertain whether or not it was killed. It may have been merely snared by one leg and pulled down to simulate its being shot, and it does appear to still be breathing after one of the amazons knocks its skull in just below the frameline; but it's hard for me to imagine an animal in such obvious distress being well-trained enough to suddenly go quiet after a 'pretend' blow to the head with a rifle butt. Besides, it's obviously a malnourished mutt and earlier in the film one of the actresses does connect with its head when she hurls a small log at it. Well, you can be the judge if you ever have a chance to see the film - which, if it does come up, I highly recommend you take.

Three on a Couch (1966)

Perverse fascination

I must admit to having a perverse fascination for Jerry Lewis, somewhat akin to the masochistic pleasure I get from unzipping scabs. How anyone beside retarded four-year-olds can find this guy funny is utterly beyond me. Jerry's biggest mistake was breaking up with Dino, who was always far more talented in every way, even and especially as a comedian. Jerry Lewis' awesomely overinflated ego is in evidence in nearly every frame of this awful, awful, AWFUL movie, from every bit of painfully unfunny 'business' he gives himself to the multiple roles he unsuccessfully assays. Like nearly all of his solo efforts (especially those that he also directed, and that includes "The Nutty Professor", another grossly overrated film), this movie is UTTER TORTURE to sit through if you have a functional brainstem. JERRY LEWIS SUCKS! HE IS NOT FUNNY. Why is he still alive and Dino's dead? (Well, maybe the liquor and cigarettes had something to with it.)

Gor (1987)

A complete pile of s**t

Fritz Kiersch, this cinematic abortion's "director", has got to be one of the most completely untalented hacks working behind the lens. (If you've ever seen the original "Children of the Corn", you'll know what I mean.) The fight scenes here are SO incredibly lame. I've seen 2nd graders stage better mock combats in school plays. It doesn't help that the script seems to have been written by a moronic middle-schooler. No cliché goes unturned here, no mundane sword-&-sorcery trope untouched. I read the first three of John Norman's 'Gor' books when I was in high school and much more interested in the genre, and even then I didn't think that they were anything special. But at least they held my attention for the first few books in the series (probably mainly because of the sexy Boris Vallejo covers and the stories' liberal doses of bondage-themed sex). This movie has none of those elements. The only two good things about it are the vigorous, hearty (and often inappropriately utilized - good job, Fritz, you inept stooge) musical score and Rebecca Ferrati's breasts. (Wait - is that three things?)

Hoero tekken (1981)

"You're going on an Auschwitz Special Honeymoon." (WARNING: possible *SPOILERS*)

This movie is BONKERS - and I do mean that in the best way possible. It opens with the apparent gundown-murder (a la Sonny Corleone) of the film's leading man (Henry Sanada). But, wait, no: it turns out it was his twin brother! Cut to Texas (?!) where the other Henry Sanada (incongruously called 'Georgie' in the English-dubbed version I watched) rides horses and ropes cattle (don't all Texans?) under the tutelage of none other than Milton Ishibashi (villain Junjo from the first two 'Streetfighter' films) who kidnapped Georgie as a child (as it turns out, for his own protection). Adoptive uncle dies, so Georgie goes to Japan to find out the truth of his family. There, among others, he meets up with none other than real professional wrestler Abdullah the Butcher as Spartacus (?!), bodyguard to a bevy of Japanese cuties in bikinis whose tops Georgie's pet spider monkey, Peter, keeps stealing. (Yes, I just re-read that last sentence and I'm still not sure whether or not this movie was the result of a chili-induced fever-dream.) Also, Georgie comes into contact with his blind, piano-playing, martial arts expert sister, played by - who else? - Sue 'Sister Streetfighter' Shiomi. She is under the protection of her seemingly kindly uncle who (SPOILER) turns out to be the man behind Georgie's parents' deaths (uncle gave the pilot of Georgie's parents' airplane coffee with an overdose of sleeping medicine - this is all related to Georgie and the audience by Mr. Magic and his hideous ventriloquist dummy, in a scene that baldly borrows from 'Hamlet', a play whose story this film's does bear some more than superficial resemblances). In case we weren't sure, we know that the uncle is REALLY bad because he fetishizes Nazis and Beethoven, hanging a portrait of Der Fuhrer himself in his secret bad guy HQ and having one of his evil henchwomen dress in something like a combination of Gestapo-meets-cheap hooker lounge wear (this character is the one who utters the above "honeymoon" line). The film's tone varies wildly, from deadly serious and bloody to drippingly maudlin to Benny Hill-style comedic (watch for the 'wacky' chase involving a cadre of ninja-monks going after Georgie through the streets of Tokyo, a chase which, at one point, has Georgie and his pal stealing a tandem bike from a pair of gay men necking by a fountain - I'm not making this up, really - and knocking over some nuns in full habits, one of whom is wearing red lace panties). Rappelling must have been big in 1982 because this movie features more than its fair share. Then there's the Hong Kong final showcase showdown which plays like a martial arts video game, with Georgie taking on wave after wave of variously armed and abled hench-dudes until his evil uncle finally clues into the fact that he'd better make a run for it. The final chase owes more than a little to the previous year's "Raiders of the Lost Ark", with Georgie pursuing the jeep-driving baddies on horseback while contending with other hench-dudes throwing bombs from a helicopter. When he finally faces off against his evil uncle (SPOILER), Georgie delivers the death-blow by karate-punching a 140-karat diamond into his uncle's eye socket (the pain of which causes uncle to fatally hurl himself off a cliff). With a theme song sung by Sanada and fight scenes directed by Sonny Chiba himself, this is one for the ages. And did I mention the lounge where they hang out called 'Casablanca', whose owner dresses exactly like Bogart from that movie?

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

"Drugs are bad, mmkay?"

Darren Aronofsky, as a director, is the Michael Bay for the arthouse crowd and this movie is the "Reefer Madness" of its generation. I mean, this is a movie that takes itself way, WAY too seriously, is so hysterically bad and over-the-top that, in future (and assumedly more perceptive) generations it will be looked back upon the way that we now watch a film like "The Valley of the Dolls". This is a film for self-pitying, mopey college students who sit around in their dorm rooms listening to Sonic Youth, talking about what they think are "deep" subjects and strumming acoustic guitars. Grow up, you infantile navel-gazers! The only 'real' performance in this film is Ellen Burstyn's (its only major award nomination, by the way - guess why?); everyone else in it plays obnoxious cyphers and rabid caricatures. How it is that anyone who watches this film would get sucked in by its 'heaviness', by its overweening and obnoxious sense of self-importance is astonishing to me. I guess it just goes to show that, like Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute."

Pandemonium (1982)

A dozen french-fried dolphin abortions -

• would be funnier than this incredibly LAME parody of slasher movies. Even Mel Brooks' later films, using a scattergun approach to comedy, at least occasionally got something to stick to the side of the barn. Not so with this film, which is so utterly lacking in laughs that it could be used to induce clinical depression. What's amazing is how many relatively big names there are in the cast, many of them normally funny people (Carol Kane, Donald O'Connor, Pee-Wee Herman) - that is, when given decent material with which to work. Other casting, though, is really inexplicable, like Tab Hunter as a college football player (he's clearly at least 20 years too old for the role). The whole enterprise reeks of Canadian tax write-off.

The Last House on the Left (1972)

Utterly inept

I cannot believe how BAD this movie is. I'd been led to believe that, like Tobe Hooper's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, Wes Craven's first feature was supposed to be one of his best. It's not. I do like some of Craven's other films, like THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS and THE HILLS HAVE EYES, but watching this reminded me more of the crap that he typically churns out, like SHOCKER, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (c'mon - Freddy is just Shecky Greene with claws) or any of those direct-to-cable stinkers his name seems to turn up on with a producer credit on a regular basis. The acting is almost totally unconvincing. (At the end, when the sheriff comes in I almost expected the mother to offer him some more birthday cake.) The plot is so indescribably preposterous that words fail me. (Let's just say that the ridiculous coincidences pile up faster than cowpies on a dairy farm.) The music is so at odds with the action (and not in an appropriately ironic way) that it beggars the mind - and that's not to mention the "comic" relief of the inept sheriff and deputy. And worst of all is Craven's utterly amateurish directing and editing. I've seen better films made by 6-year-olds with digital video cameras. (And Craven hasn't really improved that much over the years.) You want to see a movie of this ilk that still packs a punch after the same (approximate) amount of time? Watch I SPIT IN YOUR GRAVE. THAT'S a good exploitation film that transcends the limits of the genre. THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT...utter crap. Wes Craven wishes this was shocking. It's not. It's boring. And to avoid boredom (and believe me, it was SO hard not to press fast-forward through so much of this film), keep repeating to yourself, "Hit the Eject button. Hit the Eject button..."

Welcome Back, Kotter (1975)

Blinded by nostalgia

To anyone who thinks this was a good show, I would ask if you've actually seen it anytime recently. Because if you had and you still thought it was good, I'd say you need psychiatric counseling and some serious medication. This show TOTALLY SUCKS. It's nothing but an endless stream of grade school-level insult humor. (Remember "Up your nose with a rubber hose"?) There's a reason why Gabe Kaplan no longer has a career: because he's NOT funny. In fact, he's an incredibly annoying a--hole - like every other character on this show. (He's merely the worst of the bunch.) John Travolta (another overrated jerk) just barely escaped from this situational comedy sewer by the skin of his teeth.

The Naked and the Dead (1958)

Never read the book

And maybe if I had, I might like the movie less. (I read "The Thin Red Line" before I saw that movie and was, as I expected, disappointed despite the fact that that is a very fine film.) As it is, I like this film a lot. For one thing, it's got one of Bernard Hermann's best but least-known scores; I wish it were available on CD. The cast features an amazing array of '50s lead and supporting actors. L.Q. Jones is especially enjoyable as an amiable hillbilly (a role he specialized in) and Aldo Ray gives one of his finest performances as the hate-filled Sgt. Croft. Cliff Robertson is a little milque-toasty, but that's more because the role is underwritten. Raymond Massey is appropriately arrogant and high-handed as the general in charge of the campaign. If you can catch this film on TV, Turner Classic Movies is the place to see it because they letterbox it in its original 'scope aspect ratio, crucial to appreciating this film in all its widescreen glory. Trivia note: this was a favorite film of German auteur Rainier Werner Fassbinder.