Revenge Of The Ninja

REVENGE OF THE NINJA was a big step up for Cannon, as it was among the studio’s first films to receive a theatrical release from MGM. Cannon wanted a sequel to its smash hit ENTER THE NINJA, though REVENGE has nothing to do with it except actor Sho Kosugi is in both movies as different characters. Location filming in Salt Lake City gives REVENGE an offbeat look to match its offbeat script.

Kosugi, who played an evil ninja in ENTER, gets top billing this time as good ninja Cho Osaki, who leaves his native Tokyo for Los Angeles with his mother and his baby son Kane after the rest of his family is murdered in a ninja bloodbath. Six years later, Osaki has a successful business running a gallery of handcrafted dolls imported from the Orient. What he doesn’t know is that his business partner Braden (Arthur Roberts) is smuggling heroin inside the dolls and selling it to Italian mobster Caifano (an overacting Mario Gallo).

Braden’s plan goes awry after Kane (Kosugi’s real-life son Kane) accidentally breaks a doll, exposing the powder inside, and witnesses a murder. As if it weren’t already crazy enough, the screenplay by James Silke (AMERICAN NINJA) really goes off the rails when we learn Braden is also a ninja (!) and that he has the power to hypnotize sexy karate student Cathy (Ashley Ferrare) and get her to kidnap Kane.

REVENGE was the first action movie directed by Israeli-born Sam Firstenberg, and he immediately demonstrates a knack for staging exciting, bloody fight scenes. The massacre that opens the film gets the picture off to a rousing start, and the action-packed climax featuring Kosugi laying waste to an entire office building of henchmen is one of the best sequences in any Cannon movie. Kosugi and stunt coordinator Steve Lambert put together a succession of fun chases and fight scenes, which are glued together with a score credited to Michael W. Lewis and Robert J. Walsh that’s so infectious that Cannon used it in other movies.

Even little Kane Kosugi gets to knock some guys on their asses, though the sight of a little boy getting slapped around may surprise contemporary audiences. Firstenberg’s touch with actors is not as strong as his action chops — all the actors are either over- or under-emoting — but nobody’s watching a film called REVENGE OF THE NINJA to see Lee Strasberg exercises. Firstenberg, Silke, Kosugi, and editor Michael Duthie returned a year later in another unrelated “sequel,” NINJA III: THE DOMINATION, which added a supernatural spin to the chopsocky thrills.

The Wild Wild West #1 by Richard Wormser

Surprisingly, for a television series that ran four seasons and was quite popular among young audiences, THE WILD WILD WEST spawned only one tie-in paperback. Richard Wormser's simply titled THE WILD WILD WEST was not an original work, but rather was adapted without credit from "The Night of the Double-Edged Knife," an episode from the series' black-and-white first season.

In brief, THE WILD WILD WEST was a clever combination of old-fashioned western tropes, the new spy craze born from the explosive James Bond movies, and a dash of science fiction/fantasy. HAWAIIAN EYE's Robert Conrad starred as James T. West with character actor Ross Martin (MR. LUCKY) cast as West's partner Artemus Gordon. West, a typically dashing two-fisted type, and master of disguise Gordon worked as government agents who roamed the Old West battling bad guys. During the first year, their antagonists were more or less normal killers, robbers, and bank robbers. It wasn't until the series found its bearings that it introduced kinkier villains and more way-out gimmicks, including an episode in which West was shrunk to six inches in height.

The gifted Stephen Kandel, who created con man heavy Harry Mudd for STAR TREK, penned "The Night of the Double-Edged Knife," though it's unknown why he received no credit on the Wormser book. Wormser more or less follows Kandel's basic plot, though he obviously added characters and story branches to open the story to book length. West and Gordon, whose home base is a luxury steam train, are called to investigate blackmail and murder. Namely, the killing of five men per day on a railroad being financed by Penrose (played in the episode by Harry Townes) and Adamson (Vaughn Taylor) under the direction of General Ball (Leslie Nielsen), who once was West's respected Army commander, but was washed out of the service after losing an arm.

For three days straight, the mysterious blackmailers have made good on their promise to kill five men per day until Penrose and Adamson meet their demand for $50,000 in gold smelted into railroad spikes. Under suspicion is American Knife (John Drew Barrymore), a Dartmouth-educated Cheyenne who claims to be taking the fall for the real killer, a white man. Wormser keeps the killer's identity a mystery until the final chapters, though--perhaps in the interest of time--"Double-Edged Knife" reveals it at the beginning of the third act.

Wormser mostly does a good job capturing the humor and the derring-do of the television series, especially in adapting Robert Conrad's voice for the page. His biggest misstep is his characterization of Gordon, who is not West's equal in the novel, but instead a deferential employee. To pad the page count, West and Gordon have a butler, who's addicted to gambling at cards, always with a few aces up his sleeves.

Unfortunately, this 1966 novel was Signet's only WILD WILD WEST book, though Wormser went on to write TV tie-ins of THE GREEN HORNET, THE HIGH CHAPARRAL, and THE MOST DEADLY GAME, as well as a few movie novelizations and a lot of pulp fiction, sometimes under the name Ed Friend. Gold Key did release a handful of WILD WILD WEST comic books during the late 1960s through the show's cancellation in 1969.

The French Atlantic Affair

ABC’s adaptation of Ernest Lehman’s 1977 novel THE FRENCH ATLANTIC AFFAIR does not get off to a promising start with LOVE BOAT-esque main titles (“in alphabetical order”) and a startlingly phony opening shot of a cut-out photograph of a cruise ship pasted to a monitor showing the New York City skyline. At least the long scroll of television stars and character actors shows promise of high camp (and Phill Norman’s titles won an Emmy, by the way).

The talented Douglas Heyes, a former MAVERICK and TWILIGHT ZONE veteran who adapted Lehman’s book and directed, doesn’t let us down, starting with KOJAK’s Telly Savalas as a charismatic cult leader in a flashy medallion who amazingly dresses, smokes, and acts more like the Savalas in the “If” video than Jim Jones. At least Heyes doesn’t leave us hanging. Before the first commercial break, a velvet-tuxedoed Savalas informs Louis Jourdan (GIGI), the captain of the SS Marseilles, that he and his followers, most of whom are posing as passengers, have taken the luxury liner hostage.

While we all wait with baited breath to find out Telly’s end game, life aboard goes on, including — of course — a masquerade party that gives us the unique spectacle of Chad Everett in a dog costume. The MEDICAL CENTER star is THE FRENCH ATLANTIC AFFAIR’s male lead, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and journalist traveling with his estranged young son, who luckily smuggled aboard his ham radio, which is forbidden on a French ship. Savalas lured Chad aboard through false pretenses, as he wants the writer to tell the world his final story. Not that Everett, whose scenes with Savalas look like Battling Medallions, gets too worked up over the crisis. He even finds time for a haircut.

In typical disaster-movie fashion (really, that’s what THE FRENCH ATLANTIC AFFAIR is), Heyes tells us the backstories of the supporting cast, which includes Mama Michelle Phillips as Jenny Your Cruise Director, John Rubinstein (CRAZY LIKE A FOX) and Rebecca Balding (LOU GRANT) as a young couple, Shelley Winters as — what else — a blowsy old lady, Carolyn Jones (THE ADDAMS FAMILY) as a seasick passenger, and Stella Stevens as the suspicious wife of one of Telly’s flock.

ABC aired the miniseries in three parts over a November Thursday, Friday, and Sunday to unimposing ratings. The second part really drags, as Heyes takes the story off the ship to follow Richard Jordan’s (THE CAPTAINS AND THE KINGS) negotiations with cruise line execs Donald Pleasence (HALLOWEEN) and James Coco (MURDER BY DEATH) for the ransom and thinktankers Richard Anderson (THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN) and John Houseman’s (THE PAPER CHASE) efforts to learn the extortionists’ identities.

It’s unclear if one can criticize an actor for overacting when everyone is doing it, but Everett and Savalas seem to be in a fierce scenery-chewing competition with Jordan trying to catch up. Strangely, it’s amusing when Telly does it and just plain bad when Chad does it. As is often the case, there’s a pretty good two-hour movie buried in Heyes’ six-hour miniseries. I’m sure we all could have done without Coco’s petulant resignation from the cruise ship company because Pleasence made fun of his fat ass.

Abby

ABBY is one of the most obscure blaxploitation movies of the 1970s, due to American International Pictures coming out on the wrong end of a lawsuit instigated by Warner Brothers. Warners claimed this unintentionally hilarious ripoff of THE EXORCIST infringed upon its copyright, and somehow a judge agreed. Considering the dozens of movies that are no less similar to THE EXORCIST than ABBY is, but were allowed to unreel in theaters without resistance, it’s unknown why Warners picked ABBY to bully. Unless it’s because AIP was making big money on ABBY, which was an enormous success in its short theatrical run despite how silly it is.

William Girdler, the twentysomething director of ASYLUM OF SATAN and THREE ON A MEATHOOK, shot ABBY in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. It’s difficult to guess which of those films induced good actors like Carol Speed, Terry Carter, William Marshall, Juanita Moore, and Austin Stoker (who also starred in Girdler’s COMBAT COPS aka PANIC CITY aka THE GET MAN) to perform this particular screenplay in Louisville. They work hard and take the material seriously — perhaps more so than it deserves — but the reality is that ABBY is more funny than scary. Stuck with a very low budget, Girdler’s po’-faced approach to an absurd story turned out to be wrong, and ABBY lacks the horrific atmosphere necessary to set the story on its edge.

While exploring some African ruins, holy man/archeologist Garnet Williams (Marshall, who was also Blacula) uncovers a horny evil spirit named Eshu. Somehow (don’t ask me) it makes its way to Louisville (!), where it invades the body of Abby (Speed), the sweet newlywed wife of Reverend Emmett Williams (Carter, then a regular on MCCLOUD), Garnet’s son. Before you can say “the power of Christ compels you,” Abby has transformed into an ugly, cruel, foul-mouthed sex machine, frightening the elderly church organist into a fatal heart attack and cruising singles bars in search of carnal debauchery. For some reason, nobody notices Abby’s green makeup or the fact that she speaks in a raspy male voice (provided by Bob Holt) when under Eshu’s spell. I’m pretty sure the cast during production didn’t know Speed was going to be dubbed.

The sight of little Carol Speed foaming at the mouth, swearing like a drunken sailor, and tossing grown men around like rag dolls is impossible to take seriously. On one hand, one feels guilty mocking ABBY, since Girdler is nothing if not sincere in his intent to create a work of ghastly horror. Being as he was usually able to get name actors to work for him, there must have been something about his personality that attracted them, because they certainly couldn‘t have been impressed with his films. And ABBY‘s cast really does shine, struggling as they do with the silly script by Girdler and Cornell G. Layne. Marshall does his best to anchor the film in some sort of reality, spouting his Eshu expertise as if he really believed it, while Carter and Stoker as Abby’s cop brother provide fine support.

On the other hand, Robert O. Ragland’s inappropriately funky score, some very cheap sets, and some of the most painful wardrobe choices this side of Chad Everett on MEDICAL CENTER prevent ABBY’s audience from experiencing any emotion except giggly amusement. Let’s face it—the sight of an innocent-looking young woman possessed by demonic forces and compelled to spit up green foam, curse, emit a sinister laugh, and latch on to the honkers of total strangers is intrinsically ridiculous. THE EXORCIST managed to pull it off because of the brilliant filmmakers—such as William Friedkin, Max von Sydow, Jason Miller, Dick Smith and William Peter Blatty—involved with that production. It’s to Marshall’s credit that you almost buy it in ABBY, but Girdler ain’t no Hurricane Billy.

Girdler followed ABBY with another blaxploitation film — the unsuccessful SHEBA, BABY with Pam Grier in the title role — and then four more movies in the horror and science fiction veins, culminating in the bizarre THE MANITOU. Girdler died just before THE MANITOU’s 1978 release in a helicopter accident while scouting locations in the Philippines. He was just 30 years old. ABBY has never been legally available on home video, though a few bootlegs have slipped out over the years, and a random theatrical screening pops up occasionally, presumably under Warner’s radar.

Nashville Girl

I can imagine Southern drive-in audiences lapping up this New World release. Roger Corman put it in theaters as both NASHVILLE GIRL and, in Northern theaters, where audiences were presumably less enchanted with country music, NEW GIRL IN TOWN. Years later, after COAL MINER’S DAUGHTER was a smash hit, NASHVILLE GIRL found more playdates under the title COUNTRY MUSIC DAUGHTER. Now that’s exploitation. Gus Trikonis, a former dancer and husband to Goldie Hawn, directed it in the same professional style as his other New World pictures, THE EVIL and MOONSHINE COUNTY EXPRESS.

Softcore star Monica Gayle, who had earned a small fanbase among the drive-in crowd after appearing in films like SWITCHBLADE SISTERS and THE EROTIC ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO, takes the title role of jailbait Jamie, a product of a strict Baptist upbringing who runs away from her hillbilly home and hitches with a pair of truckers to Nashville to become a country-western star. After her brothers beat up her rapist and her dad takes a strap to her for listening to the radio in church, 16-year-old Jamie leaves the country for the big city, only to be pawed and groped by almost every man she meets.

She meets a friend while showering at the YWCA, loses her, meets another while serving a prison sentence for prostitution, is pawed by a lesbian guard, gets paroled, bounces around from one sleazebag record producer to another, loses her virginity to another sleazebag, and finally signs a personal contract with a country singer (Glenn Corbett of ROUTE 66) with a penchant for young girls.

Like many exploitation movies from the 1970s, rape and statutory rape are treated casually, and without the sleazier elements, NASHVILLE GIRL would probably fit well as a made-for-TV movie. Gayle, a better actress than the material she was usually given, handles Jamie’s arc quite well, graduating from naive country girl to country music superstar with aplomb. Corbett, busy hoping from one television guest shot to another, probably relished the opportunity to tackle an edgier role (and being surrounded by so many nude actresses was probably fun).

Singer Johnny Rodriguez and songwriters Rory Bourke, Gene Dobbins, and John Wills give Trikonis’ expose a stamp of approval, even though it’s a roaring indictment of the music industry. The songs are pretty good, and I wonder if a NASHVILLE GIRL soundtrack album ever existed. Marvel Comics writer Gary Friedrich, the co-creator of Ghost Rider, penned a softcore novelization of producer Peer J. Oppenheimer’s script that contains even more sex than the film does.

River Of Death

Cannon released this Alistair MacLean adaptation that’s somewhat of a change of pace for action star Michael Dudikoff (AMERICAN NINJA) in that it’s a period piece that contains no martial arts. It seems tailor-made for Cannon stalwart Chuck Norris, but reports say Robert Ginty and Christopher Walken were considered for the leading role. Dudikoff had just been in a pretty good Vietnam War flick for the studio called PLATOON LEADER, so it was natural he would get the call for this.

A prologue set during the final days of World War II finds sadistic mad scientist Manteuffel (U.N.C.L.E. man Robert Vaughn) and Nazi officer Spaatz (Donald Pleasence) planning to escape to South America to continue the doctor’s experiments to perfect a deadly virus with which to conquer the world. During a firefight, Manteuffel double-crosses his friend, shooting him and leaving him for dead. Twenty years later, John Hamilton (Dudikoff) leads a physician and his daughter into the Amazon jungle to discover the origin of a fatal disease that is decimating the Indian tribes. In an attack, the doctor is killed and the daughter captured; only Hamilton manages to escape to civilization.

Despite his cynical exterior and world-weary attitude, Hamilton is determined to rescue the girl, even though everyone, including his friend Hiller (L.Q. Jones) and the local police chief, Diaz (Herbert Lom), tries to convince him she is dead. An incognito Spaatz joins Hamilton’s party, as do his sexy young lover Maria (Cynthia Erland), an interpreter, a chopper pilot, a pair of rebels, Hiller, and a couple of others. Their destination is a legendary lost city of the Incas, but, to reach there safely, they must contend with cannibals, pirates, sneak attacks, plagues, and a few more double-crosses.

There’s much to like about RIVER OF DEATH, even though it isn’t as good as it should be. MacLean’s excellent premise is treated decently (though not completely faithfully) by adapters Andrew Deutsch (PLATOON LEADER) and Edward Simpson, and director Steve Carver (LONE WOLF MCQUADE) shows a steady hand directing his cast of crafty veterans through their obligatory action scenes.

The decision to have Dudikoff provide dollops of existential narration, a la Martin Sheen in APOCALYPSE NOW, doesn’t really work, and the action sequences, though plentiful, could have used more bite, particularly the climax, which feels like a letdown after we’ve been slogging through a treacherous jungle for 100 minutes. I imagine it was felt that Dudikoff’s martial arts talents would feel anachronistic in the 1960s setting, but hiring Robert Vaughn and Donald Pleasence to play Nazis is hardly the right move for an adventure film with ambitions of being “realistic.” The performances are fine, once you accept that most of the supporting actors are miscast, which provides this pulpy ride with an added level of fun, to be truthful.

Pepper

Cheri Caffaro and her GINGER movies must have been an influence on this sexy spy movie from Amero Brothers, a production company known for hardcore films. PEPPER features a lot of nudity and sex, much of it involving star Diana Wilson, but it earned an R rating from the MPAA.

In Pepper Burns’ first scene, we see Wilson getting it on with an anonymous dude while her phallus-shaped bedside phone buzzes with a message from her boss, who is for some reason shown petting a cat behind his desk while his face is blocked from camera view. A couple of minutes later, a different woman seductively and ferociously peels and attacks a banana. Then an old man plays pool while another naked woman lounges on the table.

Dragon lady Chang (An Tsan Hu) has four sexy assassins in all and is using them to engineer a dastardly plot to rule the world. Chang, a descendent of Fu Manchu (!), sends them to seduce four powerful men and steal a key from them. The four keys allow her to operate a satellite with nuclear weapons. I’m not certain who Pepper ultimately works for, but she’s in law enforcement and assigned by her headless boss to foil Chang’s plan.

PEPPER is basically ridiculous, like GINGER, but much less grimy. It has a lot of sex, but isn’t particularly sexy. The action is pretty much confined to the boudoir. The acting by Hu (“You have certain information I wish to require.”) is atrocious, and J.J. Coyle’s campy act as Chang’s right hand Snow makes Paul Lynde look like Big Jim Slade. The only competent performer is Caren Kaye (MY TUTOR), who plays Pepper’s office colleague and is PEPPER’s only actor to go on to a real Hollywood career.

As for Diana Wilson, well, she is only half bad. She can’t recite dialogue with authority, but she’s likable and unquestionably looks smashing in and out of her hot pants. Surprisingly, director Lem Amero and producer John Amero spring for cheap-but-acceptable visual effects to represent the satellite (I suppose it could be stock footage), and Amero’s director of photography is Roberta Findlay, one of the few women to direct hardcore films in the 1970s. Except for the original songs, the score is stock, but quite good. PEPPER has also been seen as CHECKMATE and PEPPER—AGENT OOX. If anyone has seen it.

A Place Called Today

Don Schain and his starlet wife Cheri Caffaro followed up their nasty exploitation hit GINGER with an ambitious drama about race relations. It’s the worst kind of arthouse film. Instead of conversations, the characters speechify. Instead of drama, Schain, who wrote and directed A PLACE CALLED TODAY, tosses out socially relevant topics and buzzwords like slabs of meat to wild animals. The heavy-handed sermonizing gets exhausting quickly. Just fifteen minutes in, and I felt as though I had been smacked in the noggin with a meat tenderizer.

Schain’s ponderous filmmaking extends beyond his screenplay. The film opens without credits and jumps right into longwinded conversations without establishing the setting or characters. This leaves the viewer confused and scrambling to catch up with the story, which is further made disorienting by Schain’s insistence upon shooting close-ups with actors staring directly into the camera. Yes, Schain has Big Ideas, and some of them are worthy of discussion, but not with these actors and not with just fat fingers behind the camera.

J. Herbert Kerr Jr., who did little of note on film, is earnest enough as Randy Johnson (baseball fans may be distracted by the constant use of his full name), a black man with a plan to run for mayor by inciting violence behind the scenes and more or less scaring the Caucasian Establishment sheep into voting for him. Helping him are white revolutionary Carolyn (a miscast Lana Wood, who overacts as if to make up for a lack of confidence in tackling a fiery role with a lot of dialogue) and black Steve Smith (former footballer Timothy Brown). On the other side of the election are Ron Carton (Richard Smedley), Carolyn’s lover who believes in the Establishment and is also making time with wealthy debutante Cindy Cartwright (Caffaro), a goodtime party girl who backs the current mayor (Peter Carew) basically because her daddy tells her too.

A PLACE CALLED TODAY received an X rating in its 1972 release by Avco Embassy, probably because of a scene in which Cindy is graphically raped and murdered by Johnson’s men. Caffaro is stripped naked and degraded in all of her films directed by her husband, which adds a subliminal layer of grime to them.

As for lovers working together, Wood met Smedley on this film and married him. In her autobiography, she claimed A PLACE CALLED TODAY was his first film, but he had in fact acted in several soft- and hardcore sex films prior to it and continued to do so after their wedding. He’s a dreadful actor, and Schain’s self-important dialogue really leaves him hanging. Wood trashed this movie in her book, though she claimed it was ruined in the editing. I don’t think it was edited enough.

Death In Small Doses

Peter Graves (MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE) stars in the amazing DEATH IN SMALL DOSES as an FDA agent who infiltrates the Los Angeles trucker scene as a student driver named Tom Kayler. His mission: find out who’s furnishing semi drivers with deadly amphetimines that cause one to hallucinate during an overnight run and run his rig over a cliff.

His first day, an old dude freaks out, wounds a man with a baling hook, and dies. I’m no drug expert, but I don’t think speed does what director Joseph Newman (THIS ISLAND EARTH) and screenwriter John McGreevey (THE WALTONS) think it does. McGreevey’s tough dialogue is good, though, tossing around slang like “co-pilots” and “riding with Benny,” like a pulp paperback crinkled by too many nights in someone’s back pocket.

The best reason to watch is Chuck Connors’ hilariously jacked-up performance as a pill-popping hepcat with the awesome name of Mink Reynolds who lives down the hall from Graves at a rooming house owned by Val Owens (Mala Powers). You probably haven’t seen the Rifleman grinning, dancing, jumping around, and swinging, man, swinging like Mink does. Graves is dull, of course, but his square-jawed hero turn works as an amusing contrast to Connors, particularly a possibly improvised bit in which a speeded-up Connors downs some bennies and tosses his crumpled paper cup off the noggin of an irritated Graves.

Newman directs this Allied Artists exploitation with a sure hand and even some excitment. Graves was the star of a popular Saturday morning TV series, FURY, at the time he made trashploitation classics like this, IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, and POOR WHITE TRASH. Also with Merry Anders, Harry Lauter, John Mitchum, Robert Shayne, Robert Williams, and Roy Engel.