Incubus (1982)

The director of Disney’s WITCH MOUNTAIN movies also made this sleazy Canadian horror movie based on a 1976 novel by Ray Russell, the screenwriter of X: THE MAN WITH X-RAY EYES. About a rapist demon with a phallus the size of a man’s arm that splits apart its victims and bathes them in semen, the film is, somehow, still less graphic and much less involving than Russell’s book.

Set in the small town of Galen, INCUBUS stars John Cassavetes (an Oscar nominee for THE DIRTY DOZEN), who must have needed the bread to bankroll another independent feature, as Sam Cordell, the local physician and coroner who is initially mystified by the brutal rapes and murders. So much discharge is left in and on the bodies that police chief Hank Walden (John Ireland, an Oscar nominee for ALL THE KING’S MEN) initially suspects a gang of rapists, although he can’t explain why the semen is colored red (nor can the movie).

Also curious is local teen Tim (Duncan McIntosh), the boyfriend of Sam’s daughter Jenny (Erin Flannery). Tim has been experiencing grotesque nightmares and claiming after each one that another rape has taken place. How do Tim’s dreams connect to the incubus—the monstrous supernatural creature that exists to impregnate human women while they sleep? Helping Sam get to the bottom of the mystery is Laura Kincaid (Kerrie Keane), the editor of the town newspaper. She’s also the spitting image of Cordell’s dead girlfriend, one of many story tangents inexplicably left undeveloped.

Most of the story is also present in Russell’s novel. Cassavetes’ character is an amalgamation of two men from the book, but original to the movie is his interest in very young women. Sam, a widower, is reeling from the death of an 18-year-old girlfriend, and his first scene finds him peeking at his daughter stepping out of the shower. Cassavetes’ quirky performance is not an asset to this film. Though I presume he and director John Hough (the two men previously worked together on BRASS TARGET) believed it would fit nicely into the skeezy atmosphere, his pervy personality makes Cordell a bit hard to take as the film’s hero.

INCUBUS is a somewhat entertaining if not completely fulfilling shocker. Hough, a horror vet (THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE), skillfully films the attacks as graphically as he can without going “too far” (attacks in a movie theater and a museum library are terrifically intense), and he wisely keeps the creature off camera until the end. Hough and Cassevetes basically threw out Sandor Stern’s screenplay during shooting (Stern is credited under a pen name) and just winged it on the set, which seems an unwise decision. Too many plot threads are left unresolved, as if they were forgotten during production, and the story is confusing. Likewise, Cassavetes’ improvisational acting choices are at odds with the competent and heroic character he’s supposed to be playing.

The monster suit by Les Edwards and Maureen Sweeney is pretty good and not used enough. Hough found some neat old locations in Toronto and Guelph, Ontario in which to shoot, but another of INCUBUS’ weaknesses is that we don’t get to see much of the town or its people, and thus it feels a bit claustrophobic.

And Soon The Darkness (1970) / And Soon the Darkness (2010)

Producer Albert Fennell, writers Terry Nation and Brian Clemens, composer Laurie Johnson, and director Robert Fuest, all of whom worked together on the television series THE AVENGERS, collaborated on 1970’s AND SOON THE DARKNESS, a big-screen chiller produced with teeth-chattering aplomb.

As much as the script and direction, the film creates a sense of dread through sound…or the lack thereof. Johnson’s score is terrific, but Fuest also uses silence and quiet sound effects to evoke a nihilistic mood, and presenting occasional dialogue in unsubtitled French puts the audience on the same edge as the English-speaking protagonists.

Two attractive young birds, Jane (Pamela Franklin, later in FOOD OF THE GODS and THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE) and Cathy (Michele Dotrice), embark on a bicycling trip across the back roads of France. The brunette, Jane, intends to keep her carefully planned schedule, while blond Cathy grows bored and wants to dawdle and work on her tan by the side of the road. They separate after a brief tiff, but when Cathy doesn’t show up at the next town, Jane grows worried and goes looking for her. She meets Paul (Sandor Eles), a detective who agrees to help her find Cathy, though he neglects to tell her about the pretty young tourist who was recently raped and murdered along the same road.

Fuest (THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES) masterfully frames each shot for maximum tension, and Franklin, a former child star, is a marvelously vulnerable heroine. The climax isn’t perfect because of some deceptive acting I can’t get into here, but it’s exciting enough that you probably won’t think about it while it’s happening. AND SOON THE DARKNESS isn’t a Hammer movie, but could easily be mistaken for one. Clemens’ next two films were indeed for Hammer: DR. JEKYLL & SISTER HYDE and CAPTAIN KRONOS, VAMPIRE HUNTER.

Forty years later, Anchor Bay Films decided to remake AND SOON THE DARKNESS with Amber Heard (ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE) and Odette Yustman (THE UNBORN) as the leads. Transplanting the terror from France to Argentina, the remake directed by Marcos Efron appears to go out of its way to undermine the suspense Clemens, Nation, and Fuest wrenched from the original premise.

Whereas the protagonists in the original film were alone on barren stretches of road populated only by a handful of people they couldn’t understand, the girls in Efron’s remake are in a town surrounded by solid citizens. Also deflating suspense is the opening shot, which graphically shows us a horrifying event Fuest was content to merely hint at later in his story.

Too lazy to bother with any mystery, the screenplay by Efron (making his feature debut) and Jennifer Derwingson features American teens Stephanie (Heard) and Ellie (Yustman) on a bicycling vacation in Argentina. After a night of drinking and flirting with men—well, it’s really vivacious Ellie doing the flirting while Stephanie frets—the two girls have an argument, resulting in the more responsible Stephanie leaving Ellie sunbathing near some woods. When Ellie doesn’t show up at a predetermined meeting place, Stephanie goes looking for her. The police aren’t interested in helping, but Michael (STAR TREK’s new Dr. McCoy, Karl Urban), another American, appears to be.

Efron has obviously seen the original film—he steals shots from it—but doesn’t understand why it works. Whereas Fuest plunged its Strangers into a Strange Land, Heard’s character comes across as falsely worldly (and able to beat up several men bigger and stronger than she), and Urban’s is just plumb unbelievable. The movie would like you to believe that Michael is involved in Ellie’s disappearance, but its insistence upon showing us Ellie’s kidnapping dispels that theory before Efron can even develop it. By revealing too much of its plot and falling back on standard xenophobic horror tropes, AND SOON THE DARKNESS is a thriller that doesn’t thrill.

Stunt Man's Holiday by John Whitlatch

The last time I wrote about author John Whitlatch, I noted that nobody seemed to know very much about him. He wrote eleven paperback originals for Pocket Books between 1969 and 1976, all of them rugged adventures about rugged, manly dudes doing rugged, manly things.

Since my post, blogger Paul Bishop was able to find and chat with an old friend of Whitlatch's. It appears Whitlatch died of a brain tumor in 1981, which is also the last year he was published. Please go to Bish's Beat here to learn more about the enigmatic author.

As for Whitlatch's work, I recently finished STUNT MAN'S HOLIDAY, which is a sequel of sorts to FRANK T.'S PLAN. It revolves a supporting character from that book, Hollywood stuntman and full-blooded Apache Max Besh. More or less one long chase, STUNT MAN'S HOLIDAY teams Besh with obnoxious standup comic Les Rick (an obvious double for Don Rickles) on a two-man trek across the desert in pursuit of robbers who have kidnapped Rick's wife and stolen $6000 of Besh's Vegas winnings.

It's structured similarly to FRANK T.'S PLAN, which had pretty much the same plot, and allows Whitlatch to get in plenty of snipes at women and hippies, which he seems to hate equally. STUNT MAN'S HOLIDAY isn't action-packed, but it's always interesting, as Whitlatch shares many helpful tips on camping, tracking, horseback riding, etc. That's one reason Rick is along--to give Besh someone to teach manliness to and give Whitlatch the excuse to show off what he knows.

STUNT MAN'S HOLIDAY is also a mystery of sorts, and if you're paying attention, Whitlatch scatters clues along the sandy path (I wasn't, but in retrospect, it all makes sense). If you're into macho adventuring, John Whitlatch is a good author to follow.

Strange Shadows In An Empty Room

Though it was marketed to American audiences as a horror film or thriller with horror elements, STRANGE SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM is a straight crime drama with an excellent cast and some amazing action scenes.

Filmed in Canada (and not trying to hide it) in 1975, this Italian/Canadian production showcases one of the best car chases ever performed, thanks to the nimble second-unit direction of driver extraordinaire Remy Julienne. STRANGE SHADOWS doesn’t show up in lists of great car chases, but Julienne smashes, jumps, crushes, and squeals these steel junkers in every way imaginable.

In the personage of burly star Stuart Whitman (RIO CONCHOS), police detective Tony Saitta is one of the most hilariously violent and single-minded lawmen this side of Maurizio Merli. The first time we see Saitta, he’s blasting away at bank robbers with the same obsession he feels for the murder of his much younger and much Frencher sister Louise (the gorgeous Carole Laure from THE SURROGATE). The initial target of his investigation is George Tracer (Martin Landau, possibly between seasons of SPACE: 1999), a middle-aged college physician who was having an extramarital affair with Louise.

Of course, more suspects, red herrings, and victims are in the mix in this whodunit penned by Vincenzo Mannino (GREAT WHITE) and Gianfranco Clerici (CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST). Gayle Hunnicutt (MARLOWE) plays a sexy teacher having an affair with Tracer's son, Tisa Farrow (ZOMBIE) is Louise’s blind roommate in an insanely dangerous dorm, and Jean LeClerc (THE UNCANNY) is Louise’s ex. With his colleague Ned Matthews (a what-the-hell-I’m-getting-paid John Saxon) in tow, Saitta — the world’s angriest cop — punches, kicks, shoots, and drives his way through every one of them before discovering Louise’s killer’s shocking identity. That nobody on the Montreal police force appears to be investigating the murders is just one of many holes in the story.

Not to be repetitive — and it’s fun to see the veteran stars bounce off each other — but the thrilling setpieces directed by Alberto de Martino (HOLOCAUST 2000) are delightful, even though they make no sense half the time. At least twice, Saitta puts himself into the middle of a dangerous situation, only to learn his opponent has nothing whatsoever to do with the case. While the car chase is the film’s most memorable scene, Saitta’s brutal punchout with a trio of razor-wielding transvestites is not far behind. The detective’s hilariously singleminded determination to smash his way through china shops is equaled only by director de Martino’s to put wild action on the screen, no matter how absurd it may be.

The Lone Wolf: Havana Hit by Mike Barry

Burt Wulff is back in the fifth of fourteen Lone Wolf novels penned by Barry Malzberg under the name Mike Barry. The Lone Wolf series is unusual for the men's adventure genre in that it actually comes to a definitive end, rather than just fading away. It's also one of the better written series in the genre.

Too bad HAVANA HIT isn't among the finer Lone Wolf entries. Very light on plot and action, this 1974 book from Berkley Medallion picks up with the valise of heroin Wulff picked up in Las Vegas in DESERT STALKER. The plane taking him back to New York is hijacked to Cuba, where the drugs fall into the hands of a psycho government official named Delgado, who hands them off to corrupt Intelligence head DiStasio, who plans to take the dope--a million bucks worth--to New York to sell.

Wulff, whose crusade against the mob stems from his fiance's death by overdose, enlists the reluctant aid of a 'Nam-vet helicopter pilot named Stevens to blast his way first into Delgado's office, then DiStasio's jungle estate. Although HAVANA HIT is not as exciting as previous Lone Wolf books, Malzberg creates an interesting relationship between the singleminded Wulff and the burned-out Stevens, who is a fully developed and sympathetic character whose fate is a powerful shock.

Wulff's first name was originally Burt, but was inexplicably changed to Martin in DESERT STALKER. Here, he's Martin on the inside, but still Burt on the back cover. Speaking of covers, the Lone Wolf books offer some of the most striking paperback covers, though this one painted by Mel Crair is incredibly misleading, since no women appear anywhere in the story.

Steven Seagal Is A Dangerous Man

What the hell—a halfway decent DTV Steven Seagal movie? Hey, I’m just as surprised as you are.

That A DANGEROUS MAN is one of Seagal's most watchable films in years is despite the fact that Seagal is as disinterested as ever. Rarely has a movie star been so bored by his job that it shows up in her performances. Many shots of Seagal are actually a body double, and a lot of his dialogue is dubbed by another actor trying to sound like him. If he ever took a step during a fight scene, it would be a miracle. All he does is stand in a spot and wave his arms around in quick cuts that try and fail to disguise his girth.

That’s all par for the course in a Steven Seagal movie. What sets A DANGEROUS MAN apart from most of its competition within Seagal’s DTV oeuvre is that it appears some care was taken in other respects to deliver a watchable action movie. Put a more interested (and interesting) star in it, and A DANGEROUS MAN could have really been something.

Seagal is Shane Daniels, a former military man who served six years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit (we never learn who did). His first night on the street, he witnesses two Chinese gang members killing a cop. He kills the killers and rescues a young Asian woman, Tia (Marlaina Mah), and a Russian guy, Sergey (Jesse Hatch), who talks like a McKenzie brother (A DANGEROUS MAN was shot in British Columbia). Pretty soon, Chinese drug dealers, Russian gangsters, and corrupt cops are involved with Shane and Tia and Sergey in a complicated plot that I didn’t fully catch or care about really.

Director Keoni Waxman (THE KEEPER) appears to share Seagal’s fetishes for hot Asian girls and brutal violence, which is maybe why A DANGEROUS MAN turned out as well as it did. Few action heroes have ever been as nasty as Seagal in delivering the wet stuff, pounding and grinding and stabbing his opponents until their faces look like Robert Davi lost a fight with a cheese grater. The fights and explosions work well enough for a Friday night rental and make A DANGEROUS MAN look impressive indeed compared to the rest of its star’s recent work.

The Affair Of The Unhappy Hooker by David Toma

David Toma was a real undercover police detective who wore outlandish disguises to capture drug dealers in Newark, New Jersey. Like Frank Serpico and "supercops" Greenberg and Hantz in New York City, Toma became something of a folk hero for his unorthodox style and incredibly successful arrest and conviction rates. Virulently opposed to any type of drug, even alcohol, Toma's exploits became so well known that ABC created a primetime crime drama for him.

TOMA starred Tony Musante as Toma, and even though it was a hit, Musante became disillusioned with the series and left after just one season. Not to be deterred, ABC cast Robert Blake to replace Musante and continued the show as BARETTA. For all intents and purposes, TOMA and BARETTA are the same show.

Toma also spawned a trio of men's adventure novels that don't exactly seem to be TV tie-ins. In fact, TOMA was long gone from the public airwaves by the time Dell published the third and last Toma novel, THE AFFAIR OF THE UNHAPPY HOOKER. Credited to David Toma and Jack Pearl, I suspect Toma had little to do with the book's creation, and Jack Pearl seems to be a nom de plume for Donald Bain, who is still cranking out TV-based mystery novels at the age of 75 with another MURDER, SHE WROTE book coming this fall.

Strangely, AFFAIR has next to nothing to do with any unhappy hooker, though one does appear late in the story as a peripheral character. It's a well-written tale featuring Toma undercover as a Mafioso named Augie Mara who infiltrates the Newark mob to nail some bigshots running dope and prostitutes. His partner is a sexy FBI agent named Nancy Stroud who poses as his moll.

Written in first person, as though this actually happened to Toma, the book is entertaining, though Toma's rants against drinking and drugging occasionally veer off into self-righteousness that's hard to take. I'm sure Toma had a healthy ego--in fact, it was probably necessary for him to pull off his many guises--but the fact that his fellow cops gush over him and his new partner is dying to seduce the happily married hero is a bit much. It's common for men's adventure heroes to be supermen, but Toma is an actual person, and as such, his piousness can be hard to take.

Still, I liked THE AFFAIR OF THE UNHAPPY HOOKER, and it's interesting to note that the face painted on the Dell cover is not that of actor Musante, but of Dave Toma himself.

The Baroness: The Ecstasy Connection by Paul Kenyon

Based solely on this first novel, I proclaim Pocket Book's the Baroness series as one of my favorite paperback series of the 1970s. It's fast-moving, sexy, violent, and downright weird--just the way I like 'em!

The Baroness is Penelope St. John-Orsini, the widow of both a secret agent and a car-racing baron who was left wealthy and bored after the deaths of her husbands. As "Coin," she works for the National Security Agency as a spy, using her cover as an internationally famous model and actress to travel all over the world solving cases.

Unusually for these series, the Baroness works with a team, all of whom are either models or photographers, including ex-Green Beret Dan Wharton, sexy Fiona, tough guy Eric, bombmaker Paul, master of disguise Yvette, Cherokee Joe Skytop, and Japanese Tom Sumo. She takes her orders from John Farnsworth, whose codename is Key.

Seven of the eight Baroness novels were released by Pocket in 1974. All are credited to Paul Kenyon, obviously a pen name, because the books were "produced" by packager Lyle Kenyon Engel, who was also involved with the Chopper Cop and Blade series, to name a couple. According to Bradley Mengel's SERIAL VIGILANTES OF PAPERBACK FICTION, Engel founded Book Creations, Inc. in 1973, a company that conceived novels on spec, hired writers, then sold the books to various paperback publishers.

So. THE ECSTASY CONNECTION. Well, it's an odd duck. Basically, Penelope and her team are investigating some strange isolated incidents in which people are literally sexed to death. That is, one starves to death, because he was enjoying something so pleasurable that he wouldn't stop it to eat. A stage actress literally masturbates herself to death in front of a live audience.

It's all because of a drug created by Dr. Jolly, who works at the plush Hong Kong estate of the blubberous Petronius Sim, a gigantic and evil bastard who plans to addict the world's leaders to the drug so he can control them. In his employ are zombies with electric sockets in their heads into which Sim inserts plugs that stimulate their brains with uncontrollable pleasure or pain to keep them in line.

Kenyon's major setpiece is a real action doozy. The Baroness, investigating an orgy at a Mafia hangout in a loft, finds herself in the middle of a machine gun slaughter, because Sim has ordered the men to kill all witnesses to his drug's effects. After escaping immediate death by hiding in a pile of nude corpses, she manages to lead her pursuers through windows, over roofs, and all over the building sans weapons or even clothes, for that matter. It's an exciting action scene with an extra touch of oddball sleaze to put it over the top.

It should be said that the book's sex scenes are quite graphic--something of a "hard R" nature. Personally, I'm not turned on by sexy passages in a book and find these moments tedious. I usually skip over the 3- or 4-page sex scenes, but your mileage may vary. Just to warn you that you may be surprised by the Baroness' libido and Kenyon's lengthy descriptions of her many lovemaking marathons.

THE ECSTASY CONNECTION is a terrific adventure I can't recommend highly enough for readers interested in action of an unusual bent.

Burt Reynolds in Stick

Elmore Leonard actually adapted his own novel for STICK, but was not happy with it after Universal demanded reshoots that pushed the release back several months (Leonard shares screenplay credit with SUDDEN IMPACT’s Joseph Stinson). I can’t say Universal deserves all the blame for STICK’s failure, because Burt Reynolds, who starred and also directed it, made several bad choices of his own, including allowing his own ego to demand that his character be smarter, worldlier, and handsomer than everyone else. And more egregiously, letting co-star Charles Durning wander around under a ridiculous orange wig.

Every time I see STICK, I really try to like it. Reynolds’ previous film as a director, SHARKY’S MACHINE, is an outstanding crime drama with crackling action scenes and several well-rounded characters. If only he had taken the same approach with STICK. Even though Reynolds is wearing his “serious” toupee in it, it still plays much more like CANNONBALL RUN II than SHARKY’S MACHINE. Scenes don’t hang together well, which could be the result of post-production finetuning. Alex Rocco pops in for one scene that doesn’t have anything to do with either the story or building Burt’s character, and Deanna Lund gets nice billing for a party scene, but doesn’t even get a line.

What’s most interesting about STICK is an astounding stunt by Dar Robinson that was one of the best ever filmed up to that time. Using a device he invented called a decelerator, Robinson, playing an albino assassin named Moke, did a freefall off a building ledge using wires to break his fall. This allowed Reynolds to aim the camera over the ledge and shoot Robinson’s fall without revealing an airbag on the ground. Today it wouldn’t matter, because any wires seen on camera can be removed digitally, but Robinson’s STICK fall was a big deal in 1985.

Ernest Stickney (Reynolds), just out of the pen after a seven-year sentence, accompanies his friend Rainy (Jose Perez) to deliver drug money from eccentric pusher Chucky (Durning) to nasty supplier Nestor (Castulo Guerra). It’s a setup, and Rainy is killed. Stick survives and gets in the middle of a struggle between Nestor, against whom Stick wants revenge for Rainy’s murder, and Chucky, who owes him $5000. He hides out as a chauffeur for wealthy Barry Braham (George Segal) and begins a romantic relationship with Barry’s financial advisor Kyle (Candice Bergen).

STICK starts out promisingly with some gritty photography, tough talk, and a good action piece in the swamp. Unfortunately, after that it falls into camp with Durning and Segal playing too far over the top and Reynolds doing some characteristic clowning. He probably felt that’s what his fans wanted, but the joking harms Stick’s integrity and waters down the suspense. Humor, of course, is fine in a thriller, but STICK’s is overly buffoonish.

The film isn’t a total disaster. It isn’t as good as it should have been, so it’s a disappointment, but Reynolds is talented enough in front of and behind the camera to keep it entertaining though awkward. It didn’t do much at the box office—in fact, Burt was already through as a marketable leading man, though he didn’t know it for a few more years.

Dirty Harry: Massacre At Russian River by Dane Hartman

I'm not sure why, but the men who penned the twelve Dirty Harry novels for Warner Books took a delight in taking its leading man out of San Francisco, the city he patrolled as an Inspector for the SFPD with a .44 Magnum in his shoulder holster.

It wasn't a fish-out-of-water thing, because Harry Callahan was never much of a social being anyway and had little trouble fitting in. The one exception that I've read may be FAMILY SKELETONS, which sent Harry to Boston to visit relatives he never had time for before. Getting Callahan involved with a serial killer who may be targeting his niece was a nice way of giving a case a personal spin.

Which is not the case in Dirty Harry #7, MASSACRE AT RUSSIAN RIVER, published by Warner Books in July 1982. It's purely business as Harry is sent to a small town to help bust a ring of mountain men trafficking in marijuana. His distrust of authority is bad enough, but when he learns he's to work with a local narcotics officer named Turk who is vainglorious, incompetent, and maybe even crazy, Callahan starts to worry. Author Leslie Horvitz, using Warner's Dane Hartman pseudonym, creates some evocative action scenes--a mountaintop massacre staged in the mud and the rain and the wind of a major thunderstorm and a nighttime stalk through an old house with three murderous rednecks after Harry's ass are two of them.

At 220 pages, MASSACRE AT RUSSIAN RIVER seems padded--a sequence in which Harry trails someone back to San Francisco and ends up wanted by the DEA is extraneous and is, in fact, ignored at the end--but Horvitz has a good handle on the character, and it's easy to picture Clint Eastwood saying and doing the things Harry does in the book.

Boxoffice: February 13, 1978

The Forbidden Dance

Can you believe two films about the lambada were released the same day? While Cannon’s Yoram Globus was putting out LAMBADA by BREAKIN’ director Joel Silberg on March 16, 1990, his cousin and former partner, Menahem Golan, was rolling out THE FORBIDDEN DANCE for his new company 21st Century.

By the time both films came out, nobody in the U.S. gave a damn about the shortlived dance fad anyway, and they both vanished almost as quickly as the lambada did. If anything about them is noteworthy, it’s their female leads: LAMBADA’s Melora Hardin, who went on to prime-time prominence in THE OFFICE, and this film’s Laura Harring, more than a decade before she got a boob job and landed her breakthrough leading role in David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE.

An Amazon princess named Nisa (Harring) and her hulking witchdoctor companion Joa (Sid Haig!) go to Los Angeles to prevent an evil oil company from bulldozing their native village in the Amazon. Joa gets tossed in the joint, and Nisa gets a job as a maid for wealthy racists. That gig doesn’t work out when the parents find out she went dancing with their layabout dance-obsessed son Jason (Jeff James), so she wanders over to cinema’s most ridiculous strip club/brothel. Billed as “Queen of the Amazon,” Nisa dances for about three people in this rinkydink joint until she gets into a hassle with Jason’s pals in paisley vests.

What it all boils down to is Jason and Nisa competing in a Kid Creole and the Coconuts dance contest so they can win first prize: an appearance on national television so they can preach a Save the Rain Forest message and, presumably, save Nisa’s village from getting torched by oil company mercenary Maxwell (Richard Lynch).

But THE FORBIDDEN DANCE is crazier than it sounds. Sid Haig playing air bongos. A bizarre safe-sex message. The pitiful acting and sets. Brazil portrayed like a 1950s Jungle Jim programmer. Gratuitous slo-mo window breaking. Jason’s hilarious fascination with dancing all night. And, Lord, Richard Lynch dancing the lambada.

Yes, it’s a terrible film, but perfectly watchable in the way only some dreadful films can be. Laura Harring is more than watchable—gorgeous and energetic even, though not exactly an acting powerhouse. She fares better than her blow-dried leading man, who’s unconvincing as a dancer and a lover. He appears as though THE FORBIDDEN DANCE was James’ only film—not a shocker. Also with Linden Chiles, Shannon Farnon, Angela Moya, Barbra Brighton, and the hit Kaoma song “Lambada,” which LAMBADA didn’t get the rights to.

Attar The Merman: Attar's Revenge by Joe Haldeman

The same year that Joe Haldeman published his lauded science fiction novel THE FOREVER WAR, two trashy pseudonymous paperbacks out of the same typewriter hit the shelves of drug stores, truck stops, and maybe even a few bookstores.

Packaged by Lyle Kenyon Engel and released by Pocket Books in January 1975, ATTAR'S REVENGE (cover by David Plourde) is an unusual mixture of science fiction and men's adventure. At 144 pages, it's lean and tough and offers plenty of action that wouldn't be out of place in a Penetrator pulp. However, its hero is more like the Man from Atlantis.

ATTAR'S REVENGE starts with an island off the coast of Australia where lies Aquatic Research Associates, Limited (or ARAL). Founded and operated by marine biologist Wallace Hamilton and funded by millionaire John Tucker, ARAL adopted a dozen half-breeds (so the children wouldn't become loyal to any one nation) and raised them to be great physical and mental whizzes, able to speak several languages and expert in all forms of combat. Hamilton also discovers a surgical method to transform two of them, now around twenty years of age, into water breathers, complete with gills.

Attar and his "sister" Essence undertake a mission for the CIA to destroy a Japanese criminal organization called the Black Lotus, which is polluting the Earth with drugs, prostitutes, illegal gambling, and assassinations for hire. Led by wheelchair-bound Yoshinobu Johnson, the Black Lotus is also into slaughtering dolphins for meat, which just won't do.

After Essence is killed by the Lotus during a commando raid in California, Attar goes all out for revenge, pledging to kill not just Johnson, but his five closest aides as well to ensure the Black Lotus is destroyed forever.

Besides the concept of an adventure hero with gills, ATTAR'S REVENGE has fun with another science fiction gimmick, which is that Attar can communicate telepathically with two dolphins, Sam and Lily, which follow him all over the globe and even save his life a couple of times.

ATTAR'S REVENGE is a lot of fun--bizarre and full of action. I like it a lot more than Haldeman apparently does. He wrote online:

And then there was the saga of Naked Came the Merman. The title comes from a book now mercifully forgotten, Naked Came the Stranger. A bunch of newspaper writers decided to fabricate a sleazy best-seller; they all got together for a long weekend and each wrote a chapter, and it worked.

I'd done two of the pseudonymous adventure novels for Lyle Kenyon Engel, which were about Attar the Merman, a guy who has gills and can talk telepathically to porpoises and whales. I just couldn't face writing a third one. So I threw this gauntlet out to my fellow workshoppers: I'd outlined the book, A Cold Place to Die, chapter by chapter. I'd pay a hundred dollars, against a pro ratum of future income, to anybody who would come over on Easter break and crank out a chapter.

They came, and I paid, and the result was a total disaster. I should have foreseen it. They were good writers, but they weren't experienced: they could only write in their own styles; I'd given them two Attar books to study, but they were incapable of pastiche. So I had ten wildly variant pieces of useless rough draft. I cobbled the book together, but it was pretty horrible. The series quietly closed after two installments.

Two months after ATTAR'S REVENGE, Attar the Merman returned in the second and last novel, WAR OF NERVES. While one can understand why the now-famous Haldeman, who won his first Hugo and Nebula awards for THE FOREVER WAR, would want to distance himself from cheap paperback originals, it's too bad Pocket Books didn't continue the series, because this first entry is pretty cool.

Piranha 3D

French filmmaker Alexandre Aja, who had already directed remakes of THE HILLS HAVE EYES and MIRRORS, tackles a Joe Dante 1978 B-picture classic, this time in 3D. Aside from how gory and sleazy the nasty affair is, the most amazing part of Aja’s PIRANHA is cameos by Richard Dreyfuss (redonning his Matt Hooper duds to play the film’s first victim) and Christopher Lloyd, who may have only read the scenes they’re in.

It’s rare to see a major studio so gleefully release a film with as much bloody mayhem and unabashed nudity as PIRANHA has. Much of it is needlessly meanspirited, which takes some of the joy out of watching people mangled and chewed in two. The superb makeup effects by Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero are stomach-churning re-creations of chewed-up limbs and faceless skulls. However, the CGI fish are a mite dodgy. For instance, it’s obvious Dreyfuss refused to get wet for his death scene, forcing Aja to use highly unconvincing visual effects to show the actor being drawn into a whirlpool and chomped to death.

Spring break at Lake Victoria, Arizona (though Aja shot at Lake Havasu). While Sheriff Forester (Elizabeth Shue getting top billing) and Deputy Fallon (Ving Rhames) are trying to keep the peace, sleazy producer Derrick Jones (Jerry O’Connell playing Girls Gone Wild entrepreneur Joe Francis, unless the lawyers are around, then he isn’t) and his party girls Danni (Kelly Brook) and Crystal (porn actress Riley Steele) are roaming the lake shooting their next video. The sheriff’s teenage son Jake (Steven R. McQueen, the son of actor Chad and grandson of Steve McQueen) ditches babysitting duty to tag along on Jones’ yacht, but his fantasy of making out with Danni is harshed when Derrick invites Jake’s crush Kelly (GOSSIP GIRL’s Jessica Szohr) aboard too.

There’s also Adam Scott (PARTY DOWN) as an unlikely action hero, Sage Ryan and Brooklyn Proulx as endangered little kids, and, of course, TAXI eccentric Lloyd as a vaguely Doc Brownesque mad scientist. It all seems a little crowded—don’t forget the hundreds of swimsuit-clad extras gyrating everywhere—but more is the merrier when you’re crafting a bloody movie about hungry piranha and need a body count.

Ninja Master: Million-Dollar Massacre by Wade Barker

I was not blown away by MILLION-DOLLAR MASSACRE, which was the fourth Warner Books novel in its Ninja Master series. Although it does finally get bloody in its second half, MILLION-DOLLAR MASSACRE features dull villains and less sleaze than the previous two books.

Ric Meyers, who has written comics, reference books (I still have his TV DETECTIVES from the early 1980s in my library), and many articles about Asian action movies, as well as novels, wrote this one under the Warner house name Wade Barker. It sends American ninja Brett Wallace to Atlantic City to find a teenage runaway. He finds the girl, a prostitute, dead--a victim of a war between mobsters John Testi and George Arrow. Brett infiltrates both sides as a hitman named Stillman, but the ruse doesn't work for long, and by the end of the book, nary a bad guy--or girl--is left standing.

Although MILLION-DOLLAR MASSACRE opens with an unsettling rape and mutilation of a bound young woman, Meyers basically eschews any sex angle this time. He does, thankfully, pile on the gore, as Wallace uses his ninja skills to rip people apart--sometimes literally. More Sonny Chiba than Sho Kosugi, Brett sure has a knack for mayhem.

At 173 pages, this 1982 entry could probably stand to lose twenty pages, though as it stands, outside of the violence, it's quite unmemorable.

Attack Of The Crab Monsters / Not Of This Earth / War Of The Satellites

“Once they were men. Now they are crabs.” Allied Artists released ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS, a fun 63-minute monster movie with one of cinema’s best titles. The 1957 release may be silly, but it has a good script by Charles B. Griffith, who also wrote director Roger Corman’s better-known quickies A BUCKET OF BLOOD and LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, and the earnest cast plays it with honesty.

A group of scientists, including rugged Hank Chapman (Russell Johnson, later the Professor on GILLIGAN’S ISLAND), visit the island site of atomic bomb tests to investigate the disappearance of an earlier scientific expedition. Wouldn’t ya know—and of course you would, just read the title—they were eaten by giant crabs? Even better, they’re Highlander giant crabs that take their victims’ Quickening by absorbing the memories and personalities of the brains they eat and taunting their next victims by speaking in the voices of their friends.

The science is, of course, ludicrous, and it would be a danger to take CRAB MONSTERS too seriously, no matter how bright its script may be. It’s fun to see Johnson stranded on an island and struggling to fix a radio seven years before GILLIGAN’s premiere, and the dopey-looking crabs, which were operated on a shoestring by actors Beach Dickerson and Ed Nelson, provide a goofy joy you’d have to be a monster-movie lover to understand.

Shot using familiar Southern California locations like Bronson Caverns and Leo Carrillo Beach and released on a double bill with Corman’s NOT OF THIS EARTH, ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS is an entertaining little picture with laughs of the intentional and unintentional varieties. You probably already know if you’re the kind of person who enjoys fake-looking bigass crabs, so what more can I tell you?

ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS was the second half of a double bill with another Corman science fiction movie. Hefty Paul Birch stars in NOT OF THIS EARTH as Paul Johnson, a citizen of Davanna, a distant planet decimated by nuclear radiation. A character actor who played few leads, Birch is very good playing an alien being unfamiliar with Earth customs, yet intelligent enough to fake it pretty well. He also didn’t get along with Corman and walked off the picture during production (actor Dick Miller says it was because of Birch’s drinking). Lyle Latell, who receives screen credit, conspicuously doubled Birch in many scenes.

Johnson’s mission is to find out whether human blood is fit for Davannan consumption. The script by Charles B. Griffith and Mark Hanna (THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN) is an unusual sci-fi twist on vampire movies with Birch playing a decidedly blue-collar bloodsucker. Beverly Garland (IT CONQUERED THE WORLD) is Nadine, a nurse Johnson hires to tend to him at his home, where he uses a transporter to communicate telepathically with his world and send Earth blood samples home.

Johnson doesn’t literally suck blood. He uses a contraption housed in a metal briefcase to drain his victims’ blood and store it in transparent tubes. He’s one of cinema’s most interesting vampires, subverting most of the clichés that go along with the genre. After he’s through sucking his victims dry, he shoves the corpses into the cellar’s furnace.

Though it isn’t a comedy, NOT OF THIS EARTH is notable for its occasional dry humor. Its most famous scene may be Dick Miller’s cameo as a hipster vacuum cleaner salesman who falls prey to Johnson. Miller’s performance is the film’s liveliest, though he goes a little overboard when he does a double take straight into the camera just before he is killed. Another light moment finds Jonathan Haze, playing Johnson’s houseboy Jeremy, trying to sneak a peek at Nadine dressing and is slapped for his mischievousness. That Haze plays the scene for humor and not for sleaze’s sake provides some goodwill.

NOT OF THIS EARTH may be one of Corman’s favorite films, because he remade it three times: in 1988 and 1995 as NOT OF THIS EARTH and in 1999 as STAR PORTAL. The 1988 version directed by Jim Wynorski and starring Traci Lords as Nadine is extremely faithful to the original with the addition of nudity and more obvious humor; for instance, the three hobos lured to Johnson’s house in Corman’s film are topless prostitutes in the Wynorski version.

Just a few months after the Russians launched Sputnik I in 1957, Allied Artists had a timely science fiction quickie in theaters on a double bill with ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN. WAR OF THE SATELLITES was reportedly written very fast by Lawrence Goldman (KRONOS) from a story by producers Irving Block and Jack Rabin, and Corman directed it in eight days (Corman claims Charles B. Griffith wrote the original screenplay). It has some good ideas, but it’s too talky and cheap to be very interesting. The casting of Corman repertory player Dick Miller as the leading man works pretty well. In fact, all of the actors (you can even see the director playing two roles) are quite good, considering the speed of production and Goldman’s slack screenplay.

WAR OF THE SATELLITES, like many sci-fi movies of the era, includes a soapy love triangle with the space operatics. Aliens are warning Earth to abandon its space program and destroying manned satellites that try to penetrate a mysterious barrier. Pol Van Ponder (Richard Devon), head of the Sigma rocket program, plans go up in the next satellite himself, along with right-hand man Dave Boyer (Miller) and Sybil Carrington (Susan Cabot). Dave is in love with Sybil, who is attracted to Van, who has no romantic interest in her. Before the launch, Van Ponder is killed by the aliens and replaced with an exact double that can split into two Van Ponders. The idea is to sabotage the mission, but the satellite goes up anyway.

The sets are spartan, but imaginatively conceived by art director Dan Haller, who uses arches without flats to extend corridors without seeing walls. Block and Rabin’s special effects are decent. Van Ponder’s duplications are created using routine split-screen, but some shots that incorporate miniatures, matte paintings, and live action are really nice. Shots of the satellites in space look chintzy though, because the models are too small to look believable.

Although it can’t be considered among the upper echelon of Corman’s work, WAR OF THE SATELLITES has enough going for it to make it worth watching once. For one thing, plenty of fan favorite Dick Miller, although his role as square-jawed hero doesn’t allow him to engage in the comic wiseguy stuff he does so well.

You can now own all three Corman pictures on Shout Factory’s new 2-DVD set celebrating the director’s Sci-Fi Classics. This Roger Corman’s Cult Classics set includes ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS and NOT ON THIS EARTH on one disc and WAR OF THE SATELLITES joining some choice extras on another. ATTACK and EARTH are presented in wonderful anamorphic 1.78:1 prints and appear to be uncut (ATTACK is taken from a British print), whereas SATELLITES is a full-frame presentation that looks quite good, but not as good as the others.

For ATTACK and EARTH, Shout Factory has provided audio commentary tracks with Tom Weaver, Michael Brunas, and John Brunas, noted film experts and the authors of UNIVERSAL HORRORS. Weaver is excellent; he knows his stuff and is articulate and prepared. The Brunas brothers, not so much. In fact, right off the bat, Michael Brunas claims Russell Johnson is the narrator of ATTACK’s opening scene, but he isn’t. Weaver solo or with another expert who can speak interestingly would have been a better choice. The trio are still worth listening to, if only because of their enthusiasm and genuine love for the films. They don’t fawn though—they have fun giggling at the films’ sillier moments.

Also included separately from the films are the prologues added for television screenings. They were considered too short to air in 90-minute slots, so director Herbert L. Strock (I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN) pieced together prologues consisting of aimless stock footage and repeats of scenes to add a few minutes of running time. These prologues are patently absurd, but of historical interest.

No extras accompany WAR OF THE SATELLITES on Disc 2. However, Shout Factory has compiled a 35-minute featurette on Corman that consists of various talking heads discussing how awesome the producer/director is. And what a cast—everyone from Hollywood A-listers (composer James Horner, editor Mark Goldblatt), genre filmmakers (Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante), familiar actors (Peter Fonda, Harry Dean Stanton), ex-ingenues (Belinda Balaski, Cindy Weintraub), directors, special effects men, and even Corman himself. I didn’t learn anything new about the man, but it was nice to see the love for him.

Finally, you’ll have a blast with the Roger Corman trailer gallery—more than two dozen previews of films directed by Corman, including not just the three movies included on the DVD, but also THE INTRUDER (starring William Shatner), his Edgar Allan Poe pictures for AIP, the medium-budget World War II actioner THE SECRET INVASION, and FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND, Corman’s last feature to date.

Up From The Depths / Demon Of Paradise

As a writer in Roger Corman’s stable during the 1950s and 1960s, Charles B. Griffith had no equal, penning instant classics like LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, BUCKET OF BLOOD, THE WILD ANGELS, IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, and many other adventure, horror, and science fiction melodramas with lurid titles. But he wasn’t a director. Outside of perhaps EAT MY DUST, none of the six movies he directed are highly regarded, and UP FROM THE DEPTHS is certainly one of the worst JAWS-inspired killer-fish rip-offs ever made.

Corman’s New World Pictures released this Philippines-lensed horror movie, produced by Cirio H. Santiago, with an ad campaign resembling that of PIRANHA. Like Joe Dante and John Sayles’ successful JAWS homage, UP FROM THE DEPTHS is supposed to be both scary and funny (Sam Bottoms’ credit is imposed over a shot of two hula girls’ gyrating asses). Screenplay credit goes to Alfred M. Sweeney, a pseudonym for Griffith and New World secretary Anne Dyer, who took a story credit on BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS.

UP FROM THE DEPTHS takes place at a Hawaiian resort where the tourists are being chomped to death by a prehistoric fish released by an underwater earthquake. The heroes are Greg (a heavily sideburned Sam Bottoms) and Earl (Virgil Frye), a pair of con artists swindling tourists, and Rachel (Susanne Reed, just off the canceled CODE R TV series), the hotel’s public relations director. They manage to destroy the monster with an admittedly clever and darkly funny method trying to earn hotel manager Forbes’ (the tall, bald Kedric Wolfe wearing a pink suit) reward for its head.

First and foremost, when describing UP FROM THE DEPTHS’ ineptness, is the monster. Effects soon-to-be-giants Chris Walas (THE FLY) and Robert Short (BEETLEJUICE) built the big fish, but it reportedly never worked right, so most of the attacks occur more or less offscreen with a lot of camera jiggling and some red dye splashed in front of the camera. What glimpses we do get of the twin-finned fish are lifeless and ludicrous and not to be taken seriously, even in this tedious comedy.

Occasionally a gag will work, and one can’t fault cinematographer Ricardo Remias’ (VAMPIRE HOOKERS) good-looking substitution of the Philippines for Hawaii. Denise Hayes (also in Griffith’s DR. HECKYL AND MR. HYPE) provides Corman’s nudity requirement for the R-rated picture. That’s about all the positive attributes one can muster for UP FROM THE DEPTHS, a boring, awkwardly dubbed, and indifferently performed horror comedy that’s never frightening and too rarely funny.

Eight years after producing UP FROM THE DEPTHS in his native Philippine Islands for Roger Corman, Cirio H. Santiago produced a rough remake and directed it as well. Both films even had similar ad campaigns. DEMON OF PARADISE is bad, but a slight improvement over DEPTHS. The only thing in its favor is that it has a more entertaining cheap monster, and you see more of it than director Charles B. Griffith showed of his prehistoric fish in DEPTHS. Both films had the same director of photography, Ricardo Remias, but DEMON OF PARADISE is a more dismal-looking picture, probably due to Santiago’s slipshod methods. One shot sees leading lady Kathryn Witt reacting with surprise to an actor firing a shotgun next to her ear in a blooper that made the final cut.

DEMON is set at a Hawaiian resort plagued by a scaly fish-man that’s killing the guests. Some rednecks trafficking in homemade dynamite (!) woke it up from hibernation, leaving it to sheriff Keefer (William Steis) and local herpetologist Annie Essex (Kathryn Witt, a long way from starring in CBS’ adventuring-stewardess drama FLYING HIGH) to destroy it. Unfortunately, there’s precious little monster-hunting or tourist-killing in the film, as Santiago prefers to pad the film with interminable subplots about a coke-snorting model and other uninteresting characters. Similar to the reward for the monster’s head the hotel offers in UP FROM THE DEPTHS, this film sends the guests on a silly hunt for the monster’s eggs.

The sea monster is played by a guy in a rubber costume, and it really doesn’t look too bad. Some imagination went into its design, and it looks more expensive than you might expect. However, Santiago doesn’t know what to do with the monster besides having it rear out of the water and wave its arm. The climax is kinda fun with lots of gunplay and an astonishing bit where the monster pulls a balsa helicopter out of the air. Santiago includes a bit of gore and nudity to attract undiscerning monster-movie fans looking for R-rated fun, but DEMON OF PARADISE is too dull to recommend.

Although I can think of no good reason you should buy it, UP FROM THE DEPTHS and DEMON OF PARADISE are available this week on one Shout Factory DVD. Part of the Roger Corman Cult Classics collection, the best you can say about the disc is that the prints look extremely good. I'd be surprised if these movies looked so good when they unspooled in theaters. Both are anamorphic 1.78:1 presentations with mono sound.

Shout Factory has included a few extras, the most entertaining of which is the (never before seen by me) trailer for FIRECRACKER, "the screen's first erotic kung fu classic" (!), that shows Jillian Kesner--"grand prize winner at the Black Belt Olympics" (Corman totally made that up)--running around in her underwear a lot. Hopefully, this means FIRECRACKER will be coming to DVD soon. It's a lot better than either film presented on this DVD.

Also included are trailers for HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP, CAGED HEAT, JACKSON COUNTY JAIL, and both films represented on the disc, as well as TV and radio spots for DEPTHS. Surprisingly, Shout Factory has included a new featurette, only a few minutes long, with Corman, Walas, and Short talking about UP FROM THE DEPTHS. It mostly concentrates on the special effects, and though it's slight, it's a welcome addition.

Klute

Jane Fonda won her first Best Actress Oscar for playing New York call girl Bree Daniels in director Alan J. Pakula's 1971 thriller KLUTE. Bree is a prostitute, but only until she can get her acting career started. She’s remarkably bright and takes pride in a job well done. Television writers Andy Lewis and David Lewis gave Fonda a script far beyond the MEDICAL CENTERs and VIRGINIANs that bought them houses and fed their kids, creating one of the star’s most fascinating characters and putting her in the middle of a thriller that doesn’t feel like one. I suspect the Lewis brothers penned a straight-on mystery that became less plot-oriented once Fonda signed on. The screenplay was nominated for just about every award for which it was eligible, but I wonder if there wasn’t some uncredited polishing going on.

One clue is the film’s title, as the movie really isn’t much about Klute. Donald Sutherland (just after M*A*S*H) plays a Pennsylvania small-town cop, John Klute, who goes to New York to investigate the disappearance of his best friend Tom, who appears to have been living a kinky second life. Klute’s only clue is a demented letter Tom wrote to Bree, so he taps her phone and tries to learn more about her. He discovers she has a murderous stalker, and he falls in love with her.

Midwestern character actor Charles Cioffi received the role of his lifetime in his film debut (he was also in SHAFT that year); he fell into television and played a lot of mobsters and cops. Roy Scheider, just before THE FRENCH CONNECTION, makes an impact as Bree’s former pimp. Jean Stapleton (ALL IN THE FAMILY), Shirley Stoler (THE HONEYMOON KILLERS), Rita Gam, and Dorothy Tristan as a doomed junkie are also good, and you can spot a pre-KOJAK Kevin Dobson as a bar extra and a pre-HILL STREET BLUES Veronica Hamel as a model. Harry Reems and Sylvester Stallone reportedly were extras too.

As a mystery, KLUTE isn’t much of one; well, it intentionally tips its hand early, and the climax is somewhat contrived. As previously noted, I don’t think Pakula cared much about the story, and even the suspenseful ending is more notable for its performances by Fonda and a mostly-heard-but-not-seen Cioffi than its violence or horror. KLUTE is a smart, slick film though, well-shot by Gordon Willis, who filmed New York City as well as anyone who ever lived (even if KLUTE mainly exists on soundstages), and scored by Michael Small.

Matt Helm: The Wrecking Crew by Donald Hamilton

Quickly following DEATH OF A CITIZEN onto bookshelves was THE WRECKING CREW, the second Matt Helm adventure by Donald Hamilton. Also published in 1960, THE WRECKING CREW was used as the title of the fourth and final Matt Helm movie in 1969. Starring Dean Martin as Helm, the ridiculously tongue-in-cheek films had nothing to do with the hard-hitting novels.

On his first real mission for old boss Mac after his wife and kids left him, Helm poses as the photographer for a widowed journalist named Lou Taylor who is supposedly writing a magazine article on iron mining in northern Sweden. Lou's late husband, an investigative journalist, was murdered by a mysterious agent named Caselius while working on a story there. Helm's mission is simple enough: find Caselius and kill him.

Although THE WRECKING CREW offers a slight body count, it isn't about action, but the grim world of espionage. Interesting that Helm actually has two cover IDs in this one: a photographer and also an agent that's slightly over the hill and clumsy. Since Helm had been retired from the spy game for fifteen years before this mission, his enemies would expect him to have slowed down a step or two since his youth. Although he had trained physically and mentally for his "touch" of Caselius, pretending to be in less than tip-top shape allowed him to gain an advantage over an opponent who may underestimate him.

When the action happens, Hamilton frequently describes it as quick and ugly, leaving even those who look up to Helm to wonder if he's really some sort of heartless monster. Hamilton does a good job of describing Sweden and filling the plot with local color without becoming a dull travelogue, and his use of first-person narrative gives us a more complete picture of Helm than we usually get of spy heroes.

James Bond + Batman = James Batman!

No pop culture icons were more popular in 1966 than Batman, then being played by Adam West in the nova-hit ABC television series, and James Bond, whom Sean Connery had played in four motion pictures to that point. Leave it to the Philippines film industry, thousands of miles from American or British copyright lawyers, to jump on to the Bond/Batman bandwagon and make a movie ripping both heroes off at the same time. Thus, JAMES BATMAN, in which Filipino actor Rodolfo Quizon, known to audiences as Dolphy, tackles both in a tour de force dual role.

Artemio Marquez isn’t much of a director, using too many static long takes and shooting the comedy from the other side of the soundstage so we can’t see the sight gags clearly. There’s also the problem of doing a parody of two characters who were already parodying themselves at that time. You can’t mock Adam West if he’s already beaten you to it. That doesn’t mean JAMES BATMAN can’t be fun. The many fight sequences are energetically staged and often use crazy camera angles to punctuate the action. It’s like Marquez didn’t care about the dialogue scenes and got them out of the way as quickly as possible so he could get to shooting the fun stuff.

The plot is straight-on pulpy fun: Batman and James Bond (and Robin, played by former child actor Boy Alano) are called to action to save the world from destruction by an international criminal cartel called CLAW, which includes a Fu Manchu guy who shoots rays from his fingers (and threatens the United Nations with a silent elderly sidekick played by a hilariously out-of-it extra) and the seductive Black Rose who mesmerizes her enemies with both force and her enticing cleavage. The Penguin is a cigar-smoking ham dressed like Mr. Peanut who chases a naked Bond on a beach.

The comedy isn’t especially funny—or, more likely, doesn’t translate that well to the Western world—though Dolphy has his charms in both roles, and the biggest laughs come through his interplay with Alano. Strangely, instead of a tuxedo, his James wears a loud plaid jacket that belies the character’s alleged suavity. Though there isn’t much dignity in dressing only in a palm leaf and getting bitten on the ass by a centipede.

JAMES BATMAN is broad, silly, extremely crudely produced, and haphazardly directed. It also happens to be a lot of fun if you’re in the right mood. The humor is in good spirits, though the jokes are dispensed with near the end, so JAMES BATMAN can climax with a heavy cacophony of zap rays and machine guns and karate kicks set to a Riddlesque jazz score that certainly owes royalties to Neil Hefti.

Trackdown (1976)

It was good to finally see an uncut letterboxed print of this R-rated 1976 United Artists film, which has never received a U.S. home video release. I had only seen TRACKDOWN on a battered TV print, which omits occasional profanity and approximately three minutes from two scenes of Karen Lamm being raped and battered (Lamm performs nudity in one). It's a better film than the censored version indicates, but still nothing special.

Big Jim Mitchum stars as Big Jim Calhoun, a Montana rancher who journeys to Los Angeles to find his teenage runaway sister Betsy (Karen Lamm, who was then married to Beach Boy Dennis Wilson). Mitchum didn’t have the charisma of his legendary father, but he sure looked and sounded a lot like Robert, and he could be used well in physical roles like this one. He’s certainly as notable a presence in TRACKDOWN as, say, Chuck Norris was in his earliest films.

Interestingly, director Richard T. Heffron (NEWMAN’S LAW) and writer Paul Edwards (HIGH BALLIN’), working from a story by BAD CHARLESTON CHARLIE’s Ivan Nagy, anticipate HARDCORE with its story of a morally straight man from the country navigating the sleaze of the big city to rescue an innocent teenage girl. HARDCORE is the better film, but TRACKDOWN is certainly an entertaining action-oriented version of the same story.

Betsy has it rough in Hollywood. A Latino street gang robs, kidnaps, rapes, drugs, and sells her into a stable of call girls owned by hood Johnny Dee (Vince Cannon). Classy madam Barbara (Anne Archer!) convinces the 17-year-old Betsy that prostitution is a blast, showering her with nice clothes and fancy parties with rock stars. Betsy almost buys it until one of Johnny’s pals gets rough with her on the job.

Meanwhile, Calhoun, getting nowhere with the cops, who can’t be bothered to look for one runaway blonde in a city teeming with them, crashes through the streets of Hollywood like an ox in a china shop. He eventually finds allies in sympathetic gangbanger Chucho (Erik Estrada!) and women’s shelter director Lynn (Cathy Lee Crosby!), who point which direction Calhoun should lay down the rough stuff.

The first half of TRACKDOWN moves a little slowly, while Heffron lays out the characters’ motivations, giving us a good look at the silky manner in which girls are lured into Dee’s sleazy operation. Once the relationships are clearly drawn, Heffron, a solid craftsman who moved freely between features (OUTLAW BLUES) and television (V: THE FINAL BATTLE), gets into the good stuff, staging a terrific shootout inside an elevator shaft and closing on a rousing desert chase. Crosby and Estrada are very good, though TRACKDOWN could have used a more formidable villain than Cannon.

Burning Bright

To paraphrase an old cliché from Saturday morning cartoons, the premise of the 2010 direct-to-DVD BURNING BRIGHT is crazy, but it just might work.

What’s surprising is to find television villain du jour Garret Dillahunt (DEADWOOD, TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES, BURN NOTICE, LIFE, and now a regular on the sitcom RAISING HOPE) popping up in a starring role. One would think he wouldn’t have time to act in DTV killer-tiger flicks when there’s always a CSI guest shot over the horizon, but I like to think he was just tickled enough by the plot to get involved.

College freshman Kelly (SORORITY ROW Final Girl Briana Evigan) and her autistic little brother Tom (Charlie Tahan) are trapped with a man-eating Bengal tiger inside a big ranch house during a hurricane. With all the doors and windows boarded up and internet and phones out, the enterprising Kelly, thankfully clad in just a flimsy tank top and tiny shorts—what better to hunt wildlife in?—has to use some real smarts to get outta this trap.

Oh, and it’s all because Kelly and Tom’s idiot stepfather (Dillahunt) stole Tom’s special-school money to buy a tiger for his safari ranch that you just know would never get off the ground.

The story is silly, but this isn’t one of those campy SyFy Channel fear flicks. Brooks and the screenplay by Christine Coyle Johnson and Julie Prendiville Roux play it straight, making Kelly a dependable heroine and the hungry cat a more-than-formidable adversary. The director claims only real tigers were used—no CGI—but Evigan, whose dad Greg Evigan played buddy to a chimp for three seasons on BJ AND THE BEAR, certainly never saw a tiger on set. Putting Evigan and a real tiger together in at least one shot would have given the cat-and-kids game some extra bite. Filmed in Florida, BURNING BRIGHT is an admirable sleeper that overcomes its schlocky concept.

Boxoffice: June 20, 1977

What were you seeing at the drive-in that day? Could it have been one of these fine features?

Evilspeak

EVILSPEAK, an independent CARRIE-inspired thriller set in a military academy, is perhaps best known for starring the ubiquitous Clint Howard. The juvenile star of the GENTLE BEN television series (which I faithfully watched in reruns every morning before grade school) and brother of Ron Howard, Clint followed up his iconic role as fast-talking scrounger Eaglebauer in New World's ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL with EVILSPEAK, in which he plays a very un-Eaglebauer loser.

Clint is Stanley Coopersmith, imaginatively dubbed Cooperdick by the bullies on his soccer team, an orphan who was placed in a military school after the death of his parents in an accident. Co-writer/director Eric Weston (HYENAS) goes to great lengths to establish Stanley as a real putz. He's clumsy, overweight, and tardy. Not only do the kids tease him, push him around, and pull his pants down (!), but so do the adults, including the soccer coach (Claude Earl Jones) who tries to get him kicked off the team, the colonel/principal (Charles Tyner) who spanks him, and even the reverend (Joseph Cortese) who doesn't punish the kids who steal Stanley's hat.

So when Cooperdick...uh, I mean, Coopersmith...finds in the chapel's (unusually huge) cellar a creepy old book of Satanic chants written by an exiled 14th-century Spanish monk—played by NIGHT COURT's Richard Moll, no less—you just know that black magic is going to contribute to his classmates' untimely demises. A sexy, naked blonde taking a shower is eaten by wild boar (!), a boy is set on fire, another has his heart ripped out, and—yes, indeed—heads do roll. Lots of them—perhaps the film's wittiest moment is a shock cut between a topless woman's decapitated head rolling off her shoulders and a soccer ball kicked through the air.

The trouble with EVILSPEAK is that the payoff is a long time coming. While the mayhem is definitely worth the wait, it takes about 75 minutes to get there, as Weston and Howard establish over and over again what a schlub Coopersmith is and how nasty his tormenters are. It's fun to watch, especially the drunken stylings of perpetual redneck R.G. Armstrong ("Cocksuckers!"), but more of a body count up front would have helped. Best of all, EVILSPEAK is a nice showcase for Clint Howard, who maybe never escaped the shadow of his older brother Ron (who was still on HAPPY DAYS at the time), but, then again, Ron never received a Lifetime Achievement honor on the MTV Movie Awards.

Bachelor Party

Tom Hanks, whose energetic and likable comic performances as a regular on BOSOM BUDDIES and a guest star on FAMILY TIES had impressed Hollywood bigwigs, moved to the big screen when SPLASH and this raucous slob comedy were both released in 1984. SPLASH came out first, making it Hanks’ official leading-man debut, but I suspect he filmed BACHELOR PARTY first.

Penned by Neal Israel and Pat Proft, who wrote both POLICE ACADEMY and the similar MOVING VIOLATIONS next (Israel also directed the latter), from a story by Bob Israel (reportedly based on his own pre-wedding bash), BACHELOR PARTY focuses on groom-to-be Rick Gassko (Hanks), as he prepares to marry gorgeous heiress Debbie Thompson (Tawny Kitaen, making her official U.S. film debut; she made THE PERILS OF GWENDOLINE IN THE LAND OF YIK-YAK first, but it didn’t play here until 1985).

Hanks is terrifically winning, and I doubt anyone was surprised he had a big-screen career. He gets more humor out of the screenplay than is actually in it, milking his lines to squeeze as much silliness out of them as possible. It’s hard not to get lost inside a film that features S&M hookers, a coke-snorting donkey, a suicidal partier who tries to slit his wrists with an electric razor, a male stripper named Nick the Dick serving up a peculiar hot dog, a Middle Eastern pimp, and lots of ‘80s white guy dancing.

Hanks gets good support from Adrian Zmed (then on T.J. HOOKER), William Tepper (DRIVE, HE SAID), Michael Dudikoff (AMERICAN NINJA), Gary Grossman, and Barry Diamond as fellow partiers. They bounce off each other well, and help foil the schemes of Debbie’s ex Cole Whittier (Robert Prescott) to embarrass Rick and drive Debbie back to him. Israel and Proft actually co-wrote the direct-to-video sequel BACHELOR PARTY 2 in 2008, which hardly anyone has seen or will see.

Mack Bolan the Executioner: Panic in Philly by Don Pendleton

March 1973 saw Pinnacle publishing PANIC IN PHILLY, the fifteenth Executioner novel written by Don Pendleton. It isn't anything special with its simple story and formulaic violence, but it's a good way to kill two hours.

For no real reason given in the narrative, Mack Bolan heads to Philadelphia to tackle Stefano Angeletti's crime family. Don Stefano wants to pass the family business along to his weak son Frank, but all the major capos know the wimp just isn't up to the job. While all this internal strife is going on, Bolan drops into town, blows up the Angeletti compound, then disguises himself as his own assassin to infiltrate the gang!

Like in VEGAS VENDETTA, the Executioner spends much of the novel as someone else: this time, Johnny Cavaretta, a hitman hired to take Bolan out. However, Mack gets to him first, kills him, disguises him as the Executioner, and then starts ordering the Angeletti gang around as Cavaretta.

Good action and some humor mark PANIC IN PHILLY is a decent timewaster in the Executioner series.

422

422. That's the number of movies I watched in 2010. That’s only six more than I saw last year, but well below my all-time record of 588 in 2004, which I hope I never equal. Being unemployed the last 2 ½ months of the year meant an increase in movie-watching; otherwise, I wouldn’t have made it to 400. The number also doesn’t include all the television series on DVD I’ve been digging through this year, including THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW, THE BOB NEWHART SHOW, THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, and others.

Of the 422 movies I saw, I watched 248 of them for the first time. Here are my rules. As far as the count goes, only feature films count, no matter whether I saw them in a theater, DVD, VHS, or on TV.

• TV shows don't count, unless they were presented in a format resembling a feature film (for instance, the three pilot episodes of THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, which aired as full-length made-for-TV movies)
• Made-for-TV movies count
• Documentaries count
• I didn't count short subjects or feature-length making-of documentaries included as DVD extras
• Movie serials and TV miniseries count as one long feature
• Multiple viewings each count as a separate movie

These are my rules. Your mileage may vary.

DVD: 262
HDTV: 58
Theater: 17
TV: 12
Blu-ray: 47
VHS: 8
Netflix Instant Streaming: 18

First film of 2010: THE PROFESSIONALS
Last film of 2010: STICK

From the 1930's: 1 (FIVE CAME BACK)
1940's: 4
1950's: 28
1960's: 37
1970's: 85
1980's: 132
1990's: 49
2000-2010: 86

Genres:
Action/Adventure: 118
Comedy: 48
Crime Drama: 21
Documentary: 12
Drama: 33
Fantasy: 4
Horror: 80
Musical: 3
Mystery: 8
Science Fiction: 48
Thriller: 37
Western: 10

Countries of origin:
Australia: 1
Canada: 7
Hong Kong: 5
Indonesia: 2
Italy: 24
Japan: 1 (MOTHRA)
Korea: 1 (A*P*E)
Philippines: 2
Spain: 5
Sweden: 2
Thailand: 2
Turkey: 1
United Kingdom: 4

Even though I stopped going to theaters regularly a few years ago, I still managed to see 32 2010 releases, mostly on cable or on DVD. Outside of January’s annual B-Fest at Northwestern University, I went to the theater only three times this year: THE EXPENDABLES, MACHETE, and SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD.

Most in one month:
January: 52
Least in one month:
April: 21

Films I saw more than once:
BLACK DYNAMITE
COMMANDO
FORBIDDEN WORLD
HOT TUB TIME MACHINE
HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP
NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR
PROM NIGHT
THE ROOM (3 times)

The most films in any one 24-hour period:
14, when I attended Northwestern University's annual B-Fest January 29–30

Some sequels:
THE DESCENT: PART 2
U.S. SEALS II: THE ULTIMATE FORCE
LEATHERFACE: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III
ONG BAK 2
TROLL 2
STRIPPED TO KILL II
ANOTHER 48 HRS.
CHILDREN OF THE CORN V: FIELDS OF TERROR
CHILDREN OF THE CORN 666: ISAAC’S RETURN
FRIDAY THE 13TH: A NEW BEGINNING
PSYCHO II
IRON MAN II
THUNDER WARRIOR III
RAGE AND HONOR II: HOSTILE TAKEOVER
AMERICAN PIE PRESENTS THE BOOK OF LOVE

The original and its remake(s):
THE BLOB (1958) and THE BLOB (1988)
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984) and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (2010)
WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (1979), WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (2006), and WHEN A KILLER CALLS (2006)

5 Stars:
THE PROFESSIONALS
THE ROOM
DRIVE
EUROTRIP
PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE
TROLL 2
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
TANGO & CASH
ROBOCOP
LADY TERMINATOR
NEVER SLEEP AGAIN: AN ELM STREET LEGACY
NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD: THE WILD, UNTOLD STORY OF OZPLOITATION
PIECES
GALAXY OF TERROR
FORBIDDEN WORLD
YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE
SEX DRIVE
STARCRASH
MACHETE
NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR
SLEEPAWAY CAMP
RICH MAN, POOR MAN
RITUALS
PRESUMED INNOCENT

1 Star:
BEAR
CARNIVAL MACGIC
RADAR SECRET SERVICE
SUPERBEAST
SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE II
FUTURE FEAR
LORDS OF THE STREET
LAST RITES
THE LION HUNTERS
THEODORE REX
WHEN A KILLER CALLS
PURSUIT (1991)
CHILDREN OF THE CORN 666: ISAAC’S RETURN
WIZARDS OF THE DEMON SWORD
SCREAM (1983)
SODA CRACKER
THE WAR OF THE ROBOTS
SEXTETTE
FOUR RODE OUT

Recent Direct-to-Video or Barely Released Films You Haven’t Heard Of, But You Should See:
U.S. SEALS II: THE ULTIMATE FORCE
BLACK DYNAMITE
GIVE ‘EM HELL MALONE
WOMEN IN TROUBLE
INFESTATION
FRANKENFISH
BEST WORST MOVIE
BURNING BRIGHT
EYEBORGS
NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD: THE WILD, UNTOLD STORY OF OZPLOITATION
SEX DRIVE

Burt Reynolds movies:
PHYSICAL EVIDENCE
MALONE
STICK

Bowery Boys movies:
HOT SHOTS
BLUES BUSTERS
ANGELS’ ALLEY

Documentaries you should see:
OUTRAGE
CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY
BEST WORST MOVIE

They Exist, and I Watched Them:
SEXTETTE
CAR CRASH
SHANTY TRAMP
THE CRIPPLED MASTERS
REPLI-KATE
WILLIAM SHATNER’S MYSTERIES OF THE GODS
GIRLS ON THE LOOSE
THE STUDENT TEACHERS
18 YEAR OLD VIRGIN
I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE
THE SEATTLE PILOTS: SHORT FLIGHT INTO HISTORY
THE SLAMMIN’ SALMON
THE CLONES OF BRUCE LEE
THE SOUL OF NIGGER CHARLEY
MANDROID
CAPTAIN CELLULOID VS. THE FILM PIRATES
METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN
INVASION OF THE GIRL SNATCHERS
EYE SEE YOU
SECOND FIDDLE TO A STEEL GUITAR
THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN
ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE

My Top Ten of 2010:
MACHETE
NEVER SLEEP AGAIN: AN ELM STREET LEGACY
EASY A
THE CRAZIES
HOT TUB TIME MACHINE
THE EXPENDABLES
BEST WORST MOVIE
KICK-ASS
EDGE OF DARKNESS
BURNING BRIGHT

My Bottom Five of 2010:
BEAR
COP OUT
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
THIRST
WILD THINGS FOURSOME

How many movies did you watch this year?