Invasion U.S.A. (1985)

Chuck Norris was already one of America’s biggest box office stars before this crazy, jingoistic action movie opened at number one. Courtesy of Cannon’s Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus and featuring what may jokingly be called a screenplay co-written by Norris, INVASION U.S.A. is brainless fun with zero characterization, hardly any dialogue spoken by its star, and perhaps the worst female lead (in terms of performer and character) in the history of action movies.

Retired “Company” agent Matt Hunter (Norris) spends his life wrestling alligators and trading quips with grizzled Indian trader John Eagle (Dehl Berti) outside his shack in the Everglades. Reluctantly, he returns to active duty when hundreds of godless Commie terrorists, led by his old foe Rostov (Richard Lynch), invade the U.S.A. via Florida with a massive plan to blow up school buses, shoot up shopping malls, turn Americans against authority, and ruin Christmas.

For the most part, law enforcement is nowhere to be seen, except for a couple of government spooks (one played by Eddie Jones) and Hunter, whose condition for stopping Rostov is “I work alone.” So while hundreds of baddies roam the Sunshine State mowing down citizens, Hunter cruises aimlessly in his pickup truck with an amazing sixth sense for finding the killers, blasting them with his twin-holstered Uzis, and moving on to the next target. More often than coincidence would allow, he encounters an obnoxious female journalist, played horribly by Melissa Prophet (GOODFELLAS), who shows her gratitude at being rescued by Hunter by constantly calling him “Cowboy.”

Granted, the reporter is such an ill-conceived and superfluous character that Meryl Streep couldn’t have made her anything but an annoying appendage. But that’s the kind of perplexing mess INVASION U.S.A. is — an absurd series of setpieces in which Norris stumbles onto someone in danger and blows the bad guys away. There’s no detective work involved in which he is able to deduce where Rostov’s men will pop up next. No, he just drives around until he accidentally discovers the script’s next action scene.

Rostov’s plan, as far-fetched as it seems, would stand a better chance of succeeding if he’d just give it priority, but, noooo, he has to kill Chuck Norris first. You see, years before, Chuck had interrupted one of Rostov’s terrorist plots, and—gulp—kicked the Russian square in the face. One time. It must have been one heckuva kick, because Rostov still has nightmares about it, and refuses to fully commit himself to the invasion until Chuck is dead.

A lot of bullets fly in this movie, and director Joseph Zito (FRIDAY THE 13TH—THE FINAL CHAPTER), who previously worked with Norris on MISSING IN ACTION, at least keeps things moving quickly, tossing in a few smooth dolly shots and splashing enough blood on the screen to keep nondiscriminating audience members (like me) from getting bored. Working with a reported $10 million budget, Zito manages to get it all on the screen, photographing enough exploding houses, squibbed chests, and burning men to keep Cannon’s stunt crew plenty busy. INVASION U.S.A. may be stupid, crude, and confusing, but it certainly isn’t boring and is typical of the fun but empty-headed action movies Cannon was releasing in the 1980s.

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.

Out On Bail

Robert Ginty (THE EXTERMINATOR) stars as John Dee, a drifter (or is he?) who arrives in a rural Tennessee town via freight train and immediately runs into trouble with the local cops Rambo-style. The corrupt sheriff, Taggart, is played by a bad actor named Tom Badal, who seems to have gotten the part only because A) he co-wrote the movie and B) he physically resembles actor Jack Starrett, who played the brutal deputy who tortured Rambo in FIRST BLOOD.

Taggart and the equally corrupt mayor (Russ Meyer regular Stuart Lancaster, masquerading as “Leo Sparrowhawk”) are operating a narcotics ring and frame Dee for a mass murder at the local diner. Temporarily finding refuge at a motel run by single mom Sally Anne (Kathy Shower, 1986’s Playmate of the Year), Dee quickly learns the only way out of his fix is to expose the crooked government.

Although OUT ON BAIL feels a little flabby in its second act, the chases and stunts that bookend the movie are handled well enough by veteran director Gordon Hessler (SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN) and second unit director Neal Sundstrom (HOWLING V: THE REBIRTH) to make this little Trans World Entertainment release worth a watch.

For those who don’t mind a few unintended laughs, it’s fun to giggle at the off-the-wall portrayal of rural Tennessee by the producers and crew in South Africa, where OUT ON BAIL was filmed — an ersatz handprinted “Tennesse” license plate being just one example. Ginty handles himself fine, as usual, while Shower does little but pine and pose topless. Sydney Lassick (ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST) is a reliably weird public defender. But not as weird as Hessler's half-ass attempt to convince us John Dee is some kind of avenging spirit from beyond.

The Outfit

The underrated action director John Flynn (ROLLING THUNDER) adapted Donald E. Westlake’s 1963 novel THE OUTFIT for MGM, changing the protagonist’s name from Parker to Earl Macklin in the process.

The screenplay is refreshingly free of excess baggage, outside of Karen Black’s superfluous turn as Macklin’s woman, and Flynn turns it into a lean, tough crime drama jammed with punchy dialogue, quick violence, and a wry sense of humor. Robert Duvall (a year after THE GODFATHER) and WALKING TALL’s Joe Don Baker are an efficient team that harkens back to the day when badasses could make a stronger statement with a .38 than later wannabe-tough guys could with an armory of automatic weapons.

Macklin (Duvall) is a bank robber just out of the joint who quickly learns “the Outfit” has gunned down his brother and partner in a heist. One of the gunmen (Felice Orlandi, playing a guy named Orlandi) tries to nail Earl too, but fails, earning a glass bottle smashed across his face.

Orlandi tells Earl the hits have been ordered by mobster Mailer (Robert Ryan, who died of cancer the year THE OUTFIT came out) in retaliation for the Macklin brothers knocking off a bank filled with Outfit money. Earl decides to go on offense, picking up Jack Cody (Baker), the third partner in the heist, and busting up Outfit money drops all over California until Mailer ponies up a hefty ransom.

In addition to crafting a nifty noir scenario and directing tautly (with strong help from action coordinator Ronnie Rondell), Flynn assembled a remarkable supporting cast that deserves its own paragraph: Richard Jaeckel (THE DIRTY DOZEN), Sheree North (CHARLEY VARRICK), Timothy Carey, Bill McKinney, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., Jane Greer, Joanna Cassidy, Henry Jones, Tony Young, Roy Jenson, Tom Reese, Jeannine Riley, and boxer Archie Moore.

Not having read Westlake’s novel (written under his regular pseudonym of Richard Stark), I can’t say how many clever little touches are original to the film. I love the matter-of-fact manner in which these underworld figures relate, because dishing out death is just a job of work to them. Hence, Duvall acquiescing to Orlandi’s request for a hankerchief for his bloody face and Jenson’s request to be belted on the left side of his head because of a bad right ear. Macklin’s mission is nothing personal. Until he reaches Mailer, that is.

Enforcer From Death Row

“Have fun and stay sober,” says the boss man to his agent tasked with saving the world from deadly terrorists. There’s no mistaking the author of dialogue that loony. It’s Leo Fong in one of the earliest Fongsploitation classics, and THE ENFORCER FROM DEATH ROW finds Leo at his Fongiest.

And right from the opening titles (they play over stock shots of San Francisco, even though the movie is set in Manila) too, which not only includes a funky blaxsploitation theme song for Leo (“He was a helluva birdman/And he’s the leader of the birds”), but also an awkwardly spliced title card in a totally different font crediting “special guest star” Cameron Mitchell, who may or may not appear in the film, depending on which version you’ll lucky enough to experience.

Yes, not see, but experience. One can not merely watch Fongsploitation. One must live it. This Fongian journey finds Fong in the role of T.L. Young, on death row for a murder he didn’t commit.

The World Organization of Peace (the WOP moniker displays prominently in the boardroom) fakes Young's death in the gas chamber and rushes him to Arizona (represented by a hilariously unofficial-looking office set) to lay out his mission. Namely, to prevent an organization calling itself Nomad from killing everyone in the Philippines with a bacteria (“stolen from Baltimore, Maryland”) unless WOP pays it $45 million. Paying T.L. (“How much money, and who do I kill?”) $100,000 to stop the plot is a real bargain.

The movie so fantastic it needed two men to direct it, ENFORCER FROM DEATH ROW came out the same year as director Efren C. Pinon’s hilarious blind-bank-robber flick BLIND RAGE (which features a pointless cameo by Fred Williamson as his Jesse Crowder character). It seems likely that credited co-director Marshall M. Borden came aboard only to shoot Cameron Mitchell’s late-in-the-game cameo.

Judging from Pinon’s other films, blame him for the obvious continuity errors (watch Fong’s mustache come and go), repeating scenes, and cartoonish “Danger Acid” set dressing. Let’s give the rest of the responsibility to the Kentucky-accented Fong for being as incompetent reciting a screenplay as he is writing one.

Top Cop

Probably the only film to pretend Little Rock, Arkansas locations are actually Washington, D.C., TOP COP is a regionally produced dud that fails in every category possible. Let’s start with the acting. A fat, clumsy, charisma-free, Old-Milwaukee-guzzling stuntman named Stephen P. Sides plays a fat, clumsy, charisma-free, Old-Milwaukee-guzzling undercover detective named Vic Malone, who is first seen singlehandedly killing child pornographers in a warehouse.

Malone and his partner Frank (Randal Files) are sent to D.C. to testify against Hot Springs crimelord Johnny Costello (Len Schlientz), a skinny, balding, middle-aged, completely non-threatening guy in a droopy mustache. Vic and Frank kill some crooks and pick up a pair of hot-for-Arkansas chicks — one of whom, Helen (Tiffany Dossey), is Johnny’s main squeeze. Frank is murdered by Johnny’s hitman, the Avenger (revealed in the stupid twist ending), and Malone is ordered to return to Little Rock after Costello is not indicted by the grand jury, before which Malone and Frank never testified.

Producer Helen Pollins wrote the screenplay, which possesses not a single original thought or line of dialogue. TOP COP is stupid and cheap (Skid Row is a burn barrel and eight guys in dirty baseball caps on the side of a country road — except for the natty old guy in suspenders who somehow knows the exact time and place of Johnny’s drug deals). The performers are ridiculous, particularly Sides’ porcine policeman, who always speaks through clenched teeth (with a gap in the middle), hates homosexuals, has no friends (except poor Frank), gets yelled at by all the angry black police captains, acts stubbornly and foolishly in every situation, and calls his new partner — a recent police academy graduate who wears glasses — an “accountant” probably ten times (it wasn’t funny the first time).

Crown International Pictures tossed TOP COP onto a DVD set over twenty years after it was made. No chance any theaters booked it in 1990 (unless director Mark Maness owned one), and who knows whether it made it to VHS. Why would anyone want to see TOP COP anyway, unless you really needed a couple of cheap laughs.

Scorpion (1986)

SCORPION is Crown International’s attempt to capitalize on the success of Cannon’s Chuck Norris vehicles. It stars another international karate champion, Tonny Tulleners, who bears an uncanny physical resemblance to Norris, though not as much charisma (which is hard to believe, I know).

Oddly, Tulleners is unbilled in his film debut as American agent Steve Woods—codename: Scorpion—who is assigned by big-shot attorney Gifford Leese (Don Murray) to bodyguard a Middle Eastern terrorist who’s turning state’s evidence against his partners. After Steve’s fellow agent and childhood pal is murdered, as well as the terrorist he’s supposed to be protecting, Scorpion kicks and thumps his way across Los Angeles in an attempt to find the man responsible. His plan includes hiding the dead terrorist’s body in a ripoff of BULLITT, which will anger you as much as it does the mercurial Leese.

Although director/writer/producer William Riead seems to have been an interesting individual—he was formerly a news anchor and documentary filmmaker who made behind-the-scenes featurettes about films such as THE TERMINATOR, LONE WOLF MCQUADE (which starred Norris) and FIRST BLOOD—he isn’t much of a dramatic storyteller, staging some very lethargic action scenes within a fractured, confusing narrative.

Riead gets little help from his lackluster leading man, who didn’t follow up SCORPION with other films. Tulleners is a dreadful screen presence, but you can’t blame him for the movie’s failure to show off his karate skills. It seems weird to hire a karate champion for your movie and not let him do any good action scenes. Perhaps to pick up Tulleners’ slack, Riead surrounded the star with a steady cast, including top-billed Murray (BUS STOP), Robert Logan, Allen Williams (LOU GRANT), John Anderson, Robert Colbert (THE TIME TUNNEL), Ross Elliott, Bart Braverman, and John LaZar.

Believe it or not, SCORPION did receive a theatrical release, although it may have been the last for Crown International. Although the budget couldn’t have been much, Riead did go to Hawaii, Spain, and the Netherlands to shoot footage.

Doctor Of Doom

If you’re curious about the weird world of Mexican wrestling movies, DOCTOR OF DOOM is a decent way to jump in. It seems influenced by old Republic serials, full of superhero-type action, mad science, cunning death traps, and mind control. The difference between DOCTOR OF DOOM and the dozens of adventures starring famous wrestling heroes like Santo, Blue Demon, and Mil Mascaras is that the hero is a woman, Gloria Venus, played by the gorgeous Lorena Velazquez.

A mad doctor, his face always hidden to allow the audience the game of guessing his identity, is kidnapping women to use in his brain transplant experiments. All are failures, and the women die, leading the doc to deduce that he’s choosing women that are just too damn stupid to handle the strain of having their brains removed and replaced with a gorilla’s. His response is to kidnap a scientist named Alice (Sonia Infante), but she dies too.

So he figures to try experimenting on a woman who is physically strong. He chooses voluptuous lady wrestler Gloria and her new roommate Golden Ruby (Elizabeth Campbell). He botches the snatch in more ways that one, because Gloria just happens to be Alice’s sister and dating a cop, Mike (Armando Silvestre), which gives her more motivation to bring down the mad doctor’s deadly reign of doom.

American distributor K. Gordon Murray created a dubbed English soundtrack for DOCTOR OF DOOM’s television release by AIP. Because Murray preferred dialogue that matched the Mexican actors’ lip movements, rather than an accurate translation of the original dialogue, some of the lines induce wild laughter, particularly when delivered by actors replicating the over-the-top deliveries.

Not that it’s possible to get too melodramatic in a film featuring cliffhangers, a super-strong man-ape named Gomar, plenty of fistfights in rooms stocked with empty cardboard boxes, cheap sets, and a spiked-wall trap. Director Rene Cardona repeated the formula in the direct sequel, THE WRESTLING WOMEN VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY, and his son Rene Cardona Jr. remade DOCTOR OF DOOM as the gorier NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES.

Furious Seven

Multiple locations, an overstuffed cast, and a soupcon of poignancy stand out in FURIOUS SEVEN, the first in Universal’s engine-revving series to not be directed by Justin Lin since 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS. Taking the driver’s seat this time is SAW’s James Wan, whose touch with slow-burning horror is better than his skills shooting and pacing coherent action scenes.

Star Paul Walker died in a fiery car crash during filming, and, yes, it’s a little weird to watch his character driving like an asshole, knowing what we know. Wan used doubles, including Walker’s brothers, and CGI to fill in the scenes Walker hadn’t shot yet, and the seams mostly don’t show. Despite the series’ emphasis on family and loyalty, what keeps audiences returning to these FAST AND THE FURIOUS movies are their increasingly ludicrous action scenes, which by now are no different than what you’d see in Looney Toons shorts (in this one, Vin Diesel literally survives a plunge off a steep cliff a la Wile E. Coyote).

Beginning with FAST FIVE, the franchise began a switch toward spy/caper plots, and FURIOUS SEVEN is no exception. In fact, it has too many plots. Half of FURIOUS SEVEN is Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) stalking Dom Toretto (Diesel) and his team to avenge the crippling of his brother Owen in FURIOUS 6 (and Dom promising revenge against Shaw in return).

Then there’s Mr. Nobody, a shadowy government spook who recruits Dom and his team for a secret spy mission that the United States, for unclear reasons, can’t be a part of. When your story has a lot of exposition to lay out, it’s smart to hire a charisma machine like Kurt Russell (ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK) to say the words, and Russell’s amusing turn is one of FURIOUS SEVEN’s great delights (he even gets hands-on with the gunplay).

Dom, Brian O’Conner (Walker), Letty (Michelle Rodriguez, who shines her attractive smile more often than usual), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), and Taj (Ludacris) need to retrieve a shapely computer hacker named Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) who controls a device called God’s Eye that allows its user to literally hack every computer, smartphone, tablet, you name it in the world. Obviously, it can’t fall into the wrong hands of terrorist Jakande (Djimon Hounsou, who’s barely in the movie and has nothing to do when he is).

As if that ain’t enough, Letty gets to kick-punch and punch-kick a bodyguard played by MMA fighter Ronda Rousey (THE EXPENDABLES 3), while O’Conner goes fist-to-fist twice with Jakande’s man Kiet, played by Thai action star Tony Jaa (ONG BAK). Wan’s worst crime as director is screwing up Jaa’s fight scenes, shooting them in jerky-cam so that we can’t see the acrobatic star do his thing. While this may have been done to hide Walker’s double, there’s no sense in hiring an amazing athlete like Tony Jaa and not letting him cut loose with spectacular stunts.

Oh, yeah, there’s also Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, charismatic as always in a bookended cameo as agent Luke Hobbs, who gets all the funniest one-liners. Hell, even Lucas Black, last seen in the SEASON OF THE WITCH-esque THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT, stops by for a cameo. And let’s not forget poor Jordana Brewster, once again relegated to the sidelines, tucked away in a heavily armed fortress in the Dominican Republic (just go with it) with her and Brian’s son to protect. Whew. And somehow, there’s room for a zillion chases, explosions, crashes, and stunts, most of which are heavily imbued with CGI and a disregard for physics.

If you like these movies — and I admit that I mainly do — there’s no reason you won’t get a kick out of FURIOUS SEVEN. It isn’t smart, it isn’t performed well (this franchise may be the most woodenly acted in film history), and Wan’s direction of the action is shaky. It’s more sincere than blockbusters tend to be, however, and the tag’s tribute to Paul Walker is genuinely touching — a feat quite rare in a film that features as many destroyed vehicles as FURIOUS SEVEN.

The Divine Enforcer

THE DIVINE ENFORCER, directed by Robert Rundle and released (presumably) directly to videocassette in 1992, is the world’s first psychic vigilante kung-fu priest movie! 

Don Stroud (COOGAN’S BLUFF) is over-the-moon deranged as the “Vampire of Los Angeles,” a serial killer who picks up prostitutes, removes their blood with a syringe, injects it into his arm, and keeps his victims’ skulls as trophies. He screams, rambles, rants, bugs his eyes, messes up his hair, takes off his shirt, flips the bird, and says dumb stuff like “You know what I mean, jellybean!” At one point, he looks at a mirror, yells, ties a shirt around his head, and takes a Polaroid of himself. I don’t know what the hell Stroud is doing, but it’s a sure thing he’s making it all up. It’s a remarkably terrible performance matched by a director who focuses on a skull shouting at Stroud to “kill the bitch” and “give me some blood.” 

Most of the actors have the excuse of being amateurs, but the experienced stars like Stroud have done better work elsewhere. Granted, they’re entirely on their own at the mercy of a foolish script, cheap sets, and incompetent direction. Erik Estrada (CHIPS) is hilariously miscast (his name is misspelled in the main titles) as a pipe-smoking monsignor, who lives in a suburban house with Father Thomas (top-billed Jan-Michael Vincent, whose script can be seen glued to the newspaper he’s holding), newcomer Father Daniel (Michael Foley, so wooden I think moss was growing on him), and their sexy dumb maid/landlady (?) Myrna (Judy Landers).

Daniel’s plan to clean up the crime-ridden streets is not through confession, but ass-kicking. Whenever he hears about ne’er-do-wells victimizing innocents, the director moves in close on Foley’s bugging eyes and slaps a red filter over the light to lead into Daniel’s imaginary dramatizations of what happened. Armed with throwing knives and a pistol with a cross engraved on the grip, Father Daniel goes into priest-fu mode, tossing off inept bon mots and punching out punks with laughable (for the audience) results. 

At least Stroud has the (slim) dignity of getting a character to play. A stupid, illogical character, but a character. Estrada and Vincent just sit around the kitchen table, while Jim Brown (SLAUGHTER) and Robert Z’Dar (SAMURAI COP) show up barely long enough to cheat one another in a drug deal. I doubt any of these guys worked more than one day in Rundle’s feeble attempt to fool videotape renters into grabbing this off the shelf. Every scene is slathered with monotonous underscoring that drowns out the dialogue. Not that these lines are worth hearing, but still… A stunningly incompetent action movie that deserves to be discovered by the “so bad it’s good” crowd.

The Octagon

In just his fourth starring role, Chuck Norris plays Scott James, a martial arts superstar who retired from competition after seriously injuring an opponent. Now he just works out and hangs around the site of the latest big match with his karate pal A.J. (Art Hindle, who's got the feathered hair thing going big time).

Scott and A.J. attend a dance recital, and Scott, after meeting the lead dancer backstage, asks her to dinner. His plans for romance are foiled after he takes her back to her place to discover an army of ninja has slaughtered her entire family. During Scott's battle with them, the dancer dies. The next day, he meets sexy heiress Justine (Karen Carlson from THE STUDENT NURSES), who tries to trick him into hiring on as an assassin. She wants to whack a man named Seikura, who she believes murdered her father. Scott knows Seikura well—they grew up together in Japan as brothers, but Seikura was forced to leave after shaming their father.

There's much more going on in director Eric Karson's film, including a secret training base for ninja assassins run by Seikura in Central America, a crusty old mercenary with a hoop earring played by B-movie vet Lee Van Cleef (THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY), and the "octagon" itself, which is never explained or showcased very well by Karson. It's actually an impressive set—an eight-sided obstacle course filled with blade-wielding ninja who leap out of every corner and behind every barrier.

Norris' climactic tangle in the octagon is the best scene in the movie, even if you hardly understand the plot to that point. It's possible Karson (OPPOSING FORCE) was aware of his story's pitfalls, since he in no way skimps on the action, throwing in several well-choreographed (by Chuck and his brother Aaron) karate battles, along with a few explosions, a car chase, some bullets, and even a burning man. Still, it's hard to take seriously an action film that tries to illustrate what's going through its hero's head by having Chuck dub his thoughts in a low whisper and playing them back with a laughable echo effect ("Seikura-ah-ah-ah...why-why-why-why? My brother-er-er-er-er.").

THE OCTAGON isn't one of Norris' best films, but it's well paced with lots of kung fu fighting and a cool score by Richard Halligan. Co-starring are Carol Bagdasarian, Tadashi Yamashita, Richard Norton, Kim Lankford, an unbilled Tracey Walter, Brian Tochi, stunt coordinator Aaron Norris, and Chuck's son Mike as Chuck's father in a flashback. You also might notice big Brian Libby, who later turned up in a much larger role in Norris' SILENT RAGE.

Paul Aaron, who receives story credit, was probably originally attached to direct, since he had just worked with Chuck on A FORCE OF ONE. Screenplay writer Leigh Chapman (DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY) had an interesting career, combining acting as "The Girl" in '60s television shows like THE MONKEES and THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. with penning action-oriented scripts for MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and THE WILD, WILD WEST.

Below is the original theatrical trailer for THE OCTAGON's 1980 release, digitally remastered for the recent Blu-ray.

Executioner #17, "Death Stalk"

DEATH STALK was Executioner creator Don Pendleton's return to the character after a brief contractual tiff with publisher Pinnacle. That led to 1973's SICILIAN SLAUGHTER, the series' 16th book, being written by William Crawford using the pseudonym Jim Peterson.

When Pendleton put out #17, 1974's JERSEY GUNS, he chose to ignore SICILIAN SLAUGHTER completely--it is said that he never even read it--and picked up where #15 left off. Unfortunately, that meant we never got an adventure involving Mr. Molto, the intriguing villain who popped up in the epilogue of SICILIAN SLAUGHTER.

A wounded Mack Bolan ends up in New Jersey, where he is found passed out and near death in a stream bed by Bruno, a medic who served under Bolan in Vietnam, and his younger sister Sara, nineteen years old and a widow, thanks to that damned war.

Despite their knowledge of what will happen to them if the mobsters searching for Bolan find him in their barn, the siblings are good people and nurse him back to health. Of course, both are eventually captured by gunsels working for Mike Talifero, returning from earlier Bolan adventures, and Bruno is turned into "turkey meat" (you don't want to know).

As he was wont to do, Pendleton often goes off-subject with ramblings about war and humanity that allowed him to express his worldview without having to mess with his characters (as opposed to Joseph Rosenberger, whose Death Merchant was just as crazy and racist as he was). Skip those chapters and enjoy the pages where Bolan mows down dozens of bad, bad guys without compunction. If nothing else, Pendleton knew how to tell an action story, and JERSEY GUNS does it as well as ever.

Terror Among Us

I suspect TERROR AMONG US began production as a sequel to executive producer David Gerber’s acclaimed POLICE STORY series.

The anthology, which ran five seasons on NBC and won an Emmy for Outstanding Dramatic Series, left the air in 1978, but survived through occasional TV-movies. TERROR AMONG US doesn’t fall under the POLICE STORY umbrella technically, but it’s produced by Gerber, stars Don Meredith (who appeared in eight POLICE STORYs), and features similar opening titles.

Certainly, Dallas Barnes and JoAnne Barnes’ teleplay about a serial rapist would have fit nicely into the POLICE STORY template, except it concentrates on the criminal instead of the cop. Delbert Ramsey (KNOTS LANDING's Ted Shackelford) is a convicted rapist on patrol who keeps getting busted on prowling and trespassing charges. Detective Tom Stockwell (Dandy Don) would love to send Ramsey back to the joint, but he faces resistance from bleeding-heart parole officer Paxton (SOAP’s Jennifer Salt) and ineffectual prosecutor Clayburn (Austin Stoker).

Director Paul Krasny (MANNIX) frequently cuts away from Stockwell’s attempts to make a case against Ramsey to scenes of five stewardesses living together in a swank bayside apartment, each with their own problem (one is aging out of her job, another is dating a married man, etc.). Eventually, the two plots intersect when Ramsey, on the run after committing a murder, takes the women hostage.

Sarah Purcell, who plays the stews’ “den mother,” was then a host of the NBC reality series REAL PEOPLE, a big hit. TERROR AMONG US feels padded, as if it really were a one-hour POLICE STORY stretched to feature length. While the attempt to humanize Ramsey’s victims is appreciated, their material is just not as interesting as the relationship between Stockwell and Paxton, who faces self-doubt about her job and her judgement after Ramsey begins his spree of terror. Meredith and Salt (later a producer of AMERICAN HORROR STORY) work well together, and more films about their partnership may have been interesting.

You Only Live Twice

James Bond fakes his own death, disguises himself as a Japanese (unconvincingly, it should go without saying), hits a judo fighter with a couch, and blows up a volcano while dozens of extras in brightly colored jumpsuits shoot it out. Fun! And all in a tight 117 minutes with a Nancy Sinatra theme song to boot.

Sean Connery plays Bond for the fifth time in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. 007 goes to Japan to find out who is trying to instigate a nuclear war between the United States and the USSR by stealing their spacecraft. Fantasy writer Roald Dahl (CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY) loosely adapted Ian Fleming’s lightly plotted novel using elements from Harold Jack Bloom’s screenplay. Lucky for Bond, his Tokyo contacts are sexy Secret Service agents Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi) and Kissy Suzuki (Mie Hama), as well as British expatriate Henderson (Charles Gray), who gets zapped minutes after meeting 007.

The culprit, of course, is SPECTRE and its leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld (bald Donald Pleasence with a white cat and a facial scar), who keeps a pool of piranha in his office for dealing with incompetent henchmen. His office, by the way, is in an enormous hollow volcano — an incredible set designed by Ken Adam on the 007 Stage backlot at Pinewood Studios. It’s one of the coolest sets ever built for a Bond movie and hosts the thrilling finale pitting Blofeld’s goons against Japanese agent Tiger Tanaka’s (Tetsuro Tamba) incredible ninja army.

The film’s other major setpiece involves LIttle Nellie, a miniature helicopter delivered by Q (Desmond Llewelyn) and used by Bond to shoot four full-sized choppers out of the sky. On the minus side, Dahl’s screenplay often makes no sense (though a Japanese assassin’s method of silently killing a sleeping Bond is ingenious), including Bond’s Japanese disguise, which is as senseless as it is unbelievable. John Barry delivers another lush score for an entertaining big-budget spy flick that marked Connery’s swan song in the role — or so he believed at the time.

Invasion: UFO

It was not uncommon for television studios to milk extra profits out of dead series by splicing together unrelated episodes and selling them into syndication as two-hour “movies.” Usually this was done as unobtrusively as possible by mashing together two one-hour episodes. In this case, ITC ripped footage from no fewer than six (!) episodes of the British science fiction series UFO, which doesn’t always make for comprehensible viewing.

UFO was the first series created by husband-and-wife producers Gerry and Sylvia Anderson to star live actors. Their previous shows, most notably STINGRAY and THUNDERBIRDS, featured wooden marionettes on highly detailed miniature sets. Ed Bishop (PETS) starred in UFO as U.S. Air Force colonel Ed Straker, the commander of SHADO, a top-secret government agency hidden beneath a British film studio and on the Moon. From SHADO headquarters, Straker and his crew fought back against an alien race that threatened to invade Earth. UFO ran only one season and premiered in the U.K. and the U.S. in 1970.

In 1980, ten years after Straker first pitched SHADO to its financial backers, the organization captures its first alien. Humanoid, but with a green tint to its skin, the alien rapidly ages and dies, due to contact with Earth’s atmosphere, but not before SHADO learns it had undergone a series of human organ transplants. Straker pursues two other alien spacecraft, which look like metal tops: one into the forests of northern Canada and another deep underwater.

INVASION: UFO ignores the darker aspects of the series, which was not aimed principally at adults, in favor of space opera. It was released not just on television, but also on videocassette and laserdisc in America and other countries. Derek Meddings (MOONRAKER) supervised the visual effects, which are typically excellent. By the way, an alien ship is pronounced “you-foe,” not you-eff-oh.

Gemini Man: RIP Harve Bennett

Harve Bennett saved STAR TREK.

STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE was a big moneymaker for Paramount on its 1979 release, but it was not highly regarded by critics, general audiences, or the studio. So when Paramount decided to make another STAR TREK film, it cut the budget by almost 75 percent and hired television producer Bennett to keep costs under control.

STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN, released in 1982, turned out to be one of the finest science fiction films ever made and a decent box office hit. Perhaps more importantly, it convinced Paramount that making STAR TREK movies was a viable franchise. If not for Bennett, who went on to produce STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK, STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME, and STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER, there would have been no STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION and all the spinoffs and films that series inspired.

Bennett's background was in television, where he produced THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, THE BIONIC WOMAN, SALVAGE I, THE MOD SQUAD, and THE INVISIBLE MAN. He won an Emmy for producing A WOMAN CALLED GOLDA, for which Leonard Nimoy was nominated as Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or a Special. Bennett also produced the outstanding RICH MAN, POOR MAN, which was nominated for 22 (!) Emmys, winning five.

And then there was GEMINI MAN.

After the David McCallum-starring THE INVISIBLE MAN flopped in 1975, NBC took another shot at H.G. Wells. Both THE INVISIBLE MAN and GEMINI MAN were about invisible secret agents working for a scientific thinktank, and Bennett and Steven Bochco (NYPD BLUE) produced them. THE INVISIBLE MAN lasted twelve one-hour episodes, but NBC cancelled GEMINI MAN after only five (eleven were filmed).

ALIAS SMITH AND JONES cowboy Ben Murphy starred as Sam Casey, a macho American agent first seen using a helicopter to fish for sharks. Macho. While diving to retrieve a Soviet satellite, Casey is caught in an explosion which renders him invisible. Luckily, his fellow INTERSECT agent, Abby Lawrence (Katherine Crawford), invents a super wristwatch that makes him visible again.

Obviously, an invisible secret agent gives INTERSECT boss Driscoll (Richard Dysart, later to work with Bochco on L.A. LAW) a major boner, so he convinces Casey to use his power to complete spy missions. By pressing a button on his watch, Casey can render himself invisible, but only for as much as fifteen minutes every 24 hours or else he’ll die. His clothes also disappear, and I wouldn’t spend much time pondering the science behind any of this.

Later syndicated as CODE NAME: MINUS ONE, the pilot, written by OUTER LIMITS creator Leslie Stevens, gives Casey a personal mission for his first as an invisible man: to find out who sabotaged his dive and caused the underwater explosion. Except for the 15-minute gimmick, GEMINI MAN is exactly the same show as THE INVISIBLE MAN, though Murphy’s laidback charisma is more appealing than McCallum’s more cerebral approach. Universal, which produced THE INVISIBLE MAN in 1933, was more than capable of creating believable visual effects.

Harve Bennett died Wednesday, less than one week after Leonard Nimoy passed away. Bennett was 84 years old.

One last tidbit. Bennett narrated the opening of THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN: "Steve Austin. Astronaut. A man barely alive."

Jennifer

CARRIE meets WILLARD and STANLEY in this oddball horror movie for AIP that was directed by a former Walt Disney animator and co-stars toothy game show host Bert Convy (TATTLETALES).

JENNIFER director Brice Mack started with Disney in the 1930s and painted backgrounds for FANTASIA, SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, CINDERELLA, and SONG OF THE SOUTH. That’s a long way from making a cheap horror flick about a beleaguered teenager and her army of killer snakes.

Lisa Pelikan (GHOULIES), who plays the title character, looks like Sissy Spacek, but lacks the vulnerability that made Spacek’s Carrie White so damned heartbreaking. Nevertheless, Pelikan is extremely good as the West Virginia native attending a tony California all-girls school on a scholarship. While the snooty rich girls in their fancy lingerie tell stories about schtupping John Travolta and dress in flapper gear to go disco dancing, Jennifer stays home behind the family pet store, cooking and caring for her nutbar fundamentalist father (Jeff Corey as Piper Laurie).

Kay Cousins, a television actress who married Russell Johnson (GILLIGAN’S ISLAND’s Professor), wrote JENNIFER, and does a nice job setting the mood, establishing the characters, and building to a satisfying finish, as does Mack (SWAP MEET). Unfortunately, due perhaps to a paucity of imagination, but more likely a paucity of budget, JENNIFER just doesn’t pay off.

Jennifer is bullied relentlessly by her obnoxious classmates, who are led by the psychopathic Sandra (Amy Johnston), the daughter of a prominent senator (PSYCHO’s John Gavin in a cameo). Sandra’s manipulation of lisping, overweight Jane (Louise Hoven), who’s so desperate to fit in with the cool girls that she endures a heap of humiliation, shows the limitlessness of her cruelty. And we really want Jennifer to sock it to Sandra. She does, but it just isn’t enough.

The more bloodthirsty of horror fans may lament the lack of gore in the PG film, though Mack allows some nudity — and non-gratuitous at that. Convy as a sympathetic science teacher turns out to be a superfluous one as well, though Nina Foch’s (AN AMERICAN IN PARIS) turn as the school’s supercilious headmistress (“The rich are always right.”) is JENNIFER’s true villain. Try not to dwell on Porter Jordan’s hilariously overwrought theme song, which sets a campy mood that Mack’s film, thankfully, doesn’t achieve.

Random Comic Book Splash Page: Master Of Kung Fu #40

Has it really been two years since I did one of these posts?

If I could pick only one comic book series to take with me to a desert island, it would probably be Marvel's MASTER OF KUNG FU, which mixed martial arts, mysticism, deep character development, and James Bond adventure. It was written through most of its run by Doug Moench. Its best-known penciler is undoubtedly Paul Gulacy, and the splash page of MOKF #40 is a great example of why.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture Souvenir Pressbook (1979)

Scans from the original STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE souvenir program I bought at Market Place Cinema in Champaign, Illinois in 1979. It's falling apart after all these years.

Avalanche Express

Lee Marvin (POINT BLANK) and Robert Shaw (JAWS) in his final film lead an all-star cast in this international thriller for 20th Century Fox. CIA spooks Marvin, Linda Evans (DYNASTY), Mike Connors (MANNIX), and — hilariously — New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath (THE WAVERLY WONDERS) are assigned to escort defecting Soviet spy Shaw on the Atlantic Express from Milan to Rotterdam.

Taking an enemy agent on a slow train ride across Europe sounds like a dumb idea, but Marvin’s plan also includes using Shaw as bait to find out who the mole on the train is. Like too many espionage movies, the story is both impenetrable and silly, though this may be attributed to the change in directors. Both director Mark Robson (EARTHQUAKE) and Shaw died during production of AVALANCHE EXPRESS. Monte Hellman (TWO-LANE BLACKTOP) was recruited to direct reshoots and supervise the editing, and Gene Corman (I ESCAPED FROM DEVIL’S ISLAND) took over Robson’s producing duties. Shaw’s entire performance was dubbed by a different actor.

John Dykstra created some of the visual effects under Hellman’s watchful eye, and the train miniatures are quite good, even though there’s no mistaking them for a real train. According to Hellman’s biography written by Brad Stevens, all of the special effects footage by Dykstra and Bruce Logan was directed by Hellman, though some, such as the avalanche sequence, was intercut with shots made by Robson. Adapted by Abraham Polonsky (TELL THEM WILLIE BOY IS HERE) from a Colin Forbes novel, AVALANCHE EXPRESS plays like a cheapjack version of THE CASSANDRA CROSSING with a slumming cast flailing to make sense of it all.

Look, anything with a cast like this is worth checking out — hell, it’s about time Joe Namath worked with Maximilian Schell (cast here as the Soviet killer in a ridiculous disguise). But even if the script had been more interesting, the choppy production and distracting dub job on Shaw (by Robert Rietty, who matches Shaw’s lip movements, but doesn’t sound anything like him) prevent the film from being successful. The action setpieces, when they occur, are good, particularly the big avalanche that not only threatens the train, but also allowed Fox to market the movie as a disaster flick. Gene Corman’s brother Roger produced AVALANCHE a year earlier, but Gene’s special effects are better.