Storm Trooper

Carol Alt once wore a bikini on the cover of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED. She graduated to an undistinguished career in independent movies, both in Hollywood and in Italy, including this direct-to-video action movie directed by Jim Wynorski. And there’s no doubting it’s a Wynorski movie when the first scene is guys with guns running into L.A.’s Department of Water and Power — a Wynorski staple location.

Another way to identify STORM TROOPER as a Wynorski joint: the cast. Many of the director’s repertory company is here: John Terlesky (DEATHSTALKER II) as Guy With Shotgun, Ross Hagen (HARD BOUNTY) as Goon Driving Semi, Arthur Roberts (NOT OF THIS EARTH) as Evil General, Tim Abell (RAPTOR) as Douchebag Cop, Melissa Brasselle (RANGERS) as Butch Soldier, Jay Richardson (MUNCHIE) as Other Evil General. And the plot is similar to Wynorski’s THE ASSAULT (which Brasselle wrote).

Alt is an abused wife who kills afore-mentioned Douchebag Cop husband at exactly the same time an amnesiac arrives on her doorstep. Pursuing him are Roberts’ soldiers, which include Zach Galligan (GREMLINS), Rick Hill (DEATHSTALKER), and Corey Feldman (THE GOONIES) in an eyepatch. Alt and the amnesiac (John Laughlin) fight back while the dead husband lounges in the bathtub. It takes forever for Wynorski to reveal the big twist, which is that Laughlin is a robot.

Whatever. That Laughlin is a robot has no bearing on the story, which would have played out the same way if he were a whole man. This sloppiness runs throughout the production. Characters crash through windows with no glass in them. The ground shows no signs of a recent thunderstorm. Alt is saddled with memories of a dead son that have no impact on the plot or her arc. STORM TROOPER is unexceptional, though some will get a kick out of the cult actors, even the ones who are miscast.

Girl On The Run (1953)

This very cheap independent production gets off to a discouraging start, as the opening titles play over a still of a creepy clown while generic school-band music plays. However, if you stick with GIRL ON THE RUN, its weirder elements start to take effect, leading to an unusual, almost dream-like narrative that barely sustains its 64-minute running time. And Steve McQueen is in it.

The whole film takes place over one night in a single location: a small-town carnival. Traveling carnies may not have been as skeevy as GIRL ON THE RUN indicates, but it’s an appropriately grim setting for Joseph Lee and Arthur Beckhard’s murder tale. Richard Coogan, best known at the time as TV’s Captain Video on the DuMont network, stars as Bill Martin, a newspaper reporter accused to killing his editor, a man named Marsh, who was investigating allegations of vice at the carnival.

In keeping with normal B-movie pacing, Martin’s backstory is dispensed through early dialogue. Our first glimpse of the film’s hero is inside a dark tent, where he and his girlfriend Janet (Jacqueline Pettit) are hiding from both the cops and a local councilman named Reeves (Harry Bannister). Martin suspects Reeves and the carnival’s owner, a midget (!) named Blake (Charles Bollender), of pimping and, of course, Marsh’s murder.

So with the story already in motion when the film opens, it moves along pretty rapidly while still leaving room for local color — namely tantalizing views of the forbidden pleasures awaiting inside the adults-only tent. Whether the result of the low budget, desperate casting, or the filmmaker’s attention to realism, the hotsy-totsy burlesque dancers are a long way from Vegas showgirls. Dumpy, weary, hard-edged, and certainly not the girls next door, they’re alluring enough to entice the rubes, but with no question Blake’s rundown show is as far as they’ll ever get.

As for McQueen, he can be seen early in the picture testing his strength with a mallet, and then again a few minutes later squiring his date to the fortune teller’s tent as Coogan walks into frame.

The Klansman

Paramount released this notoriously tasteless, inept, and unintentionally hilarious racial melodrama, but not proudly. Richard Burton, whose performance is terrible (producer Bill Shiffrin said Burton didn’t deserve to be paid), was so drunk during shooting that, years later, he had no memory of meeting co-star Lee Marvin, with whom he shares many scenes. Best of all is the stolid Burton’s clumsy karate fight with equally uncoordinated Cameron Mitchell, which remains funny no matter how many times you see it.

As with Paramount’s later release MANDINGO, THE KLANSMAN is based on a novel (this one by William Bradford Huie) and features major stars humiliating themselves in an overwrought stew of sleazy sex, violence, and racial epithets. The slurring Burton (CLEOPATRA) plays Breck Stancill, a rich liberal landowner who allows poor African-Americans to squat rent-free on his Alabama mountain. This pisses off the locals, many of whom, including the mayor (THE BIG LEBOWSKI’s David Huddleston), are members of the Ku Klux Klan. Trying to stay neutral in the heated confrontation between blacks fighting for their voting rights and whites trying to block them is local sheriff “Big Track” Bascomb (Marvin, who claimed he and Burton never received their full salary), who is kinda racist, but is willing to live and let live.

Samuel Fuller (VERBOTEN!) was the original writer and director before being replaced by Millard Kaufman (BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK) and Terence Young (FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE), respectively, in those roles. It’s difficult to know who to blame for THE KLANSMAN’s most sordid moments, which include the castration of a black man wrongly accused of raping white Linda Evans (MITCHELL), Bascomb covering up racist deputy Butt Cut Cates’ (Mitchell) rape of black virgin Lola Falana (LADY COCOA), and O.J. Simpson (!) sneaking around and shooting the white men responsible for his friend’s murder. By the time Marvin has smeared the blood from Falana’s busted hymen across Mitchell’s face, you may be in the mood for a Silkwood shower.

One thing’s for sure: once you’ve seen THE KLANSMAN, you’ll never forget it. No movie with Lee Marvin mowing down the Ku Klux Klan with a machine gun can be all bad. The Staples Singers perform the opening song, and Shiffrin somehow convinced name actors to wallow in this mire, including THUNDERBALL’s Luciana Paluzzi (dubbed by Joanna Moore) laughably miscast as a small town police clerk named Trixie. She’s at least as convincing as Oroville, California’s performance as Atoka County, Alabama.

Pink Cadillac

Any discussion about the worst film of Clint Eastwood’s career has to begin with PINK CADILLAC, Malpaso’s attempt at a comedy about white supremacy. Opening the same weekend as INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE certainly didn’t help at the box office, but PINK CADILLAC was deservedly a dud, debuting in fifth place and pretty much out of theaters a month later.

As mentioned above, PINK CADILLAC is a comedy about neo-Nazis, a tough feat for accomplished filmmakers, much less screenwriter John Eskow (AIR AMERICA) and director Buddy Van Horn (THE DEAD POOL), Eastwood’s longtime stunt double. Playing to his Philo Beddoe fan base, Eastwood plays Tommy Nowak, a bounty hunter who wears wacky disguises in pursuit of bail jumpers. His new assignment is dingey Lou Ann (Bernadette Peters, of all people), who steals her jerk ex-husband Roy’s (miscast Timothy Carhart) pink Cadillac, unaware that it contains dirty money belonging to Roy’s white supremacy group.

It would come to no surprise to learn Tommy Nowak was one of Eastwood’s favorite roles. The macho actor gets to pose as wacky morning zoo DJ, lisping redneck (pretty funny actually), and rodeo clown in pursuit of prey, never mind there must be ninety easier and less costly methods. No doubt he had more fun making PINK CADILLAC than anyone has watching it. The preppy-looking Carhart (THELMA & LOUISE) is the least convincing trailer-park-living redneck racist of all time, and Jim Carrey (also in Eastwood and Van Horn’s THE DEAD POOL) appears briefly as an Elvis impersonator. Unfunny, tasteless, and insanely long at 121 minutes, PINK CADILLAC runs out of gas early in its first act and sputters out quickly thereafter.

Count Yorga, Vampire aka The Loves Of Count Iorga, Vampire

The career of 44-year-old journeyman Robert Quarry received a major boost from COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE, which led to a sequel and an AIP contract as the studio’s next big horror star. What was originally intended as a softcore sex flick by writer/director Bob Kelljan (RAPE SQUAD) and producer Michael Macready (TERROR AT THE RED WOLF INN) was re-edited and released as straight horror based on the belief that Quarry’s regal, sexy performance as a charismatic vampire would make the film a success. Some prints still bear the original title, THE LOVES OF COUNT IORGA, VAMPIRE, but the film is strictly PG fare.

After performing a seance for Donna (Donna Anders) and her friends, Count Yorga (Quarry) is driven home by Paul (Michael Murphy, later in Robert Altman films) and Erica (Judith Lang) in Paul’s van. After dropping off Yorga, the couple is stranded in the count’s driveway and spend the night there, where they are attacked. We see the assailant is Yorga, now pale and bearing fangs, but Paul doesn’t get a glimpse at him and Erica doesn’t remember anything. All she knows is that she has lost a lot of blood and bears two strange puncture wounds on her neck. Nobody apparently having heard of vampires, Erica’s physician, Dr. Jim Hayes (Roger Perry), advises her to eat a lot of steaks.

Only after Paul and his friend Mike (Macready, whose character actor father George contributed the opening narration) walk in on Erica chowing down on her pet cat instead of a juicy steak do they start to believe a vampire may be in their midst. Yorga, who has already taken Erica’s late mother (softcore actress Marsha Jordan) as one of his undead brides, kidnaps the weakened Erica as another, leaving it up to Mike and Jim to storm the Bulgarian count’s mansion on a rescue mission.

Quarry is excellent as Count Yorga — perhaps too good, as the bland but likable Perry, a reliable television actor, and his co-stars are not believable as formidable opponents, either physically or mentally. Placing an old-fashioned vampire story, usually told in a Gothic setting, in modern-day Los Angeles was a novelty at the time COUNT YORGA was released, and Quarry does a nice job straddling the contemporary and the Old World.

Spurred by the success of COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE, AIP not only commissioned a quick sequel, THE RETURN OF COUNT YORGA, but also a pair of films about Blacula, an African vampire played by William Marshall. Quarry also played a vampire in DEATHMASTER, and co-starred with AIP star Vincent Price (the two actors disliked one another) in two horror movies. Quarry died in 2009.

Sudden Impact

The only Dirty Harry movie directed by Clint Eastwood, SUDDEN IMPACT is the one in which Clint says “Go ahead...make my day” — a catchphrase that went so viral even President Reagan used it in a speech two years after the film came out. The film was a hit — it opened at number one at the box office, out-grossing the premiering SCARFACE (!) and CHRISTINE — and audiences openly cheered the violence.

Eastwood’s San Francisco police inspector, “Dirty Harry” Callahan, kills so many people in SUDDEN IMPACT that he is first suspended and then sent to a small California town to investigate a series of vigilante murders. The killer is a sympathetic one: Jennifer Spencer (Sondra Locke), the victim of a gang rape years earlier that left her sister a catatonic and Jennifer out for revenge. A sympathetic villain, perhaps, but a weak one, as Locke isn’t a strong enough actress to project the proper represssed rage and, despite their long romantic relationship, she and Eastwood never had much on-screen chemistry.

The weak central plot in the screenplay by Joseph C. Stinson (STICK) actually works to SUDDEN IMPACT’s advantage. As a series of unrelated action setpieces, Eastwood’s film is a lot of fun. Bad guys with guns seem to pop up everywhere Harry goes, and he can’t even take vacation days without stumbling into a crime scene. Eastwood directs the chases and shootouts for maximum excitement, and Stinson (and possibly uncredited script polisher Dean Reisner) ensures Harry always has the perfect bon mot to punctuate each confrontation.

Scored by Lalo Schifrin (DIRTY HARRY), who lays down a killer cue to announce Harry’s arrival in the climax, SUDDEN IMPACT was the last Eastwood hit for almost a decade until UNFORGIVEN revitalized his career. Even the fifth and final Dirty Harry movie, THE DEAD POOL, despite featured roles for unknowns Jim Carrey (THE TRUMAN SHOW) and Liam Neeson (TAKEN), was a 1989 bomb.

Fire Maidens Of Outer Space

There’s something quaint about Cy Roth’s obvious pride concerning FIRE MAIDENS OF OUTER SPACE. Credited as the film’s director, producer, and writer (story and screenplay!), Roth’s name is given an ostentatious signature font in the opening titles, as if to mark the film definitively as Un Film De Cy Roth. What makes it so quaint is that FIRE MAIDENS OF OUTER SPACE is quite bad, mainly because of Roth’s direction, which is leaden, unimaginative, and devoid of adequate pacing. Roth directed two other films — military-themed B-pictures — that are forgotten today. Thanks to loyal science fiction fans, FIRE MAIDENS OF OUTER SPACE will always exist. Some of them don’t even mind that a “stone” wall wobbles when a tree branch is propped against it.

Anthony Dexter, the lead in Columbia’s VALENTINO, stars in this British production as an American scientist in charge of Expedition 13: a space flight to the newly discovered 13th moon of Jupiter, which amazingly looks like Earth. Like those classics MISSILE TO THE MOON and CAT-WOMEN OF THE MOON, Dexter and his men find a civilization of sexy women and one old dude (Owen Berry), the last of the original inhabitants of Atlantis, who left Earth to colonize space many years earlier. The so-called Fire Maidens, er, spend all day dancing near a flaming hearth. The only maidens we get to know are Berry’s daughter (Susan Shaw) and head dancer Jacqueline Curtis.

Oh, there’s also a creature, referred to only as “the creature.” Hammer makeup man Roy Ashton (THE MUMMY) created the creature’s look, which isn’t wildly convincing, but since Roth really only shows the creature in long shots (and it serves no purpose in the story, along with everything else), the makeup is okay. Despite the premise of astronauts meeting dancing girls and a monster in outer space, auteur Roth only has about 20 minutes of material in an 80-minute movie, so three out of every four scenes are padded with shots of people walking, sitting, dancing, staring, smoking — god, all the smoking — anything but telling a story.

Most of the visual effects are swiped from earlier films, including KING DINOSAUR and ROCKETSHIP X-M. No attempt is made to present its science with any degree of verisimilitude (“their gravitational laws and magnetic poles are contrary to ours” sounds like bullshit to me), and Roth’s direction is so sloppy that you can see British motorcars driving in the background of “the 13th moon.” Outside of Dexter — hardly a household name — the actors are obscure and were likely chosen for their low asking prices rather than their screen presence. Roth was no director, but judging from the massive product placement (TWA, Chesterfield, Coca-Cola, Longines…), he must have been a heck of a salesman.

Any Which Way You Can

Of course, Warner Brothers demanded a sequel when EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE became Clint Eastwood’s biggest box office smash to date, so here we are with ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN. To this day, the two films are Eastwood’s all-time most successful as an actor when grosses are adjusted for inflation, which is something when you think about the brilliant films in which he has starred. Also, I suspect it may hold the record for acts of violence in a PG film.

The screenplay by Stanford Sherman (KRULL) is not exactly outside the box nor should it be, I suppose. Bare-knuckles brawler Philo Beddoe (Clint) is back with most of the cast of the first film, including but not limited to scene-stealing Clyde the orangutan. Nazi bikers are still giving Philo a hard time, his pal Orville (Geoffrey Lewis) and Orville’s cantankerous mother (Ruth Gordon) still has his back, and even the country singer who jilted him (Sondra Locke) is back (it’s easy to forget the first film ended on kind of a bummer). Hell, even the main titles are the same, except instead of Eddie Rabbitt, it’s Clint warbling a song with Ray Charles about being in Vietnam. And, of course, it all ends with another knockdown dragout punchfest between Clint and Tank Murdock surrogate Jack Wilson, played by ubiquitous movie badass William Smith (CONAN THE BARBARIAN).

This sequel has more of a story — something about gangsters kidnapping Philo’s lady friend to coerce him into one last fight — but what makes it really interesting is the relationship between Philo and Jack Wilson. Smith doesn’t play Wilson as a standard heavy, but a man with a strong moral code who respects and maybe likes his opponent. Their fight, directed by stuntman Buddy Van Horn (THE DEAD POOL) making his debut, is a real corker that doesn’t stop just because of Philo’s broken arm. ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN is smuttier than the first film with more Clyde and more low-hanging boob jokes (literally). It’s also dumber and weirdly compelling most of the time.

Every Which Way But Loose

Clint Eastwood was one of the world’s biggest movie stars and at the height of his fame when he made EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE against the advice of his Malpaso team. Clint’s first comedy, EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE shocked critics to not only become his biggest box office hit to date, but his biggest hit ever when grosses are adjusted for inflation. It ain’t exactly Noel Coward, but the blue-collar antics of Clint’s bare-knuckles brawler Philo Beddoe and beer-swilling, bird-flipping orangutan Clyde struck gold in America’s heartland.

Writer Jeremy Joe Kronsberg (GOING APE!) sort of concocts a plot leading up to a match between Philo and the legendary Tank Murdock (Walter Barnes), but there’s a lot of cursing, infantile slapstick, weak double entendres, chases, drinking and driving, destruction of property, and punching of Nazi faces first. A surprising amount of screen time is given to Philo and his friends on a road trip where they camp out, get into fights, and sneak into a zoo to get Clyde laid.

Beddoe and Clyde live in Los Angeles next door to Philo’s best pal Orville (Geoffrey Lewis) and Orville’s senile mother (Ruth Gordon). Philo, who can lift a car, makes extra money fighting in underground bare-knuckles bouts. He picks up country singer Lynn Halsey-Taylor (Sondra Locke, who bowls in tiny shorts) in a bar and makes out with her in his old Chevy pickup. He also beats up a Pacoima Nazi biker gang called the Black Widows, played by the ugliest character actors Clint could find. Basically, Philo Beddoe is awesome.

With Eastwood’s ace crew, including editors Ferris Webster and Joel Cox, assisting director James Fargo (THE ENFORCER), EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE looks and sounds more professional than its ragged storyline deserves. Gregory Walcott (PRIME CUT) and James McEachin (FUZZ) play corrupt cops on Philo’s tail, and Beverly D’Angelo (NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION) gives Lewis a romance. Mel Tillis sings a couple of his big hits, and Eddie Rabbit’s title song went to number one on the country charts. Believe it or not, the sequel, ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN, is Eastwood’s second-biggest inflation-adjusted box office hit of all time.

The Ghost And Mr. Chicken

Don Knotts is at his wound-up finest in THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN, his first film after leaving THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW. He’s a cornucopia of fidgets and shakes that pushes his physical comedy skills to the limit. Even when he isn’t saying anything, Knotts is a delight to watch.

As written by GRIFFITH vets Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum and directed by the Griffith show’s Alan Rafkin, THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN is one of the most quotable comedies of its era: “Bang! Right on the head!”, “Mister Boob. That’s me. B-Double-O-B. Boob!”, “When you work with words, words are your work,” and, of course, “Attaboy, Luther!” Set in rural Rachel, Kansas, Knotts plays Luther Heggs, a meek, excitable typesetter at the local newspaper with dreams of becoming a reporter. Neither his editor (Dick Sargent, later the Fake Darrin on BEWITCHED) nor his reporter rival (Skip Homeier) takes him seriously, and Homeier isn‘t even particularly friendly, cutting Luther down like a grade school bully.

Luther’s big chance comes when he accepts a dare to spend the night in the creepy Simmons mansion, an abandoned old house rumored to be haunted since Old Man Simmons murdered his wife there 20 years previously and then committed suicide. Simmons’ nephew (Phil Ober) has returned to Rachel to demolish the place, but those plans are put on hold after Luther’s scoop the next day in which he describes encounters with hidden staircases, a pipe organ that plays by itself, and a portrait of the late Mrs. Simmons with bloody shears protruding from it.

Since you and I don’t believe in ghosts, it’s easy to guess that human hands might be behind Luther’s apparitions. The journey to the mystery’s solution is a pleasing one, particularly because of the delightful supporting cast Rafkin assembled. TV Land fanatics will undoubtedly smile at Reta Shaw, Charles Lane, Ellen (“Grandma Walton“) Corby, Robert Cornthwaite, Cliff Norton, and Burt Mustin, just to name a few. However, the movie's secret weapon is the amazing jazz score by Vic Mizzy, whose jaunty main theme is later rearranged as a spooky organ tune Luther hears in the mansion. It's hard to get the tune out of your head once you've heard it, and it‘s one of the finest comedic scores of the 1960s.

Attack Of The Puppet People

Bert I. Gordon’s specialty, if it can be called that, was making movies about animate objects that were either very large or very small. Hence, titles in Gordon’s filmography like VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS, THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN, KING DINOSAUR, BEGINNING OF THE END (giant grasshoppers), EMPIRE OF THE ANTS (giant ants), FOOD OF THE GODS (giant chicken). And ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE, which is not about puppets, but people shrunken to about six inches in height.

A kindly old dollmaker played by John Hoyt (WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE) owns a three-room doll factory on the fifth floor of an office building. He’s the only employee of Dolls, Inc., except for new secretary June Kenney (EARTH VS. THE SPIDER), who is replacing the old secretary, who just disappeared. So did Hoyt’s mailman and several other people in Hoyt’s outer circle, not that the authorities ever noticed. Well, the title gives it away — Hoyt has learned how to shrink people and soon adds Kenney and doll salesman John Agar (TARANTULA) to his repertory company.

Of course, it’s typically silly “Mr. B.I.G.” shenanigans, though Hoyt works hard to create a sympathetic villain. Hilariously, based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever, Kenney deduces her boss turned Agar into a doll just because the doll looks like him. The fact that she’s right makes this plot point no less ridiculous. Gordon takes credit as director, producer, story writer (IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA’s George Worthing Yates wrote the screenplay), and technical effects supervisor.

Befitting a film at this budget level, the quality of the effects varies. Sometimes the simplest are the best — some shots of miniaturized people in glass tubes are actually 2D photographs, rather than actors and photographic effects. Agar and Kenney make out during THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN at a drive-in, and AIP released ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE on a double bill with Gordon’s sequel, WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST.

Venom (1981)

I’m just going to jump in and proclaim VENOM the greatest killer-snake movie of all time (I would not be surprised to learn about some crazy Asian snake flick that makes VENOM look as sedate as a Mitch Miller concert). Much of its value comes from its cast, which includes some of the acting profession’s most notorious troublemakers. You’d have to be nuts to cast Klaus Kinski (SCHIZOID), Oliver Reed (SITTING TARGET), Sterling Hayden (THE LONG GOODBYE), and Nicol Williamson (THE EXORCIST III) in the same movie. When original director Tobe Hooper (THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE) was fired a few days into production, it may have saved his sanity.

Piers Haggard (THE FIENDISH PLOT OF DR. FU MANCHU) was a rapid replacement for Hooper, but to his credit, none of VENOM’s backstage shenanigans show up on the screen. It’s a neat little thriller with a unsettling premise that should affect you whether you’re afraid of garter snakes or let your pet python crawl freely around your home. Kinski leads a band of kidnappers after the asthmatic grandson of wealthy hunter Hayden. Kinski’s conspirators include family chauffeur Reed and the boy’s nanny Susan George (MANDINGO), Kinski’s lover who uses her wiles to keep muscle-headed Reed toeing the line.

It goes to show no matter how intricate your plan, you can’t think of everything. Such as a black mamba, the world’s most vicious and poisonous snake, getting loose in the house. Hey, it could happen. With Williamson’s laconic police inspector and his men surrounding the house, the kidnappers, Hayden, snake expert Sarah Miles (RYAN’S DAUGHTER), and the boy are trapped inside with a killer that could literally be almost anywhere — inside the air vents, behind a curtain, hiding in a dark corner. Yikes.

For a last-minute director pulled from the ranks of British television, Haggard does a remarkable job keeping the suspense high and your rear end on the edge of your seat. VENOM is a very good thriller, thanks to its wily direction, stellar cast, and creepy cinematography by Gilbert Taylor (STAR WARS), who keeps the camera close to accentuate the claustrophobia that enhances the characters’ fear.

Untamed Youth/Born Reckless

Howard W. Koch, a very busy producer and director of B-movies (including FRANKENSTEIN 1970, VOODOO ISLAND, HOT CARS, and BIG HOUSE U.S.A.), signed megablonde Mamie Van Doren to a personal two-picture contract after being impressed by her work wearing a bathing suit in THE GIRL IN BLACK STOCKINGS. Both UNTAMED YOUTH and its followup, BORN RECKLESS, gave Van Doren top billing for the first time and allowed her to do what she did best, which was wriggle around in a tight dress while singing Les Baxter songs that sort of sounded like rock-and-roll.

To be fair, Van Doren may have been minimally talented, but what she did, she did extremely well, and it’s difficult to pull your eyes away from her. So pity poor Lori Nelson (DAY THE WORLD ENDED), who acquits herself just fine in UNTAMED YOUTH, but unfortunately barely registers standing next to the bullet-braed Van Doren. The two blondes play sisters who are busted by corrupt sheriff Robert Foulk (who played a nicer sheriff on LASSIE) on hitchhiking charges and sentenced by judge Lurene Tuttle (TV’s JULIA) to thirty days slave labor on a cotton plantation owned by LAWMAN’s John Russell (who turned up years later in Clint Eastwood’s PALE RIDER).

What we have is cinema’s first women-in-prison musical, as Van Doren or Eddie Cochran (“Summertime Blues”) as a prisoner named Bong bursts into family-friendly rock tunes on a moment’s notice. Even after a long, hard day picking cotton under a sweltering sun, these beatniks still have the energy after work to turn their dorm into a swinging dance party. Writer John C. Higgins (BORDER INCIDENT) does his best to make all this nonsense, including the revelation of Russell’s secret marriage to the much-older Tuttle, play as if it could actually happen, and fans of 1950s bombshells will also enjoy Yvonne Lime (I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF) and nudie model Jeanne Carmen (THE MONSTER OF PIEDRAS BLANCAS) in the cast.

The busy Van Doren was married to bandleader Ray Anthony and doing a song-and-dance act in Las Vegas during her two-picture deal with director Koch. Unlike UNTAMED YOUTH, BORN RECKLESS plays straight — unfortunate, because drama is not what either Van Doren or co-star Jeff Richards does best.

Richard Landau’s repetitive horse-and-bull story follows saloon crooner Van Doren (with tight shirts and a cowboy hat perched precariously upon her peroxide hairdo) and cowboys Richards (who went from this to his own television series, JEFFERSON DRUM) and Arthur Hunnicutt (THE BIG SKY) from county to county competing in local rodeos. Like a living Bill Ward drawing, Van Doren draws catcalls just stepping into a room, which inevitably leads to some masher molesting her, Richards getting beaten up defending her honor, and Hunnicutt missing another steak dinner to retrieve the truck for a fast getaway.

Aside from the usually entertaining Hunnicutt, Koch’s film offers little of note. The drama isn’t interesting, the rodeo action is mostly stock footage, and the strident comic relief is over-scored by Buddy Bregman. Carol Ohmart (SPIDER BABY) shows up as Mamie’s competitor for the stiff Richards, but she doesn’t seem like the villain the film depicts her as. After BORN RECKLESS, Van Doren stopped working for Koch (for whom she made three pictures) and moved on to directors Edward L. Cahn and Albert Zugsmith to varying success.

The First Power

27-year-old Lou Diamond Phillips is ridiculously miscast as a badass Los Angeles homicide detective named Russell Logan, who is L.A.'s King of Serial Killer Tracking. Some baffling police work somehow leads Logan to the Pentagram Killer, Patrick Channing (hideous Jeff Kober, perfectly cast as a creepy bastard), who sacrifices his victims to the Devil and carves pentagrams in their chests.

An anonymous tipster warns Logan not to send Channing to the gas chamber (like an L.A. cop has anything to do with the decision). After the killer's execution, Logan's fellow detectives are systematically murdered in a manner identical to Channing’s victims, right down to the knife wounds on their chests. Reluctantly teaming with the phone caller, a beautiful red-haired psychic named Tess Seaton (Tracy Griffith), Logan slowly comes to realize that Channing has returned from Hell and is possessing human bodies to carry out his murderous vendetta.

What's really funny about Phillips' character is that, despite what the other characters tell us about him, he's really an inept cop. Nothing he does has any positive impact on his investigation or pursuit, even though we're supposed to identify with his lone wolf. When he captures Channing at the beginning, he runs out of bullets (and throws his gun at the villain!), then is stabbed several times in the stomach before help arrives to apprehend the killer. Logan gets his ass kicked by just about every opponent, including a ninja-like bag lady right out of a Ronny Yu movie who floats up to the cop's loft and perpetrates some kung fu on Lou's not-bad self.

Writer/director Robert Resnikoff, whose only film THE FIRST POWER is (I'm curious as to who he was and what happened to him), does have a knack for handling stunts and action scenes. The pacing is good, and the chases and action is brisk. There's a cool spinning car jump and crash, and a stuntman playing Channing leaps off a tall building, plunges several stories, lands on his feet, and runs off.

Between the silly plot, Logan's incompetence, and the lousy acting, THE FIRST POWER provides much to laugh at, especially a real howler of a climax. Did you know the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power keeps gigantic vats of boiling acid (!) in its basement? And be sure to drink every time Lou loses his gun. Drink twice when he gets kicked in the nuts. Resnikoff’s film is a lot funnier than ERNEST GOES TO JAIL, which opened the same weekend in 1990 and came in third at the box office. THE FIRST POWER was fourth.

The Perfect Weapon

Jeff Speakman was a victim of bad timing. By the time THE PERFECT WEAPON, Speakman’s first major film, came out in the spring of 1991, studios were beginning to phase out medium-budget martial-arts movies for theatrical release, unless your name was Jean-Claude Van Damme. The future was in low-budget actioners made for the video market, which is where Don “The Dragon” Wilson, Brian Bosworth, Jeff Wincott — even Chuck Norris — found themselves working during the 1990s.

And so did Speakman. Paramount may have been trying to groom its own Van Damme in the kenpo karate black belt, but THE PERFECT WEAPON opened in sixth place (well ahead of Richard Grieco’s IF LOOKS COULD KILL, at least), and Speakman’s next film two years later was for a dying Cannon. Speakman continued working in direct-to-video features, but not with prime scripts or directors. Behind-the-scenes whispers that Speakman could be difficult to work with probably didn’t help land good prospects either. THE PERFECT WEAPON, his only major theatrical production, remains Speakman’s best film.

Even so, THE PERFECT WEAPON is kind of a mess with KICKBOXER’s Mark DiSalle directing a routine screenplay by David Campbell Wilson (SUPERNOVA). Speakman’s romance with Mariska Hargitay (later an Emmy winner for LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT) was cut completely out of the picture, leaving the prominently billed Hargitay with zero dialogue. Also contributing unfortunately abbreviated performances are Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (PEARL HARBOR) and Clyde Kusatsu (IN THE LINE OF FIRE), indicating credited editor Wayne Wahrman (I AM LEGEND) may have taken a dislike to those two talented gentleman as well.

Speakman holds his own on-screen, considering he was hired for his impressive physical skills. Every action hero in television and movies now uses some sort of martial arts — usually faked through doubles and rat-tat-tat editing — but Speakman’s speed and agility as a screen fighter are the real deal, and DiSalle is smart enough to just point the camera and let his star do his thing.

Once you get past the dreary origin story that fills the opening reel, THE PERFECT WEAPON settles down as a perfectly acceptable action flick. Jeff Sanders (Speakman), long estranged from his father (Beau Starr) and brother (John Dye), both policemen, returns to Los Angeles’ “Koreatown,” where his mentor (Mako) is murdered by the Korean mob — specifically, the hulking Tanaka (Professor Toru Tanaka).

Deciding he’s the “perfect weapon” to avenge Mako, because his outsider status can open doors that the police can’t penetrate, Sanders kicks, punches, and smashes his way through a small Asian army to get to Yung (James Hong), the man at the top. With a Gary Chang score and Snap’s “The Power” laying a musical backdrop, THE PERFECT WEAPON surpasses its cheap look (“Koreatown” looks like a backlot) and narrative hiccups to deliver a surplus of authentically bone-crunching thrills.

The Omen (1976)

If it had only featured one of cinema’s all-time great decapitations, THE OMEN would stand tall within the horror genre. But the film that put director Richard Donner on Hollywood’s A-list (he did SUPERMAN next) is more than just slick murder sequences.

Given a generous budget by 20th Century Fox and handed major movie stars Gregory Peck (TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD) and Lee Remick (ANATOMY OF A MURDER), Donner and screenwriter David Seltzer created a genuine horror classic that even the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences blessed with two Oscar nominations (Jerry Goldsmith won for his iconic score). Likely influenced by — or at least given the green light because of — THE EXORCIST, THE OMEN was the fourth biggest hit of 1976 behind ROCKY, A STAR IS BORN, and ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN.

THE OMEN is based on a nifty “what if” — what if your newborn baby was actually the Anti-Christ? That’s what happens to U.S. Ambassador Robert Thorn (Peck in a role Dick Van Dyke turned down!) when his and wife Katherine’s (Remick) son dies shortly after being born. Katherine doesn’t know, so Thorn agrees to secretly adopt a baby whose mother died during childbirth. It isn’t long — about five years — before unusual tragedies begin to occur around the Thorn family, notably little Damien’s nanny hanging herself at his birthday party (one of Donner’s great shocker scenes). Is Damien (Harvey Stephens) the son of Satan? Will Thorn have to destroy his son? Can he?

The director of BRONK and SARAH T.: PORTRAIT OF A TEENAGE ALCOHOLIC seems an unusual choice to make a big-budget horror movie for a major studio, but Donner made the most of the opportunity. The story unfolds as a grim mystery with David Warner (TIME AFTER TIME) turning in good work as a photographer who teams with Thorn to play detective. The murderous setpieces are staged with gruesome good taste, and Goldsmith’s Oscar-winning music establishes a sinister tone early and never lets go. Because THE OMEN keeps the supernatural horror within the realms of believability, its power remains potent decades after its original release. Many sequels, ripoffs, and an unloved 2006 remake followed.

Deadly Eyes

James Herbert, whose novel THE RATS was the basis for this horror movie released by Warner Brothers, called it “absolute rubbish.” For a movie that dressed dachshunds in rat costumes to create its “monsters,” DEADLY EYES acquits itself fairly well. The director, Robert Clouse, is better known for ENTER THE DRAGON and other action movies (clips from his GAME OF DEATH can be seen in a DEADLY EYES movie theater), but he also made THE PACK, a very good thriller about killer dogs against humans stranded on an island.

The star is Sam Groom, who played the eponymous POLICE SURGEON on the indefatigable syndicated television series of the 1970s. Miscast as an “exciting” man with “animal magnetism,” Groom plays Paul Harris, a high school teacher and basketball coach with the will to rebuff sexy cheerleader Trudy (THE NEST’s Lisa Langlois) when she tries to seduce him in the boys’ shower. But Harris has the hots for lady health inspector Kelly Leonard (Sara Botsford) and becomes intimately involved in her job to exterminate the giant steroid-rage rats living in the sewers.

Clouse is ruthless when demonstrating the brutality of these animals — their first victim is a baby yanked from her high chair and dragged into the basement with only a bloody trail to indicate the child had ever existed. Another victim is beloved character actor Scatman Crothers (from Clouse’s BLACK BELT JONES), which really makes us good and mad. As silly as dressing dogs in rat costumes sounds, it’s actually fairly effective and more believable than the animatronics and hand puppets used in bloody closeups.

The screenplay by Charles Eglee (DEXTER) drags like hell in the middle with the soppy romance between Groom and Botsford and the annoyingly fickle Langlois’ crushes. Clouse knows how to build a setpiece, though, and DEADLY EYES is at its best when the rats go all out — tearing into a crowded movie theater or chowing down on upper-crust types on their way to a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The climax is weak, however, and early scenes involving Harris’ students are ultimately pointless. I doubt DEADLY EYES is the best killer-rat movie ever produced, but it certainly ain’t the worst.

Superman And The Mole-Men

Before George Reeves starred in the first season of the syndicated ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, Lippert Pictures produced this 58-minute feature that was later cut into a two-part episode, “The Unknown People.” SUPERMAN AND THE MOLE-MEN was not a pilot per se, but was a vehicle to release in theaters as publicity for the TV show, which premiered in 1952.

Reeves (RANCHO NOTORIOUS), who became a television star in the dual role of Clark Kent and Superman, is terrific in it — confident, intelligent, tough, and compassionate. He’s almost matched by the feisty Phyllis Coates (PANTHER GIRL OF THE KONGO), who remains the screen’s pre-eminent Lois Lane.

Daily Planet reporters Kent (Reeves) and Lane (Coates) travel to little Silsby, home of the world’s deepest oil well, which drills more than six miles below the surface. Unfortunately, it has drilled a tunnel to the underground home of a race of “mole people”—phosphorescent midgets with hairy backs and big foreheads—who crawl to the surface and run around accidentally frightening humans to death. They may also be radioactive, spurring the hotheaded citizens, led by rabble-rousing bigot Luke Benson (Jeff Corey), to form a lynch mob to murder the strange creatures. Superman (Reeves in a padded suit) shows up in time to rescue the invaders and teach Silsby a lesson in tolerance.

Welcome exterior filming and a strong story — both of which the TV series generally lacked — as well as its short running time, help this minor science fiction film go down easily. Reeves doesn’t appear as Superman until the 24-minute mark and dominates from then on. Harry Thomas’ special mole man makeup is unconvincing. Discounting serials and cartoon shorts, SUPERMAN AND THE MOLE-MEN was the first feature to star Superman or any other National Periodicals character. No Jimmy Olsen or Perry White in it though. Corey, ironically, was blacklisted in 1952 by people very much like Luke Benson.

The Golden Gate Murders

He’s a cop. She’s a nun. Together, they solve a murder in THE GOLDEN GATE MURDERS, an entertaining made-for-TV crime drama that teams the distinguished British actress Susannah York (THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY?) with the crusty and busy television star David Janssen (THE FUGITIVE). The plot is typical cop-show stuff, but Janssen was never uninteresting on the small screen.

A priest (Regis Cordic) plummets over the side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Investigating is gruff, wisecracking police detective Paul Silver (Janssen), eight years on the graveyard shift, but temporarily switched by boss Tim O’Connor (BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY) to days. What seems like an open-and-shut case of suicide is exacerbated by the priest’s nurse, Sister Benecia (York), who is convinced he would never kill himself.

Because director Walter Grauman gives us glimpses of Cordic going over the side, we know he was murdered (the title also gives away the mystery), so while writer David Kinghorn (TWO FATHERS’ JUSTICE) sends the stars through their procedural paces, we derive pleasure from the chemistry between them. Of course, romance is out (or is it?), but the distinguished York brings out the best in the hilariously brusque Janssen, who probably isn’t ad-libbing, but is so natural in his line-readings that he sometimes appears to be. He wears sunglasses a lot, which may be to hide red eyes (he’s funny when shopping with York and nonchalantly filling his cart with liquor bottles, telling her, “I entertain a lot”).

The production is surprisingly cheap for a ‘70s TV-movie with Grauman shooting driving scenes against an unconvincing screen and bridge scenes on unconvincing sets. Janssen died a few months after CBS aired THE GOLDEN GATE MURDERS against Game 1 of the American League Championship Series between the Orioles and Angels.

The Last Dinosaur

This American/Japanese co-production bypassed U.S. theaters for a premiere on ABC after a DONNY & MARIE episode. It’s the only film ever made with a hero named Masten Thrust Jr. I guess we have screenwriter William Overgard, best known for drawing the STEVE ROPER & MIKE NOMAD comic strip, to thank for that.

Basically a mixture of Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Toho monster movies, and the Jock Mahoney adventure THE LAND UNKNOWN for Universal-International, THE LAST DINOSAUR sends wealthy white hunter Thrust (Richard Boone), journalist Frankie Banks (Joan Van Ark), scientist Kawamoto (Tetsu Nakamura), geologist Chuck Wade (Steven Keats), and tracker Bunta (Lester Rackley) above the Arctic Circle, where they enter a tropical valley populated with dinosaurs beneath a volcano. The party becomes stranded there, and Thrust becomes obsessed with killing a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Boone, a great actor who became a television star on HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL, is fascinating to watch for both the right and wrong reasons. He plays the heck out of the complex character Overgard created on the page, giving the misogynist, rundown, yet somehow heroic Thrust plenty of dimension. He’s also clearly plastered in some scenes — Boone was a notorious alcoholic — is cursed with an outrageous toupee, and fiddles with his false teeth once or twice. His romantic chemistry with the 27-years-younger Van Ark (KNOTS LANDING) is surprisingly effective.

The special effects work by the Japanese crew is, as usual, not terribly believable, but almost always fun and imaginative. The American producers were Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass, well known for animated television specials like RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER and FROSTY THE SNOWMAN. They brought back Boone, Overgard, and co-director Tsugunobu Kotani for THE BUSHIDO BLADE, which turned out to be Boone’s last film (he died before its 1981 release).