Mafia Death Trap

So here Robert Briganti is, just minding his own business, relaxing in the Maine woods with his elderly new friend Lem Perkins, when a couple of Mafia "pigs" take a potshot at him and accidentally kill Perkins instead. This makes Briganti, known among Mob circles as the Assassin, mad. Really mad. Mad enough to go to Boston and wipe out the local capo, Franco Toriello, and his entire organization.

So goes BOSTON BUST-OUT, the third and final Assassin paperback, all published by Dell in 1973. 1973 was also the year author Peter McCurtin began writing novels about the Marksman for Belmont Tower, and it's clear that the Assassin books were intended for the Marksman, as both characters have the same origin and the same bloody concept.

BOSTON is practically plotless: just a series of kidnaps, beatings, and shootings as Briganti kills his way through Toriello's entire family. Barely a hero by this point, Briganti even snatches the old man's young girlfriend, sleeps with her, and sends her back to Toriello with false information that he knows will kill her. Coldblooded mofo, that Assassin.

As these things go, BOSTON BUST-OUT isn't bad. It's maybe a little long at 192 pages, but it ain't exactly packed with a lot of big words. As entertaining as it is, it's easy to see why the Assassin didn't last. He isn't an original or terribly interesting character, and there's nothing about him that stands out among the Sharpshooters and the Marksmen and the Liquidators that were competing for eyeballs. Pretty good cover though, especially the blue background that makes the illustration really pop.

His True Story Can Be Told

Roger Corman produced this 20th Century Fox exploitation film that plays very loosely with the established facts of Al Capone’s life. 44-year-old Ben Gazzara plays 19-year-old Al Capone as the film begins, and when John Cassavetes (HUSBANDS) in a one-day cameo as Frankie Yale calls Gazzara “kid,” I dare you not to snicker. Corman and director Steve Carver, who previously made BIG BAD MAMA and THE ARENA for Corman’s New World Pictures, are more concerned with getting sex and violence on-screen as cheaply as possible, and as a titillating drive-in picture, CAPONE works pretty well.

The screenplay is by Howard Browne, a very fine novelist (THIN AIR) and TV writer (MAVERICK) who also penned Corman’s THE ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE, footage from which is recycled here. It rushes very quickly from Capone’s apprenticeship with Johnny Torrio (Harry Guardino) in the Chicago mob through his arrest for income tax evasion and eventual death from syphilis. Carver makes plenty of stops for period car chases and bloody Tommy gun shootouts on the backlot streets that unconvincingly serve as Chicago. One early scene set in rural Joliet features the familiar dirt roads, brown grass, and mountainous terrain of the Fox Ranch (now Malibu Creek State Park).

Corman assembled a heckuva good cast, who seem more interested in their paychecks than the material. The acting is comically bad, particularly Gazzara’s hilariously unrestrained performance, complete with bulging cheeks and foot-long cigars. Sylvester Stallone (between THE LORDS OF FLATBUSH and DEATH RACE 2000) is Frank Nitti, who outlives Capone in this version. Susan Blakely, just prior to heating up the small screen in RICH MAN POOR MAN, is Capone’s mistress Iris Crawford. Also with Royal Dano, Frank Campanella, John Orchard, Martin Kove, John Davis Chandler, Carmen Argenziano, Robert Phillips, George Chandler, Beach Dickerson, and Dick Miller.

CAPONE is not part of Shout Factory's Roger Corman's Cult Classics series, apparently because it was made for Fox and not New World. Shout Factory, as usual, did a terrific job packaging the film for DVD, providing it in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Among the extras are two trailers, two television spots, and the trailer for THE ST. VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE. Even better is the audio commentary with Nathaniel Thompson moderating Steve Carver. The director offers some nice stories involving the actors, such as the innovative ways in which good friends Guardino and Gazzara would try to upstage one another, and working on a tight four-week schedule and budget on soundstages and backlots at Universal, Fox, Warner Brothers, and Paramount.

Somebody Had Bitch For Breakfast

The most frightening thing about MEGA PYTHON VS. GATOROID is knowing how many of its viewers are forty-year-old men sitting home in their underwear fast-forwarding to the Debbie Gibson/Tiffany catfight scene. The only reason this movie exists is because former teen pop singer Gibson (“Only in My Dreams”) had starred in The Asylum’s MEGA SHARK VS. GIANT OCTOPUS, and you know somebody at the studio or at SyFy thought, “Hey, wait a minute…what if we hired the other late-1980s teen singer, Tiffany (‘I Think We’re Alone Now’), to co-star in a sequel?”

Since both women had already posed nude for PLAYBOY, putting Tiffany and Debbie together in a cheap monster movie does, honestly, seems like a good way to attract eyeballs to SyFy on a Saturday evening. To little surprise, when MEGA PYTHON VS. GATOROID premiered on SyFy in January 2011, it drew more than 2.3 million viewers. That probably means we can expect Kylie Minogue to fight a giant Gila monster in the next Asylum sequel.

Debbie is Nikki Riley, an eco-terrorist who releases a bunch of pythons into the swamp, where they grow to massive size and start eating people. Tiffany is Terry O’Hara, a park ranger whose genius idea to fight the snakes is to feed steroids to the alligators, so they’ll grow to massive size and eat the snakes. How well do you think that plan works?

Both stars get to wear tiny shorts, sing on the soundtrack, and call each other “bitch” (many, many times). They’re also pathetic but game actresses who wink their way through the script’s in-jokes about their musical careers. No one is taking this movie seriously, particularly the visual effects supervisors, who crap out half-baked CGI work that looks like a six-year-old did it in Microsoft Paint and is less convincing than the Reptilicus puppet of the 1960s. Really, whoever created these effects should be embarrassed.

So should director Mary Lambert, who once was something of a big deal (PET SEMATARY), not that you would guess from her clumsy staging here. Surprisingly, veteran soap star A Martinez (SANTA BARBARA) is working hard to create a performance, and THE WEST WING’s Kathryn Joosten provides wry humor. Micky Dolenz, playing himself (!), is beyond being embarrassed by this point in his career. It was a nice surprise to see Kristen Wilson, the slinky host of Comedy Central’s ‘90s series STAND-UP STAND-UP, make an appearance. Griffith Park, the L.A. Arboretum, and Bronson Canyon play the Everglades.

Do-It-Yourself A-Bombs

The Death Merchant is as violently death-obsessed as ever in his 19th adventure: ARMAGEDDON, USA!, published by Pinnacle in Our Bicentennial Year 1976. Author Joseph Rosenberger, who actually wrote all of the Death Merchant novels without passing them off to ghosts, was one of men's adventure fiction's most idiosyncratic writers. Considering the lengthy passages of graphic gunplay and violence and the frequent proselytizing performed by his leading man, there's no mistaking a Rosenberger chapter for anyone else's.

ARMAGEDDON, USA! has a pretty good though not terribly original plot. A right-wing organization called The Sons and Daughters of the Stars and Stripes have hidden atomic bombs in three U.S. cities and promise to explode them unless the President resigns. Based near St. Louis, Missouri, Richard Camellion and his CIA team (which includes one woman) race against their deadline to track down the SDSS' leader, elderly nutbag H.G. Motts, and find out which cities are targeted for destruction. Rosenberg delivers a nice twist in the form of Motts' airtight backup plan involving goons hired to set off the bombs manually in case of government interference, but they think they're just exploding arson devices!

If you're read a Death Merchant novel or just my earlier reviews of Death Merchant novels, you're aware of Rosenberger's penchant for drawn-out action scenes that flamboyantly describe in almost fetishistic detail the number of ways the human body can be destroyed. ARMAGEDDON, USA! has more going on between the violent interludes than usual, including a couple of long dialogue scenes in which Camellion preaches anti-religion views presumably belonging to Rosenberger.

It has been said that Rosenberger was using the Death Merchant series to parody the simplistic action series dotting the literary landscape during the 1970s, such as Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan books, but I'm not buying it. If it's satire, it's too clever for me to pick up on.

The Dirty Dolls Of Devil's Island

Roger Corman didn’t invent the women-in-prison genre, but there’s little doubt the three movies his New World Pictures released in 1971 and 1972 were influential. All three were filmed on location in the Philippines using sexy young unknowns looking for a big break. One of them, Pam Grier, who appeared in all three and made her film debut in THE BIG DOLL HOUSE, parlayed their box office success into a career as the top female action star of the 1970s. This week, Shout Factory released the trio—THE BIG DOLL HOUSE, THE BIG BIRD CAGE, and WOMEN IN CAGES—on a 2-DVD set as part of its amazing Roger Corman’s Cult Classics series.

THE BIG DOLL HOUSE was only the second film produced by New World and was an immediate smash. Director Jack Hill (COFFY), screenwriter Don Spencer (SWEET SUGAR), and executive producer Corman basically created the new style of women-in-prison picture with this fast-paced mixture of violence, nudity, feminism, and social commentary. Judy Brown (THE MANHANDLERS) has the leading role as red-haired Collier, who is tossed into a crummy cell in a prison in the Philippines along with brassy blonde Alcott (Roberta Collins), black lesbian Grear (Grier, who also performed the theme song), political prisoner Bodine (PETTICOAT JUNCTION’s Pat Woodell), and junkie Harrad (Brooke Mills). Food fights, shower scenes, fights, seductions, and kinky tortures abound until the prisoners finally bust out and get revenge against sadistic warden Dietrich (Christiane Schmidtmer) and loony head guard Lucian (Kathryn Loder).

Although the subject matter sounds grim, Hill directs with wit, using comic-book-style wipes between scenes and camping up the more violent material (no blood is seen) to take the sting out of it. The leading actresses are not just beautiful and willing to disrobe on camera, but they also appear to “get” what Hill is aiming for and adjust their performances accordingly. THE BIG DOLL HOUSE is pure fantasy with many iconic scenes, lines (“Get it up or I’ll cut it off!”), and images (Brown in cutoffs firing a pair of burp guns from the hip) that inspired a whole slew of women’s prison pictures, including Hill’s pseudo-sequel, THE BIG BIRD CAGE.

By the time Corman and Hill got around to making the follow-up to DOLL HOUSE a year later, the market had been saturated with women’s prison movies that filled the screen with nudity and degradation. Hill’s solution was to send up the genre and pack even more humor into the movie than DOLL HOUSE had. Thus, the delightfully pulpy THE BIG BIRD CAGE.

Once again, beautiful women wearing very little clothing are imprisoned in a hellhole in the Philippines. Grier returns as a different character, Blossom, an armed robber who gets tossed into the clink with innocent bystander Terry (THE PRICE IS RIGHT model Anitra Ford), tough black Mickie (Carol Speed), wisecracking Bull (Teda Bracci), tall Karen (Karen McKevic), and sex-starved Carla, whom I believe was intended to be played by DOLL HOUSE’s Roberta Collins, but was instead essayed by blond Candice Roman, who looks and acts exactly like her. Sid Haig also returns from DOLL HOUSE as a revolutionary named Django who breaks his lover Blossom out of prison.

Given more money and more time for the sequel, Hill provides the fast-paced action and nudity the genre required, but with a few stylish twists. For instance, all the guards at the prison are gay men, which not only turns the cliché of lesbian prison matrons upside down, but also becomes a source of politically incorrect (but not tasteless) humor. The centerpiece of BIRD CAGE, however, is the title prop, an intriguing three-story contraption that ostensibly serves as a sugar mill, but is really more of a large visual gag.

During the year between the release of DOLL HOUSE and the production of BIRD CAGE, Corman contracted Filipino filmmaker Gerardo de Leon (MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND) to make another women-in-prison quickie. Grier, who performed so well in DOLL HOUSE, starred as a ruthless gay prison matron named Alabama in WOMEN IN CAGES.

For this depraved drive-in movie, Corman cast Judy Brown and Roberta Collins from DOLL HOUSE as Grier’s co-stars, along with Jennifer Gan (NAKED ANGELS) as new fish Jeff. This simp is framed for heroin possession by her weasely pimp boyfriend and sent to Alabama’s jungle jail. Mess with Alabama, and you get sent to her “playpen,” where her methods of torture include whipping, a spinning wheel, and stone boots into which a naked inmate is strapped over a flaming brazier. As if Jeff doesn’t have it bad enough, one of her cellmates, junkie Stoke (Collins), has been hired by her weasely pimp boyfriend to kill her.

For sure, de Leon knows how to deliver the goods that drive-in audiences were looking for. WOMEN IN CAGES offers de rigueur amounts of nudity, catfights, brutality, and racial conflict. But it also lacks the humor of the Jack Hill duo, and because de Leon is a less insightful filmmaker than Hill (to be fair, almost everyone working in the genre was), WOMEN IN CAGES is much less interesting. Gan’s character is too dumb to root for, and the padded climax wears out its welcome.

Grier, although obviously beautiful with unbeatable screen presence, is miscast as the villain. She hadn’t developed enough as an actress by this point to stretch in a role that required more than her own natural charms. Collins handles a more dramatic role than she was used to just fine, but playing a part with no humor in it took a big arrow out of the talented comedienne’s thespian quiver. Top-billed Brown appears to be having a nice time with her tongue in her cheek.

There’s no faulting the look of the film, which appears yanked off the cover of a FOR MEN ONLY or MEN’S ACTION “sweat magazine” cover. Production design (the playpen is really fantastic) and photography are surprisingly imaginative. The musical score consists of recycled Les Baxter cues from previous Roger Corman features.

All three movies look better than they ever have on home video and probably as least as good as their theatrical releases. Both DOLL HOUSE and BIRD CAGE, in addition to trailers and TV spots, port over Jack Hill’s audio commentaries from the earlier New Horizons DVDs, which are in every way inferior to the new Shout Factory discs.

The most important supplement is FROM MANILA WITH LOVE, a 50-minute documentary that covers DOLL HOUSE and BIRD CAGE. It’s a delight, featuring nearly every important creative force from the two films, including Corman, Hill, producer Jane Schaffer (who has rarely, if ever, been interviewed about these movies, to the best of my knowledge), actors Ford, Roman, Bracci, Brown, and Haig, and writer James Gordon White (THE INCREDIBLE 2-HEADED TRANSPLANT), who apparently wrote the first draft of DOLL HOUSE and brought it to Hill before it was rewritten by Don Spencer, who receives sole screenplay credit. The late Roberta Collins also appears courtesy of earlier interview footage taken from an unknown source. Pam Grier, who reportedly wanted more remuneration than Shout Factory was able to provide for her participation, is noticeably absent.

It’s an old story by now, but one worth repeating. Shout Factory is doing a helluva job packaging its Roger Corman collection, and this edition featuring THE BIG DOLL HOUSE, THE BIG BIRD CAGE, and WOMEN IN CAGES is no exception.

Going (Not Very) Berserk

SCTV stars John Candy, Joe Flaherty, and Eugene Levy made this scattershot Canadian comedy the same year Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas brought their Great White North characters to STRANGE BREW.

GOING BERSERK, which was written by Dana Olsen (THE ‘BURBS) and director David Steinberg (PATERNITY), would likely had been much funnier had it been penned by its stars, who each won two Emmys for writing SCTV NETWORK 90 shows. Perhaps it wasn’t developed specifically for Candy, Levy, and Flaherty, who look lost.

The closest that GOING BERSERK gets to reminding fans of SCTV is a pair of parodies that would have probably been rejected by the show: a kung fu spoof (a dead horse after KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE’s brilliant “A Fistful of Yen”) and a meanspirited updating of FATHER KNOWS BEST (that features Elinor Donahue!). At least these setpieces break up the hamfisted plot, which stars Candy as John Bourgignon, who runs an unsuccessful limousine service with his best pal Chick Leff (Flaherty).

John’s impending marriage to Nancy (THE WONDER YEARS’ Alley Mills), the daughter of presidential candidate Ed Reese (Pat Hingle), is endangered by Reese’s nemesis, religious cultist/con artist Sun Yi Day (Richard Libertini). Day concocts a plan to brainwash John using a playing card and writhing aerobicizers into assassinating his new father-in-law on his wedding day.

GOING BERSERK’s major failure is a paucity of scenes of the SCTV actors together. Levy is sadly underused as a sleazy filmmaker named Salvatore DiPasquale, who hounds John to convince Reese to let him film the wedding. Flaherty is wasted in a straight part; he’s awkwardly included in one scene in which he literally does nothing but watch Hingle and Levy. Director David Steinberg, a standup comic with a Second City background, became a prolific TV director, but his work here is bad. His timing is haphazard, and he stages some sight gags out of camera range.

Candy survived this flop, moving on to scene-stealing supporting parts in SPLASH and VOLUNTEERS that turned him into one of the 1980s’ top comedy stars. Levy, also funny in SPLASH, joined Christopher Guest’s repertory company and acted in the first eight (!) AMERICAN PIE comedies. Flaherty starred in the ‘90s sitcoms MANIAC MANSION and POLICE ACADEMY: THE SERIES.

Blazing Fury

An earlier version of this review was posted here four years ago. With the Warner Archive's release of the film on DVD-R, I have updated and reposted it.

DARK OF THE SUN is one of the greatest action movies of the 1960s, maybe of all time. Released in 1968, it's a beautifully photographed and edited action picture with seminal tough-guy performances by Rod Taylor (THE BIRDS) and former football pro Jim Brown (THE DIRTY DOZEN). And until the Warner Archive recently put it out on DVD-R, few of us ever got a chance to see it looking its best in its theatrical 2.35:1 ratio. Never before released on home video, DARK OF THE SUN had aired a handful of times on Turner Classic Movies, but never looking as good as it does now.

The mission is succinctly set early on. The new president of war-torn Congo, Mwamini Ubi (Calvin Lockhart), hires Captain Bruce Curry (Taylor) to put together some men and a five-car train and take them on a journey to rescue some citizens and, oh, yes, liberate $25 million in uncut diamonds too, while he's there. Curry, who never met a mercenary job he wouldn't take if the money was right, recruits his friend Ruffo (Brown), a Congolese educated at USC, ex-Nazi captain Henlein (Peter Carsten, dubbed by Paul Frees) and his troops, and alcoholic physician Wreid (Kenneth More). Curry has just three days in which to complete his mission, partially because of the invading Simba force—African nationalists ripping a bloody swath across the country, slaughtering men, women, and children, cutting them into small pieces, and feeding them to their enemies.

Director Jack Cardiff was better known as an Oscar-winning cinematographer (BLACK NARCISSUS). He made fifteen films as a director (several with Rod Taylor), but DARK OF THE SUN is his magnum opus. Excitingly lensed in Jamaica, DARK OF THE SUN is fast-paced and loaded with rich dialogue penned by journeymen Adrian Spies (HAUSER’S MEMORY) and Ranald MacDougall (CLEOPATRA), who adapted a Wilbur Smith novel. It's just 100 minutes long, and I wouldn't be surprised if plenty was left on the cutting-room floor. Yvette Mimieux's (Taylor's co-star in THE TIME MACHINE) role as a widow rescued in the nick of time from rampaging Simbas comes across as perfunctory, and it seems that more could have been done with actor Olivier Despax’s role as a cowardly French soldier.

On the other hand, I wouldn't want Cardiff to have sacrificed any of the blistering action, including epic-looking raids, a chainsaw fight, Taylor bouncing his Jeep down a rocky stream in pursuit of an enemy on a raft, and particularly a suspenseful sequence in which Brown and Taylor infiltrate a grisly Simba celebration. DARK OF THE SUN is one of the toughest, most violent adventures of the 1960s. Blood flows freely, and Carsten’s Nazi shoots down two children in one of the film’s most shocking scenes. French jazz pianist Jacques Loussier, who rarely worked on English-language films, composed a marvelous score that effortlessly buttresses Cardiff's crisp direction.

We Want Our Lungs To Be Pink When They Fry Us

By far, the most popular characters created for the long-running Canadian comedy series SCTV were the dimwitted Canucks Bob and Doug McKenzie played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas. Never seen without toques on their heads and beers in their hand, these two knuckleheads evolved from two-minute television sketches to a North American fad fueled by magazine covers, a platinum comedy album, and this silly movie based, believe it or not, on HAMLET.

STRANGE BREW sends Bob and Doug to the Elsinore brewery, where they try to con the company into giving them free beer to make up for the mouse they allegedly found in one of their empties. Instead, they stumble upon a sinister plot by Brewmeister Smith (Max von Sydow!) and Claude Elsinore (Paul Dooley) to drive Claude’s niece Pam (Lynne Griffin), the brewery’s new owner, insane and use the beer to dispense a mind-control drug that will allow Smith to rule the world.

Okay, eh, like, it’s a dopey idea played for maximum giggles by Thomas and Moranis, a couple’a hosers with keen comic timing honed over several years of playing these characters on television. Although the SCTV sketches were totally improvised, STRANGE BREW’s script lets the two men develop a relationship between the brothers that goes beyond beer and back bacon and makes them heroes to root for.

The absurdist opening with the McKenzie brothers attending the premiere of their film-within-a-film, a ridiculously cheap and inept science fiction thriller, prepares you for a different kind of movie that settles into something straighter (more or less) after the opening titles (and theme song composed and sung by Ian Thomas, Dave’s brother). Still, it nicely ties the film to the Great White North sketches and certainly gets STRANGE BREW off to a howling start.

One of the more quotable comedies of the 1980s, STRANGE BREW was written by Thomas and Moranis after MIRACLE MILE’s Steve de Jarnatt took a couple of swings at the screenplay. It’s not only unusual in that its two stars co-directed it, but also because it’s a rare film shot in Canada for a primarily American audience that’s also set there. Angus MacInnes (WITNESS), SCTV’s Mary Charlotte Wilcox, and NATIONAL LAMPOON contributor Brian McConnachie are also in it. Score by Charles Fox. Onscreen title: THE ADVENTURES OF BOB & DOUG MCKENZIE: STRANGE BREW.

Moranis and Thomas left SCTV, which was still airing 90-minute episodes on NBC, to make STRANGE BREW. Two months after MGM released STRANGE BREW, John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Joe Flaherty released another “SCTV movie,” GOING BERSERK, which was a flop (and also had Paul Dooley in it).

Hippie Professor Faces Murder Rap

JUDD FOR THE DEFENSE was a very good but low-rated lawyer series that aired on ABC from 1967 to 1969. Carl Betz, formerly the doting husband and father on THE DONNA REED SHOW, played a flashier character in Clinton Judd, a flamboyant, high-priced Texas attorney who flew all over the country defending his clients in cases that either involved a lot of media coverage or a controversial issue or both.

Very likely based on F. Lee Bailey, Judd was no Perry Mason. He didn't win all his cases, and the show sometimes felt ripped from the headlines with episodes about race relations, abortion, draft dodging, migrant workers, and care of the mentally ill.

The TV show also spawned two tie-in paperback novels, both written by Lawrence Louis Goldman, a screenwriter with credits including two Roger Corman movies, the fine sci-fier KRONOS, and many television series, including JUDD FOR THE DEFENSE. Goldman's first JUDD novel is true to the series, sending Judd and his young associate Ben Caldwell (played on TV by Stephen Young) to Ben's alma mater of Commonwealth University to defend an elderly professor accused of murder.

Dr. Leland Michales (sic), an old liberal who had Ben in some philosophy classes during the younger man's college days, is conducting legal and university-sanctioned experiments with LSD, which include dosing volunteers and monitoring their actions. When the experiments begin to garner the school negative publicity, the administration demands that Michales quit his research and return the LSD. When he refuses, the school suspends him. But when a female student falls from the college's bell tower to her death while under the influence of acid, Michales is arrested on a murder charge.

While much of the dialogue sounds a little dated today--the way many books, movies, and TV shows from the 1960s do--it also sounds reel coming from the mouths of Commonwealth's college students. As in the series, Ben does most of the legwork, interviewing witnesses and tracking down leads, leaving the dramatic courtroom shenanigans to his mentor Judd. At 222 pages, Goldman has plenty of room to develop the characters and the mystery plot, and his experience working on the TV show lets him adapt the qualities that made it an Emmy- and Edgar-winning series to the page.

Even if you aren't familiar with JUDD FOR THE DEFENSE, Goldman's novel is still an absorbing mystery and highly recommended. Goldman's followup, THE SECRET LISTENERS, was also published by Paperback Library in 1968.

Shock By Incredible Shock

During the 1950s, drive-ins were flooded with science fiction programmers about giant insects rampaging cities and eating people. Only one of them came from Great Britain.

THE COSMIC MONSTER, a relative obscurity today that recently made its Turner Classic Movies premiere, was based on a British television serial penned by silent-movie actress Rene Ray, who later adapted it for a novel. Distributors Corporation of America, probably best known for releasing Edward D. Wood Jr.’s PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, unleashed the feature version, written by Paul Ryder (THE GIRL IN THE PICTURE), stateside on a double bill with THE CRAWLING EYE. Both films starred blustery American actor Forrest Tucker (F TROOP), who also starred in Hammer’s THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN while in England.

Even if every other part clicked, THE COSMIC MONSTER’s dire direction by Gilbert Gunn (WINGS OF MYSTERY) would probably still sink it. Stodgily paced and woodenly performed by actors struggling to find something in their flat characters to accentuate (even the normally avuncular Tucker appears deflated), the picture plods along from one technobabble conversation to the next while the viewer awaits something resembling the shocks promised in its poster (“Every second your pulse pounds, they grow foot by incredible foot!”). There must have been a lot of disappointed viewers leaving the theater in 1958.

Mad scientist Laird (Alec Mango) and his sensible assistant Gil Graham (Tucker) are performing magnetic experiments. One accidentally tears a hole in the ionosphere, which causes cosmic rays to turn a hobo into a psycho killer and cause insects to grow larger than humans. It takes about an hour into this 75-minute movie for the melee between man and bug to get going, and even then the action is badly staged, shot, and edited with macro photography of normal insects acting as unconvincing special effects.

Martin Benson, memorable as Solo, the gangster that gets squashed inside a car in GOLDFINGER, plays Smith, an alien who speaks perfect English with a British accent (his people have been monitoring ours for years and even teaching their children about us). His performance is the best in the movie, though Smith plays like a deux es machina. Amazingly, when he tells Tucker about his extraterrestrial origins, the American unbelievably accepts the explanation without even an eyeblink.

THE COSMIC MONSTER is one of the rarest of ‘50s “big bug” movies and deservedly so. Aside from one cool shot of a creature eating the face off some poor schmuck, there’s little of interest in it, and Forrest Tucker seems uncomfortable in it.

The Most Exciting Experience In A Woman's Life

Russ Meyer’s lone attempt at mainstream filmmaking was THE SEVEN MINUTES, an adaptation of Irving Wallace’s 1969 sudser. Meyer’s previous film for 20th Century Fox, BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, made a lot of money and enticed the studio to hire him for something more down-to-earth. Fox still didn’t trust him, however. When Meyer replaced Richard Fleischer (THE BOSTON STRANGLER) as director, the studio cut the budget from $6 million to less than $2 million.

Despite its studio pedigree, THE SEVEN MINUTES is recognizably Meyerian with its quick cutting, spoofy musical score (by Stu Phillips), and sexually aggressive female characters. It’s also something of a mess, mostly because Meyer seems unsure whether or not to take the material seriously. Half the film is set in a courtroom, and the various cross-examinations arguing the merits of free speech versus censorship are sharply written by Richard Warren Lewis and portrayed. However, Meyer plays the other scenes for camp, and the jagged shifts in tone are annoying. Why should we bother to think about the issues when the director doesn’t seem to want us to?

Wayne Maunder, just coming off the western TV series CUSTER and LANCER, stars as Mike Barrett, an attorney hired by publisher Phil Sanford (Tom Selleck (!), who had been in MYRA BRECKINRIDGE) to defend a young bookstore manager who sold the police the popular novel THE SEVEN MINUTES, written by the late J.J. Jadway in 1935 and considered pornographic by some standards. Barrett’s case runs into real problems when a young man named Jerry Griffith (John Sarno) is busted on a rape charge and blames the book for his crime.

Meyer flooded his supporting cast with every old white character actor in town—Philip Carey, Jay C. Flippen, Ron Randell, Lyle Bettger, John Carradine, Charles Drake, Stanley Adams, Olan Soule, Harold J. Stone, Jackie Gayle, Alex D’Arcy, Berry Kroeger, David Brian, Regis Cordic—added regular players Charles Napier, Stuart Lancaster, James Iglehart, and Edy Williams (his then-wife), and brought in Yvonne DeCarlo (THE DESERT HAWK) for a crowdpleasing cameo at the end. If nothing else, THE SEVEN MINUTES provides some enjoyment in watching the cast—you’ll also spot Marianne McAndrew, Jan Shutan and even Wolfman Jack!

Meyer’s fling with Hollywood suits didn’t take, though. He didn’t like THE SEVEN MINUTES, Wallace hated it, and audiences stayed away. So it was back back to the boobs-and-square-jaws route with BLACKSNAKE, which was also a flop, and the triumphant SUPERVIXENS.

Street Vigilante

STREETS OF BLOOD was the second in Manor Books' series about Bronson: Street Viglante; I've now read and reviewed all three of them. As you may have already guessed, they're heavily influenced by the 1974 film DEATH WISH, which starred Charles Bronson as a liberal New York architect who turns deadly vigilante when his family is attacked by street scum. I'm surprised Manor was able to dodge a lawsuit, the influence is so strong.

I suspect STREETS OF BLOOD was written by a different author than BLIND RAGE, though both are credited to Philip Rawls. Leonard Levinson, a longtime pulp writer who contributed to the Sharpshooter and Apache Wars series, among others, penned this one. In BLIND RAGE, the violence is more vulgar and graphic than the other books. Bronson has few qualms about knocking off innocent bystanders, and he has an affair with a teenage girl during his swath of vengeance.

STREETS OF BLOOD forgets all that. It's stated he hasn't been with a woman since his wife's murder two years previously, and Bronson is more compassionate in this book. He's still patrolling the streets of New York, killing muggers and rapists though. The body count is amusingly high, and Levinson keeps the action moving at a nice clip. Some conflict in the form of a cop named Jenkins who figures out Bronson's "night job" works well too.

He's A High-Speed Disaster

Shout Factory continues its superlative Roger Corman's Cult Classics series with this 2-disc DVD containing two car-crash features starring Ron Howard, then the star of ABC's hit HAPPY DAYS.

How did New World Pictures head Corman get big-time TV star Howard to do a cheap drive-in movie? By promising the former child actor a chance to make his own movie, which became GRAND THEFT AUTO. EAT MY DUST, released in 1976, was written and directed by Charles B. Griffith, a terrific screenwriter who provided Corman with dark comic stories for LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS and BUCKET OF BLOOD, but fell miserably short in the films he directed. UP FROM THE DEPTHS and SMOKEY BITES THE DUST are woeful movies, but EAT MY DUST gets by on the strength of its charming actors and copious highway destruction.

Howard plays Hoover Niebold (Griffith loved to give his characters silly names), a girl-crazy teenager who steals a race car belonging to Big Bubba Jones (Dave Madden, the harried manager of THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY) to impress snobbish blonde Darlene (TRAPPER JOHN, M.D.’s Christopher Norris, looking fine in yellow hotpants and white go-go boots). That’s all the impetus Griffith needs to smash a gaggle of police cruisers and stock cars in pursuit of Hoover and his friends. Warren Kemmerling acts properly harried as Hoover’s dad, the local sheriff, and Griffith peppers the narrative with sight gags and puns to break up the chases. Madden’s creative cursing (“Bull-double-dee-goddamn-loney”) and sneaky in-jokes referencing other Corman pictures are fun. Barbara Peeters, who went on to direct New World movies (HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP), directed the second unit, and actor Bill Paxton (ALIENS) was a set decorator.

Corman lived up to his word, and one year later, Howard, who would one day win an Academy Award for A BEAUTIFUL MIND, was directing his first film at the age of 22. Wanting to capitalize on the box-office success of EAT MY DUST, Corman asked Ron and his actor father Rance to write another screenplay with basically the same idea--a young couple on the run surrounded by car crashes.

Howard’s reputation for getting more bang for his bucks must have started on GRAND THEFT AUTO, as cars chase, crash, smash, and blow up with surprising regularity. He plays Sam Freeman, a poor youth engaged to be married to Paula Powers (fresh-faced Nancy Morgan), the daughter of snobbish gubernatorial candidate Bigby Powers (Barry Cahill). When Bigby opposes his daughter’s marriage—he’s already arranged her engagement to whiny polo player Collins Hedgeworth (Paul Linke)—Paula steals his Rolls Royce and makes a mad dash with Sam for Vegas to elope—a feat made more difficult by an army of pursuers after a $25,000 bounty offered by Bigby.

Reportedly filmed for $600,000, GRAND THEFT AUTO is decent drive-in fare with enough broad humor and car crashes to keep audiences awake. It isn’t particularly sophisticated, but it is quickly paced by Howard (who also penned the script with his actor father Rance) and sharply edited by Joe Dante, who was directing New World pictures himself (HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD). Howard gets goofy supporting performances from his brother Clint and Peter Isacksen (the tall doofus from CPO SHARKEY) as a pair of hot-rodding idiots, Hoke Howell as a greedy minister, and TV mom Marion Ross (HAPPY DAYS) as a rich woman who wrestles a cop.

The funky score is by Peter Ivers, who never again worked in film before his murder six years later. Dante, producer Jon Davison (AIRPLANE!), second unit director Allan Arkush (ROCK AND ROLL HIGH SCHOOL), and unit production manager Michael Finnell (THE HOWLING) went on to work together several times in various combinations.

The Ron Howard double feature receives ace treatment from Shout Factory, putting them out in letterboxed presentations for the first time and drenching them with extras. For EAT MY DUST, Shout Factory produced a new interview with Howard and a new featurette on poster artist John Solie to go with a previously released making-of doc (starring Christopher Norris, editor Tina Hirsch, and cinematographer Eric Saarinen) and a short conversation between Corman and critic Leonard Maltin. GRAND THEFT AUTO contains two audio commentaries--Howard and Corman ported over from the old New Concorde DVD and a new one starring Dante, Arkush, Rance Howard, and second unit key grip Ben Haller. The other new extra is a short piece on Rance and Clint Howard, who also appears in both films. A Ron Howard/Corman conversation and a Corman/Maltin chat are carried over, and trailers for both movies are included.

Howard’s next directorial efforts were in television until breaking through with the hilarious NIGHT SHIFT in 1982. He more or less retired from acting then.

An Avenger On Wheels

Not part of the Roger Corman's Cult Classics line, but it may as well have been, is Shout Factory's new DVD teaming two action pictures of the 1970s. FIGHTING MAD and MOVING VIOLATION, both released in 1976, were produced by Roger Corman for 20th Century Fox. It was a great opportunity for both parties; Fox got two crisp little drive-in moneymakers, and Corman got to work his magic using the (slightly) higher budgets of a major studio.

After directing two financially and surprisingly critically successful drive-in movies for Corman’s New World Pictures, Jonathan Demme (a future Oscar winner for SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) moved up to Fox for FIGHTING MAD, a rural vigilante picture inspired by WALKING TALL. It's an entertaining action movie laced with authentic Arkansas location shooting and a relevant ecological message.

FIGHTING MAD may well have been a decent picture no matter who directed it, but Demme’s careful handling raises it up a notch. The slow Dutching of the camera to punctuate a foreboding murder, the casting of perennial heavy John Doucette (TRUE GRIT) as a simple farmer, the guy who takes a punch from star Peter Fonda and then politely begs off from continuing the fight—little things, for sure, but they all add up to create an original atmosphere to surround a simple story.

Fonda (DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY) plays Tom Hunter, who returns with his son to the Arkansas farm where he grew up. His hometown has changed and not for the best, due to venal strip-miner Pierce Crabtree (LAREDO’s Philip Carey, chosen by Corman over Charles Napier for his name value), who’s buying up local farms and destroying the land. And the stubborn farmers who won’t sell, well, Crabtree makes them sell by dynamiting all night, dropping boulders on their crops, and physically threatening them. When Tom’s brother (Scott Glenn), sister-in-law (Kathleen Miller), and father (Doucette) are victims of mysterious “accidents,” he gets—ahem—fighting mad and pulls out the bow and arrows for some nighttime vengeance.

Demme, who also penned the screenplay, knows how to work the melodrama for maximum impact. Aided by the extra bucks, he’s able to shoot plenty of stunts and chases to make the action scenes exciting, but juxtaposing mining explosions with soft-focus shots of frightened horses, accompanied by Bruce Langhorne’s gentle score, really puts the audience on the side of the good guys. Amazingly, both Fonda and the ten-year-old playing his son, local actor Gino Franco, do stunts involving motorcycles and crashing cars, which may shock contemporary viewers.

By pumping up the characterizations and local color, Demme has created a tight B-picture that transcends its simple story. It’s still basically drive-in filler, but one of some substance.

Roger Corman and his wife Julie served as executive producer and producer, respectively, of MOVING VIOLATION. It has some minor casting problems, but overcomes them with its whip-sharp pacing and tire-squealing stuntwork. Television veteran Charles S. Dubin (M*A*S*H) seems an odd choice for director—he was several decades older than the young directors Corman used at New World, and he made only two features in forty years of directing—but it’s likely his fee was right, and his experience shooting TV crime dramas on six-day schedules worked in his favor.

A young couple, drifter Eddie (Stephen McHattie) and hometown cheerleader Camille (Kay Lenz), meet at the local ice cream joint and like each other. They sneak into an estate’s backyard to make out, where they witness the town sheriff (Lonny Chapman) murdering one of his deputies. Framed for the killing and targeted by Chapman’s men as “armed and dangerous” terrorists, the youths run for their lives in a series of stolen vehicles with only sympathetic lawyer Alex Warren (Eddie Albert) on their side.

Dubin, who jumped a lot of cars and blew up plenty of stuff on TV shows like KOJAK and CANNON, provides the drive-in audience with a steady stream of smashed-up cars, shootings, and stunts, although Roger Corman’s habit of undercranking to make the chases look faster is annoying and distracting. The mumbly McHattie, who acted in Corman’s VON RICHTOVEN AND BROWN, is slightly miscast (he, not surprisingly, played James Dean in a telefilm the same year), and Albert, who is excellent, would have been a tighter fit as the corrupt sheriff. However, these are niggling faults, and more than outweighed by Lenz’s appealing turn (and she does have good chemistry with McHattie).

William Norton (BIG BAD MAMA) and David Osterhout (WOMEN IN CAGES) wrote the screenplay, which functions as a decent springboard for second unit director Barbara Peeters’ gags. No question that MOVING VIOLATION is a fun romp that compares nicely with the many car-chase programmers that dotted drive-ins during the 1970s.

Shout Factory includes trailers and TV spots for each film and accompanies them with an audio commentary track. FIGHTING MAD's includes Roger Corman, Demme, Lynn Lowry, and Peter Fonda, who wanders in unannounced during recording. It's quite informative and entertaining. Everyone has a good memory of making the film, and Demme remembers such trivia as ROLLERBALL author William Harrison playing a small role and shooting a jail scene on a set built for Corman's JACKSON COUNTY JAIL.

The MOVING VIOLATION track includes director Dubin, now in his 90s, whose recording is edited into a separate track voiced by Julie Corman and McHattie. Dubin doesn't have a lot to say, mainly because so much of the picture was actually directed by the second unit, and much of what he says is either obvious stuff or mentioning how great someone is. Corman seems like a nice, smart lady, and her efforts to elicit memories from the tightlipped McHattie leads to a funny moment. After saying very little, McHattie finally opens up to remember a stuntman who refused to do a particular crash for the price Julie wanted to pay. So "a young guy from Oklahoma" volunteered to do it for the smaller fee, but the stunt went awry, and he broke his leg. McHattie says, "You remember that?" Corman's response is a long uncomfortable silence.

You Can't Buy A Ticket To See This Movie

Swedish director Gunnar Hellstrom’s American work was almost entirely in episodic television, helming network westerns (GUNSMOKE) and cop shows (THE FBI). His lone big-screen venture was an unusual thriller produced by Joe Solomon (THE LOSERS) and distributed in 1968 by his Fanfare Films (AIP also released it in various territories).

Seen on local television as THE FEMALE TRAP, THE NAME OF THE GAME IS KILL! boasts a very good Stu Phillips (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA) score and sharp Vilmos Zsigmond (THE DEER HUNTER) photography. The screenplay by Gary Crutcher (STANLEY) is damned unusual and structured like a mystery. It offers juicy roles for its five leading characters with strong dialogue and a helluva twist that will unfortunately not surprise anyone who’s seen HEAD. Unfortunately, it opened the day after RFK’s assassination, and a movie called THE NAME OF THE GAME IS KILL! didn’t have a chance.

Jack Lord, just before beginning his twelve-season run on HAWAII FIVE-0, plays Symcha, a Hungarian immigrant wandering across the Arizona desert on foot. He’s picked up by the lovely Mickey Terry (THE TRIP's Susan Strasberg), who brings him back to the isolated gas station she operates with her sisters Diz (TV mainstay Collin Wilcox) and Nan (Tisha Sterling, COOGAN'S BLUFF) and their mother. Mr. Terry was apparently an abusive husband who was killed when the girls were children, but no one can keep their stories straight when explaining the incident. It’s pretty clear that the whole damn family is whacko, but Sym falls for Mickey, leading to jealousy, lust, and the revelation of some pretty messed-up Terry secrets.

Never available on VHS or DVD, THE NAME OF THE GAME IS KILL! has been difficult to see for decades, but if you get the chance to see it, do. It’s fairly talky and bloodless for what has been billed as a horror movie, but it makes up for its lack of action with its characterizations and performances by stars who rarely had material this odd in Hollywood. Sterling’s sizzling dance to the Electric Prunes’ “Shadows” is a highlight.

Stripped Of Everything They Had

With all due respect to Jack Hill’s THE BIG DOLL HOUSE and THE BIG BIRD CAGE, if CHAINED HEAT isn’t the greatest women-in-prison flick ever made, I don’t know what is.

Jam-packed with preposterous plotting, arch performances, hilarious dialogue, and gobs of female nudity, CHAINED HEAT lacks the social satire of Hill’s New World programmers, but more than makes up for it in the camp department. Surely the humor is intentional; the warden (John Vernon) has a Jacuzzi in his office, for chrissake, where the coke-snorting perv videotapes his sex sessions with inmate Monique Gabrielle (EMMANUELLE V).

The premise is nothing new. Sweet-cheeked Linda Blair (SAVAGE STREETS), 23 when she made this, stars as Carol, the new fish doing eighteen months for manslaughter. In prison, she finds herself trapped between the warring factions of the white inmates led by tough, cheroot-smoking Ericka (Sybil Danning, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS) and the Amazonian Duchess’ (Tamara Dobson, who played Cleopatra Jones in two 1970s blaxploitation flicks) black inmates. Eventually, the two sides fight together against a common enemy: repressed assistant warden Taylor (Stella Stevens, the villain in CLEOPATRA JONES AND THE CASINO OF GOLD) and pimp Lester (Henry Silva, memorable as the drug-soaked assassin in SHARKY'S MACHINE), who sneak girls out of the prison at night to work as prostitutes for rich men.

What first strikes you about CHAINED HEAT is the all-star exploitation cast, which also includes Sharon Hughes, Edy Williams (BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS), Irwin Keyes, Louisa Moritz, Greta Blackburn, Robert Miano, and Jennifer Ashley (THE POM POM GIRLS). And it’s definitely bizarre to see CAT BALLOU’s light leading man, Michael Callan, billed somewhere around a dozen for a two-minute scene as a creep who tries to rape Blair’s character. Although the pleasantly plump Blair, who performed her first nude scene in CHAINED HEAT, has claimed the screenplay by director Paul Nicolas (THE NAKED CAGE) and Aaron Butler (HELLHOLE) changed during shooting and was not what she had signed up for, the actors seem to know what kind of movie they’re in and ham it up appropriately. Vernon gets the best lines (after Gabrielle’s character is killed, he mutters, “She was the best piece of ass I ever had in here.”), and much of the fun in watching the movie comes from the gleefully over-the-top performances.

CHAINED HEAT isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It may be the grimiest American-made women-in-prison picture with nary six or seven minutes passing without a murder or rape attempt, and those viewers immune to the charms of its stars or the wonky screenplay may find it to be something less than tasteful. Nicolas shoots the violence without gloss, making CHAINED HEAT a tough haul for someone without the peculiar sense of humor necessary to succumb to its perverted pleasures. Oddly, it’s one of the few prison pictures in which the protagonists’ goal is not escape, but rather prison reform.

CHAINED HEAT's NSFW theatrical trailer:

New York Has A New Weapon

Five years after his first American production, the unsuccessful THE BIG BRAWL, Jackie Chan teamed with New York action director James Glickenhaus (THE EXTERMINATOR) for a second shot at impressing the North American market.

THE PROTECTOR is not highly thought of by Chan fans, but it deserves a better rep. Granted, it doesn't use Chan to his full potential. It’s a solid cop flick filled with chases, fights, and bloody shootouts, but it appears as though Jackie is being doubled for the more spectacular stunts.

New York detectives Billy Wong (Chan) and Danny Garoni (Danny Aiello), both on the Commissioner’s shit list for excessive use of force, are working security at a fashion show when designer Laura Shapiro (Saun Ellis) is kidnapped by masked gunmen. They deduce she’s been taken to Hong Kong. Touting Billy’s Chinatown contacts and Danny’s familiarity with the island during his stint in Vietnam, the new partners convince the New York brass to send them to Hong Kong to find the girl.

Of course, being maverick cops, Wong and Garoni proceed to tear hell out of half the city, as Glickenhaus subjects them to enough exploding cars, machine gun bullets, anonymous kung fu fighters, broken glass, and giant squibs to keep any undiscerning action fan occupied for a couple of hours. Highlights include Jackie’s running and leaping across an obstacle course made of junks and a climactic fight with a racist bodyguard played by Bill “Superfoot” Wallace. THE PROTECTOR is clearly a James Glickenhaus joint, from the slow-motion free-falling bodies to the giant squibs blowing apart stuntmen’s chests, and if you got a kick out of Glickenhaus' THE EXTERMINATOR or THE SOLDIER, you’ll like this one too. Just don’t ask me what the opening scene is all about.

Somehow, THE PROTECTOR failed to attract American audiences, probably because of a resistance to an Asian leading man, and it wasn’t until RUMBLE IN THE BRONX made waves in 1996 that Chan finally found mainstream U.S. success. THE PROTECTOR is a much better movie than RUMBLE IN THE BRONX, so perhaps timing was everything.

In an unusual move, Chan was allowed to create his own version of THE PROTECTOR for Asian markets, eliminating a lot of Aiello and all the nudity and directing additional fight scenes. I prefer the Glickenhaus cut, but I can understand why Jackie’s fans would prefer his.

Kill Oscar

The three-part “Kill Oscar” episode is considered the magnum opus of the bionic adventures of spies Steve Austin (Lee Majors) and Jaime Sommers (Lindsay Wagner).

Airing over eight nights on ABC in October and November of 1976, the shows’ most ambitious story aired first on THE BIONIC WOMAN with Part II on THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and the conclusion back on BW. It not only proved popular with the series’ young fans, but it also introduced one of the franchise’s most enduring foes: the Fembots, which were later spoofed in AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY.

To get you up to speed, THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN premiered in 1974 and starred Majors (THE BIG VALLEY) as astronaut Austin, who was critically injured in a plane crash and rebuilt by Dr. Rudy Wells (Alan Oppenheimer in the pilot, but played regularly by Martin E. Brooks when “Kill Oscar” aired) using bionic parts. With super-strength in his right arm, left eye, and both legs, Steve became an agent for the Office of Scientific Intelligence under Oscar Goldman (Anderson).

Sommers was a professional tennis player and Austin’s childhood flame who was nearly killed in a skydiving accident and also given bionic parts—in her case, an arm, both legs, and an ear. The character was extremely popular with viewers, and even though Jaime died in her initial appearance, ABC had her revived and spun off into her own series, THE BIONIC WOMAN, in 1976. Both Majors and Wagner occasionally appeared on each other’s shows, including the “Kill Oscar” trilogy, which crossed over between them.

“Kill Oscar” guest-stars Academy Award-winner John Houseman (who played Wagner’s father in THE PAPER CHASE) as Franklin, a mad scientist hired by the Soviets to snatch a weather-control device being created by the U.S. government. His plan involves replacing key government personnel with robot duplicates, including Goldman (Anderson).

Writers Arthur Rowe, William T. Zacha, and Oliver Crawford make an attempt to connect Franklin’s misogyny to his choice to create robots in the form of beautiful women, but characterization was not the strong suit of either series at this point. After Jaime is critically injured fighting with fembot duplicates of Goldman’s secretary (Jennifer Darling) and Rudy Wells’ assistant (Corinne Michaels), Austin learns the location of Franklin’s base and heads there alone to rescue Oscar. Steve battles a pair of red-haired fembots and is tricked into rescuing an Oscar duplicate.

He and Rudy eventually see through the ruse and deactivate the Goldman double, just as Franklin uses the weather device to wreak havoc around the world. Steve and a recovered Jaime convince a Naval admiral (Sam Jaffe) to lend them an atomic submarine, which they use to storm Franklin’s Caribbean island stronghold.

“Kill Oscar” is silly, campy fun. It isn’t the first time human-looking robots were represented in the SMDM/BW universe, but it’s the grandest. Producers Kenneth Johnson and Lionel E. Siegel pack the three-parter with bionic battles, explosions, futuristic sets, stock footage of disasters, and goofy special effects that may not be convincing today, but there’s no doubting the gasps emitted from 1970s kids when the fembots’ human faces were ripped off to reveal the creepy mechanics behind them.

Wagner was a natural performer with an uncanny ability to find chemistry with nearly every actor she worked with. Her loose style meshed perfectly with the laconic Majors whether they were exchanging quips or leaping small buildings in a single bound. “Kill Oscar” was their last appearance together in the Seventies; THE BIONIC WOMAN was cancelled after its second season and picked up for a third by NBC, which was reluctant to publicize its competition.

Universal cranked episodes out like sausages, hiring directors better known for working quickly than with any style. Alan Crosland Jr. and Barry Crane managed to get all the planned shots in their six-day schedules, but an event as special as “Kill Oscar” could have used a stronger directorial hand.

A Nice Place To Visit

Laurence Harvey, the Lithuanian-born and South African-raised actor best known for starring in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, was already dead from stomach cancer by the time his final film as an actor, executive producer, and director came out.

Warner Brothers didn’t much know what to do with WELCOME TO ARROW BEACH, and it later played in drive-ins in a much shorter version under the blunter title TENDER FLESH. I saw the so-called “uncut” Warners version with a Brut Productions logo and the original title. Scenes appear to be missing though and were reportedly dropped by Warners in the test-screening phase.

Hitchhiker Robbin (Meg Foster) is chilling on a California beach when kindly Korean War vet Jason (Harvey) invites her to spend the night with him and his sister/lover Grace (Joanna Pettet, who had recently co-starred with Harvey in a famous NIGHT GALLERY segment). Investigating a banging noise in the cellar, Robbin discovers Jason chopping up a human corpse and eating it! At least, I think so; the editing is pretty choppy here. Robbin runs to sheriff John Ireland (THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS) and deputy Stuart Whitman (RUBY). Neither believes her story, but Robbin swears to play Nancy Drew and get to the bottom of things.

Harvey’s movie, written mainly by THE SILENT SCREAM’s Wallace C. Bennett, is certainly an odd duck, but not really good. It putts along slowly and feels padded with scenes that don’t go anywhere. Certainly the car chase that opens the movie is extraneous. Not much of an attempt is made to explain Jason’s cannibalism, or if there was, the footage was dropped. A brief flashback of Jason surviving a plane crash may indicate that he ate his comrades to survive. Or it may not.

The movie has several very good individual moments that demonstrate Harvey’s affection for actors. His scenes with a washed-up hooker (an excellent Gloria LeRoy) are played for pathos, Whitman’s snappy interrogation of Foster works terrifically, and Ireland being interviewed by a left-wing newspaper is humorous. Lou Rawls’ soulful theme song and Tony Camillo’s incongruous score add to the picture’s eccentric nature.

Death Squad

The Death Squad series is similar to Manor Books' Kill Squad series. Both are about a trio of renegade cops who hunt bad guys that have escaped punishment due to the flaming liberals who operate the legal system. Both series were shortlived, violent, and not terribly well-written. The only real difference is that one of the Kill Squad is a woman and one of the Death Squad is Latino.

Set in San Diego, KILLERS FOR HIRE, the second and last Death Squad novel from Belmont Tower, starts with black police detective Sam Durham witnessing a man tossing a young woman off a bridge. He tries to save her, but it's difficult when the guy keeps shooting at him. Sam knows the killer is noted criminal Carlos Reyes, but his superiors don't believe him, and, besides, Reyes has an alibi.

Although the book starts with Durham as the main character, the focus soon shifts to Mark Sanders, a white man who is allowed the story's love scenes. The third member of the Death Squad, Raul Gomez, basically serves as comic relief (he would be played by Luis Guzman in the movie version). All three eventually track Reyes to Las Vegas (they engage in a shootout with bikers along the way) in an attempt to bust his alibi and kill a lot more criminals.

KILLERS FOR HIRE isn't bad for what it is. It was written by 47-year-old Dan Streib under the pseudonym Frank Colter. Streib was one of those journeyman who often hid behind pen names and wrote novels in several different genres, including westerns and romances. He also some of the Nick Carter and Executioner books. Both Death Squad books came out in 1975 and may have even been written back-to-back, probably in just a few weeks. KILLERS FOR HIRE is a quick violent read, but nothing you haven't seen before.