Top Cop

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

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

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

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

Scorpion (1986)

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

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

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

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

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

Doctor Of Doom

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

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

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

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

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

Furious Seven

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Divine Enforcer

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

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

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

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

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

The Octagon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Executioner #17, "Death Stalk"

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

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

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

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

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

Terror Among Us

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

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

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

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

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

You Only Live Twice

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

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

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

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

Invasion: UFO

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

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

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

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

Gemini Man: RIP Harve Bennett

Harve Bennett saved STAR TREK.

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

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

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

And then there was GEMINI MAN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jennifer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Star Trek: The Motion Picture Souvenir Pressbook (1979)

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

Avalanche Express

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

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

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

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

RIP Leonard Nimoy

Hustler Squad

Does 1976's HUSTLER SQUAD match up to its incredible poster? Could any film?

Filipino actors posing as Japanese and a lack of period detail add to the hilarity of this silly action flick set in World War II. Basically THE DIRTY DOZEN with chicks (and only four of them to fit Crown International’s budget), HUSTLER SQUAD grasps its pervy premise with both hands and commits halfway, ignoring the sensual aspects. It’s set in Australia, but obviously filmed in the Philippine Islands, and the clothing, hairstyles, and language is strictly Seventies. Still, HUSTLER SQUAD is an entertaining drive-in picture that serves up plenty of pulpy action.

The Allied have sixty days to plan a stealth attack on an envoy of Japanese officers holding a strategic meeting at a whorehouse. Major Stonewell (John Ericson, best known as Honey West’s sidekick), who doesn’t really seem like an out-of-the-box thinker, recruits four women with little to lose, trains them to kill, and sends them into the brothel disguised as prostitutes. On the squad: salty hooker Cindy (Crystin Sinclaire in the Roberta Collins role), convicted killer Rose (Nory Wright), rape victim Sonya (Liza Lorena), and terminally ill nurse Anna (Johanna Raunio), in addition to Lieutenant West (Karen Ericson, billed in earlier productions as Karen Huston) and Paco (Ramon Ravilla), the lone survivor of the initial assault on the island containing the brothel.

Perhaps director Cesar Gallardo’s heart wasn’t in it, because even though the women spend most of their downtime bitching about needing to get laid, HUSTLER SQUAD is remarkably sexless. The director occasionally pops for a topless scene, but he emphasizes the men’s adventure aspect of the plot, putting the girls through extensive training and bookending the film with extended rat-a-tat shootouts against Japanese ground forces. A Japanese admiral is portrayed with intelligence and sensitivity, adding a dose of complexity to what is otherwise a simple actioner.

Missile To The Moon

In 1958, Hawaiian-born Richard Cunha made a quartet of science-fiction films that are legend among fans of bad movies. Cunha's filmography is strange, starting with these four films in the same year and ending with just two more credits spread across the early 1960's.

But with Cunha, quality--as in "lack of"--definitely wins out over quantity, as GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN, SHE DEMONS, FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER, and MISSILE TO THE MOON have won legions of devoted fans, despite--or, I should say, because of--their incompetence.

Check out this plot for MISSILE TO THE MOON, as concocted by screenwriters H.E. Barrie and Vincent Forte. Middle-aged scientist Dirk (Michael Whalen) is pissed off when the government steps in to confiscate the rocketship he constructed with his partner Steve Dayton (Richard Travis), who seems content to slurp up bourbon with his fiancé June (Cathy Downs).

Determined not to allow his baby fall into the hands of the military, Dirk steps into the rocket, which is parked in his backyard, and discovers a pair of juvenile delinquents hiding out in it. Lon (Gary Clarke) and Gary (Tommy Cook) are prison escapees who go on the lam inside the ship, because Lon had read about it in the newspaper, and, hey, who the hell would look for escaped cons inside a nearby rocketship?

Dirk forces the pair to help him fly his ship, which also includes among its crew Steve and June, who become reluctant stowaways. Needless to say, the inside of this ship looks like it wouldn't drive a go-cart, much less a space vessel traveling to the moon. A stupid accident inside an asteroid belt kills Dirk, but the remaining foursome lands safely on the moon's surface, where they encounter large rock creatures that appear to be made from rubber and chase the landing party at an approximate speed of .15 miles per hour.

They hide inside a cave, where Steve discovers the atmosphere is breathable (!), so the party ditches their spacesuits, just in time to be captured by a society of sexy space honeys in skintight clothing. Most of them, especially the youngest and hottest, have never seen a man before, which raises the libidos of young Gary and Lon.

Meanwhile, the ladies' leader, the Leto (K.T. Stevens), wants to steal the rocket and bring all of the women to Earth. Her conniving assistant, Alpha (Nina Bara), wants to whack the Leto and become the new moon boss. She also wants a piece of the Stevester, which makes June so jealous that she accidentally gives up a vital piece of secret information in her green rage. Women.

MISSILE TO THE MOON is only about 75 minutes long, but still manages to include a pointless if sexy dance number, a giant spider called the Dark Creature that attacks June, a cache of priceless diamonds, a sizzling race across a fatally hot moon desert (!), another encounter with the "ooooo...scary" rock men, and a misogynist final scene. The special effects are particularly pathetic. In fact, the rocket landing on the moon's surface is depicted by running its takeoff from Earth in reverse. The problem with that is that the launching pad is plainly visible on a lunar surface where one shouldn't be. The sets are beyond cheap, the dialogue is ripe, the performances are undistinguished, and the credits proudly proclaim the presence of (alleged) international beauty contest winners, including Miss Illinois (yay), as Moon Girls.

The credits also hide the appearance of actress Leslie Parrish, who appeared in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and many other films and TV shows after MISSILE TO THE MOON. Parrish is billed using her real name of Marjorie Helen, just before she changed it to play the pivotal role of Daisy Mae in LI'L ABNER. Sci-fi fans will remember her as dishy Carolyn Palamas, the Enterprise lieutenant who fell in love with Greek god Apollo in the STAR TREK episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?"

The Horror Of Party Beach

It came billed as “The First Monster Horror Musical,” and it damn well might be. It’s got boys and girls in swimsuits frugging on a beach while a band of nerdy-looking white dudes in striped shirts play three-chord rock-’n’-roll. It also has an infestation of man-sized “sea zombies” that creep out of the ocean to munch on nubile female flesh. Add some bikers, a fistfight, wretched one-liners, and a romantic triangle, and you have THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH, which remains, fifty years later, a unique cult oddity.

Dull Hank (John Scott) fights with his alcoholic girlfriend Tina (Marilyn Clarke) on their way to a beach party. “You ain’t seen livin’ ‘til you’ve seen Tina swing,” she says, as she leaps into the fray and shakes her moneymaker at leather-jacketed tough Mike (Agustin Mayor), who fights with Hank over the cheap little tease.

Meanwhile, some boaters dump into the ocean a barrel of radioactive waste, which pops open upon hitting the bottom and soaks a skull buried there. Via clumsy time-lapse photography, the skull transforms into…well, it’s hard to describe. Something like a slimy green sea monster with bulbous eyes and a dozen frankfurters sticking out of its throat. Whatever it is, it’s ahead of its time, because fifteen years before slasher movies established the rules for screen killing, the monster attacks the slutty girl first, ripping Tina to a bloody shred.

Director Del Tenney (I EAT YOUR SKIN) mixes lowbrow humor with the shocks, contributing groaners such as two boys watching a girl in a bikini shaking her pert ass, and one of them saying to the other, “That reminds me.  Did anyone bring hot dog buns?” That night, the monsters attack a slumber party where 22 girls wear nighties and have a pillow fight. Best. Movie. Ever. Unfortunately for them, my dream bash turns into a hootenanny, which causes the monsters to slaughter all the girls. Lesson #1:  sea zombies hate folk music.

With the local police befuddled (“You think it might be a wild shark?"), Dr. Gavin (Allan Laurel), who pushes his daughter Elaine (Alice Lyon) to pursue Hank now that his girlfriend is out of the picture (dead), works to discover a method of destroying the monster horde. The Gavins’ superstitious black maid Eulabelle (Eulabelle Moore) even gets into the matchmaking act, scolding Elaine for lying around the house moping the day after 22 of her friends were murdered and pushing her to get out of the house to have some fun.

With the Del-Aires thumping their Fender Jaguars and the ridiculous-looking “sea zombies” stalking the Eastern seaboard, THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH remains a memorable movie, spawning an episode of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 and a 1964 Warren comic book assembled by Russ Jones and comics legend Wally Wood.

Alley Cat

Los Angeles has a lot of rapists and a stunningly inept justice system. That was my takeaway from this low-budget exploitation item that weaves elements from DEATH WISH and VIGILANTE into the shapely form of star Karin Mani.

A troubled production that saw three different directors putting their hands into it (the “Edward Victor” directing credit is a pseudonym for Filipino filmmaker Ed Palmos, RUNAWAY NIGHTMARE co-star Al Valletta, and ALLEY CAT producer Victor Ordonez), the Film Ventures International release offers enough skin, fighting, and silly dialogue to leave drive-in audiences in joy.

The music score is canned library tracks, some of which were heard in BARNABY JONES episodes. Actors blow lines and look into the camera, plot points are forgotten, and coincidences substitute for drama. I wouldn’t want ALLEY CAT any different. Trouble seems to find poor Billie Clark (Mani) everywhere. First, she puts a beatdown on two dirtbags stealing the tires off her car parked in her driveway. They whine to their boss Phil (Michael Wayne, not the son of The Duke) about getting their butts kicked by a girl, so the three of them assault Billie’s grandparents outside a grocery store.

With her grandmother in the hospital, Billie goes jogging and stumbles upon those same two dirtbags raping a woman. She kicks their asses again, but her cop boyfriend’s corrupt partner tosses Billie in jail for trespassing and carrying a concealed weapon. She gets out of the clink, goes jogging again, and gets accosted by another rapist. She beats his ass too. After a corrupt judge sentences Billie for contempt while setting the rapists free, she is molested by her cellmate (spoiler: Billie beats her up). When Billie gets out of the joint because her boyfriend blackmailed the judge, she runs around the city beating up more rapists, including a fat, stupid drunk.

At least Billie is having tons of sex with Johnny (Robert Torti), the aforementioned ineffectual cop boyfriend, in between beating up bad guys and training for her black belt. Mani appears nude in many scenes, including what may be the longest and dumbest shower scene ever. Mani had a shortlived career in pictures (she had a decent supporting role in AVENGING ANGEL) before marrying a producer of rock videos and giving up the biz. She’s not great at either acting or fighting, but she’s good enough. It’s also a novelty to see an Asian woman beating up white guys in an American production.