Category Archives: 80’s Movies

Think Big (1989)

Posted on June 27, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Truckers with big muscles.

Rafe and Victor (Peter Paul, David Paul) are brothers who make a living driving a truck though they’re always missing the freight deadline to the constant consternation of their boss (Richard Moll). He gives them the ultimatum: either get this new delivery to its intended destination within 30 hours, or find a new job. Holly (Ari Meyers) is a teen genius who has invented a mechanism that can electronically deactivate any code allowing one to start, or stop any other device without having a key, or password to do it. When she finds out that the company she’s been working at, or more honestly enslaved at, wants to use her invention for unscrupulous means she escapes with her device in hand and then hides inside the brothers’ truck. Initially the brothers want to throw her out as they consider her presence a sign of bad luck, but eventually they help her out in her quest to avoid the bad guys.

The Pauls, who were bodybuilders before they got into acting, made their film debut in D.C. Cab, as The Barbarian Brothers, which lead to guest starring roles in TV-Shows like ‘Knight Rider’ that eventually got them starring in their own movie The Barbarians, that did well enough at the box office that producers gave them this comedic vehicle though it proved to be a disaster. Most of the problems lie with the silly script that’s filled with pseudo science, dated technology, and campy humor, which will amount to one long, continuous eye roll from the viewer.

The brothers are poor actors with their scenes in Natural Born Killers getting deleted because of what director Oliver Stone felt was shameless overacting, and their dialogue here doesn’t help. It’s one thing to be bit dimwitted, but these guys are infantile and their chicken bone chant that they do is highly redundant and annoying. For big guys they’re quite wimpy as they allow their boss to grab them by the neck and during fights they get punched by men who are far smaller and immediately fall down backwards by the power of the blow though you’d think in reality the person doing the punching would get their hand injured and they’d run-off hollering while these two big buys would remain standing. Their profession isn’t interesting either and puts to waste their big muscles. Instead of driving a big rig they should be working as club bouncers, or security for celebrities, or even just owning a workout gym.

The plot is also cluttered with villains. Martin Mull plays the head of the evil agency and while he does get a few funny ad-libs I didn’t feel his part was necessary. David Carradine, who plays this cantankerous repo man that tries to take back the brothers’ truck, gets wasted too. Initially I was surprised why a star with his stature would even appear in this though I did find him amusing and the caricature he creates to be colorful, but the stupidity of the script overshadows him and since he’s only seen sporadically his acting efforts get lost.

Richard Kiel was the one bad guy that I did like.  In his past roles he’s played the one who’s strong, but not bright, but in this film he’s the exasperated leader that gets irritated by the dummies around him. For this reason I thought he should’ve been the main heavy and Mull’s presence cut out completely. It’s also interesting seeing him take-on the Paul brothers as usually his physical presence dominates everyone else, but here it’s a much more of an even fight. I did though find it frustrating that we see him struggling to get out from underneath a car and the film then cuts away, only to see his character appear later, uninjured, with no explanation for how he got out of his predicament.

While Ari Meyers’, who’s best known for her work on the ‘Kate & Allie’ TV-show, acting isn’t the best she’s still easy-on-the-eyes and therefore should’ve been made the lead while the brothers could’ve been cast in support as these bumbling truckers she’d meet along the way, where their presence could be used as comic relief, but having the whole thing centered around them kills the movie right from the start. Throwing-in a sappy ‘life lesson’ speech at the end just makes it even worse and a genuine insult to the intelligence of anyone who sits through it.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: October 23, 1989

Runtime: 1 Hour 26 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Jon Turteltaub

Studio: Motion Picture Corporation of America

Available: VHS, DVD-R (dvdlady.com)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Buddy Movies, Campy Comedy, Movies for the Whole Family, Obscure Movies, Road Movies

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Hot Resort (1985)

Posted on June 25, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Looking for some action.

Filmed on the island of St. Kitts in the West Indies the story, or what little there is of it, follows around a group o college men lead by Brad (Bronson Pinchot) and Chuck (Dan Schneider) who travel there in order to work at the resort and earn some money over the summer. They hope also to hit-on the bikini-clad babes in-between shifts and seem to have sex much more on their minds than work. The resort manager (David Lipman) hires disciplinarian Bill Martin (Samm-Art Williams) to get them under control, but even he has a hard time keeping them in-line. The boys also clash with a group of snotty ivy leaguers, who are on the island to film a soup commercial. After having several run-ins with them the boys challenge the Ivy guys to a rowboat race and become determined to beat them even if it means cheating.

This yet another low budget production produced by The Cannon Group, which was run by Yoram Globus and his cousin Menaham Golan. They made a business of buying bottom barrel scripts and turning them into low budget productions and while some of them where a delightful surprise and even rivaled a standard Hollywood production this was certainly not one of them. The script was co-written by Boaz Davidson, who had earlier success with the Israeli teen comedy Lemon Popsicle, which was later Americanized into The Last American Virgin that was also written and directed by him, but this one has none of the comic spark of those and seems compelled to reach to the lowest common denominator possible almost challenging the viewer to see how much inane, low brow humor they’re willing to sit through before turning it off.

Granted 80’s teen sex comedies where never meant to be masterpieces, but this thing, even when compared to those others, is incredibly uninspired and adds nothing new to the otherwise tired mix. The only two things that are a bit different from the norms of that genre is that the fat guy, played by Schneider, who later went on to star in the TV-show ‘Head of the Class’, isn’t shown constantly stuffing his face with food, or the butt of all the jokes. In fact he’s portrayed as being just as hip as the others and getting more action than the rest of them.

The film also switches things around in that it isn’t the men that are on the aggressive make, but instead the women, who literally grab the guys as they’re walking and minding their own business and then bring them into a room for hot action. At one point they even swipe an elderly man off the sidewalk though it’s hard to believe that any woman could be that oversexed. It might’ve made the story more funny and at least given it a certain logic by having the females take some sort of drug that causes them to become sexual animals, but that’s not the explanation here, which just makes the shenanigans all the more insane.

I started to wonder too if these gals were on the pill because if not they risked getting pregnant, which would force them to either get a lot of abortions, or raising kids they really didn’t want all by themselves since they didn’t even bother to get the names of the guys they had fucked, and seemed to choose them at random. Also, if you really think about it, it comes-off like rape as the men constantly say no and resist making it more like we’re witnessing a crime than just a carefree sex.

The guys who play Ivy Leaguers speak in such an overblown accent that it’s not even mildly amusing, but genuinely irritating and there’s simply no way that anyone who talked like that, no matter how deluded they were, would think they were cool and not worried that people would be making fun of them behind their backs. I will give some props though to the scene where the emergency medical personal must come to the aid of a couple who get stuck inside a car that they were making love in forcing the fire department to saw off the roof of the vehicle to get them out though anyone who would even think of trying to have sex in the back seat of a tiny VW bug should have their heads examined.

Some of the supporting players are amusing particularly Stephen Stucker, who plays the same type of character that he did in Airplane! where he’d jump into a scene say something quirky and then quickly jump back out. I also enjoyed Frank Gorshin (billed as Mr. Frank Gorshin) a talented impressionist who rose to fame playing the Riddler on the ‘Batman’ TV-show. Here he plays a dirty minded middle-aged man who tries to teach the youngsters the finer points of hitting-on chicks much to the consternation of his wife (Zora Rasmussen) who sits next to him and listens in as he talks about it. Mae Questal though, who’s best known for being the voice of Betty Boop and Olive Oyl gets sorely wasted particularly in the scene where she gets ‘tricked’ into putting on a dress with a giant bullseye on the back, which her husband plans to use as a target to aim his gun at, though it’s hard to imagine any woman wouldn’t have seen this before she put it on, which just shows how stupid and poorly thought out the gags are.

Even on the level of cheap, soft core porn it’s no good. The nudity is infrequent and fleeting and the women aren’t exactly cover girls looking more like they’re around 30 and a bit ‘rough-around-the-edges’, so if you’re looking to grab this thing simply for some healthy voyeurism you’ll still end up sorely disappointed anyways.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: January 14, 1985

Runtime: 1 Hour 33 Minutes

Rated R

Director: John Robins

Studio: The Cannon Group

Available: VHS, DVD-R (dvdlady.com)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Drive-In/T & A, Movies with a Hotel setting, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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Phobia (1980)

Posted on June 22, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: His patients are dying.

Dr. Peter Ross (Paul Michael Glaser) is a Canadian psychiatrist who has come up with a radical new therapy to help cure those who suffer from phobias. The program includes having them watch their fears played out visually on the big screen and thus forcing them to conquer those irrational thoughts and be able to go on living normal lives. Peter feels he’s making great progress with his patients only to suddenly have them start to die-off one-by-one with each perishing in ways that reflects their private phobia that they had hoped to overcome.

This is definitely one of those movies where what happened behind-the-scenes had to be far more interesting than anything that occurred in front of the camera. Having John Huston, the legendary director who helmed such classics as The Maltese Falcon and Key Largo doing this one, which is nothing more than a cheap thriller with 80’s slasher instincts, has to be the most baffling thing about it. It wasn’t like his career was on the outs either as he went on to direct several more critically acclaimed flicks in the 80’s that were well financed with big name stars and he had just 5 years earlier did the well received The Man Who Would Be King, so why he decided to take a weird foray into doing this inept thing, which just by reading the script you could tell was a mess upfront, I don’t know.

It starts out with some visual panache, but otherwise could’ve easily been directed by a no-name, two-bit director and no one would’ve known the difference. The one segment dealing with a car chase down the city streets that culminates with a man falling from a tall building had some potential though I would’ve framed the shot differently showing it from a bird’s-eye view where the viewer could see how far off the ground the victim really was versus having the camera on the ground looking up, which is less dramatic. I suppose it might’ve given away the safety net that’s clearly present as you never see him hit the ground, it cuts away while he’s still in mid-air, but in either case it’s the only mildly diverting moment of the whole film.

Everything else is run-of-the-mill including the numerous deaths, which despite the tagline don’t all have to do with their phobias either. For instance one woman fears being in big crowds, so in order to ‘cure’ her, the doctor has her go onto a crowded subway, but she panics and runs back to his place where she ultimately dies when a bomb explodes. The segment dealing with a woman who fears men gets pretty ridiculous as he has her watch a movie of a woman getting gang raped, which would appall anyone and yet when she runs out of the room in disgust and shock he’s confused. The very fact that he talks about ‘curing’ his patients is a major red flag altogether as in psychiatry you never really ‘cure’ anybody, which just shows how poorly researched and shallow the script really is.

Paul Michael Glaser, better known for his work in the TV-show ‘Starsky and Hutch’, makes for a wretched leading man and it’s no surprise that he decided to get into directing after this one and has never starred in a theatrical film since. It’s not completely his fault as his character exudes a cold demeanor, so you never really care about him, or his quandary. John Colicos, as the police detective, is far superior and helps enliven the film with the few scenes that he is in though his interrogation techniques are highly unethical and the fact that he only focuses on one angle as to who the culprit is makes his character come-off as unintentionally inept.

The film does feature a twist at the end as to who the killer really is, but it’s dumb and not worth sitting through. In fact the ultimate reveal is so bad that it ruins everything else that came before it, as it had been watchable up until that point, but the climax solidifies it as a bomb.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: September 26, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated R

Director: John Huston

Studio: Paramount Pictures

Available: Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Movies from Canada, Movies with a Hospital setting, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Obscure Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

Posted on June 13, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Breaking the fourth wall.

Cecilia (Mia Farrow) is a lonely woman living in 1935 who’s stuck in a dead-end job and an abusive marriage. As an escape she regularly goes to the movies and becomes especially entranced with one called ‘The Purple Rose of Cairo’ particularly the dashing young man character named Tom (Jeff Daniels). Tom notices Cecilia continuing to attend each showing and thus breaks out of the black-and-white movie he is in and into the real world just so he can speak with her as he feels he’s falling in love. Cecilia tours him around the small New Jersey town where she lives while the rest of the cast in the movie he’s left sit around and hope he’ll come back, so they can continue on with the story. The actor, Gil Shepherd (also played by Daniels), who played Tom in the movie hears about Tom jumping out of the screen and heads to New Jersey in order to coax him back, but Tom is having too much fun getting to know Cecilia and has no intention of returning to the phony life of the movie world. In the meantime Gil also meets up with Cecilia and the two begin to hit-it-off. Will Cecilia choose Gil over Tom and if so will this get Tom to go back into the movie once and for all?

This was the first of Woody Allen’s nostalgic picture that would replicate the time and place of when he grew up and in fact the theater where Cecilia watches her movies was the Kent Playhouse, which Allen had gone to when he was 12 and which he describes ‘one of the great, meaningful places of my boyhood’. His ability to capture working class life and Cecilia’s bleak existence is completely on-target making the opening 20-minutes one of the most impactful of the whole film. Farrow is nothing short of excellent and Danny Aiello, who got this part to make-up for getting passed over in Broadway Danny Rose, is quite good too particularly with the way he’s able to show the human side of his character despite him being quite abusive and domineering to his wife otherwise.

The comedy takes off when Tom literally jumps out of the screen and Allen is very creative at thinking out every conceivable angle at not only how the other patrons in theater respond, which is some of the funnier bits in the film, to the characters onscreen, who are also quite amusing most notably Zoe Caldwell who plays the Countess and has some great zingers, but also the film’s producer (Alexander Cohen) and how he responds to the ‘calamity’. Some may argue that it’s missing a cause, since film characters don’t jump out of the screen everyday what allowed it to happen in this case, which the movie never answers, but for me that’s what made it even more amusing as everyone reacts in wildly different ways to the unexplainable and if anything Allen at least doesn’t cop-out by turning it into some sort of dream that Cecilia had, which would’ve been disappointing. I’d rather have as some odd fluke in the universe than reverting to an overused dream gimmick.

My one complaint was Daniels who’s deadly dull. He has a few amusing responses to things, but he’s bland most of the way. Michael Keaton was cast in the part initially, but after 10-days of filming Allen decided he seemed ‘too contemporary’ and thus had him replaced, which is a shame as Keaton has a more dynamic onscreen presence while Daniels seems too transparent. I didn’t like the entering in of the actor character either as that just started to make it too confusing. The actor should’ve been wildly different than the character he played, extreme narcissistic ego, which would’ve been hilarious. While he does show some of these traits it’s not enough and it gets hard telling the difference between the two. Having a rich Hollywood actor, who would most likely already be in a relationship anyways, falling in love with a nondescript housewife didn’t make a lot of sense. While the scenes between Cecilia and Tom are quite endearing, the moments between her and Gil are boring and start bogging the whole thing down.

Spoiler Alert!

Some have complained about the so-called ‘unhappy ending’, which Leonard Maltin in his review described as ‘a heartbreaker’, but I found it to be a perfect. The odds that a relationship between a up-and-coming Hollywood star and a New Jersey housewife would actually work are pretty slim. Besides Cecilia’s love affair wasn’t with people anyways, but with movies and their ability to sweep her away from her sad existence and into a fantasy world and on that level it’s a happy one as Cecilia returns to the theater all broken-hearted only to again forget her troubles when she gets wrapped-up in a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers flick proving that movies would always be there for her even when people won’t.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: January 26, 1985

Runtime: 1 Hour 22 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Woody Allen

Studio: Orion Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Tubi, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black & White, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Offbeat, Romance

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Zelig (1983)

Posted on June 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Wanting to fit in.

Leonard Zelig (Woody Allen) is a man living in the 1920’s and 30’s who has an uncanny ability to reflect the personalities and features of those he’s surrounded with. Even if he’s in the company of someone of a different race, or ethnicity, he can still acquire their traits, including their skin color, until he looks exactly like them. He becomes known as a the human chameleon and Dr. Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow) , a psychiatrist, becomes determined to find the root cause. She takes him on as a patient and under intense hypnosis comes to the realization that his deep need to be liked by others causes him to conform to the most extreme ways imaginable. Through her therapy she gets him to become more confident in expressing his own opinions, but this leads to him arguing with others over the most mundane reasons, which leads to several fights. She again puts him under hypnosis, so that he’ll become more of centrist, but this then leads to even further complications.

Allen was inspired to do this movie when his friend Dick Cavett was hosting a history series on HBO and a segment was done where Cavett’s likeness got spliced into an historical image. While the effects of using old newsreel footage and photos from long ago and inserting in cast members to make it seem like they were there when the picture was taken may not seem like that big of a deal today, but back in the 80’s it was very much talked about. I remember an entire segment of CBS Morning News hosted by Diane Sawyer going in depth about the ‘incredible’ special effects and ‘how did they do it?’ With digital filmmaking and movies like Forrest Gump we’re used to it, but back then it was state-of-the-art and got nominated for several awards. To help make it look as authentic as possible cinematographer Gordon Willis used vintage cameras and lenses from the 20’s and then stomped on the negatives of the film in his shower to help create the crinkles and scratches.

While telling the story through newsreel footage is certainly diverting and many times amusing I was fully expecting after about 20 minutes or so that it would eventually become more like a normal movie with the plot being propelled by actual characters, dialogue, and conventional scene structure, but instead it sticks with the novelty until the bitter end, which for me was a mistake as it makes the viewer too detached from the people in the movie to the point that they become distant caricatures that we really care nothing about. Much comedy is also lost as everything hinges on the voice-over narration of Patrick Horgan and how he describes what’s going on versus having it played out. A great example of this is when Allen gets into an argument with someone over whether ‘it’s a nice day, or not’, but all we see of it is some grainy, black-and-white figures in a distance that appear to be squabbling when witnessing the actual argument in real-time would’ve been so much funnier.

My favorite moment had nothing do with the special effects, but instead was the scene with Farrow and Allen where she tricks him, using reverse psychology, into admitting he really wasn’t a psychiatrist like her, and the movie needed more segments like this one. The vintage footage is nice for awhile and highly creative, but ultimately makes it come-off like a one-note joke, or an experimental film that’s misses the most basic elements of a good story, which is character development. It’s a shame too as Farrow gives a strong performance, which gets overshadowed. Usually she’s best at playing emotionally fragile types, but here is a strong woman and does quite well though I thought it was ridiculous that in color segments where here character is speaking in the modern day as an old woman another actress, Ellen Garrison, plays the part when they could’ve easily had Farrow doing it by dying her hair gray and putting on a few wrinkles. So much effort was put into the black-and-white vintage stuff that they forgot about the simplest of all special effects: stage make-up.

There’s also a host of other famous faces that have cameo bits as they talk about the fictional Zelig in the modern-day like historians discussing a past event, or famous person. Of these includes Susan Sontag, Saul Bellow, Irving Howe, and John Morton Blum, but like with the newsreel element it gets overplayed and derivative. It also brings to question what exactly was the movies’ point. Was it a satire on conformity and if so it could’ve gone much deeper, or poking fun at documentaries, which could’ve been played-up much more too. In either case it’s a misfire that’s engaging for awhile, but eventually, even with its short runtime, wears itself out.

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My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: July 15, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 19 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Woody Allen

Studio: Orion Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black & White, Movies with a Hospital setting, Offbeat, Quirky

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Bedroom Eyes (1984)

Posted on May 18, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Voyeur witnesses a murder.

Harry Ross (Kenneth Gilman) is a businessman who enjoys taking a late night jog in the Toronto neighborhood in which he lives. One night he steps in dog poo and as he’s trying to scrape it off he notices a light coming from a nearby window. Out of curiosity he peers in and sees a half-naked woman (Jayne Catling) dancing provocatively. It turns him on and he decides to make it a point to peer into the window each night when he goes for a run. He though begins to feel guilty about what he’s doing and thinks he may be a ‘pervert’ and thus schedules an appoint with Alex (Dayle Haddon), who is a psychiatrist, so that they can talk it through. During their sessions he also becomes attracted to her and things slowly work into a relationship. While this is going on he continues to look into the window each night, but eventually witnesses the woman getting murdered and now must go into hiding inside Alex’s apartment as not only the police, who mistakenly think he did it as they get his prints off of the window, are after him, but so is the killer.

This film was directed by William Fruet, a prolific writer/director from Canada, who shot to fame with the excellent Wedding in White and then followed that up with a lot lame thrillers and horror films. While some of those were diverting this one isn’t and the tacky set-up is the biggest problem. The fact that Harry isn’t portrayed as being a life long voyeur, but instead quite literally just ‘stumbles’ upon it is farfetched and the character would’ve had more depth if this had been a constant trait that he had to deal with. Having him ‘panic’ that he was afraid this made him a ‘pervert’ was ridiculous too as I’d think just about any heterosexual guy would get aroused seeing a hot lady cavorting around erotically. The way he peers in, the camera captures it from the inside looking out, is quite obvious as his face is fully light, from the indoor lamps, and thus all the people needed to do was glance up briefly to see him, which I would think would’ve occurred at some point especially since he continues to do it over multiple nights. The fact that they always leave the window shade half open seems like they’re inviting someone to look in though the movie acts like this is unintentional and just a ‘coincidence’. The place is lit in a way that makes it seem like it’s a set for soft core porn flick and the woman behaves like an adult actress, which completely ruins any sliver of plausibility.

Initially I liked seeing Haddon, who was at one time a super model before she got into acting, cast as the therapist as this was traditionally at that time still more of a man’s profession, so she was playing against type, but having Harry immediately asks her out on a date was dumb. Due to this being a professional doctor and patient relationship he should’ve at least waited until after several sessions before he got up the nerve to do it and even then it’s putting her in an unethical spot and he should’ve known that. Fortunately she tells him ‘no’ the first couple of times, which is what she should’ve done, but I knew, going by how stupid this script had already been, that she’d eventually cave and of course she does, which makes the whole premise become even more ludicrous. Having her spot him at a fancy restaurant was too coincidental in such a big city and having his girlfriend perform a sexual act while inside the place with all sorts of people around was over-the-top. If anything Haddon should’ve just been cast as his girlfriend, who just happens to work as therapist, and he could’ve still spoken to her about his voyeurism in private when they were together and this would’ve helped made it more believable.

It does get a bit intriguing for a few minutes when the police begin to close-in on Harry and I enjoyed the inner-rivalry of the police department where the two lead detectives became irritated at how a young ‘wet-behind-the-ears’ kid (Alf Humphreys) was always coming up with new leads and clues before they did, but other than that there’s very little to recommend. The climactic sequence in which the killer ties Harry up while he’s inside Haddon’s apartment, is quite boring and the female actor who plays the culprit shows no panache and thus making her scenes quite dull. In 1989, at the request of no one, this was made into a sequel, but with a completely different writer, director and actors with the only thing connecting the two being the Harry Ross character.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: November 30, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated R

Director: William Fruet

Studio: Pan-Canadian Film Distributors

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 80's Movies, Erotica, Foreign Films, Movies from Canada, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Obscure Movies, Police Drama, Thrillers/Suspense

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Vice Squad (1982)

Posted on May 16, 2023 | 2 comments

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Violent pimp kills prostitutes.

Princess (Season Hubley) is a business woman who is having some financial trouble and thus decides to go back to being a prostitute in Hollywood in an effort to support her young daughter. She becomes aware that her friend Ginger (Nina Blackwood), who is also a prostitute, has been killed after getting beaten-up by a violent pimp named Ramrod (Wings Hauser). Tom (Gary Swanson), a police detective, gets her to agree to be wired, so that she can get Ramrod to incriminate himself when she goes back to his place for a rendezvous.  The sting works and Ramrod is arrested and put into police custody, but he’s able to escape and spends the rest of the night chasing after Princess and determined to exact a revenge on her while the cops remain always one-step behind and unable to apprehend him.

This was Gary Sherman’s fourth theatrical feature and third horror one. He had started out with British cult hit Raw Meat in 1972 about a group of underground cannibals living in a London subway tunnel was met with rave reviews and fans, but his subsequent horror foray Dead and Buried and Phobia, which he co-wrote only, didn’t do as well. This one is more of a sleazy thriller meant to ‘inform’ the viewer about the brutalities of street life, but is really just an excuse to be exploitive and get cheap points for nudity and violence with characters that are cliched and situations highly derivative.

My main issue was with the prostitutes themselves for instance Ginger who runs away from Ramrod and hides out in a seedy hotel only to let him into her room the minute he comes knocking at her door. Once inside he immediately kills her while asking ‘I can’t believe you were that stupid’ and I felt like saying the same thing. It’s hard to sympathize with characters when they do incredibly dumb things and the scene would’ve worked better if Ramrod was only able to get in by crashing through the window, or breaking down the door, but having her allow him in shows no common sense especially from someone that is supposedly ‘street smart’.

This then brings up the second problem that I had, which is the fact that these women have absolutely nothing to defend themselves with in case things get ugly. They should all have guns, knives, or the very least some pepper spray especially if they’re supposedly ‘street smart’, but instead if things get bad they’re virtually helpless as is the case of when one of the male customers decides to rob Princess of her money and all she can do is give him some veiled threat that her pimp would come after him, which seemed almost laughable. Another scene has her being attacked by Ramrod where she manages to get her hands on a metal pipe and she uses it to hit him twice with it and then drops it to go hide somewhere, but why not continue to hit him until he’s either dead, or comatose? She hated his guts for killing her friend, so why back-off from giving it to him when she had the chance? At the very least, if she is going to run-off, at least continue to carry pipe, so she could use it for protection when he gets back up.

The motivations of the Princess character made no sense. She’s supposedly this L.A. businesswoman living in a nice suburban house, who’s now in financial trouble for whatever reason, but why turn to prostitution? There seemed to be hundreds of other income avenues she could’ve considered before leaping into streetwalking. If it was a high end escort gig where the male clientele could be filtered and scrutinized so it would not just be any scumbag and the prices would be high enough and in a safe neutral area, so she would just have to service one a night instead of ten, then maybe. However, here she’s forced to do one after another submitting that whatever crazy kink they wanted in whatever scuzzy locale they took her to. If she was on drugs, or teen runaway with no money, it might be a little more understandable, but the film portrays her as being smart and educated and she somehow ‘chooses’ to do this, which for me made her seem completely insane and therefore not any one that I could relate to.

The film does have some great acting by Hauser, who also sings the closing song, and Gary Sherman is good as the detective as he doesn’t have the chiseled features of a Hollywood good guy, but instead is more non-descript like how most policemen look, which I liked. Sunset Boulevard, where most of it was filmed, gets captured in a cool way giving it a surreal presence where all the action takes place exclusively at night and once the sun rises all the dark characters go symbolically back into their caves. There’s even a nifty car chase, but overall it’s flat, and predictable, and only for those who enjoy sleazy B-movies.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: January 22, 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 37 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Gary Sherman

Studio: AVCO Embassy Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube, Tubi

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Exploitation, Movies with Nudity, Thrillers/Suspense

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Nightkill (1980)

Posted on May 13, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Somebody is listening in.

Kathy (Jaclyn Smith) is married to Wendell (Mike Connors) a wealthy, but unethical businessman living in Arizona. She’s unhappy in the marriage and wants a divorce, but Wendell promises to make things hard for her if she does, so she reluctantly stays in it, but on the side has an affair with Steve (James Franciscus) his close business associate. Steve poisons Wendell and sticks his body inside the freezer of Wendell’s home and then impersonates him on a flight to Washington to make it appear that he’s still alive. Kathy remains at home only to become harassed by a aggressive detective Donner (Robert Mitchum) who’s suspicious that Wendell has become a victim of foul play. Kathy decides she must get rid of the body, but when she opens up the freezer she discovers it’s no longer Wendell’s corpse that’s inside, but instead Steve’s.

Odd thriller that was produced by a German film company, but filmed in the US. The film succeeds with having a distinct score and great location shooting of Arizona in which it’s dry, desolate landscape helps reflect the empty, inner nature of the characters. It was directed by Ted Post, who’s best known for the cult hit The Baby, which is famous for its twist ending, and there’s a lot of story twists here too, but for whatever reason fails to be captivating and this is mostly due to the dull characters.

Kathy was the one that got on my nerves the most. One minute she’s telling him that she can’t stand him and then the next minute she’s upset and sobbing over his unexpected death, so which is it? It seems like she should’ve been elated when he keeled-over and having her played-up as being this innocent is unrealistic. When you spend your life associating with bad people it tends to rub-off and it’s hard to imagine she wouldn’t have been tainted by the corruption of not only her spouse, but lover and Smith’s poor attempt at crying just makes it all the more worse. I rather have openly bad people going after each other and seeing which one is left standing then some idealized angel who’s completely out-of-place in the setting and would have to be extraordinarily naïve not to have caught-on to the shenanigans that were going on long before she does. If anything Sybil Danning, who is seen in a much smaller role, should’ve been given the lead as her conniving, sauciness was exactly what the character needed to have made it interesting.

Franciscus isn’t in it long enough to make much of an impression and Mitchum sleep walks through his part and thus making his onscreen presence quite bland and his big name, star status adds nothing. The only one that is fun is Connors, best known for his starring role in the cop TV-show ‘Mannix’. Here he plays against type by being an obnoxious jerk that delights in upsetting some caged monkeys that they have in his home. The rotten personality of his character is over-the-top enough to be fun and it’s just a shame he had to die-off so quickly.

Spoiler Alert!

An mentioned there are some nifty twists, but it ultimately adds up to little. The biggest problem is that Mitchum, who’s just as shady as Connors and Franciscus, ends up getting away with it, by stealing the stolen money that Connors has in his airport locker and flying out of the country, which isn’t exactly an audience pleaser. Smith doesn’t completely die either as we see her injured body on the bathroom floor calling the police making it seem that with her information there was still a chance he could get caught and the film should’ve played this out to completion and not left it open to guessing.

Lots of logistical issues too. For instance Mitchum kills Francsicus supposedly at the airport, but for some reason, we never see it but can only presume, drags the dead body back to Smith’s home just so he can put it into the freezer, but why bother? Also, where does he put Connor’s body when he replaces it with Franciscus’? Where does he get the mask of Mike Connors’ face that he uses to disguise himself that he is him? Does he know a manufacturer that makes specially made masks  to resemble someone they know and if so what company is this because I’ve never heard of it? Also, how does he know there’s a cop inside the police department named Donner as he pretends to be this man when he investigates the case even though he’s really a private eye named Rodriguez? These along with several other questions never get answered, which significantly hurts the plausibility.

Original Cinema Quad Poster - Movie Film Posters

Original Cinema Quad Poster – Movie Film Posters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: December 18, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 35 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ted Post

Available: DVD-R, Blu-ray

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Too Scared to Scream (1984)

Posted on May 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Who’s killing the tenants?

Female tenants living in a New York City high-rise building are turning-up dead in brutal fashion. Lieutenant Alex Dinardo (Mike Connors) and his younger, female partner Kate (Anne Archer) are convinced that the culprit is Vincent (Ian McShane) who works as the overnight watchmen at the apartment building and since all the crimes happen during his shift he quickly becomes suspect number one. Though getting enough evidence in order to arrest him becomes a delicate matter. Alex then decides to asks Kate to move-in to the building as a new tenant and thus keep tabs on what Vincent is doing and hopefully lure him into a situation where he’ll incriminate himself, but Kate soon finds herself in over-her-head as the killer is on-top of what’s going on and he soon bates her into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse where Alex and the other policemen are not able to help her.

The film was an attempt at creating an American version of an Italian giallo complete with gory murders and an intricate mystery where you don’t know who the real killer is until the final twist ending. It’s also the only film to date to be directed by actor Tony Lo Bianco. Severely straddled during production as it was shot in 1982, but due to the production studio that financed the project going bankrupt it was never released until 3 years later where it was given little fanfare and came and went with few people seeing it.

The biggest problem with it is that it plays-up McShane’s role too much. Granted he’s a gifted actor who’s best known today for his work in the TV-series ‘Deadwood’, but by overemphasizing his character it makes it seem right from the start that he’s the culprit and thus making the investigation uninteresting because you feel it’s just a matter of time before he’s found out and thus little mystery, or intrigue. Granted there are a couple of other suspects, but they seem thrown-in simply as red herrings and aren’t seen much. The story would’ve had better tension had the suspects shared equal screen time and a more balance of clues making it seem like any one of them could’ve done it and thus some genuine interest at getting at what the truth is versus having it seem like it’s all spelled-out from the start. If anything Maureen O’Sullivan, who plays McShane’s near comatose mother whom he takes care of, is far more captivating, despite the fact that she doesn’t speak any line of dialogue and trapped in a wheelchair, then anything McShane himself does.

The unusual pairing of a 60-something male cop alongside a female one that appears to be only around 30 should’ve been what the film focused on as I found their contrasting personalities and different ways they approached their police work to be something that could’ve been played-off of more. Unfortunately the film taps into this just slightly and then quickly moves on and thus misses the opportunity for what could’ve lead to captivating confrontations and debates. Connor does seem a bit too old for this kind of thing and seeing him trying to chase down a young athletic man who was only 20 came-off as almost laughable and I was surprised he didn’t just fall over from a heart attack, or exhaustion before he ever managed to get near the guy. Having him lose a fight to the younger guy and have to depend on his partner to bail him out of it was realistic, so it gets props there, but the way he goes about his police work, which includes physically beating-up on suspects, is highly unethical and should’ve gotten him demoted, or fired.

Spoiler Alert!

I had issues with Archer’s character as well. This comes when she agrees to move into the apartment and work undercover, but seems woefully unprepared for it. She manages to carry a gun with her when she goes down to the basement of the building to do laundry, but then when she gets back to her place she does a goofy aerobics workout where she gets caught off-guard, but wouldn’t a seasoned cop know to carry a weapon on her at all times especially when she’s intentionally making herself a target to the killer? Also, what kind of person walks into their apartment and then doesn’t turn around and immediately lock the door once they’re inside? If you want to argue that this was intentional (I don’t think it was) because she wanted to lure the killer inside, so as to apprehend him, then fine, but she should then make damn sure she was a gun in-hand, pointed at him, when he does, which in this case she didn’t.

You must likely won’t be able to guess who the true killer is, but it’s not worth sitting through. The script doesn’t offer any clues, or hints either, so even an alert viewer won’t figure it out, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good mystery because it really isn’t. The story is sloppily put together without much imagination, or character development. Unlike a true giallo the murders are quick and without much blood, so if you’re a gorehound this thing won’t suffice. The concept had potential, but the execution is half-hearted.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: September 28, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Tony Lo Bianco

Studio: International Film Marketing

Available: Blu-ray (Import), DVD-R

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Posted in 80's Movies, Gay/Lesbian, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Obscure Movies, Police Drama, Thrillers/Suspense

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Reuben, Reuben (1983)

Posted on April 15, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Housewives lust for poet.

Gowan (Tom Conti) is a middle-aged poet going through writer’s block who hasn’t written anything in 5 years and manages to remain solvent by touring around a college town and reciting his older writings to women’s clubs. The stress though of not being able to produce anything new causes him to turn to alcohol and further rescinds his writing ability. Geneva (Kelly McGillis) is a college student several years his junior who spots him on a train one day and agrees to pay his fare when he’s found not to have any money. This generosity manages to have a profound affect on him and he makes a commitment to mend his ways while also going out with Geneva on casual dates. The awkward love affair doesn’t go far as Gowan continues to drink and embarrass her every time they go out. When Geneva finds out she’s pregnant the two then must decide how they will proceed.

Unusual romantic flick that has all the ingredients of failing, but manages somehow to have a certain light appeal. Much of this is thanks to McGillis, who in her film debut really shines and while this film is not one of her better known ones I still consider it her best work. Normally film’s dealing with May-December romances don’t work because the younger partner is always portrayed as being wide-eyed and naïve, but here it’s Geneva that’s the sensible one who calls all the shots and remains in control. This change of pace gives the old theme a refreshing new spin and made it palatable enough to hold my interest and in certain moments even becomes touching.

Conti gives a good performance, but he seems more like a caricature. He wears the same dowdy outfit all the way through making me wonder if that was the only suit he owned and if so whether he reeked of odor. I found it hard to believe that this guy, who looks like he was living on the streets, would attract all these frustrated housewives who’d be rushing to go to bed with him. With all the alcohol he consumed I’d have serious questions whether he’d be able to perform, or how sex with him could possibly be much better than with their husbands as I would think it might actually be worse.

Supposedly this was all meant as ‘satire’ and based loosely on the life of Dylan Thomas. Possibly in book form, as this was based on the novel of the same name by Peter De Vries and then later turned into a stage play, it might’ve worked, but as a film set in the modern day it’s confounding. Thomas hit his fame in the 30’s and 40’s when movies and television where just getting started and therefore writers held more clout, but by the 80’s there were so many other types of celebrities that some frumpy looking drunk guy who used big words to create long poems wouldn’t be someone a suburban housewife would get all that excited over. The opening sequence shows the reactions on their faces as they listen to him recite some of his writings and while one of them has a confused look on her face I felt they all should’ve and for my money that would’ve been really funny.

Spoiler Alert!

The finale, which Leonard Maltin in his review calls ‘curious’, but I’d describe more as ill-advised is the one thing that really hurts it. I’m not sure what the thinking was other than Dylan Thomas died young so possibly they felt Gowan needed to die too, but it was the wrong decision. Normally I get annoyed with movies that tack-on a happy ending and have everything work-out even when it’s not earned, but this film works in reverse by throwing in a very sad one that comes out of nowhere and doesn’t fit the tone of the rest of the movie, which for the most part had been quite whimsical.

The way it gets done is pretty dumb too as he elects to hang himself inside his apartment after he finds out all of his top teeth, many of which have been rotting for years due to neglect, would have to be removed. While losing teeth is no one’s idea of fun it does happen to a lot of folks of all ages and dentures (this was made before the advent of implants) if fitted properly aren’t always that noticeable, so to kill yourself over something like that seemed awfully rash.

Just as he’s about to hang himself he gets inspired again to write and even excited about finding new women to sleep with, but then a lovable sheep dog named Reuben runs into the room (you’d think someone planning to kill himself would have the sense to shut his door and lock it) and being overly affectionate jumps-up and knocks down the chair that he’s standing on, which comes-off as being more farcical than anything. I was fully expecting the wooden beam that the rope was tied around to break from the stress of all the weight, which in reality I think it would, but instead it doesn’t and he’s left hanging leaving me genuinely baffled. For such an otherwise light and quirky movie to end this way was very jarring.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: December 19, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 41 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Robert Ellis Miller

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies with Nudity, Romance

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