Category Archives: Campy Comedy

Zorro, The Gay Blade (1981)

Posted on April 30, 2024 | Leave a comment

zorro

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Brothers become masked hero.

Diego (George Hamilton) is living in Madrid, Spain during the 1840’s when he receives a letter from his father ordering him to return to California. Once there he meets Esteban (Ron Liebman) whom he shared a friendship with when the two were children. Esteban has now married Florinda (Brenda Vaccaro) who Diego had a crush on when they were younger. He has also become Magistrate of the region upon the death of Diego’s father who suffered from a riding accident when his horse became startled by a turtle. Later Diego receives his inheritance, which turns out to being the disguise worn by Zorro the famous hero throughout the region. Diego now takes on the hero’s persona as he battles with Esteban who oppresses the already impoverished citizens of the area with high taxes. Unfortunately Diego breaks his ankle while jumping off a high balcony and is forced to turn-over his Zorro duties to his gay brother Ramon (also played by Hamilton) who uses a whip instead of a sword while also wearing flamboyant, color coordinated attire.

Hamilton’s career by the late 70’s had nose-dived to the point it seemed on life support until the surprise hit Love at First Bite helped revive it. This lead to many starring opportunities in the comic vein. He eventually decided to take this one since it allowed him the option to also be producer, but the film ultimately tanked at the box office killing off any more offers and he was never in another film for the rest of the decade and today he’s known less for his screen work and more for his vain persona, perpetual perfect tan, and appearing on reality shows dealing with has-been celebrities.

I’m not sure why this film is so obscure and hard-to-find as it’s not streaming anywhere, nor available on blu-ray while it’s DVD issue is from 20 years ago. Maybe it’s because of a white guy playing a Latino, though with Hamilton’s tan you’d never know, or maybe it’s because of the over-the-top caricature of the gay brother that could be deemed ‘controversial’ by today’s generation, but overall it’s adequately amusing for the most part. Hamilton is especially energetic and is the main reason it’s watchable though I felt it misses-the-mark when Diego goes from regular dude to caped crusader too easily. I would think becoming a masked super hero would bring in a certain learning curve that would invite mistakes to occur along the way. Outside of spraining his ankle no other missteps happen, which loses out on a lot of potential comedy.

Leibman as the bad guy is terrible as he overplays the campiness too much. A villain, even in a comedy, should have some threatening ability and this guy comes-off as a complete doofus from the get-go, so there’s never any suspense since we know this inept idiot’s bark is far worse than his bite. He also conveys his lines in a shrill tone that genuinely hurt my ears though he does have one good bit where he wiggles his hips in an attempt to replicate gay mannerisms, which is the only part of this movie that I remembered from when I first saw it over 40 years ago.

Vaccaro for her part is quite funny as she manages to balance the campiness with character’s personality in just the right way, so it seems organic. If anything I thought she should’ve been the heavy and Leibman could’ve been fully kicked-out. Lauren Hutton on-the-other-hand, who plays the other female lead as an idealistic woman fighting for change, and also Diego’s potential love interest, isn’t funny at all and is quite bland. I felt too that the idealistic period are usually when people are college-aged, so they should’ve cast a woman that was more that age, of which Hutton was clearly way past.

While there is a few chuckles here and there it overall comes-off as quite empty and limp. Not enough happens to make it intriguing and memorable. The sword fights become redundant and the hero is never put in any type of real peril. The humor is too constrained and needed to be played-up much more as does the sexual aspect. This was done when just having a gay character was considered ‘edgy’, but now seems quite pedestrian. There’s also only a few filming locations, so the visual backdrop offers little variety. The final shot has the heroes riding off into the sunset, which looks to be a painted backdrop, and it probably was, that just accentuates the film’s cheap looking production.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: July 17, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 33 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Peter Medak

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Gay/Lesbian

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The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975)

Posted on December 29, 2023 | 2 comments

sherlock

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Sibling solves the case.

Gene Wilder plays Sigerson Holmes, the jealous younger brother of Sherlock, who is upset that his sibling is so famous for solving crimes while he sits in obscurity having not seen as much success though he feels he’s just as smart if not smarter. One day Sigerson gets a case that his brother doesn’t want to get involved in due to him desiring to lay low for awhile. It involves Jenny Hill (Madeline Kahn) who’s a beautiful music hall dancer who is being blackmailed by an opera singer named Eduardo (Dom DeLuise) over a lewd letter she sent him years ago. However, the document proves to be much more than just a letter and is in fact an important paper that foreign powers will pay high price to get their hands on. Eduardo agrees to sell it to the evil Professor Moriarty (Leo McKern), but will only hand it over to him during one of his operas, which Sigerson and his loyal partner Orville (Marty Feldman) plan to attend in order to intercept the paper before it gets into the wrong hands.

Gene Wilder was approached by producer Richard Roth to do a parody of Sherlock Holmes, but Wilder didn’t like the idea of poking fun of what he felt was an iconic character. Roth told him to think about it and then approached him a week later. By this point Wilder said he had come up with a better idea instead of it being about Sherlock it would focus on his jealous brother Sigerson. Roth found the premise intriguing and suggested Wilder begin writing the screenplay which he did while working on Young Frankenstein. Once completed he asked his friend Mel Brooks to direct, but Brooks declined saying he didn’t like working on projects that were not his own idea, so Wilder took the reins himself calling it a ‘terrifying commitment’.

While the movie has some good moments the Sigerson character is not interesting. For one thing he’s poorly defined. One minute he’s cunning and sharp and then the next he proves dimwitted and clumsy almost becoming another Inspector Clouseu. The comedy should feed off the character, but with it unclear whether he’s brilliant or buffoon it never catches its stride and for the most part the scenes with him in it are boring and the audience doesn’t care if he solves the case nor feel that there’s any redemption if he does. He’s also genuinely unlikable particularly with the way he snaps at Jenny Hill making you almost want to despise the guy and hope he doesn’t succeed. Also, if he really is Sherlock’s brother then I felt there needed to be some scenes with them together and the interplay between the two could’ve been amusing if done right, but this never happens.

Wilder directs the film the way most actors turning director do by having the scenes more extended and allowing the actors to drive the pace and momentum versus the editing. With a so-called ‘zany’ comedy like this that doesn’t work and there’s several segments that go on too long until it becomes dull and looking a bit amateurish. The biggest example of this is when Jenny arrives a Sigerson’s place to tell him about the letter. Their interplay doesn’t go anywhere and ultimately in order to get out of it the characters, for some unexplained reason, break-out into song and dance making it seem like its a musical, which it isn’t, but either way it’s dumb and not funny. During Jenny’s music hall show, which Sigerson and Orville attend, she sings a long song there too, which wasn’t needed and saps the comic energy.

There are though some offbeat moments much of which comes from McKern a usually serious actor who shines in his campy part and really plays it up to the point that he becomes the highlight. The part where he goes to a fortune telling machine, that he has inside his residence, is inspired and his visit with Eduardo in which the two strangely fondle each other and even go to bed together that gives off weird homoerotic vibes is good too in a sort of bizarre ‘what am I looking at’ type of way.

The best part though is when a giant saw blade cuts off the back of Wilder’s and Feldman’s trousers causing their bare behinds to be exposed. They then go to a formal dance party and shock everyone who sees their asses with them still not aware that they’re showing. What’s so interesting about this part is that they both have really good looking butts especially Feldman. You’d think with his freaking looking face that his rear wouldn’t be so hot either, but it amazingly is, so in keeping with our current male ass scorecard we still have Dabney Coleman, who bears his behind in Modern Problems, coming in first and Tim Matheson’s in Impulse, being a close second and then Wilder and Feldman tying for third place.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: December 14, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 31 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Gene Wilder

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Campy Comedy, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Quirky

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Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983)

Posted on November 15, 2023 | Leave a comment

smokey1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: Where is the Bandit?

Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason) announces his retirement as sheriff after more than 30 years of service. He decides to spend his time in Florida where he expects to get some rest and relaxation. However, once he becomes a part of the senior community he doesn’t enjoy it and feels the need to get back to what he liked doing most, which was chasing after the elusive Bandit. Big Enos (Pat McCormick) and Little Enos (Paul Williams) offer him a deal to get back into the swing of things. They bet that he can’t drive his police car from Miami, Florida to Austin, Texas, a total of 1,400 miles, in two days with a stuffed fish tied to the top of the car. If he’s able to succeed at the challenge he’ll make $250,000, which Buford readily accepts. To keep him from getting there the two Enos brothers set-up traps along the way in order to stymie his progress, but Buford and his dim-witted son Junior (Mike Henry) manage to get out of each predicament that gets thrown at them, so the Enos brothers decide to call-in Snowman (Jerry Reed) to help them. Snowman is a trucker, but in this instance he gets to pretend he’s the Bandit and even dress in his get-up and drive Bandit’s fancy black and gold Pontiac Trans Am. The new Bandit, who picks-up Dusty (Colleen Camp), a disgruntled used car sales woman along the way, soon catches up with Buford and son and steals their stuffed fish, which turns-the-tables and forces Buford to go after them.

By 1982 both Hal Needham, who had directed the first two installments, and Burt Reynolds, who had played the Bandit in the first two go-arounds, were no longer interested in getting involved in the project for another time as both were already busy working together on Stroker Ace. The studio though didn’t want to give up on the idea of a third installment since the first two had made a lot of money, so they signed-on Gleason to reprise his role as Buford with the promise that he’d have full script approval, which proved difficult as he didn’t like any of the scripts that were handed to him and at one point made the glib remark “with scripts like these who needs writers?’. After going through 11 rejections the writers finally hit on the idea of letting Gleason play dual roles of both the Bandit and the sheriff. Initially Gleason didn’t like this either, but the prospect of hamming up two different characters, which he had already done in Part 2 where he played Buford’s two cousins Gaylord and Reginald, got the better of his ego, so it received the green light.

In October of 1982 the script with Gleason in both roles was shot, but with no explanation for why he was playing the Bandit and everyone else in the story playing it straight like they didn’t see the difference. Eventually upon completion it was sent to a test audience in Pittsburgh where they gave the film unanimously negative feedback convincing the studio that the experimental novelty wasn’t going to work. They then hired Jerry Reed, who wasn’t even in the project before then, and asked him to reprise his role as Snowman who would then disguise himself as the Bandit. Then every scene that originally had Gleason in the role as Bandit was reshot with Reed now doing the part, but all the rest of the scenes that had already been filmed without the Bandit remained intact. The reshot Bandit segments were filmed in April of 1983 and the film eventually got its release in August of that year where the response of audiences and critics alike remained just as negative.

For years this was considered by many to be an urban myth as no footage with Gleason as the bandit was ever seen, but then in 2010 a promo of Gleason playing Buford, but talking about becoming the Bandit, or ‘his own worst enemy’ appeared on YouTube with the title of Smokey IS the Bandit Part 3 and Jerry Reed’s name not appearing anywhere on the cast list. Then in 2016 the actual shooting script that was shot in October of 1982 was downloaded to IMDb’s message board (back when they still had them), which plainly detailed Gleason as the Bandit, but had no written dialogue for those scenes since Gleason was routinely allowed to ad-lib his lines. The lost footage of Gleason in the Bandit scenes is purportedly in the control of the Gleason estate where it’s kept under wraps never to be shown to anyone again by apparently Gleason himself who felt humiliated by the test audiences negative reaction.

As it is the movie is not funny at all and unsurprisingly did not do well at the box office. Nothing much makes sense and the humor is highly strained including a drawn-out segment featuring the Klu Klux Klan, which I found downright offensive. Having a Blu-ray release of the lost footage of Gleason in dual roles would most likely be a big money maker as through the years it’s built up a lot of curiosity. It might be confusing and weird just like the original test audiences said it was, but it couldn’t be any worse than what we ultimately get here, which is as bottom-of-the-barrel as they come.

smokey2

My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: August 12, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Dick Lowry

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Crude Comedy, Cult, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with Nudity, Road Movies, Sequels

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Stewardess School (1986)

Posted on September 14, 2023 | Leave a comment

stewardess

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: They become flight attendants.

Philo (Brett Cullen) and George (Don Most) are training to become airline pilots, but an unexpected calamity during the flight stimulator test causes them to flunk out. Without a job, or money they decide to enter into a school that trains people to become flight attendants. They feel this way they’ll still be able to be up in the air and can also hit-on all the hot women. They’re class is full of misfits, but somehow they all manage to graduate despite the presence of Miss Grummet (Vicki Frederick) who runs the school and tries to make each of their lives a living hell. After graduation the students get a job with Stromboli airlines, but Miss Grummet is onboard and wants to make sure things do not go as planned while a mad bomber (Alan Rosenberg) wants to blow the aircraft up.

This was another in a long line of Police Academy imitators that did nothing but make that one, which wasn’t too great to begin with, seem like a masterpiece. The film, which per later interviews with star Sandahl Bergman where she attests the cast and crew including the director were snorting cocaine during the production, is nothing but a barrage of lame jokes and uninspired storyline making it pretty much dead on arrival from the first frame in. It doesn’t even have all that much nudity and what little it does comes from gals looking well over 30. The women cast in the leads keep their clothes on even though they’re far more attractive. Judy Landers, who plays a hooker who speaks in the most annoying Flossie-like accent, in order to conform to the caricature of a NY streetwalker, I found to be the most perplexing. She’s clearly sexy and yet is never seen naked even though she goes to a Dr.’s office for a medical exam, but just as she’s set to remove her bra the camera cuts away, which will frustrate certain viewers as the only point for watching this vapid thing is to see some good-looking flesh and if it can’t even succeed with that then it’s pointless to sit through.

I found the characters to be the most irritating as everything gets approached from a 13-year-old perspective with no inkling of nuance. Star Cullen is a prime example as he plays this pilot who can’t see without his glasses even though most people who use them can still make out things when they’re not on but they’re just real fuzzy and yet here this guy doesn’t know when he’s in a shower room full of naked women. The thick coke bottle type of glasses that he does wear was severely dated as by the 80’s the technology had improved that people with bad eyesight could wear lenses that weren’t so thick and obvious.

Wendi Jo Sperber, who is slightly overweight though the film acts like she’s ‘obese’, gets stuck with a part that’s genuinely insulting as it does nothing but make fun of her few extra pounds the whole way through. At one point it even has her spotting a cheese cake in a refrigerator and going ‘oink, oink’, which I found to be quite shallow as they’re can be many reasons for why someone as a bigger body type than others that has nothing to do with overeating.

I did enjoy Mary Cadorette who’s probably best known for playing in the short-lived ‘Three’s a Company’ spin-off ‘Three’s a Crowd’. She definitely gives a likable performance of a terminal klutz. While her clumsiness does get overplayed, with none of the pratfalls ever being funny, I felt the way she overcame her problem by going through hypnosis was a cop-out. A good story should have a character grow and succeed through their own initiative versus having it all go away with the literal snap-of-a-finger.

The worst part may be the ending where the film inadvertently turns into a airplane disaster flick, which has been done better in many other parodies. The mad bomber is too obvious and everyone should’ve been eyeing him suspiciously from the get-go instead of having him being ignored until it was too late. The film should’ve played against type with this part by having the nut turn-out to being what initially seemed like a sweet old lady, or someone else you wouldn’t expect, but of course that would’ve required creativity, which filmmakers here were clearly lacking. The film does stand out in one way as it holds the record for being the most played movie on the Comedy Central cable network, which says more about their subgrade level of programming than anything else.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: August 20, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 29 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ken Blancato

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD-R, Amazon Video, Tubi

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Crude Comedy, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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How to Frame a Figg (1971)

Posted on July 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

how

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Tricking a dumb bookkeeper.

Hollis Fig (Don Knotts) is an inept bookkeeper working as an accountant at City Hall. The place is run by the Mayor (Edward Andrews), his staff, and the richest man in town who is also quite elderly, Charley Spaulding (Parker Fennelly). Together this bunch, unbeknownst to Figg, are skimming city funds. They decide though that they must cover their tracks by firing all of the other accountants and keeping only Figg who they deem as not smart enough to catch-on to what they’re doing. They also install a computer to do the bookkeeping and tell Figg it’s his job to maintain it, but nothing more. However, Figg and his friend Prentiss (Frank Walker) become suspicious when the computer readouts involving the city’s budget show that much of the money has gone missing. When Figg brings these findings to the mayor they divert his attention by hiring him a sexy secretary (Yvonne Craig) who will flirt so heavily with him that he’ll forget about everything else that’s going on, but this doesn’t sit well with Figg’s girlfriend Ema Letha (Elaine Joyce) who works across the street as a waitress.

This was the final movie produced from Knotts’ 6-picture deal that he signed with Universal in 1964 after he rose to fame in the ‘Andy Griffith’ TV-show. While none of the movies produced from that contract were very good this one has to be the weakest. The story is slow moving and lacks any action, or sight gags, which will bore most kids who are the intended audience. Visually it’s quite banal and looks like it could’ve easily been an episode for a TV-show with the biggest failing being that it was shot on a studio backlot, so the town is nothing more than propped up buildings. While it would’ve cost more shooting it in a real town it would also have given the production more of a distinct look, but at least it uses the same courthouse that was eventually also in Back to the Future.

Knotts is a funny guy, but he’s just playing the same Barney Fife caricature over and over and thus making everything that he does here quite predictable. Edward Andrews and Joy Flynn are both talented character actors, but together they end-up negating the other. In this instance Andrews totally dominates making Flynn’s efforts negligible and not worth appearing at all. Frank Welker, who later became a very famous voice artist including speaking for the Fred character in the ‘Scooby-Doo’ cartoons, makes for a strange buddy to Knotts since there was over a 20-year difference between the two and it shows. It would’ve been better if they were around the same age and Welker’s character not so painfully stupid as having two dimwits becomes tiring and monotonous.

I did however enjoy Yvonne Craig, best known for playing Batgirl on the ‘Batman’ TV-show, here she enlivens things as the vixen.  Parker Fennelly, who was 80 at the time, but looking more like 100, is very funny, and in many ways the best thing in the movie, as the crotchety, but still conniving codger, who violently slams down his cane when he gets angry and has everyone else at his beck-and-call.

Spoiler Alert!

Had the script not spelled everything out right at the start and instead had the viewer to see things completely from Figg’s perspective would’ve allowed for a few twists and surprises, but the way the plot gets presented here is quite routine. The ending, in which Figg and his new bride travel to Rio de Janeiro for their honeymoon and explicably bump into the Mayor and his staff who are hiding-out there is disappointing.  Do the bad guys ultimately escape justice, or does Figg figure a way to take them down? Or do they kill/kidnap Figg to keep him from talking? Either way none of this gets answered, which is a letdown. At least with the Disney films of that era everything would end with one big car chase, or ultimate showdown of some kind, which is what this film, as dull as it already was, sorely needed.

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My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: February 2, 1971

Runtime: 1 Hour 43 Minutes

Rated G

Director: Alan Rafkin

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Campy Comedy, Movies for the Whole Family

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Think Big (1989)

Posted on June 27, 2023 | Leave a comment

thinkbig1

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

hot

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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Silent Movie (1976)

Posted on March 27, 2023 | Leave a comment

silent

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Marcel Marceau says no.

Mel Funn (Mel Brooks) was a one-time top Hollywood movie director, whose career spiraled downward due to alcoholism. He though, along with his two sidekicks, Marty (Marty Feldmen) and Dom (Dom DeLuise), aspires for a comeback. His idea is to make a silent movie, but the studio head (Sid Caesar) initially rejects it and only warms up to it when Mel convinces him that he can bring in some top name stars. Mel and his two buddies then set out to find the talent and although it isn’t easy they’re able to get Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Paul Newman, Anne Bancroft, and Liza Minnelli. The movie is eventually made, but then on opening night the one and only print of it gets stolen by a greedy conglomerate named Engulf and Devour, who want the studio that produced the movie to go under in order for them to take it over.

In 1975 after the success of Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, writer-director Brooks was on top of the film world and I suppose any zany idea he came up with the studios would be willing to roll with considering his already built-in cult following, so it’s no surprise it got made. It even, to my surprise, did quite well at the box office pulling in $36 million from a $4 million budget though this was mainly due to the fact that Brooks had his legion of fans upfront who would be willing, if not running to see his next movie even if it was about farm pigs mating. What really flabbergasted me was how, at least at the time, most critics reviewed it favorably with Roger Ebert even giving it 4-stars. I for one though found very little that was funny and felt more like Anne Bancroft, who was Brooks’ wife, who responded negatively to Alan Alda when he congratulated the couple on it after watching it during an opening night screening. After describing how hard he laughed Bancroft then turned to her husband and said: “You see Mel, I told you some idiot would find this funny.”

A lot of the problem is with the script, or lack thereof where too much emphasis is placed on disconnected gags and not enough on  story. Many silent films from the era had intricate plot lines, so to say because the movie didn’t have dialogue, only title cards, so it had to remain simple is just not a good excuse. There needed to be more at stake and a threatening bad guy, some would say that Harold Gould, who plays the head of the conglomerate is the heavy, and he probably is, but he’s too bumbling, not seen enough, and there’s never any confrontation/showdown between him and Mel.

Having three guys essentially playing the protagonist didn’t make much sense either. I didn’t understand what bonded them, or since Mel was down-on-his-luck, where they would find the time, or money to traipse around in a snazzy little sports car all day and not have to work. There’s little distinction between the three and they could’ve been combined into one person, preferably Marty, whose odd face is perfect for this kind of material.

The humor is on the extreme kiddie level, which may disappoint some Brooks fans who at the time was known for his bawdy and even envelope pushing material. The gags aren’t all that imaginative. I think the only one I got a kick out during the entire 87-minute runtime was the heart machine at the hospital, which inadvertently gets turned into Pong, the very first video game. The Geriatric Lounge where no on one under 75 is admitted and everyone gets carded was alright too, but literally everything else falls flat and for the most part horrendously lame. The jokes have very little to do with the plot, which is anemic enough, and thus takes away from the main storyline as they just get haphazardly thrown in at regular intervals and in certain cases take quite a long time to play-out, which robs the movie of any momentum and makes it seem like it’s bogging down and going nowhere.

The cameos by the famous stars are wasted. I did like Bancroft, who does a rare comic turn from her usual drama forte, and is quite good particularly with the freaky eye trick that she does, which was taught to her by Carl Reiner. Paul Newman, who goes on a wild wheelchair race, isn’t bad either, but Reynolds segment doesn’t have enough going-on and Caan’s moments, in which the four try to eat melon balls inside his trailer that has a broken spring, is just plain silly and highly strained. In Minnelli’s bit she does nothing but just sit there as the other three try to sit down at her table while wearing body armor, which again takes agonizingly long to play-out and less sophisticated than a comic bit on ‘Sesame Street’.

I will give Brooks all the credit in the world with his ability and daring to come-up with what many people would consider an unworkable idea and have the guts to pull-it-off, or at least attempt to. However, like with History of the World, Part 1, it becomes an overreach that can’t equal its grand concept. Having characters that weren’t broad caricatures and a script that didn’t rely so heavily on mindless shtick would’ve helped.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: June 17, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 27 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Mel Brooks

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Campy Comedy, Slapstick

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The Projectionist (1970)

Posted on November 25, 2022 | Leave a comment

projectionist1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Projectionist escapes into fantasy.

Chuck McCann plays a man named Chuck McCann who works in a projection booth of a New York theater. He spends his isolated days winding the film reels and putting them into the film machines so that they can be broadcast onto the big screen. He finds his job boring and he does not get along with Renaldi (Rodney Dangerfield) who is the head usher at the theater and routinely chews him out for minor infractions. To escape his mundane existence he imagines himself the star of his own movie playing the superhero Captain Flash who helps save a beautiful damsel in distress (Ina Balin) while also fighting-off the evil villain known as The Bat, which he sees as being Renaldi and his way of getting ‘back at him’ without having to do it in real-life.

Writer/director Harry Hurwitz, who appears as an usher who visits Chuck in his film booth, had some creative movie ideas during his career though most of the movies he made were hampered by a low budget and not fully realized enough to break-out and gain mainstream attention. This film, which was his first, is generally considered his best. It was shot in September-October of 1969, at the same time as Myra Breckenridge, with both movies being credited as the first to use superimposition of older movies, known as Hollywood’s Golden era, into the main story. Some of the clips, which features everything from old cartoons to news reel footage, is fun and even at times provocative. The Captain Flash segments, which are filmed in a grainy black-and-white to replicate the other older clips, are amusing and I really enjoyed seeing actual photographs of Chuck when he was younger, from infancy to a teen and then young adult, over the opening credits. There’s even some cool surreal moments where he walks out of the theater he’s working in and on the marquee is advertised the film we’re watching as well as a segment where Chuck the actor walks down the red carpet at the premiere of this film while talking about playing Chuck the character.

McCann, who’s probably best known for co-starring with Bob Denver in the 70’s children’s TV-show ‘Far Out Space Nuts’, reveals definite talent particularly his spot-on impressions of famous stars making you wonder with that much talent why does this character not make an attempt to go on stage at a local amateur night and show his stuff to an audience instead of hiding it away to himself. If the character has stage fright, or social anxiety, and that’s why he’s so shy and lonely then that needs to be brought out, which it isn’t, making the character poorly fleshed-out and in-turn makes the film less interesting.

The segments examining Chuck’s day-to-day activities, between the old film clips, are dull and have low energy. It’s like the production was completely dependent on the old footage to save it, which is not how a good movie works. ALL the scenes in a successful film need to be captivating in some way and a great number of them here fall flat. The character does not grow, or change in any way. In would’ve been fun to see Chuck confront Dangerfield in real-life instead of just fantasizing about it, or making an attempt to ask-out the beautiful woman instead of dreaming about her from afar.

Dangerfield, in his film debut, plays against type. Normally he’s the loser taking-it to the oppressive authority figure, but here he’s the heavy and helps keep it engaging. Ina Balin, on the other-hand, is beautiful, but I found it frustrating that she wasn’t given a single thing to say.

The story doesn’t evolve and ultimately comes-off as an experiment that fails to click. I was also surprised with the dark nature of  some of the old clips including bits with Adolph Hitler, Mussolini, the Klu Klux Klan and even one recreating the assassination of Lincoln, which didn’t have anything to do with the main theme and not sure why they were put-in.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: October 17, 1970

Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes

Rated GP

Director: Harry Hurwitz

Studio: Maron Films

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black & White, Campy Comedy, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Obscure Movies, Offbeat

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American Drive-In (1985)

Posted on June 17, 2022 | Leave a comment

american2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Evening at the movies.

Filmed at the old Sky Drive-In in Yucca Valley, California that has long since been abandoned, the film centers around a couple, Bobbie Ann (Emily Longstreth) and Jack (Patrick Kirton). Both are fresh out of high school and Jack plans to use the occasion of going to the drive-in to watch a horror flick called Hard Rock Zombies to propose to Bobbie Ann. Bobbie Ann is smitten with Jack, but after he gives her the ring she’s not so sure she’s ready to jump into marriage. Meanwhile Sarge (Joel Bennett), the leader of a local street gang, has his sights set on Bobbie Ann and plans to get rid of Jack while they watch the film, so that he and his buddies can gang rape Bobbie Ann in the back bleachers. While this is going on there’s also Councilmen Winston (John Rice) who’s running for mayor and feels it would be a great opportunity to break-up the local drug ring in town, which he feels is occurring at the drive-in and to prove it he gets his own kids to walk around and inquire where they can get their hands on some ‘Mary Jane’ and then film it thus looking like a hero to the public for exposing the drug pushers in the area.

This was the second-to-last film directed by Krishna Shah who was one of the first directors to start his career in Bollywood before graduating to Hollywood. His initial film was the so-so Rivals, but none of his movies ever met any critical or financial success, which caused him to become quite bitter in his later years. This project was the result of his frustration of doing serious, big budget pictures like The River Niger and Shalimar, which were made with a lot of promise, but both failed at the box office, so out of desperation he decided to try-his-hand at exploitation B-pictures only to be met with the same failures.

What struck me was how similar it is to Rod Amateau’s Drive-In that came out 9 years earlier complete with the same type of farcical comedy and stereotyped characters and both dealt with a teen gang trying to steal away a girl who was dating a super clean-cut kid all while watching a cheesy disaster flick onscreen. It was almost like they had watched that one and it had ‘inspired’ them to make this. They’d probably deny it and say they had no knowledge of the other flick, but if that were the case then it makes this one seem even worse as it lacks anything original both in humor or storyline.

A lot of the comedy falls flat including a segment that makes fun of fat people and shows them eating up their food in a close-up, slurping fashion that’s quite gross and portrays them as seeming like animals that most people in our body shaming culture today will find offensive. I also thought the running joke of this prostitute who services the male customers in her RV as the movie plays was a bit overboard as she takes-on one after the other in a brief 90-minute period. Not sure what the typical nightly quota for a sex worker is, but I would think that would be too exhausting, so unless the film was trying to portray prostitution in a campy way, which in this case I don’t think it was, then there should’ve been several women in the RV doing the guys versus just one.

The only inspired thing, or at least it seemed that way initially, was the it becomes a film within a film as Krishna Shah had also directed Hard Rock Zombies. Since that has been put on many a list of worst movies ever made I thought this was the unusual case of a director showing humility and openly mocking his own work, where at one point one of the characters even says “Whoever wrote this should be shot”, but that was apparently not what happened. Instead the zombie movie scenes was only intended for a brief few minutes, but then after filming them Shah got ‘inspired’ to turn that into a feature film, which is now considered even worse than this one.

Spoiler Alert!

There is a darker tone here than in Drive-In, when Bobbi Ann threatens to kill the gang members with her gun as the other people cheer her one. Emily Longstreth, who sadly hasn’t done a movie since 1994, looks quite sexy standing on a raised platform in a skimpy outfit while waving the gun around, which in my opinion is the only memorable moment, but the movie unfortunately doesn’t go far enough. This would’ve been a perfect time to have her kill-off everybody, which would’ve made sitting through this silly inane crap worth it by having a truly shocking finale. It could’ve been Carrie with guns instead of telepathy, but this stupid movie cops-out completely.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: September 19, 1985

Runtime: 1 Hour 33 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Krishna Shah

Studio: Patel/Shah Film Company

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Zombie Movies

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