Category Archives: Movies with Nudity

Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

Posted on June 18, 2012 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Jason likes to kill.

(This review contains spoilers, but it is such a bad movie, so who really cares.)

A new campsite near where the massacre from the first film took place and still on Crystal Lake opens for business. Soon the counselors begin receiving the same type of bloody fate.

I was a bit surprised how incredibly derivative this movie was. In many ways it is almost exactly like the first one even to the point of having them killed at night during a thunderstorm. My opinion is that if it says ‘Part 2’ in the title then that should mean some sort of story progression, or evolvement, but instead it’s just the same formula getting repeated. The only real difference is that the young counselors aren’t the only ones who get killed as Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) ends up being one of the killer’s victims as well. Although I thought his murder looked a bit fake, I was still glad to see it as the idea of having to hear him say “You’re all doomed” for another ninety minutes seemed more horrifying.

It might have been more intriguing had the story centered on Alice Hardy (Adrienne King) the sole survivor from the first film who is now living by herself many miles away. The film starts out with her, but she is then immediately killed and then it’s back to the campsite for the same old, same old. I also found this opening sequence to be a bit baffling.  Here is a woman living alone and still suffering from nightmares of the attack and yet it is only after she wakes up from one of these bad dreams that she decides to lock her front door and close her kitchen window, which has no screen and wide enough for even a large person to crawl through, even though I would’ve thought she should’ve done that from the very start.

One plus to the movie is that the cast here is more attractive than in the first one. Amy Steel as Ginny Field is pretty and looks great in a bikini. I liked how her face has a very natural quality to it, but still quite appealing without any excessive make-up. Kirsten Baker, who plays another counselor named Terry, is really hot and can been seen fully nude from the front and back. For the female viewers I’d say the male cast has more hunks as well. I also found it interesting how the character of Mark (Tom McBride) who is confined to a wheelchair is still portrayed as being sexy and appealing to the other female characters, which is good. Also, for the trivia buffs, McBride was the first actor to portray one of the counselors to end up dying in real-life.

The killings are a letdown. At times it seems that director Steve Miner is trying to put a satirical spin on the bloodshed, but then pulls back at the last minute. For instance when Mark gets ‘the axe’ he is seen in his wheelchair rolling down a long flight of steps and I thought this may be an amusing homage to the classic Battleship Potemkin where a baby carriage rolls down a long flight of stairs while a battle rages all around it. Instead we see the victim and wheelchair go halfway down and then the shot freezes and cuts away without the expected pay-off. Another part that is similar to a famous scene in Mario Bava’s Twitch of the Death Nerve where a couple has a spear go through them while they are making love. Here Jason attacks the couple, but all we see is the end of the spear going through the bottom of the mattress and touching the floor, which seemed unrealistic. It was hard to believe that there would be a spear long enough and a person strong enough to push it through two bodies and what would probably have been two mattresses to get it to reach the floor.

This also brings up the issue of the Jason character. Supposedly this is a ‘mentally and physically challenged’ individual with limited thinking and social capabilities. Yet in the scene where he murders the couple in bed he then removes their bodies, which would be rather difficult as supposedly they have a big spear going through them, and places them somewhere else in the room so when Ginny comes in he is the one lying in the bed where he then jumps out and attacks her, which seemed too sophisticated and elaborately thought out for someone of his supposed mental state. Also, the opening sequence where he kills Alice doesn’t make sense either. How is Jason, who has been living in a ramshackle shed in the woods most of his life able to track her down and figure out where she is? Also, I would think anyone living alone in the woods would be very intimidated and confused coming to a big city, or any populated community for that matter. There is also the fact that with his deformity, even if he is wearing a mask, he would have called a lot of attention to himself, and it is very unlikely that he would have gotten away with her murder undetected. In addition there is the matter of his mother’s decapitated head, which he keeps on top of a candle lit altar in his shack, but even in a shriveled up state it still doesn’t look anything like actress Betsy Palmer who played the role in the first film.

This is the type of film that gives slasher movies a bad reputation. It is very mechanical and unimaginative. There are a few shocks here and there, but I saw them coming and there is no sustained tension at all. Of course at the very end you do get to see what Jason looks like unmasked and my response to that is ‘whoop-te-do’.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 1, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 27Minutes

Rated R

Director: Steve Miner

Studio: Paramount

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video, Netflix streaming

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Horror, Low Budget, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Sequels, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , ,

Friday the 13th (1980)

Posted on June 11, 2012 | 5 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Don’t reopen the campsite.

(This review contains spoilers. Lots of spoilers)

Twenty-two years after two counselors were brutally murdered Camp Crystal Lake reopens, but as the young staff tries to get the place ready they are killed one-by-one by an unknown assailant.

I first saw this film back in 1986 and thought it was alright. I presumed I would dislike it this time, but instead came away entertained and although certainly not a perfect film it does deserve its classic status. Director Sean S. Cunningham shows more flair than a lot of critics give him credit for. I liked the idea that all the murders take place during one stormy night at a remote location. Every murder sequence has its own beginning, middle, and end and filming it at an actual campsite gives it a lot of flavor. In fact I believe that is the main element for why this film became such a big hit because it reminds everyone when they went to camp as kids and tried to frighten each other by telling ghost stories around a camp fire.

Some of my favorite aspects of the film are what most might consider minor stuff, but stands out for me. For instance when Brenda (Laurie Bartram) goes to the archery range during the storm and the killer turns on all the lights and she becomes blinded by them is an interesting visual sequence. It is just unfortunate that she was not slayed with a shooting arrow as this would have corresponded to an earlier scene where she was almost hit by one shot by Ned (Mark Nelson). They were apparently planning to this, but then for whatever reason changed their minds. I equally liked the part where the killer shuts off the power and the viewer can see the lights slowly fading from the campsite at a distance, which has a nice foreboding quality. The part where Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) rides off on his bicycle after warning the staff the they are doomed creates an eerie image because there is no music and the lake is amazingly still proving that sometimes less is more when creating an intended impact. Having shots from the killer’s point of view watching the staff from a distance is creepy.

I watched the film closely thinking that there would be a lot of errors due to its low-budget, but found surprisingly little, or at least none that would create any type of major distraction. I know Betsy Palmer, who played Pamela Voorhees and is exposed as the killer at the end, only participated in a few days shooting. The hand that you see that represents the killer’s during the first half of the film was not Palmer’s, so I presumed that seeing a big ring on the third finger of the left hand would prove a mistake, but when Palmer does finally appear a ring is indeed there and the filmmakers prove to be astute. I know some people consider the scene where Alice (Adrienne King) has trapped herself inside a cabin and piling all sorts of stuff in front of the door to keep the killer out is a mistake because the door pushes out instead of in. However, I don’t agree because in her panic she would not be thinking straight and putting chairs in front of the door gave her a false sense of security, which at the time she may have needed emotionally. About the only real annoying mistake I saw is the fake lightning. Clearly it is a bright yellowish light coming from a flashlight that was shown on the performers from a stagehand that was just off- camera. The effect looks stupid and when are filmmakers ever going to realize that thunder and lightning rarely occur at the same time. You will always see lightning first and then the sound of thunder will usually occur several seconds later.

Too much time at the beginning is spent on the crew getting the campsite ready. These scenes don’t build any tension, the characters are vapid and clichéd, and the dialogue is trivial. I also found Ned to be incredibly irritating as the ‘comedian’ of the group whose attempts at humor where lame to the extreme. I found it funny how his murder is one of the few you don’t see and I think that was because the filmmakers feared that viewers would end up enjoying it too much. A little more nudity during this segment would have helped it along. I found it ironic that the one cast member that does end up going topless, Jeannine Taylor, was in real-life a graduate from a conservative Christian college. There is also a part here where they kill an actual snake and it deserves some mention because it is rather gory and has hints of Cannibal Holocaust where the viewer starts to think ‘if they are willing to kill actual animals in front of the camera what’s to stop them from doing it to the people’.

I like Betsy Palmer and the final climatic segment where she terrorizes Alice who is the last remaining survivor is in many ways the best part of the whole film. However, Estelle Parsons had been their first choice and I was a bit disappointed because Parsons has a unique acting style and a more distinctive face, which could’ve given the character more depth. Still, upon my third viewing I must say that Palmer does well. The close-ups of her face are great as is her gray sweater.

The music of course is another plus. I always thought it sounded like ‘chi,chi,chi; ma,ma,ma’, but it is actually supposed to be ki,ki,ki; ma,ma,ma’ and used to reflect the voice of Jason that Pamela hears inside her head instructing her to ‘Kill her Mommy’. Composer Henry Manfredi actually said ‘ki’ and ‘ma’ into a microphone before using sound effects to get the intended distortion.

Despite the film’s reputation the killings seem rather quick and uneventful. The slitting of the throat is a Tom Savini specialty, but was starting to get old even here. The machete through the head is one of the better ones, but the shot of it is too quick. The decapitation of Pamela is far and away the best. I liked how her hands continue to move even when she is headless. Apparently this is unrealistic and would not happen in real-life, but it is a cool visual nonetheless.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: May 9, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 35Minutes

Rated R

Director: Sean S. Cunningham

Studio: Paramount

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video, Netflix Streaming

5 Comments

Posted in 80's Movies, Classic, Cult, Horror, Low Budget, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , ,

Heavy Traffic (1973)

Posted on June 8, 2012 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: A world without women.

            Animated feature with some live-action scenes dealing with a lonely 24 year old artist named Michael who is still living with his parents in a rundown New York City apartment and aspires to be an underground cartoonist.

The film seems compelled right from the beginning to shock and offend as many viewers as it can. Violence and blood, lots of blood, seems to spurt out of characters heads and bodies every few minutes. Breasts pop out of female dresses with just as much regularity and there is even a segment dealing with spousal abuse that gets rather nasty.  Racial stereotypes abound and the N-word is used liberally by the white characters. Some may consider this groundbreaking while others might think it was done by someone who has been sitting alone in his studio too long and needs to seek professional help.  I can appreciate the no-holed-barred approach and the idea that cartoons don’t have to be just for kids, but the edginess is no longer as potent these days since Family Guy, American Dad, and South Park come quite close to what you see here and in some ways are even more outrageous.

The story is too free-form and lacks focus. It took quite a while before I could get into it and the beginning comes off like a lot torrid, wild images thrown at you without cohesion, or direction. The characters are vulgar, gross, and unlikable. Michael, as the protagonist, as some appeal, but he is too detached.

There were some scenes that I found to be quite funny, but they all come in the second half. The scene where Michael describes a new fantasy comic he wants to create to a very sickly, old publisher is great and nicely symbolizes how the old guard is out of touch with the tastes and ideas of the younger generation. His idea deals with an apocalyptic world that has no women, so the men have sex with a pile of garbage instead only to have a real woman appear and then be taken away by God who wants her for himself. This sequence is by far the funniest and most imaginatively perverse of the whole film and I wished that this had been the main premise.  Another segment has Michael’s father bringing home an obese prostitute for Michael, which in a gross sort of way is highly amusing. Another similar scene has Michael trying to have sex with another woman on the rooftop of a building, but inadvertently knocks her over the side wall and she spends the rest of the film dangling naked by a telephone wire. The Godfather who eats a hearty meal of spaghetti while in front of a row of urinals deserves mention as well.

The film is certainly not for all tastes. The animation may not hold up to today’ s standards and the live action segments are not as interesting. The ending falls flat and gets extended longer than it should. Supposedly the initial idea was to have it end with a climatic car chase with images of penny arcade pinball machines flashed across the sky, which would have been better, but due to budget restraints was scrapped.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: August 8, 1973

Runtime: 1Hour 17Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ralph Bakshi

Studio: American International Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Animation, Crude Comedy, Cult, Movies with Nudity, Offbeat, Sex, Surreal/Fantasy

Tagged , , ,

Dirty Hands (1975)

Posted on June 1, 2012 | 7 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Their plans go awry.

Julie Wormser (Romy Schneider) is married to Louis (Rod Steiger) who is rich, but also 18 years older and suffering from impotency. A young, virile man by the name of Jeff Marle (Paolo Giusti) comes into her life and the two become lovers. They conspire to murder her husband and run off. However, their elaborate plan quickly unravels leading to many unexpected twists and turns.

Story-wise this is one of the better Hitchcock imitations. There are a lot of twists that are interesting and surprising. They are also well-explained and make sense. Nothing is thrown in that is implausible or creates loopholes.  The script is like traveling on a curving, winding road in a fast car and I found myself delightfully surprised, intrigued, and entertained with each new revelation. The film takes its time in explaining each detail and plot point. I liked how the investigators are given almost as much screen time as the culprits and writer/director Claude Chabrol has everything well-thought out and even manages to get you to care for these people at the end.

Schneider is stunning. I loved her blonde tinted hair and chic outfits. She has a sultry nude scene at the very beginning, but it is only from the backside. This was pretty much her vehicle. Her character goes through a wide-range of emotions and she does a great job of conveying each one. Her facial expressions especially as the case unravels and she is being interrogated by the Judge and questioned by her lawyer are captivating to watch and perfectly realized.

Steiger is always fun. His ability to display raw intense emotion is second to none. The character was a bit cardboard as written, but Steiger manages to make him human and I had genuine sympathy for him towards the end. He does tend to border on over-acting at times, but he injects life into the scenes that otherwise could have gotten boring and slow.

Although Chabrol clearly put a lot of care into the script the visual element is lacking. The camera work is conventional and unimaginative. Certain scenes are too dark and shadowy while others look bright and splotchy. The majority takes place in an exquisite looking French Chateau, but Chabrol fails to take advantage of this. The lack of visual style makes the thing look almost amateurish and the grainy, faded DVD transfer does not help. I also felt the dialogue between the two investigators seemed stale and derivative. There was also a part were Julie complains to the investigators that they have dropped into her house for a visit at much too late an hour and then, only a minute later, she is seen walking out of her house and it is broad daylight. Also, when she hits her husband over the head and supposedly kills him in his sleep he is still seen breathing.

If one is looking for a sharp mystery done in the Columbo style then this pick could be a fun, escapist evening. Schneider’s beauty and acting will carry the rest, but just be prepared for production values that are on a TV-movie level.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: March 26, 1975

Runtime: 2Hours 1Minute

Rated PG

Director: Claude Chabrol

Studio: New Line Cinema

Available: DVD

7 Comments

Posted in 70's Movies, Foreign Films, French Films, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Thrillers/Suspense

Tagged , , ,

Fore Play (1975)

Posted on May 30, 2012 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: This sex goes limp.

This is a boring, flat, and completely disastrous attempt at sex comedy. This is the type of teaser T & A picture that gives all other T & A pictures a bad name. Out of the entire running time there is less than a minute of any actual nudity. The sex jokes are stupid and a child could watch this and not be overly shocked. It also looks like it was meshed together on the smallest of budgets.

The film is structured much like a horror anthology with three different stories all based on the same theme in this case sex. The first one features comedian Pat Paulsen as a lonely man who buys a realistic looking sex doll (Deborah Loomis). The doll is supposed to be Polish, but her accent sound more like it is Swedish. This segment is somewhat interesting because Paulsen plays against type here. He is much more emotional and hostile. He even ends up swearing at his own mother (Sudie Bond). There is also an amusing bit of seeing him trying to get the doll, with her stiff arms and legs, into a taxi cab. However the segment goes by too fast and the ending is really stupid. Paulsen also sings here and it sounds as bad as you might expect.

The second segment features Jerry Orbach as a writer going through writer’s block. Here you see the film’s one and only offensive sight, which is having to witness George S Irving in a bikini bottom. He plays Orbach’s muse and takes him back into time to reverse certain sexual conquests that he initially bombed at. One amusing bit has him in a game where he must undress a beautiful lady in sixty seconds in order to have sex with her. He does only to find that she is frigid. Like with the first segment this one also has a really stupid ending.

The third and final story sounds like a winner, but fails terribly. It consists of Zero Mostel as the President whose daughter is kidnapped. As ransom he is forced to have sex with his wife (Estelle Parsons) on national television, which ends up being incredibly dull and unsexy. The only amusing bit, and it is a very brief one, is when one of the secret service agents has to frisk the first lady before she is allowed to hug her husband. Both Parsons and Mostel play dual roles neither of which is funny.

The film is sleep inducing. Although many sources list it with a very brief running time it ran a full 90 minutes on the print I saw, which of course only means more minutes of boredom.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: March 24, 1975

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated R

Directors: John G. Avildsen, Bruce Malmuth, Robert McCarty

Studio: Cinema National

Available: DVD (Troma)

1 Comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Crude Comedy, Drive-In/T & A, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Sex

Tagged , , ,

Mackenna’s Gold (1969)

Posted on May 6, 2012 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: They all want gold.

This is a sterile western with some irrelevant offbeat elements thrown in for good measure. The story consists of Mackenna (Gregory Peck) coming upon an old Indian man with a map showing the whereabouts to some gold. Feeling that the map is meaningless he burns it and tries to move on. He becomes entangled with outlaw Colorado (Omar Sharif) who feels that the map was legit, and since Mackenna was the last one to see it, forces him to come along with him and use his memory to show him the location. Ultimately they meet a wide assortment of other characters all searching for the same thing.

The cheap special effects are one of the main drawbacks. They are awful and help bring down the whole movie. The scene involving Peck being tied to the back of a horse and then lead across an old rickety bridge has to rate as the worst as the wide shots clearly shows a miniature bridge with a toy man and toy horse. The climactic sequence involving the cataclysmic destruction of an entire valley is so tacky that it is almost painful to watch. There are also other shots spliced in throughout that were done on a different film stock and this difference in grain is obvious and distracting. Even simple shots of Peck riding his horse are laughable as it becomes obvious that he is not on a real horse, but instead one of those mechanical ones that bop him up and down in perfect rhythm.

Only when the film features its stellar supporting cast does it get interesting. Unfortunately this legendary line up was only given about ten minutes of screen time a piece and then very quickly killed off one by one in ways that are particularly gruesome and demeaning.

Peck is okay in the lead and acts as a sort of stabilizer. This was the film where he starts to look elderly with some gray hair showing and a handle bar stomach. He was also not as agile as his younger costar Sharif.

Julie Newmar as Indian lady Hesh-ke is a stand out and even sexier than she was as Catwoman on the TV-show ‘Batman’. She also displays a real vicious side and this probably rates as her best performance despite the fact that she never says a single word. Camilla Sparv as Inga is almost as sexy and the two share a fun ongoing rivalry.

The film is watchable and has some nice, even exciting, aerial shots. However as a whole it is pretty ordinary. Things added to make it seem unique really end up hurting it. Jose Feliciano’s singing is out of place and the music score overall is bad. Victory Jory’s narrative is unnecessary and a feeble attempt to make the production seem like an epic, which it definitely isn’t and the mystical ending just doesn’t work.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: May 10, 1969

Runtime: 2Hours 8Minutes

Rated M (Brief Nudity)

Director: J. Lee Thompson

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

1 Comment

Posted in 60's Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Outdoors, Westerns

Tagged , , , ,

Altered States (1980)

Posted on April 30, 2012 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Blair Brown’s hairy armpits.

            This film, which is loosely based on the experiences of dolphin researcher John Lily the inventor of the isolation tank, and from the Paddy Chayefsky novel comes this bizarre concoction that is half sci-fi and half surreal fantasy.  The story pertains to Eddie Jessup (William Hurt in his film debut) who spends time in his isolation tank at his Harvard research lab while taking hallucinatory drugs that send him into different states of consciousness that become increasingly more frightening and vivid until they begin to externalize in his everyday life.

It was directed by Ken Russell and if you are familiar with his work you realize that means the presence of lots and lots and lots of strange visuals that come at you in quick and unannounced ways. They are confusing, cluttered, and often times make no sense. However, since the story is pretty wide-open these trippy segments work to the film’s benefit, unlike other Russell productions where I felt they became off-putting.  They also give the movie distinction and momentum. I’ve never done LSD, acid, or meth, but these segments probably come as close to the experience of a drug trip as you will find.  It is best not to demand any logic and instead sit back and allow it to become an assault on the senses, which on that level works to excellent effect. I came away wishing these scenes had been more extended and frequent as they are the best part of the movie. Of course the state-of-art special effects are no longer as impressive and look like images put on a mat screen, but some of the other stuff is cool. My favorite part is where a naked Blair Brown and Hurt are lying on the ground and a strong wind completely covers their bodies with sand and then they slowly evaporate into the air.

Hurt does a competent job and the character isn’t the clichéd kind of sensitive modern man like most Hollywood protagonists. He is emotionally ambivalent and self-centered.  His unromantic marriage proposal to Emily (Blair Brown) is one for the books, but I liked it. Most research scientists probably aren’t a socially skilled, people person to begin with otherwise they wouldn’t be shutting themselves inside a lonely, dingy research lab all day, so in that regards I felt the script hit the target and gave the film a little more of an edge.

Blair does fine in her role as the long suffering wife and it is nice seeing her looking so young and even briefly smoking a joint. She looks great naked, but her armpits where much too hairy during the love-making scene and she should have shaved them. I also found it amusing that during the time the two were separated Eddie started to have relations with a younger student of his who continued to refer to him as ‘Dr. Jessup’ even when they were in bed together.

Charles Haid plays Mason Parrish a friend of Eddie’s who helps him out with his experiments despite strong misgivings. His rants and tirades are well-played and give the film energy when it is not in fantasy mode.

To me the movie became boring and contrived when Eddie started to mutate into that of an ape man and runs around the campus and city terrorizing everyone. It seemed too reminiscent to An American Werewolf in London, which came out around the same time as well as countless other wolf man movies. The part is also not played by Hurt, but instead Miguel Godreau, who was an excellent dancer. I was impressed with his limber body and the way he could climb things, which gave him an animalistic quality, but felt that if it represented the Hurt character then Hurt should have been performing it even if it meant allowing for certain concessions.

The opening sequence showing Hurt locked in a thin, rusty tank in an empty room is terrific. There is a certain starkness and foreboding quality, especially with the eerie music, that makes this one of the better openings to a horror movie. The use of the credit titles is creative and reminded me a bit of The Shining. However, the film’s ending is horrid and one of the worst I have seen. It reeks of being a forced ‘happy’ Hollywood ending that practically ruins the entire picture as a whole. Because of this and the fact that the script seems to only skim the surface of this potentially fascinating subject matter forced me to give it only a 5 rating.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: December 25, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 42Minutes

Rated R (Language, Brief Nudity, Adult Theme, Intense Visuals)

Director: Ken Russell

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video 

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Moody/Stylish, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Sci-Fi, Surreal/Fantasy

Tagged , , , ,

How to Beat the High Co$t of Living (1980)

Posted on April 25, 2012 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Ball full of money.

            Jane, Elaine, and Louise (Susan Saint James, Jane Curtain, Jessica Lange) are three women who find themselves in financial straits. They become aware of a contest going on at their local mall that features a giant plastic ball filled with money. The idea is to guess how much money is inside the ball, but the women decide to tunnel underneath the building and suck the money out with a vacuum.

The movie falls flat from the beginning. There is no action, hijinks, jokes, or pratfalls. Everything relies on the dialogue that is boring and conventional. The small attempts at humor including some Abraham Lincoln jokes are stale and unimaginative. It takes a plodding 35 minutes just to detail all of their financial difficulties and then another 40 minutes of going through their planning phase before we ever get to the actual heist, which proves not to be worth the wait.

Having a giant ball in the middle of the mall makes for an interesting visual and the concept of trying to get money out of it managed to hold my interest somewhat in what is otherwise a highly uninspired movie. However, I found it hard to believe that these women, as financially desperate as they were, would decide to pull off such a dangerous and complex heist when they had no experience in robbing anything before. Having them rob a bank, although more standard, would have made more sense and with a little imagination could have been even funnier and more interesting. The actual execution of the crime is dull and I thought it was really reckless and stupid that they chose to do it while security guards where standing around it and tons of people present watching a nearby play instead of waiting until the place closed. Also, it was ridiculous during the planning stage when they decided to force Jane to rob a grocery store in order to get her ‘psychologically ready’ and prove that she had the ‘guts’ to pull off the big heist, but this seemed stupid because if she got caught, which could easily happen, then all their plans would have been ruined.

The only thing that half-way saves it are the female leads and I liked all three of them. Saint James is a very attractive woman and normally I don’t particularly like ladies with husky voices, but with her it is sexy. I also enjoyed the naïve quality of her character. Lange is young and beautiful here and looking light years removed from the southern accented old crone that she has been playing in ‘An American Horror Story’. Her vivaciousness helps propel every scene that she is in. Curtain is a blast as well. She has impeccable comic timing and I always felt her presence on ‘Saturday Night Live’ was one of the main reasons that show was so successful and ground-breaking during its first five seasons. The only problem I had with the character is that she performs a striptease near the end, which isn’t funny or sexy and comes off as stupid and degrading instead. It is also quite clearly a body double and not Curtain herself that you end up seeing topless, so for any voyeurs out there who might think of buying this just for that reason, don’t bother.

The male leads are essentially wasted. Eddie Albert has a meaningless role as Jane’s father and I could see no other reason for why he took the part except that he wanted to stay busy in his old age. Richard Benjamin can be great at times, but here his character is vapid. I also thought it was a bit strange that he was cast as Lange’s husband since in real-life he was eleven years older and given her very youthful appearance here almost made it look like a middle-aged guy bedding a minor. Dabney Coleman is cast against type playing a nice guy for a change instead of a conniving jerk that he usually does. Since he plays conniving jerks so well I have always enjoyed him and the change of pace is interesting for a few seconds before it becomes boring like everything else.

The on-location shooting in Eugene, Oregon does not help. The music score comes about as close to ‘elevator music’ as you can get. The opening animation sequence is lame. Outside of a slightly amusing cameo by Garret Morris this thing never gels and it is one film you can afford to miss.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: July 11, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 44Minutes

Rated PG (Brief Nudity)

Director: Robert Sheerer

Studio: American International

Available: VHS, DVD, Netflix streaming

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy, Heist Movies, Movies with Nudity

Tagged , , ,

Maniac (1980)

Posted on March 26, 2012 | 4 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: He wants their hair.

A loner (Joe Spinell) terrorizes New York City by killing young women and scalping them. He then takes their hair, brings it home, and places it (actually he nails it) onto the heads of some mannequins that he has.

In a lot of ways this is the same old mechanical slasher flick as it has all the predictable characteristics of the others that dominated the early 80’s. The story is simple and strung along by long, drawn-out murder sequences. There is some suspense, but it is minimal since we know exactly what is going to happen. The victims are young, good looking women, who are clueless to the dangers that are lurking until it is too late. One segment in particular features a nurse getting off of work late at night, who mentions her fear of the killer and yet for some reason she still foolishly refuses a ride home from her friend and instead walks down a dark, lonely street and into, of course, eventual carnage.

There are also some rather glaring technical errors. One features a woman (the same one who refused a ride) running from the killer by going into an empty subway. Although isolation is the whole factor here there is one shot, taken from inside a departing subway car that clearly shows a whole bunch of people standing just across from her on the other side of the tracks. There is also a segment where Spinell takes his girlfriend to his mother’s grave. When the car pulls up to the cemetery it is a nice, bright afternoon, but when they reach the actual grave it has become pitch black with a strange unexplained fog that has rolled in. Lastly there is the ending. This is a man that has terrorized a whole city and yet only two policemen in an unmarked squad car come to his residence and when they do they don’t even bother to secure the site.

Despite the low-budget problems there are a few things that raise this slightly above the rest. One is the fact that it actually manages to get inside the killer’s head. You hear the inner conversations between his ‘good’ side and his ‘bad’ side. Of course this only touches the surface of a true schizoid personality, but it does offer a little more depth than most. It also helps create a good portrait of a tormented soul and you end up feeling more sadness than fear for the man. The film also consistently has a dark, grainy look, which helps accentuate the ugly theme. Having it take place in New York City gives it a little more distinction and atmosphere.

The special effects are good. The part where he blows a man’s head off, through a car windshield, looks very realistic and has become the film’s most famous scene. The surreal ending, where the mannequins all come to life and exact a sort of revenge, is also well-handled and imaginative. Makeup artist Tom Savini, who also appears as the character of ‘Disco Boy’, has had a lot of success, but the stuff here may be his best.

Director William Lustig shows some panache and Spinell, who also co-wrote the screenplay, gives a surprisingly strong performance, but their attempts at creating a better understanding of a crazed killer prove placid and simply done for shock value.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: December 26, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 27Minutes

Not Rated (Graphic Violence, Brief Nudity, Language, Adult Theme)

Director: William Lustig

Studio: Magnum Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (30th Anniversary Edition)

4 Comments

Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Exploitation, Horror, Low Budget, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Psychological, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , , , ,

The Gong Show Movie (1980)

Posted on March 19, 2012 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Jaye P. Morgan topless.

A very fractured, offbeat look at game show host Chuck Barris and his trials and tribulations as producer and host of the hit 70’s game show ‘The Gong Show’. In between there are some very short snippets of acts that never made it past the network censor. If you are unfamiliar with the show it featured three B-celebrities, usually Jamie Farr, Artie Johnson, and Jaye P. Morgan, who would watch talent acts performed by amateurs. The acts were usually done in the comic and absurd vein and could include anything from singing, dancing, or stand-up comedy. If they were really bad the celebrities would get out of their seats and bang a big gong that was behind them, which would have the performer thrown off. If the participant avoided being gonged they would then have the potential of winning a monetary prize at the end.

If you were not a fan of the show then you probably won’t be a fan of this movie either. If you were a fan you still might not like it because Barris acts consistently embarrassed by his creation and seems to want to disown it.

The film lacks cohesion. It mixes absurdity with surrealism and even trashy segments thrown in for good measure. The quirky bits are forced and the ‘hilarious’ dialogue is just plain stupid. There is also too many scenes involving a stuffy, uptight network boss who is so over- the-top clichéd that he becomes annoying.

Barris never seemed completely cut out for a game show host and even less as a leading man. He has no charisma and  spends the whole time moping around. He comes off as very burdened making you wonder if his stories about being a part-time CIA hit man were true. Either way he is not an engaging centerpiece for a movie. It would have been better had it broadened out and shown more of “The Gong Show” cast especially Jaye P. Morgan who is as raunchy as ever in the few scenes that she is in including her topless part!

The show always had a unique and perverse brilliance, which comes out every time it features one of the acts from the show making me feel that using this simply as a highlight reel of all of the best and most outrageous acts would have been a better idea. The ones that they show aren’t bad, but they are cut pretty short. A few of the ones that I liked featured two teenaged girls performing fellatio with their popsicles. Another one has three men standing at a urinal and making music with their zippers until one of their zippers gets caught! There is also two obese Siamese twins singing the Captain and Tennille hit ‘Love Will Keep Us Together’.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: May 23, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 29Minutes

Rated R (Language, Brief Nudity, Raunchy Humor)

Director: Chuck Barris

Studio: Universal

Available: None

2 Comments

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

Tagged , , ,