Well, Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh and John Russo is a local, so that counts for all the reasons we need to have these movies be a double feature. That’s right, we’re watching Andy Warhol’s and The Majorettes this Saturday night on the Groovy Doom Facebook page at 8 PM East Coast Time.
First, it’s time to fuck life in the gallbladder! You can watch Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein aka Flesh for Frankenstein aka Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein in 3D. You can watch it courtesy of the fine folks at Blechbuster Video.
Sure, at its heart Vigilante is Death Wish, but both of those movies are really just westerns updated to fit the decade that they were created for. Plus, where Bronson’s film at least seems to end with some hope, this movie is a nihilistic, cynical and pessimistic journey into hell, which is really the only three ways to properly describe just such a trip.
Eddie Marino is played by Robert Forster in a rare lead role. You know how I always say that every movie should have William Smith in it? Well, let’s amend that by saying that if William Smith doesn’t want to do it, call Robert Forester. Despite living in the end of the world NYC of 1982, he has a good wife (Rutanya Alda, who between Mommie Dearest, The Stuff, Amityville II: The Possession and Girls Nite Out ends up being in so many of my favorite movies) and a cute little kid.
Sadly, he’s not in some coming of age tale or family drama. No, Eddie Marino has the bad fortune to be the hero of a William Lustig movie. And between scalp-lopping serial killers and zombified cops, every Lustig movie I’ve seen is full of tragedy, despair and a casual disregard for morality and the suffering of its characters.
Eddie’s co-workers, Nick (Fred Williamson, always a more than welcome sight), Burke (Richard Bright, Cut and Run) and Ramon (Joseph Carberry, Short Eyes) are fed up with crime, the cops and the system that keeps criminals out of jail. Now, the neighborhood tells them, instead of the police, who is behind the crimes that happen every day.
Eddie refuses to be a part of this, even when he comes home to find his wife stabbed and his son shot and killed. His wife had helped a gas station attendant who was being abused and that’s all it took for Frederico “Rico” Melendez (Willie Colón, a salsa king when not acting) and his gang to snap.
Assistant District Attorney Mary Fletcher (Carol Lynley*, The Night Stalker) tries to get him put away, but another gang member named Prago (Don Blakely), bribes the Judge Sinclair, allowing his defender Eisenburg (Joe Spinell!) to get him off with a plea bargain. Eddie flips out, attacks the judge and ends up being the one to go to the big house.
After being saved from a jailhouse assault by Rake (Woody Strode, the former pro wrestler who was also in Keomaand Once Upon a Time in the West; as if we need any reinforcement that this movie is a western), our hero does his time and emerges ready to get bloody revenge. His wife has left him, his son is dead and now, he has nothing left to lose.
While Vigilante was successful at the box office, Lustig never saw any profits from the film at all. First, Film Ventures International wanted to rename it Street Gang**. Then, as we all know, producer Edward L. Montoro ran away in 1985 with a million dollars in company money and was never seen again.
*This role was meant for Caroline Munro.
**It played in Detroit, Chicago and Pittsburgh with that title.
You can watch this on Tubi or do yourself a kindness and get the 4K UHD and blu ray set from Blue Underground. It has a 16-bit print from the original 35mm camera negative, with Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos audio, along with three different commentary tracks (Lustig and co-producer Andrew Garroni; Lustig and Robert Forster, Fred Williamson and Frank Pesce; Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson), trailers, TV and radio commercials, interviews with writer Richard Vetere, Rutanya Alda and associate producer/first A.D./actor Randy Jurgensen and a book with plenty of info on the film from Michael Gingold.
Editor’s Note: This review originally ran on August 7, 2020, a part of our reviews for Mill Creek’s Savage Cinema 12-Movie collection. We’re bringing it back as part of Mill Creek’s B-Movie Blast 50-Film pack.
Savage Cinema’s last film is the 1962 film Dangerous Charter, the only narrative film directed and produced by Robert Gottschalk, who helped found Panavision. This film was to be a showcase for his new process and camera lenses.
Instead, it is 75 minutes that feels like 75 hours, an odyssey at sea that seems to never end. It has no motorcycles in it, no matter what the Savage Cinema box art may promise
The crew of a fishing boat finds a deserted luxury yacht at sea with a dead body and half a million of heroin on board. There is no Blind Dead to save this movie, just a lot of talking. In fact, they may still be talking as I write about this movie.
You just never know when it comes to Mill Creek sets. We first reviewed this bike-racing flick on March 7, 2020, because we just enjoy digging up ’70s drive-in junk. Then we revisited it August 4, 2020, when the film popped up as part of Mill Creek’s Savage Cinema set, a box set which we reviewed in full.
Yep. Mill Creek “goes green” once again, as they also include the film on their B-Movie Blast 50-Film pack. Ah, but those scamps at Mill Creek changed it up: now they’ve included the film under its alternate title of Five the Hard Way . . . and we, at first, though they included, but mistitled, Gordon Parks’s blaxploitation actioner Three the Hard Way. But this isn’t a blaxplotation picture. So, while there’s no Fred Williamson, we do get a Ross Hagen and Micheal Pataki fix in the bargain.
But, after watching, we still don’t know what a “sidehacker” is.
Well, we do, actually, as Sidehackers is part of the late ’60s fascination with bikers, a genre that got its start — to an extent — with Motorpsycho (1965) and featured the likes of The Wild Angels (1966) and hit its peak with Easy Rider (1969). However, that didn’t stop low-budget studios from pumpin’ out more biker flicks into the mid-’70s,with the blaxploitation genre offering their takes on the genre with The Black Six and Darktown Strutters (both 1974).
Sidehackers, however, isn’t mention within the biker genre, as we are not dealing with any Hell’s Angels or Satan’s Sadist or Born Losers, here, but legit motorcycle racers — sidecar motocross racing, in particular. Yes. If you ever wondered if there was a movie made about the obscure sport of sidecar motocross, well, the fine folks at Crown International gave you one. And much like Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer indulging Tom Cruise’s love of stock car racing into a movie with Days of Thunder (1990), Crown indulged Ross Hagen’s love of the sport.
As with most racing movies — a trend that carried out to the likes of the sort-of-apoc “death sport” rip Ground Rules (1997) — we have a mechanic — who is also a “sidehacker,” as well — who wants to be a racer behind-the-handlebars, in this case, Rommel, played by producer Ross Hagen.
Now, every race flick must have a villain; Tom Cruise had Michael Rooker, right? Here, our villain, J.C, played by the always welcomed Michael Pataki, who excels at dickdom when he needs to, is abusive to his girlfriend, his crew, and his gang. And as in every Fabian or Frankie Avalon stock car flick (1966’s Fireball 500, for one; 1967’s Thunder Alley, for two), the bad driver’s girl goes “femme fatale” and pines for the good racer.
So, how do you get even when your “woman” makes you look bad: beat the hell out of her and blame her crush; so J.C’s gang comes after our man Rommel and his woman, Rita (Diane McBain, who we reviewed in Wicked Wicked, but she did the racing flick thing with Elvis in Spinout; yep, she’s in Thunder Alley, too).
That’s pretty much the movie. But what raises Sidehackers above all of those Elvis, Fabian, and Frankie Avalon racing flicks is that there’s no stock footage, here: all the racing was shot specifically for the film.
So, yeah. What we have here is a stock car racing flick, just with sidecar motocross racing. But even with the original-to-the-film racing footage, we’d still — as in the somewhat similar Rollerball (without the ball, natch) — we’d wish there was more sport and less romantic drama.
And what’s this all have to do with Goldie Hawn?
Goldie’s husband, former Broadway dancer Gus Trikonis — who appeared as one of the “Sharks” in West Side Story (1961) — made his directing debut with the film. He’d go onto direct the always great Richard Crenna in The Evil (1978), as well as giving us the hicksploitation romp Moonshine County Express (1977), the nasty-scuzzy country fallen star romp Nashville Girl (1976), and one of the more successful movies-based on songs, Take This Job and Shove It (1981). He and Hagen would also go against the grain and break the mold with the only film — ever — dedicated to the illegal “sport” of cockfighting: Supercock (1975). Okay, well, two: we can’t forget Monte Hellman of Two-Lane Blacktop fame (1971) made one: Cockfighter (1974) for Roger Corman.
So, there. Now you know about the two films made about cockfighting — by way of the only movie made about motocross sidecar racing.
As we dig through the credits, we notice that Robert Tessler — a stuntman who formed Stunts Unlimited with Hal Needham, and made his acting debut in Tom Laughlin’s own biker flick, The Born Losers (1967), and appeared in Burt Reynolds’s football flick, The Longest Yard (1974) — appears. Also keep your eyes open for B-movie warhorse Hoke Howell (Humanoids from the Deep, 1980). Screenwriter Tony Huston went “biker” again with Outlaw Riders (1971), but previously gave us the female-centric biker flick, Hellcats (1968).
Editor’s Note: This review originally ran on August 6, 2020, a part of our reviews for Mill Creek’s Savage Cinema 12-Movie collection. We’re bringing it back as part of Mill Creek’s B-Movie Blast 50-Film pack.
The Savage Cinema set from Mill Creek just keeps on rolling this week, bringing to us not only some NASCAR, but former racer turned country star Marty Robbins, who sang “El Paso” and “Honkytonk Man.”
Three brothers — stock car driver Marty (Robbins playing himself), mechanic Del (John Ashley, the man from Blood Island) and revenue agent Steve — all have their issues. Marty is trying to be a star, Del wants to be Marty and Steve is busting some moonshiners.
Del tries to out do his brother to prove himself to his girlfriend Sue (Gigi Perrau, The Cool and the Crazy) and the gang ends up almost killing them all. Meanwhile, Connie Smith and the Stonemans play a whole mess of songs.
The entire film was independently made in Nashville, Tennessee. John Ashley told Trash Compactor, “Marty was a terrific fellow and a great singer, and I was a big fan of his. He was a stock car racer, loved stock cars, and the producers had put this thing together. They said to me that this was going to be his motion picture debut, and they needed me to play his brother and basically carry the movie. So I went down there for six or seven weeks.”
This was directed by Will Zens, who also made Trucker’s Womanand Hot Summer in BarefootCounty, two Joe Bob Briggs-approved redneck movies.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This review originally ran on August 8, 2020, as we watched the Savage Cinema box set. Then we brought it back on November 22, 2020, as part of our “William Grefe Week.” And Mill Creek, never to let a cool film die, has brought it back as part of their B-Movie Blast 50-Film pack.
William Grefe came right out of the Florida swamps and demanded that you watch his films. He was second unit on I Eat Your Skin before unleashing films like Mako: The Jaws of Death, Death Curse of Tartu and Stanley, a movie in which a young man menaces Alex Rocco and Marcia Knight with snakes.
Rod Tillman (Steve Alaimo, whose life took him from being in the Redcoats, whose song “Mashed Potatoes” hit #75 on the Hot 100, hosting Dick Clark’s Where the ActionIs and even owning TK Records, who dabbled in the Miami bass scene) is a stock car racer out of cash. He sells everything he owns and enters Swinger’s Paradise where he does nothing if not swing. Actually, that’s where he meets Satan’s Angels, a biker gang who needs a getaway driver for a con they have in mind.
They are Banjo (Willie Pastrano, who held the unified world light heavyweight boxing titles (WBA, WBC, The Ring) from 1963 until 1965), Fats (Jeff Gillen, yes, Jeff from Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things and the director of Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile, as well as Santa Claus in A Christmas Story), Linda (Bobbie Byers, the voice of Johnny Sokko in Voyage Into Space) and Jester (John Vella, who played for the Oakland Raiders).
The cops try and get Rod on their side too, but he’s all into Linda, who claims she doesn’t do the crimes for the financial prize, but for the kicks. It all ends up in a lighthouse shootout between the cops, the bikers and our hero, who is caught between both sides.
Featuring real-life members of the Hell’s Angels and a Tampa garage rock band known as The Birdwatchers — you know, for the kids — this movie is probably amongst the best on this set. It also has, I can assure you, motorcycles in it.
You can either watch this on YouTube or see the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version on Tubi.
As he was trying to break into Hollywood after playing Johnny in The Toxic Avenger, Ryan Sexton discovered El Duce, the leader of The Mentors, passed out in the bushes outside his apartment. That led to him videotaping the life of the shock rock performer for some period.
For a quarter of a century, these tapes went unused. But now, David Lawrence (the editor of Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on the Exorcist) and Rodney Ascher (Room 237) have taken the footage and recombined it to tell the story of who El Duce was and how The Mentors were prophets or a shocking culture that they themselves would have both fit right into and railed against.
This is by no means an easy watch, but I have no idea why you’d be here if you weren’t already a fan of the days when rock and roll could be stupid, dangerous and both in equal measure.
You can come out of this thinking El Duce was a complete moron. Or perhaps he was a tortured soul who never really had a chance, who took fighting authority figures in high school to the next logical degree. Perhaps he was a victim of abuse who at times was so drunk that he couldn’t articulate how that made him feel, but would rather go for the shock of casual racism or German salutes. Was he in on the joke until he became the joke? Or was that the joke?
The Mentors: Kings of Sleaze Rockumentary came out a year before this and while that may tell a more complete picture, this is the more polished and ultimately heartbreaking movie. There’s a moment where Jerry Springer asks El Duce to take his hood off and then immediately asks him to put it back on. But I kind of think that the mask that he was compelled to wear was way more than just an executioner hood.
Katrina “Hellkat” Bash (Sarah T. Cohen) has hit rock bottom, but then she learns that the bottom goes even lower when she finds herself entering a no holds barred MMA tournament against men, beasts and even demons, all to save her soul and the soul of her dead child.
Directors Scott Jeffrey (The Bad Nun) and Rebecca Matthews (The Candy Witch) have a fun script by Michele Pacitto (Jurassic Dead, Monster Force Zero) and Jordan Rockwell to work from and they’ve delivered a dark night of hell for the soul.
There haven’t been many mixed martial arts versus Satan movies, so let’s consider this one the very first. That in itself is more than a good enough reason to check this one out.
I liked how the filmmakers did not shy at all away from the fact that their heroine is incredbly damaged while still remembering that she’s a hero.
This movie is available from Uncork’d Entertainment. You can check it out on demand and on DVD.
Never doubt my commitment to Crown International Pictures or Mill Creek Entertainment. As I prepared to watch this movie, I learned that my B-Movie Blast set actually had the disks for the Dark Crimes set. A quick Amazon order was made, but I wouldn’t be getting a delivery in time to write this for the site. And Weekend Pass, in a world where everything is streaming, was not streaming, even on Mill Creek’s great movieSPREE app.
There’s one place on the internet that movies go and hide. That would be OK.ru, the Russian lawless land of video, where you can often find the movie you want — it was the only place I could find Armed and Dangerous — but you have to hear someone screaming the dialogue in Russian over the real audio track of the movie.
Lawrence Bassoff made two movies: this one and Hunk. Both are on the B-Movie Blast set — as well as Mill Creek’s Too Cool for School collection. Yes, I am that guy buying multiple Mill Creek 12, 20, 50 and even 100 movie sets just because I love them that much.
Basically, four Navy recruits get out and about on shore leave after finishing their initial training. This is what we call a hijinks ensue movie. Just re-read that first sentence and add “hijinks ensure” and you’ve got the entire movie figured out.
Have I seen too many teen sex comedies to instantly recognize Chip McAllister as Magneto Jones from Hamburger: The Motion Picture? That D.W. Brown was in Mischief? That Hilary Shepherd was also in Scanner Cop, Theodore Rex and, yes, Bassoff’s other film Hunk?
Look, some people use their minds to make the world a better place by inventing great things or leading others in peace and harmony. I just sit here in my pajamas watching teen movies from when I was a teen and write them up for you to read. I’d argue I’m doing the Lord’s work.
PS: Phil Hartman is in this, which makes how boring the rest of the film is a necessary exercise and maddening, because he should have just been the whole movie.
Editor’s Note: Sam loves this flick as much as I do, i.e., we crushed on Betsy Russell back in the VHS days, and he’ll give us another take on the film — later this month — as we unpack its inclusion on the Excellent Eighties set during this, our Mill Creek Month celebration.
Betsy Russell was a teen dream in competition for our teen hearts alongside Deborah Foreman (Valley Girl, My Chauffeur). And with her curly mop of black hair — and that cap! — she was a tomboy after our hearts. After co-starring alongside Phoebe Cates (Fast Times at Ridgemont High) in Private School (1983), she earned her first starring role in the action-thriller Avenging Angel (1985), a role that she earned after Donna Wilkes (Blood Song) turned down reprising the Angel role over money.
You gotta admit, the bolt-n-wrench logo is pretty darn inventive.
Russell is perfectly cast as Tomasina “Tommy” Boyd, a strong-willed garage grease monkey with dreams to become a stock car driver. Daunted by Randy Starr (Gerard Christopher; went on to become Superboy in the 1989 to 1992 series of the same name), a sexy, chauvinistic fellow racer, she plans to beat him on the track and earn his respect — and love. All in all: Tomboy is a dumb film but a fun film, filled with sexism, bad n’ bouncy ’80s new wave tunes, and cheesy comedy — basically all the things we expect from our ’80s comedies of yesteryear. A flick about “female empowerment” certainly deserved better than a T&A Crown International take . . . but hey, us horndogs will power through since we have Kristi Summers (Savage Streets, Hell Comes to Frogtown) as Tommy’s friend, along with Cynthia Thompson (Cavegirl), and scream queen Michelle Bauer in the cast.
As with Deborah Foreman: Russell was poised for stardom, but never broke through. While on the set of Avenging Angel, an offer came across the desk for a role in Lawrence Kasdan’s box-office western smash Silverado (1985); Betsy turned down the part; it went to Rosanna Arquette. Leaving the business shortly after her role in the low-budget actioner Delta Heat (1992) with Anthony Edwards, Betsy came out of retirement to work in the Saw horror franchise (we’ve reviewed them all, search for them).
If you’ve read our Mill Creek reviews — or plowed through the box sets yourself — you know their box sets are primarily comprised from the Crown International Pictures’ catalog; a catalog that’s all over the place across every genre imaginable. Yeah, Crown loved the adolescent comedy-drama racket, in particular, and wanted some of that Fast Times and Risky Business, well, business, with the likes of films such as Coach, Hunk, Jocks, and My Chauffeur, and My Tutor just to name a few. And thanks to Mill Creek, we’ve watched and reviewed them all this month during our February Mill Creek blowout.
Director Herb Freed is someone known all too well in the B&S About Movies’ offices, with his work in the horror flicks Haunts, Beyond Evil, and Graduation Day. The Eric Douglas in the credits is, in fact, the less successful (and sadly) no-longer-with-us brother of Micheal and son of Kirk (Saturn 3).
You can relive the ’80s with Betsy in Avenging Angel, Out of Control (1985), and one of her later comeback films, Chain Letter (2010) on Tubi TV. Unfortunately, there’s no freebie uploads of Tomboy to enjoy online and it’s currently offline at Amazon Prime. But thanks to Mill Creek, there’s plenty of opportunities — at affordable prices — to get your own copy.
While Tomboy became an oft-run HBO favorite and VHS rental, Tomboy didn’t see a DVD reissue until 2006. Mill Creek eventually recycled the film on several box sets: Too Cool for School Collection (2009), which also features The Beach Girls, Cavegirl, Coach, Hunk, Jocks, Malibu Beach,My Chauffeur, The Pom Pom Girls, The Van, and Weekend Pass. In 2011, Tomboy was also released in two four-pack sets with a combination of those same films. And you can also pick it up as part of their 50-movie set B-Movie Blast and Excellent Eighties, both which we’ve unpacked this month. Need more enticement? Here’s the trailer.
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