Boaz Davidson, the man who brought us Lemon Popsicle, the American remix The Last American Virgin and The Expendables, directed this early Cannon film, which is all about two kids who fall in love (Danny and Alice, played by Timothy Wead and Mary Cannon), move to New York City and watch it all fall apart.

There’s a good supporting cast — there’s nothing that I ever disliked Vincent Schiavelli , T.K. Carter and William Sanderson in — and hey look there’s Shirley Stolen from The Honeymoon Killers.

The kids fight, they reconcile, they work hard, they hit a wall, they nearly break up and almost lose their kid, but the end brings it all back together in a joyous courtroom moment that had me say, “You know, they’re still going to lose that kid to CPS, right?”

This really seems like an afterschool special made by maniacs that don’t really feel like giving you a moral or a lesson, which really seems to be a description of so many Cannon films when you get right down to it.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As part of an American Giallo week, we watched Schizoid on January 9, 2018. Now it’s back as part of this month of all things Cannon. 

Also, this isn’t the retitled America edit of Fulci’s Lizard In a Woman’s Skin.

Julie (Marianna Hill, Messiah of Evil, The Baby) writes the lonely hearts column for a newspaper, but she’s suddenly getting more than letters from the lovelorn. An anonymous person is sending her letters threatening to murder people. And at the very same time, members of her group therapy session are getting stabbed and killed, one by one. Is there a connection?

Schizoid has all the markings of a giallo — the main character is in the middle of a murder investigation and has no idea who is behind it, while many of the killings are from the murderer’s POV. And let’s not forget the black leather gloves!

It’s missing the insane devotion to fashion and interior design, but we can’t hold that against it, as at least Dr. Pieter (Klaus Kinski, a legit real life maniac who always plays maniacs on screen) has an interesting home.

Right from the beginning, when the ladies of Dr. Pieter’s encounter group luxuriate in a hot tub, we get the idea that someone is watching. When one of them leaves, she is run off the road, chased into a farmhouse and repeatedly stabbed with a pair of scissors. Several days later, a couple that’s trying to have sex is surprised by the body.

Are the letters connected? Why do they mention a gun when the murders are done with a knife? Who is the killer? Is it Gilbert (Christopher Lloyd, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension), the weirdest person in her therapy group? Is it her ex-husband, Doug (Craig Wasson, Body Double) who argues with her every day because they work in the same place? Or how about Dr. Pieter, because he’s Klaus Kinski? Beyond that, he’s having sex with every single one of his patients, including a stripper named Pat (Flo Gerrish, Don’t Answer the Phone) who he takes against a hot water heater! And hey — his relationship with Alison, (Donna Wilkes, Jaws 2, Angel) his daughter, feels super incestual. Maybe that’s who the killer is!

This film also follows the giallo tradition by having police officers that are so ineffectual that they depend on the heroine to do her own investigation with no protection and only a special phone line to help her.

Alison and Dr. Pieter argue repeatedly, especially after he grows closer to Julie, bringing her home to dinner. She begins to dress in her mother’s clothes or as a little girl and even steals her father’s gun.

The police put in the phone line, but every single call seems to be cranky readers who are angry about Julie’s column. Then, Alison calls her from a payphone, gun in hand. Julie gets Alison to come visit her at her house, where her husband (she doesn’t call him ex-husband) is doing some repair work. Alison throws out a whole bunch of the letters and brandishes her gun, but it’s unloaded. Then, the phone rings.

It’s Dr. Pieter, who demands to know where this number reaches Julie. He comes to visit, but someone takes a shot at him. We don’t see who, but he assumes that it is Alison. The lights go out and we have no idea who is in the room with him. The phone rings again, but it’s not Alison or Julie on the line. They’re both tied up and a man is on the other line — but who!

Should I reveal it here? I won’t. But I will say that this movie is truly a giallo because it’s the person that is the least likely suspect and the police come running at the last moment. And by that, I mean just in time for the credits.

Director David Paulsen also brought Savage Weekend to the screen, but is more well known for his primetime soap opera work on shows like Knots Landing, Dallas and Dynasty.

Want to see this one for yourself? Vinegar Syndrome has just released this on 4K with X-Ray.

You can also listen to The Cannon Canon episode that discusses this movie here.

There aren’t many movies that have a scene where Adam West is nude in an Austin Powers way and has a famous madame go down on him while he takes a long satisfying puff on a cigarette, but here with this early Cannon film, which was the third and final in the series* of films about Xaviera Hollander, a Dutch call girl who grew up in a Japanese-run internment camp and going on to be New York City’s top madame before writing the best-selling The Happy Hooker: My Own Story, acting in My Pleasure Is My Business, releasing a board game and recording the album Xaviera! which has spoken word thoughts on sex, her singing The Beatles’ “Michele” and then some early JOI content including her having audio sex with Toronto rock star Ronnie Hawkins.

Martine Beswick (Zora in From Russia With Love, Paula Caplan in Thunderball, a cavewoman named Nupondi who battles Racquel Welch in One Million Years B.C., Sister Hyde in Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, the Queen of Evil in Oliver Stone’s Seizure, plus From a Whisper to a Scream, Critters 4 and the Fred Olen Rey movie Cyclone; more people should be worshipping her) is Xaviera, who has been flown to Hollywood to discuss the movie of her life that she doesn’t want to make. She’d rather just have fun with her business, which she’s still a very hands — and other body parts — on part of, servicing a cop played by Dick Miller in the first scene. Martine may be following Lynn Redgrave and Joey Heatherton in the role, but if she can’t measure up to their acting — actually, she totally does — she’s more willing to toss off her clothes.

Warkoff Brothers Studios — run by Phil Silvers! — wants to get the signature from her to make this, but they want it cheap, so they use Lionel Lamely (West) to get her to fall in love. Come on, people. This is the Happy Hooker! She turns the tables by getting her girls to make the movie cheap and bringing young Warkoff Brothers exec Robby Rottman (Chris Lemmon) to her side, making an independent version of her film financed by horizontal assets.

Her ladies are Tanya Boyd from Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks; January 1977 Playboy Playmate of the Month Susan Kiger from Death Screams; 1969 Miss Utah Lindsay Bloom who was Maybelle on The Dukes of Hazzard; twins Candi and Randi Brough and Dana Feller, who was only in one other movie, the Cannon weirdness that is Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype.

This is the kind of movie that has Army Archerd play himself and satirize Hollywood while completely being Hollywood. But it’s fun, all of the women have way more brains and agency than the men and maybe we can overlook that the end of the movie has Richard Deacon — yes, Mel Cooley from The Dick Van Dyke Show — and West dressed as women. And hey — Edie Adams is in this, too.

It’s total fluff, but the kind of fluff that makes me happy. There’s never any real tension, nothing other than the trans jokes at the end that are troublesome and carefree late 70s nudity. 15 year old me gives this movie unlimited stars; 49 year old me can’t believe that I still watch and write about stuff like this.

*There are two other movies inspired by her, The Life and Times of Xaviera Hollander and The Best Part of a Man. 

Joe (Walter Olkewicz, Jacques Renaul from Twin Peaks) is worried that he’s going to close his bar, which seems more like an Italian family place than a place to drink, but who knows, right? Anyways, just as he thinks everything is at its lowest, he heads to a disco nearby that’s packed and learns that it’s not the mirrorball or the coke or 135 bpm remixes or the dancing, it’s the wet t-shirts.

Hot T-Shirts comes at the line between the old Cannon and the Golan-Globus version that’s better known and was directed and written by Chuck Vincent, whose show business career took him from managing the Yale Repertory and the Negro Ensemble Company to hardcore (Roommates, Visions) and more mainstream movies like Hollywood Hot Tubs, Deranged, Warrior Queen and Bedroom Eyes II.

Therefore ensues several scenes of disco music overlaid with women getting water all over their chests because in 1980, that’s what entertainment was, I guess. Corinne Wahl, who was once married to Ken, is in this, as the ringer in the wet t-shirt contests, which, as I’ve said before, constitute most of this movie’s intricate storyline.

For the raincoaters — or streamers now, right? — Randy West shows up.

That said, this movie proves that nude college students can actually be boring. Who knew?

EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally watched this movie on July 7, 2021, but as it’s the first Golan-Globus Cannon 1980s list on the voluminous wikipedia list of Cannon’s movies, this feels like a great place to start. 

Based on the 1976 novel of the same name by Bernard Taylor, this film pulls no punches if you’re thinking that children are safe in a movie.

Alan and Kate Marlowe are walking with their four children — Davy, Lucy, Sam and Matthew — when a pregnant stranger (Angela Pleasence  — yes, Donald’s daughter) follows them home, staring oddly and doing strange things like cutting their telephone line before giving birth in their home. The next day she disappears — I guess hospitals weren;t around in 1980 England — and keep her child, who they name Bonnie. I also figure that the adoption system wasn’t a thing either.

Within days, Matthew is dead while lying in the same playpen as the mysterious baby. The Davy drowns in a creek, supposedly saving Bonnie’s life, which makes sense, until then Sam dies in a barn and Bonnie’s ribbon is nearby. Suddenly people are calling the Marlowes child killers. Then, Bonnie gets the mumps and kisses him, giving him the illness as well as a dream where he realizes she has killed all of his children other than Lucy.

By the end of the film, Bonnie has claimed the Marlowes’ unborn child when she trips Kate, broken up their marriage and used mind control — wow, where did that come from? — to make Lucy walk out a window. This ending is nothing like the book, so I’ve heard. I do like the close where Alan sees the woman in the park who started all this insanity, but nobody will listen to his prophecy of doom.

This was directed by Gabrielle Beaumont, working from a script by her husband Olaf Pooley. She was the first woman to direct an episode of Star Trek and also made Death of a Centerfold, He’s My Girl and Beastmaster III: The Eye of Braxus.