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CBS LATE MOVIE: Firepower (1979)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Firepower was on the CBS Late Movie on March 9, 1983.

Firepower started as a Dirty Harry film, written by Bill Kerby, but was later rewritten. At one point, it was going to have Terence Hill as the star. Then, producer Carlo Ponti came on and got his wife, Sophia Loren, hired for $1 million. The expectation was that Charles Bronson would be the star before he decided he wasn’t interested. Some say it’s because they wouldn’t hire Jill Ireland. Whatever it was, so much money had been spent that the movie had to be made, so James Coburn, in one of his last starring roles, came on.

He was quoted in Psychotronic Video issue 9, saying, “I did it for the money, the locations (the Caribbean islands), and to work with Sophia Loren. The director was Michael Winner. He’s probably one of the weirdest guys I’ve ever met. Yet, I thought he was a good guy when I first met him. But when he got on the set, he was almost like a total dictator. I found it hard to work that way. The most fun I had was when I got to drive a bulldozer through a house in the islands.”

This Janet Maslin review is, to me, a rave: “Mr. Winner directs movies the way others toss salads, which means that Firepower is best appreciated at a kind of mental half‐mast. A lot happens. None of it makes sense. Some of the performances Mr. Winner gets from his supporting players are rip‐roaringly awful, as is Gato Barbieri’s loud and schlocky score. However, there’s a nice chemistry in the teaming of Miss Loren, Mr. Coburn and Mr. Simpson, each of whom has an unusually physical presence on the screen.”

Those are the kind of reviews that make me watch movies!

Adele Tasca (Loren) watches her husband get killed with a letter bomb and blames his boss, one of the wealthiest men in the world, Karl Stegner (George Touliatos). Turns out the drug they worked on causes cancer, and Stegner wants to kill all the loose ends and disappear.

FBI agent Frank Hull (Vincent Gardenia) turns to a former secret agent, Sal Hyman (Eli Wallach), to help track down the big pharma villain. In turn, Hyman hires retired hitman Jerry Fannon (Coburn), who is now gardening and wants nothing to do with the world of murder. But for a million dollars, he takes the job.

When his assistant Catlett (O.J.) is killed by the mob, it becomes personal. Working with Adele, he tracks down Stegner, who isn’t who he says he is. He’s Anthony Franciosa! Man, the cast! Victor Mature in his last movie (paid $5,000 cash — for just 8 hours work — so that it wasn’t taxed), Jake LaMotta, Billy Barty, Paul D’Amato…did I go back in time and work in the casting office?

In his book, Winner Takes All: A Life of Sorts, Winner said that he and O.J. remained close friends, even when Simpson was accused of a double murder, a charge of which Winner was sure he was guilty.

Michael Winner, noted lunatic, a man who nearly died after eating nothing but steak tartare and nothing else, said this: “In the meantime, Nicole arrived and was fatuous and unpleasant. O. J. was a delight, and Al Cowling was a delight. I stayed very friendly with them for many years after the movie.

The trial doesn’t affect my opinion of O. J. After his first trial, I was in a serious political discussion with Adam Bolton of Sky News. The Attorney-General and some MPs were there. Adam Bolton introduced me. “And Michael Winne, who was a friend of O. J. Simpson’s.” I said, “No, not was, Adam. I am a friend of O. J. Simpson’s.”

I think the O. J. Simpson trial showed clearly that the LA police fabricated so much evidence that the jury was right to find him innocent.

I wasn’t about to re-try him. Regardless of my opinion, it doesn’t alter the fact that he was acquitted of murder, whether people believe he did it or not.”

Years later they met and this is what Winner remember: “He also maintained his outrageous sense of humour. We were driving around Hyde Park Corner, a crowded and dangerous spot. I nearly hit two people. O. J. said, “Watch out, man! They’ll say O. J. killed another two!”

You can watch this on Tubi.

FANTASIA 2025: Anything That Moves (2025)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Official synopsis: Anything That Moves follows nubile sex worker Liam who bikes with his girlfriend — his partner in both business and pleasure — through the city delivering snacks and divine satisfaction to his love-hungry clients. Meanwhile, a serial killer’s gory murders are piling up and all the evidence seems to point back to the lovers’ bed. 

If you have been wondering what Ginger Lynn and Nina Hartley are up to these days, writer/director  Alex Phillips has you covered with his latest feature Anything That Moves. The two actresses add adult-film authenticity to this tale of bicycling sex workers Liam (Hal Baum) and his girlfriend Thea (Jiana Nicole), who get caught up in the case of a serial killer who targets Liam’s clients.

The film’s aesthetic combines 1970s era porn vibes with that decade’s sleazy, gory grindhouse horror gruesomeness. There’s more here than mere pastiche, but social issue elements and sincerity tend to get muddled amongst all of the calculated weirdness and exploitation activity.

There’s no denying the fine 16mm cinematography work by Hunter Zimny, who marvelously captures the oppressiveness of both the Chicago summer and the powers that be that try to hold down the sex workers, along with the sex scenes that vary from tender to violent as well as the decidedly graphic horror mayhem. The performances are all committed in their own ways, from the more sincere to the over the top, the latter including Frank V. Ross and Jack Dunphy as two police officers accusing Liam and Thea of being prime suspects.

Anything That Moves is a unique vision. If you’re in the mood for what Fantasia’s official synopsis describes as “a psychosexual dark comedy thriller” that bounces around but never seems to quite settle on a main thematic focus, it’s certainly worth a view. 

Anything That Moves screens as part of Fantasia 2025, which takes place from July 16–August 3 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. 

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Cheerleaders (1972)

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Stephanie Fondue, who stars in this as Jeannie, had an even more incredible real name. Enid Finnbogason. She was in Hollywood from Winnipeg, got hit up at lunch to try out for this movie and got it. She’d never been a cheerleader. She was twenty. Also: A nude model, so disrobing during the audition was no big whoop.

In the film, Amarosa High School is a high-stakes place where lives depend on football games. Along with Jeannie, Bonnie (Jovita Bush), Debbie (Brandy Woods) and head cheerleader Claudia (Denise Dillaway, who eventually did the makeup for 2000s reality specials Exposed! Pro Wrestling’s Greatest Secrets and Breaking the Magician’s Code: Magic’s Biggest Secrets, as well as the VHS release of Party Games for Adults Only, the girls try to help the men win. Except that Claudia is catty and is trying to get Jeannie deflowered by the end of the season. It’s a backward teen sex comedy bet.

But hey, everyone goes to see I Drink Your Blood at one point. So there’s that.

Director and co-writer Paul Glicker also directed Running Scared (starring Ken Wahl) and adult films Parlor Games and Hot Circuit. Other writers included Richard Lerner, Tad Richards, and Ace Baandige, a pseudonym for someone who claimed to have been a Presidential scriptwriter named David. David Gergen seems too clean for this, David Shipley is too young and David Frum was 11 when this came out. I am looking at Presidential writers and comparing them to someone who made a sex film.

Speaking of sex films, Suzie is played by Sandy Evans, but that’s Clair Dia, who was in Lucifer’s Women and 3 A.M. — the only porn with an Orson Welles-edited scene — and directed Screwples and The Health Spa. Patty, played by Kim Stanton, who is also known as Kimberly Hyde, appeared in The Young Nurses and Candy Stripe Nurses. There were a lot of nurse movies. There are even sequels to this one: The Swinging Cheerleaders, Revenge of the Cheerleaders and Cheerleaders’ Wild Weekend.

The coach is Patrick Weight, who was in so many 70s and 80s scumbag movies. Track of the Moon Beast, the handsy truck driver in Gradation Day, Mr. Peterbilt in Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens, a gardener in Young Lady Chatterley, the stepfather in Wicked Wicked…his career was something.

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Chained Heat (1983)

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Sometimes I wonder how far a movie can go down the toilet. Good news — Chained Heat left me with little room to ponder. It’s written and directed by Paul Nicholas, who brought us another slice of insanity, Julie Darling.

This is yet another descent into madness for poor Linda Blair, who has endured some of cinema’s worst tortures. Here, she’s naive teenager Carol Henderson, sentenced to serve 18 months in the slammer for accidentally killing a man. As the new fish, can she survive?

This is one horrifying prison. Warden Backman (John Vernon) has a hot tub where he films pornography with the inmates. Captain Taylor (Stella Stevens) is a madame who uses the inmates to make money when she’s not making whoopee with Lester (Henry Silva). Meanwhile, Lester is making time with the prison’s leader of the white girls, Ericka (Sybil Danning!), who is battling the leader of the black girls, Dutchess (Tamara Dobson, Cleopatra Jones) and strangely TV’s Jason of Star Command) for dominance.

Edy Williams, the former wife of Russ Meyer, shows up, as does Nita Talbot (Marya from Hogan’s Heroes) and Louisa Moritz from The Last American Virgin and New Year’s Evil.

Because this was made in the 1980s, the ladies want to riot in the hopes of getting a better warden. Instead, perhaps they should seek the means of power for themselves. Then again, you can’t expect a 1983 women in prison movie to be woke. You have two men in prison, and you need to know what and when it was made for.

In my perfect world, Sybil and Linda would have teamed up for Thelma and Louise and spent most of the movie’s running time killing men with chainsaws. This is probably why I don’t get to make the movies, only write about them.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Cat Murkil and the Silks (1976)

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Also known as Cruisin’ High, this stars two actors from another 1976 teens in trouble movie, Derrel Maury and Steve Bond, who were in Massacre at Central High AKA Sexy Jeans. As for the titular Eddie “Cat” Murkil, actor David Kyle is now a missionary and religious speaker after being an actor and male prostitute.

Eddie and the Silks are white kids playing around at being a gang, which means stealing cars, robbing businesses, fighting with other gangs and because this is a 70s drive-in movie, sleeping around. Eddie’s brother Joey (Bond) has already been through all of this and tries to warn his sibling to go straight. He kills Punch, the leader of the gang, takes over and pretty much gets them all killed when he rumbles with a Latino gang. He’s also trying to make time with his brother’s wife, except she’s already cheating on his brother, so he ties up her new man and shoots her in the lady parts. This is a scene at odds with some of the hijinks here, just like the shower stabbing scene earlier.

Either you look like a kid or a twenty-year-old teenager in this.

But hey, vans are cruising, which is what I watch movies for.

In case you recognize Eddie, well, he’s Judith Myers’ boyfriend.

This was re-released as its alternate title in 1979, Cruisin’ High, with a different ad campaign, then again under that name on VHS in 1985 with a totally different look, trying to be tougher than it is. That’s funny because it cut all of the gun violence and the shower stabbing.

In Germany, it was released as CATS – Die Klasse von 1976, in Spain as Eddie el gato and had two incredible working titles: L.A. Gangs Rising and Street Kids of America.

Also, as I always note this, Doodles Weaver is in this!

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Catherine & Co. (1975)

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Based on Catherine and Co. by Edouard de Segonzac, this is about Catherine (Jane Birkin) — are you shocked? — who becomes a sex worker and starts her own business. She also sells stock and repurchases her business.

Directed by Michel Boisrond, this was written by Catherine Breillat, whose first novel at 17, l’Homme facile (A Man for the Asking), was banned for French readers under 18. She would go on to make Romance and Anatomy of Hell, both of which feature adult actor Rocco Siffredi. She also acted in Last Tango in Paris.

She isn’t without controversy, as actress Caroline Ducey accused her of allowing actors to go too far with her sexually during Romance (not Siffredi). She has also been outspoken about actress Asia Argento, who had starred in her film The Last Mistress. She didn’t believe that Weinstein was guilty and referred to Argento as being involved in “semi-prostitution.” Argento responded by calling Breillat “the most sadistic and downright evil director she’d ever worked with.”

CBS LATE MOVIE: The Cartier Affair (1984)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Cartier Affair was on the CBS Late Movie on May 5, 1988.

Curt Taylor (David Hasselhoff) is released from California State Prison, and to settle a debt to Phillip Drexler (Telly Savalas), he pretends that he’s gay and becomes the secretary for soap opera star Cartier Rand (Joan Collins). The goal? Steal her jewelry. But then he falls in love.

Rod Holcomb only made two theatrical films: Stitches, for which he used the pseudonym Alan Smithee instead of his name, and Chains of Gold, the only thing that John Travolta ever wrote. The rest of his career was spent in TV. The writer crew included Scarecrow & King creators Eugenie Ross-Leming and Brad Buckner, who wrote the script from a story by Michael Devereaux.

What a guest cast! Ed Lauter, Randi Brooks as the Hoff’s girlfriend, Rita Taggart as the maid who wants to basically sodomize Hasselhoff, Charles Napier and Harry Reems as a cop! As for the film, well, it’s as good as a 1984 TV movie with Hasselhoff and Joan Collins should be. There’s one great scene where the Hoff is trying to run from mob henchman David (John Bloom, The Reaper from The Hills Have Eyes Part II, The Dark from The Dark, Frankenstein’s Monster in Al Adamson’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein). He keeps trying to talk his way out of it, while the hitman keeps telling him that he has to shoot him. Bloom was more than seven feet tall but had some great comic timing.

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Castle of Fu Manchu (1969)

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Man, Christopher Lee may rival Donald Pleasence for not being able to say no — I say this with full knowledge that the former turned down Halloween while the latter said yes to that series more than he should have — and here he played Sax Rohmer’s “yellow peril” character of Fu Manchu, who is joined by his just as sadistic daughter Lin Tang. She’s played by Tsai Chin, who was a Bond girl twice in You Only Live Twice and Casino Royale, topped the music charts with “The Ding Dong Song,” and played Auntie Lindo in The Joy Luck Club.

Rosalba Neri is also in this, and you know, as bad as this movie might be, Rosalba Neri is in it. You should be so lucky as to get to spend 92 minutes with her.

This is the fifth and final time that Sir Lee played Fu Manchu, if you can believe that. Also starring in this movie is a substantial amount of pilfered footage, including the entire opening effects sequence from A Night to Remember and the dam bursting sequence taken from Campbell’s Kingdom.

There’s lots of fog, which I appreciate, and a plot about freezing the oceans, which I am also totally down with. Man, is Fu Manchu the good guy?

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Topper Takes a Trip (1938)

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July 28 – Aug 3 Screwball Comedy: Just imagine, the Great Depression is raging and you’re getting less than a fin a week at the rubber boiling factory, but it only costs two bits to go to the movies all day, so let’s watch some quick-talking dames match wits with some dopey joes!

The sequel to Topper finds Marion Kerby (Constance Bennett) still on Earth with George already in Heaven and Cary Grant only appearing in reused footage. To get her own place in the hereafter, Mation must reunite Cosmo (Roland Young) and Clara Topper (Billie Burke). That said, Clara left him over a supposed affair between her husband and Marion.

The most famous actor in this might be Skippy the dog, who had been in more than a dozen movies before this and is best known as Asta in the five Thin Man movies. He was also in Bringing Up Baby and The Awful Truth. Check out the press he got: “His owner is Mrs. Gale Henry East, once a prominent movie comedienne…When Skippy has to drink water in a scene, the first time he does it he really drinks. If there are retakes and he’s had all the water he can drink, he’ll go through the scene just as enthusiastically as though his throat were parched, but he’ll fake it. If you watch closely you’ll see he’s just going through the motions of lapping and isn’t really picking up water at all. And, because he has a sense of humor, he loves it when you laugh and tell him you’ve caught him faking but that it’s all right with you.”

It was directed by Norman Z. McLeod, who also filmed the first film, and written by Jack Jevne, Eddie Moran and Corey Ford.

You can watch this on YouTube.

CBS LATE MOVIE: All the Kind Strangers (1974)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: All the Kind Strangers was on the CBS Late Movie on October 9, 1979 and November 25, 1980.

Let’s not judge Burt Kennedy for directing the Hulk Hogan vehicle Suburban Commando. Let’s remember him for something much better — All the Kind Strangers.

Written by Clyde Ware — a writer/director/producer who worked on shows like Airwolf and Gunsmoke, as well as TV movies like The Hatfields and the McCoys and The Story of Pretty Boy Floyd — this film reeks of backwoods menace. No wonder — Ware was born in West Virginia and his second novel, The Eden Tree, was a semi-biographical read which scandalized his hometown.

Jimmy Wheeler (Stacy Keach, Butterfly, Mountain of the Cannibal God) is a photojournalist traveling by car to Los Angeles. He runs through a small Southern town where he sees Gilbert, an adorable child, walking on the side of the road. Seeing that the kid is hefting some heavy groceries, Jimmy offers him a ride. As the road goes deeper into the woods, the rain increases. Soon, he realizes he’s trapped in a house of seven children.

The oldest, Peter (John Savage, Hair, The Deer Hunter), has hidden the fate of his mother and father from the town, using various resources to keep their power on and training vicious dogs to protect the children. Their father was a bootlegger and their mother a schoolteacher (what a match!); when she died, he drank until he fell from the roof.

The rest of the children — John (Robby Benson, who sings two songs on the soundtrack), Martha, Rita, James and Baby (named because their mother died before they could name him) — need guidance, so Peter sends the younger ones out to lure people to their home. Then, they evaluate whether or not they’ll be good parents. If they’re fit, they stay. If not, they’re free to go. Or that’s what the kids think. Evidence points to another, more grisly fate.

There’s a new mother already in the house. Carol Ann (Samantha Eggar, The Brood, Demonoid, Curtains) has been taking care of the children for some time. She has seen plenty of other father figures, and while she asks for help, she also knows that everything seems pointless.

Jimmy has to convince the kids that he’d make a good dad while trying to find a way to escape. But between the multitude of kids and dogs, as well as his car being sunk in the swamp, he starts losing hope as well.

I have two issues with this film. Things get wrapped up with way too neat of a bow. Jimmy gives a speech to the kids, which saves his life, and Peter asks him to walk him into town so that they can get some help. Jimmy doesn’t even talk about the police, and when you know that these kids have murdered numerous “kind strangers,” you have to wonder if he traded his freedom in for some complicity in the crimes. Second, as a photojournalist, Jimmy’s only camera is a Polaroid, which would not be good enough to be printed in the 1970s. I know that it makes good theater to have him show Gilbert the photo as it develops, but it’s a stretch.

All the Kind Strangers is a small-screen Deliverance, yet it has some fine acting from Keach and Eggar. It’s restrained, but there is more not seen than seen that makes this movie slightly scary.

You can watch this on Tubi.