VIDEO ARCHIVES NOTES: This movie was discussed on the February 28, 2023 episode of the Video Archives podcast and can be found on their site here.

Niall Hennessy (Rod Steiger) watched his family die in a Belfast riot. There’s only one thing he can do now. Kill the Royal Family and all of Parliament. As he coldly enacts his plot, both the police and the IRA want to stop him. Steiger is great, as he plays a man who just wants to avoid “the Troubles” — even though his brother is in the IRA — but when he loses those that he loves, he loses his humanity.

John Guillermin was the original director, but he left to make The Towering Inferno. Don Sharp (Psychomania) came on and worked from a script by John Gay. Lee Remick agreed to play her supporting role as it reunited her with Steiger and Gay, as they had just worked on No Way to Treat a Lady.

This was based on a story by Richard Johnson — who played Inspector Hollis — and the movie was accused of making entertainment from terrorism. Samuel Z. Arkoff for American-International Pictures said, “We do not consider this a pro-IRA movie but we are very anxious to avoid public opinion in Britain. I think the film is brilliant. I realize the bombing campaign in Britain must have made people very bitter about the IRA. I ask people to see the film before they make up their minds.”

The British Board of Film Classification refused to classify the film as there was newsreel footage of the Queen altered to appear as if she was reacting to a bomb explosion. Arkoff added a disclaimer stating that the British Royal Family had not participated, but Odeon Cinemas refused to show it and EMI would not distribute it.

It’s wild that this movie came out during such a politically charged time and was either very brave or very exploitative.

VIDEO ARCHIVES NOTES: This movie was discussed on the February 28, 2023 episode of the Video Archives podcast and can be found on their site here.

Robert Aldrich had a long and varied career, well beyond being the king of psychobiddy movies thanks to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte. He also made Westerns like Vera Cruz, Ulzana’s Raid and 4 for Texas; the epic Sodom and Gomorrah; war movies like Attack, The Dirty Dozen and Too Late the Hero; even films as diverse as The Longest Yard, The Killing of Sister George and …All the Marbles.

This was the second movie that he’d make for Lorimar Productions, a TV company making features, and it was written by Joseph Wambaugh and Christopher Knopf. Wambaugh had written the book this was based on and did the first draft. He said, “When I turned in my first script they said they loved it. Then there was total silence. I called but they didn’t return my calls.”

Aldrich said to Film Comment, “I think Mr. Wambaugh is going to be very unhappy with this film of his work. I haven’t figured out yet how to correct some of the things that are in the book and still make people who read the book want to see the movie – but I do intend to figure it out.”

The problem that he had with the book was that he couldn’t relate to cops: “I don’t know how to feel sorry for a cop. It’s a volunteer force. You’re not drafted to become a cop. So you’ve got to take some of the heat if you don’t like what people think about you. After all, that’s an extraordinary pension you get in twenty years; nobody else gets it. In fact, I disagree with Wambaugh to such an extent that I don’t think people really like cops.”

He went on to say that the book didn’t go far enough in showing how cops are racists and how they act in Los Angeles, even saying that Wambaugh couldn’t face the issue — the author was the son of a Pittsburgh cop and was on the LAPD from 196o to 1974, rising to the rank of detective sergeant — so it was never in the book.

Wambaugh said, “They’d mutilated my work,” and took out a full-page ad protesting the movie, finally demanding that his name be taken off the movie.

He hadn’t even seen the movie yet.

When he did, he exclaimed that it was a “dreadful, slimy, vile film… a sleazy, insidious film. There was no serious intent to it. It was an insult to me but also to every self-respecting cop in America.” He got a million dollars in a lawsuit with Lorimar and bought back the rights to his books The Onion Field and Black Marble  — which both ended up being directed by Harold Becker — from the studio.

Aldrich said — I got this quote from the magnificent site Hidden Films  — that he “changed the script a maximum of 1-3 percent…he wrote a dirty, tasteless, vulgar book, which I think I’ve managed to capture.”

What Aldrich did get right was his cast.

There’s Charles Durning as aging cop Spermwhale Whalen; Perry King as mild mannered S&M enthusiast Baxter Slate; Clyde Kusatsu as prank-loving Francis Tanaguchi; Tim McIntire as odious Southern redneck Roscoe Rules; Randy Quaid as his partner Dean Proust; Don Stroud as the Vietnam vet on the verge of violence Sam Lyles; James Woods as the nerd cop used to entrap sex workers, Harold Bloomguard; James Woods as Harold Bloomguard; the always dependably scummy Burt Young as Sgt. Scuzzi; Robert Webber as Deputy Chief Riggs; former cowboy actor and future Dallas actor Jim Davis as Capt. Drobeck; George DiCenzo as Lt. Grimsle; Charles Haid as Sgt. Nick Yanov and Vic Tayback as Zoony, a vice cop who literally goes to war with Roscoe.

Louis Gossett Jr. also shows up, as does a collection of actresses that is the dream of exploitation film lovers, including Phyllis Davis (Sweet Sugar, Terminal Island, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls), Barbara Rhoades (Scream Blacula Scream), Jean Bell (TNT Jackson, The Muthers and the first African-American woman to be on the cover of Playboy) and, most essentially, Cheryl Rainbeaux” Smith (Lemora, The Swinging Cheerleaders, Massacre at Central High and so many more movies worth watching).

The story revolves around what the cops call choir practice, which is them getting trashed and abusing one another at MacArthur Park. What sums up the way the cops act is when Rules and Proust are called to rescue a suicide jumper. Rules can barely be bothered, bellowing “Go ahead and jump, bitch!”

She does.

There are no heroes in this, the tone goes from horrific racism played for laughs to the cops covering up the death of one of their own and the music seems to be taken from another movie, not punctuating the action as much as it stands in sheer contrast to it.

You know how people say that movies trigger them today? Well, they should probably not watch this.

I can’t even imagine coming to wellness spa Serenity Gardens to relax, because everyone there is deranged.

Owner Ivy Watson (Rayisa Kondracki) has decided to take her somewhat laid back business and apply the business knowledge of Stella Benton (Sierra Wooldridge) toward improving revenue. That means that  she has to analyze every expense, study what each employee does and learn how she can best maximize profit.

There’s quite the crew working there.

Zoe Ravenstill (Kendra Williams) has been there since the beginning, creating much of the Serenity Gardens concept with her best friend Ivy. She’s resistant to any change and seems ready to beat Stella into a pulp when she even tells her good morning.

Kilman (Chris Kapeleris) rocks out his warrior poses and ignores much of what Stella wants to do, but he has a secret tie to Ivy. He’s also dating or has dated nearly everyone that works in the spa.

Jett (Hailey Summer) is the crystal studio manager who reads tarot cards and can see chakras. She’s worried that all the work she’s put in will be thrown away by these new plans.

Boxer (Mal Dassin) is the masseuse who will totally give you a tantric session, which they call a release and which I call the old fashioned. The rub and tug. Wait — it seems he mostly works on ladies, so maybe just the rub. Anyways, he’s quite gross and almost gets into Zoe’s Svadhisthana chakra before his stalker Mandy (Brendee Green) comes to her house and loses her sense of inner calm.

None of these people are ready to calm you down. They’re ready to kill each other.

After several weeks of confrontations, potential romance and even an out and out murder attempt in the sauna — which already killed another employee named Kimber Walters — Stella has had enough and wants to quit. Yet Ivy wants to promote her to running everything and sending Kilman to London to start a new spa. Zoe, who thought the position was hers, quits in disgust.

When Zoe confronts Stella later, two hooded people attack, knocking out our protagonist and killing Zoe. They also shut off the security system and get Stella’s prints all over everything, framing her for the murder. Jett gets her out and by doing some detective work on their own — and consulting the tarot — they figure out who is behind it all.

Directed by V.T. Nayani and written by Scotty Mullen (Girls Getaway Gone Wrong, The Manny), Killer Coworker takes you behind the beaded curtain of the spa industry to reveal the dirt inside all the massage oil. My neck and back are bothering me, but I think I’ll avoid going to any wellness place for some time after seeing this.

You can watch this on Tubi.

VIDEO ARCHIVES NOTES: This movie was discussed on the March 14, 2023 episode of the Video Archives podcast and can be found on their site here.

Hugh Wilson created WKRP In Cincinnati, Frank’s Place, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd and The Famous Teddy Z for TV, which would be enough for a career, but he also directed Police Academy, a movie he rewrote just so he could direct it. He also made Burglar, Guarding Tess, The First Wive’s Club and Blast from the Past, so he definitely had a great career.

Rustler’s Rhapsody was inspired by working at CBS Studio Center, which was once the Republic Pictures backlot. Wilson said, I grew up watching Roy and Gene and Hopalong Cassidy. That was my idea of a movie.” He told the Los Angeles Times, “This isn’t really a send up. We’re playing it very straight. We loved those old films and we really are trying to say something about them, like how can the hero keep changing his shirt?”

Shot in Spain on some of the same sets Sergio Leone made his films on, this is a strange proposition. Yes, the 80s saw a Western revival of sorts with Young Guns and Silverado, but I wondered, before seeing this, that if everything funny to be said about Westerns had already been said in Blazing Saddles.

I was wrong.

Double wrong, as this was released pretty closely to Lust In the Dust, a movie it vied for Godlen Raspberry awards for, with Henner nominated for worst actress and Divine for worst actor. As always, I hate those awards.

Anyhow…

Rex O’Herlihan (Tom Berenger) is somehow supernaturally smart. Maybe it’s all the vegetables he’s been digging up and eating. But he knows the story before anyone else does, that he and his high-stepping horse Wildfire are eternally destined to “ride into a town, help the good guys, who are usually poor for some reason, against the bad guys, who are usually rich for some reason, and ride out again.”

This town, the fifty-third that they’ve been to, is Oakwood Estates. Peter the town drunk (G.W. Bailey, also from the Police Academy films; Brant Van Hoffman, who was Kyle in that film is also in this ) explains that Colonel Ticonderoga (Andy Griffith) owns the town and the sheriff (John Orchard), and is working with a railroad tycoon (Fernando Rey, who was in Corbucci’s Navajo Joe and Compañeros). As Ticonderoga says to the railroad colonel, “We should stick together. Look what we have in common: we’re both rich, we’re both power-mad, and we’re both colonels — that’s got to count for something!”

Soon, Blackie (Jim Carter) and two of his men show up in the saloon and threaten the hooker with the heart of gold Miss Tracy (Marilu Henner). Rex shoots the guns out of their hands, but not before they shoot their leader, whose loss is lamented equally by Ticonderoga and his daughter (Sela Ward). In fact, it’s hard to tell which one loved him more.

To keep control of their town, the town rich men hire “Wrangler” Bob Barker (John Wayne’s son Patrick, who is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met), who as a fellow good guy is able to get inside Rex’s head and make him doubt even his maleness. Is it time to break the cycle before Peter goes from drunk to sidekick to dead — like always — and he has to do this all over again in another town?

I find it funny that one of the later movies that Wilson made was Dudley Do-Right, a parody of the same things that this movie is making fun of. He knows exactly the right notes to hit, including a horse so incredible that it can avoid bullets.

VIDEO ARCHIVES NOTES: This movie was discussed on the March 14, 2023 episode of the Video Archives podcast and can be found on their site here.

Like everyone else, I only knew about this movie because of Quentin Tarantino bringing it up on the Video Archives podcast. Steve Norman is playing Jack Benny, pretty much starting just like his TV show, before the story becomes, well, Star Wars.

Jet Benny is an intergalactic soldier of fortune who crash lands his ship the Maxwell onto an alien planet. He loses his ship and his robot butler Rochester (Kevin Dees). After years living on his own, he finds and saves Princess Miranda (Polly MacIntyre) and becomes part of her quest to stop Lord Zane and saving her brother Prince Carmen (Richard Sabel).

Then, we’re back to Jack Benny on his TV show.

Directed by Roger Evans and written by Mark Feltch, this was shot on Super 8 and released on VHS and beta by United Entertainment. And you know, it’s a strange little film that’s a better concept — what if Jack Benny did a Star Wars sketch on his show — that is pretty much the one joke that lands. The Carmen Miranda one, on the other hand, thuds.

I think the learning experience here is that even your cinematic hero can love and champion a movie you see nothing in. As for me, I expect no one to follow me into the weird corridors of end career stage Jess Franco, foreign remake remix ripoff movies and vanity projects, but if you do, I’m happy to have you along for the trip.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Mal Cooper (Theo Rossi, Emily the Criminal, Sons of Anarchy) is a bounty hunter whose only life is the so-called bull**** of tracking down people who have violated their parole. He was once a cop, but he knocked out a senator’s son when he got away with rape and lost his job, his marriage and pretty much everything else other than getting drunk and watching revenge-a-matic movies in the house he used to live in while his ex-wife is on her honeymoon.

His latest job from his boss Alexander Rogan (Kim Coates, Sons of Anarchy) is tracking down Jake Gordon (Shane Paul McGhie), the only witness for a crime lord — Alonzo Beaumont, Anthony “Treach” Criss from Naughty By Nature — in a case that involves mercenaries, crooked cops and no small amount of twists and turns. He also has to deal with his old partners in the police department, like his old boss Chief Joe Milazzo (Dermot Mulroney) and his informant Trina (Tameka Bob).

Directed by Jared Cohn (Lord of the Streets) and written by Chad Law and Gary Charles, this movie doesn’t break any new ground for its story, but the execution is solid and it succeeds because of the charisma of Rossi, who remains tough and capable while also showing vulnerability and even kindness in the midst of nonstop attempts on his life and the man he’s been hired to bring back.

You can watch this on Tubi.

VIDEO ARCHIVES NOTES: This movie was discussed on the April 11, 2023 episode of the Video Archives podcast and can be found on their site here.

Bull terriers can be independent and stubborn, but have a good temperament, get along well with people and can be a loving member of the family when socialized early. Like other terrier breeds, they were raised to kill rats and fight one another. In the U.S., we associate this breed with America’s party animal, Spuds MacKenzie, who if we are to believe the 1980s commercials was scoring human women thanks to his love of beer. Today, Spot, the Target dog, is also this breed.

So is Baxter.

Let me tell you, I don’t care what Baxter does in this movie, I love him more than any of the humans.

Baxter can’t find a family that he belongs to. The old woman is boring and must be killed. The couple across the street don’t understand when he tries to show his heart and when he brings them dead animals. They make a child that he hates and so he is given to the boy across the street. The boy wants to be Hitler and goes so far as to destroy Baxter’s puppies. Baxter wants to kill him in retaliation, but he can’t see the boy as anything other than his master, allowing him to kill him.

I wanted more for Baxter, as his voice (Maxime Leroux) speaks to you about what he desires in this world. He isn’t human. He’s a dog. He wants what a dog wants. He wants the firm hand of ownership, he wants discipline and he wants structure. I wish that Baxter found something else. I wish that he had a large field to run through and an owner that made him feel the belonging that he craves.

Directed by Jérôme Boivin, who wrote the script with Jacques Audiard, based on the book Hell Hound by Ken Greenhall (and republished under his pen name Jessica Hamilton), this is a bleak affair, a movie of darkness and constant looming death.It’s not an easy watch.

In the book — Will Ericckson brought it to light in a series of books he spotlighted for Tor Books — Baxter has a lot to say about mankind. “Pity is not something I want to encourage in myself. It is something for humans to feel, one of the jumble of odd sentiments they burden themselves with. Their emotions are like diseases, I think; diseases that can spread among those who try to understand them. Let their feelings be a mystery, like the dozens of other strange traits they have… The ways in which they deceive themselves are endless.”

Poor Baxter. Sure, he’s a sociopath, but he’s also a good boy.

You can get the reissued Paperbacks from Hell edition of Hell Hound here.

VIDEO ARCHIVES NOTES: This movie was discussed on the December 6, 2022 episode of the Video Archives podcast and can be found on their site here.

Rene Cardona Jr. made some great movies — Tintorera, The Bermuda Triangle, Guyana: Crime of the Century — and this film, which was also called Under Siege.

An organized crime gang attacks several casinos all at the same time, killing people left and right, and as they go their separate ways, the cops — hey there’s Hugo Stiglitz and Stuart Whitman as the law — get on their trail just in time for some of those criminals to break into a wealthy man’s house and take his entire family hostage.

This thing has car chases, bus chases, plenty of gun battles and even an airplane chase before it all ends. There’s also a bad guy that gets knocked off a bus and their guts go everywhere. This is like the United Nations of exploitation as its a coproduction between Mexico, Italy, Spain and Venezuela.

I also love that this has a class war inside it, as you may not feel all that bad for the rich family that gets taken by the mob. The way they waste wine and mistreats the hired help, your loyalties may not evebe all that divided.

You know why I really watched this movie? Marisa Mell has to land the airplane.

You can watch this on YouTube.

VIDEO ARCHIVES NOTES: This movie was discussed on the December 6, 2022 episode of the Video Archives podcast and can be found on their site here.

Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, the creators and writers of Sherlock, credited this movie as a source of inspiration for their project. It attempts to tell the real story of Sherlock Holmes (Robert Stephens) and Dr. John Watson (Colin Blakely).

It is made up of two stories. In the first, a man named Rogozhin (Clive Revill) wants Holmes to have a child with ballerina Madame Petrova (Tamara Toumanova), but he tells her that he is in love with Watson. Whether or not that is true is left up to the viewer. In the second, Holmes rescues the drowning Gabrielle Valladon (Geneviève Page) and she asks him to save her husband, which leads him to Loch Ness, a place where he sees the legendary sea serpent and learns that his brother Mycroft (Christopher Lee) is creating a submarine for World War One. Queen Elizabeth says that the ship is unsporting, so Mycroft allows the Germans — posing as monks — to steal it and arrests Valladon, who is actually a German spy named lse von Hoffmanstal.

Director Billy Wilder said of the film, “I should have been more daring. I have this theory. I wanted to have Holmes homosexual and not admitting it to anyone, including maybe even himself. The burden of keeping it secret was the reason he took dope.” That said, Holmes does fall for the spy and is so moved by the revelation of her death that he disappears into his room to do cocaine.

When this came out on laserdisc, several deleted scenes — some not even filmed — were included. The first is a framing device that would have Dr. Watson’s grandson picking up a box full of his grandfather’s writing; a scene on a train that would take Holmes and Watson to 221B Baker Street; “The Curious Case of the Upside Down Room” in which Watson creates a case to get Holmes out of his drug haze; “The Adventure of the Dumbfounded Detective” of which only the script survives and Holmes discussing winning a race and a night with a sex worker. He had fallen for another girl and wanted to keep his purity, only to learn that the girl and prostitute were the same person, which is why he is emotionally uninvolved; “The Dreadful Business of the Naked Honeymooners,” a story where Holmes asked Watson to solve a case and two epilogue scenes where Holmes avoids being involved in the Jack the Ripper investigation and another that was similar to the end of Wilder’s Some Like It Hot.