This is another one of those public domain ditties that I don’t recall as playing in theaters, but seeing after the fact as an early HBO programmer. And yes, it was on the home video shelves, but I didn’t need to rent it, as result of its incessant cable airings.
You’ll notice the Death Wish* plug that, sadly, didn’t pack ticket buyers into the theaters or drive-ins, thus the film’s quick appearance on pay cable. Death Wish, as you know, was a best-selling 1972 novel by Brian Garfield turned into the 1974 Charles Bronson-starrer. Garfield’s other book-to-screen successes that you may not know about include 1971 western Gun Down, which became 1976’s The Last Hard Men (the book was reissued under that title as a film tie-in) starring Charlton Heston, and the 1975 spy-thriller Hopscotch, which became a 1980 film of the same name starring Walter Matthau and Sam Waterson (one of my favorite actors, with films like Capricorn One and Warning Sign).
Absolutely nothing to do with Rambo.
For the younger, modern audiences: you’ve seen Garfield’s official Death Wish sequel, 1975’s Death Sentence, turned into the 2007 James Wan-directed and Kevin Bacon-starring film of the same name (but the film does not pick up the Death Wish-film timeline, nor follows the book’s plotting). And you know the quintessential, crazy dad flick, The Stepfather (1978) and its sequels in 1989 and 1992: those began with an unpublished story turned into a screenplay by Garfield. And again, I remember the newspaper and TV ads for The Last Hard Men and Hopscotch — and seeing both in theaters — but not Fleshburn, which was based on Garfield’s 1978 novel, Fear in a Handful of Dust.
What we have here is a survival thriller that, based on the theatrical one-sheet, looks like we may be getting a post-Max Max apoc flick or a Wes Craven The Hills Have Eyes imprint — of which Fleshburn is neither. What we do have here another outdoor revenge thriller akin to John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972) and the Peter Fonda-starring Open Season (1974). And the apoc confusion — in spite of the B-Movie-ish theatrical one-sheet — is also the result of Fleshburn somewhat pinching a highly-influential film we name drop often within the context of B&S Movie reviews: Richard Connell’s 1924 short story “The Most Dangerous Game,” which became a 1932 film of the same name — a film that inspired several, ’80s Italian-Euro apocalyptic films**.
While Steve Kanaly, then hot-off-CBS-TV’s primetime soap opera Dallas as Ray Krebbs gets top-billing, the star-antagonist of the film is actor-stuntman Sonny Landham; you know him as Billy Bear in 48 Hrs. (1982) and Indian tracker Billy Sole in Predator (1987). Landham stars as Calvin Duggai, an ex-Vietnam vet who escapes his wrongfully-committed mental institution imprisonment to kidnap the four psychiatrists who committed/treated him — and their family members. He dumps the emotionally blind and relationship-troubled city slickers deep in the desert and spies on their struggle for survival.
Sound like a pretty decent tale so far, right? Well. . . .
Considering being ripped as a “soap actor,” Kanaly is really good in his role as the most resourceful of the bunch (he should have transitioned as fellow soap actor Ray Liotta) courtesy of his having giving up psychiatry to become a park ranger. Sadly, this is a Crown International Picture production, a studio where exploitation and sensationalism is marketing de rigueur. So, instead of having the deep, psychological character study of Brian Garfield’s Fear in a Handful of Dust, we have, well, a pseudo-copy of Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes after all, with a bunch of bickering, can’t-get-their-shit-together city folks who illicit no sympathy as kidnap victims and deserve a desert “fleshburn” comeuppance. If there is a message-plot twist to extract, it would be that Landham’s Indian — a spiritually free man who lived on and off the open land — was, figuratively, abandoned in the “desert” of the white man’s institution; now Duggai has taken the spiritually blind city folks and dumped them his “desert” to survive.
Sadly, since this is a much-distributed public domain title in the digital age, the DVDs — both grey-market and not-so-grey — are from the edited TV prints that negate the film’s original R-rating that played on HBO and was officially issued on VHS.
Criticisms aside: While Fleshburn could have been so much better, I enjoyed this movie a few times over, courtesy of its HBO replays, and during my revisit this week. Even with the TV cut, this still comes highly recommended. We found a ripped-from-VHS, R-rated copy to enjoy on You Tube. And you can have your own copy as part of Mill Creek’s B-Movie Blast 50-Film Pack.
** Be sure to check out our month-long, two-part post-apoc homage with our “Atomic Dustbin” round-ups. The big kahuna of the genre is, of course, Elio Petri’s 1965, sci-fi pop-art “human death sport” romp, The 10th Victim.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
We’ve been jammin’ on this movie at B&S About Movies for quite some time, as we included it on August 19, 2019, as part of our “Deadly Game Shows Week” of film reviews. Leave it to the fine film folks at Mill Creek to finally give it a slot on a Mill Creek box set. And it’s a part of their B-Movie Blast 50-film box set. And guess what? As is par for the Mill Creek course, it’s coming at us again on Mill Creek’s Excellent Eighties 50-film set — which guest writer Sean Mittus covered for us (on February 28, 2021).
Yes. The poster is better than the movie.
Well, Sam, even though he knows I hate Troma movies more so than him, he asked me to give this another take, so as to keep the site fresh and repeat free. Whatever, boss.
Lord help me. I guess I’ll be sharing some of Sam pissy hate-mails love for not liking Troma movies. But I pride myself on my “delusional hipster” and “edgy commentary” skill sets. Look, I just don’t like movies that are bad on purpose. Well, scratch that. Writer and director Eric Eichelberger, of the comedic horror Ghoul Scout Zombie Massacre, purposely made his movie “bad.” But it’s not bad from incompetence or campy due to lack of skill (as is the case, here), for it is a well-produced and shot film and acted film (by skilled actors that understand their material) that is in homage to the ’80s SOV films before it.
That same can’t be said for this . . . celluloid thing. It’s exists. That’s the nicest thing I can say. It’s not a real movie, like Ghoul Scout Zombie Massacre. I know, I know. It’s “over my head” and this . . . thing . . . and Redneck Zombies has fans. I am not one of them. Maybe The Toxic Adventure and Surf Nazis Must Die — and that’s only because of the nostalgic USA Network Friday-Saturday weekend connection. Yeah, yeah. I know this isn’t a Troma movie. But it dumps #2s — among other things — like one.
There, now that’s two rips on Troma. Deal with it, dear reader-cum-troll.
Yeah, this movie is more “deadly” that you realize. Where’s Ralphie’s Red Rider?
So, in an f’d up Los Angeles communications outlet of the KLST variety of the Zoo Radio variety (only that’s radio; this is TV) and just down the dial from “Weird Al” Yankovic’s Channel 62 in UHF, is the bottom-of-the-barrel KSIK — with the top-rated show hosted by John McCafferty: Live or Die. And McCafferty (played by Chuck Toedan) ain’t no Damon Killan. Now, do you remember when Chuck Barris went meta with The Gong Show Movie? That’s how you do a game show parody: Deathrow Gameshow is a “how to” on how not do to them.
Now, before you start with the “hypocrite” love: Yes, I liked Mark Pirro’s My Mom’s a Werewolf. But he only wrote that and didn’t direct it: the great Michael Fischa, did. And Fischa had John Saxon and Susan Blakely to carry the film. And McCafferty and his co-star, Robin Blythe ain’t no Saxon or Blakely.
So, if you haven’t figured it out: Condemned death row prisoners are given one last chance to entertain the masses before they get executed, as well as the chance to win prizes for their families. What you don’t know, in the “plot” of it all: It all goes off the rails when the Spumoni family’s boss is executed playing the game — by electro-shocked wires on his penis as a stripper dances before him. Comedy. You gotta love it.
Now the family send Luigi Pappalardo to kill the host. And this is where I am allowed by B&S About Movies’ hipster and edgy editorial policy to use the word “ensues” because to say more is a lesson in QWERTY futility. Okay, I’ll say this:
This is a film that thinks naming the love interest damsel-in-distress Gloria Sternvirgin, a member of Woman Against Anything Men Are For organization, is funny. It’s not. This is a film that can’t pull of its too-ambitious over talent and budget mock-parody TV commercials and promos for other shows at the station. Again, “Weird Al” does it so much better in UHF. This is a cheap, talentless crap bag that’s an insult to crap bags the world over that also served as a waste of my hand muscles. Do not do this to me again, Sam, or I’ll scrape up my couch coins and Auntie and Gram’s X-Mas and Birthday money and send a hitman to kill you — which is greater than the budget wasted on this “existing” crap bag that stinks to Troma high heaven.
I can’t recommend this. You’ll have to find your own freebie streams and online shopping links for DVDs.
R.D out. See you in the comments box.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Necropath, the feature film debut of writer and director Joshua Reale, has had a long, strange trip . . . on a path that begins in 2014 as a short that found a wider audience as part of its inclusion in the 2016 indie-anthology Empire State of the Dead. Now, that short has been combined with two other award-winning short films to create the feature-length version of Necropath.
Warning: If you enjoy zombie movies, you’re not going to like this movie. Now that doesn’t mean it’s not a good movie, because it is a good movie. A great one, in fact. But this ain’t your pop’s traditional George Romero or Lucio Fulci zombie movie. And it’s not one of the many indie-streaming pieces of zombie slop clogging up Amazon Prime. Necropath is a zombie movie run through an unconventional, Bigas Luna surrealistic filter with a smidgen of Alejandro Jodoroswky’s impressionism and José Mojica Marins phantasmagoria. So, if their off-beat brand of psychedelic ambiguity open to interpretation (as with our recent reviews of 2021’s Blood Freaks and Welcome to the Circle) with their respective films Anguish, Santa Sangre, or the fubar’d supernatural exploits of ol’ Coffin Joe isn’t your cup ‘o joe, well, then you’re already dead. So stand tall in the mortuary corridor and let one of the Tall Man’s flying cuisinart balls take you the red planet . . . if Scag doesn’t slice off one of your ears, first.
We, well moi (Did your read our reviews of?), have been down this less-dialog-is-more narrative (that isn’t everyone’s cup of Coffin Joe) before with Jason Lester’s High Resolution and Vahagn Karapetyan’s Greek horror Wicca Book. As with those films, Reale’s debut feature is a film of sight, color, and sound that pushes the visual medium envelope of film; an art form that, at its core, is a craft based in “showing” and not “telling.” In the case of Necropath, Reale tears the ubiquitous 90% visual and 10% dialog film rulebook (stage is the reverse) in half, tosses it into Scag’s needle-strewn drug den, and goes for broke and allows his actors — through their use of props and body language — to bring on the hopeless fear and dread.
Well, what exactly do we mean by an “unconventional” serial killer-cum-zombie movie?
Well, this ain’t no A-List Brad Pitt-starrer or AMC-palpable living dead romp. Necropath is a film of darkness and nihilism (and FYI: the third act goes uber-brutal). It’s a film rife with odd-ball light sources, queasy-inducing framing, and a soundtrack that forgoes the trite and trope route of Blumhoused screeching-crescendo shock scare soundscapes for, well, a bunch of disconnected noises. And Necropath also forgoes with the prattling exposition on how we got here, in fact, the characters rarely speak at all. (And when they do speak, it’s none of that lazy, wild lines “Quick, run!,” “Look out!,” “He’s right behind you!” dialog daggit dung.) Ultimately, Necropath answers the felicitous question: What if Micheal Myers and Hannibal Lecter — or any criminally insane individual — were allowed to wander unchecked amid the chaos of a global pandemic. And what if he’s also infected with the zombie plague?
When that mysterious zombie plague rips across the globe, the virus’ spread is exacerbated by corruptions within an opportunistic pharmaceuticals industry. Amid the imminent demise of society occurring around him, a serial killer known as Scag (a stellar Moe Isaac) — a needle-pushing drug addict that’s also zom-infected — continues his murderous rampage with impunity . . . until he meets his match from the most unlikely person: a little girl who survived the slaughter of her family. And she’ll do whatever it takes to save her baby sister from Scag and his girlfriend/hoe, Crack Hag (Natalie Colvin, in another stellar turn), whose own zom-morphin’ kicked in her motherly instincts: she wants the baby. And, regardless of her age, our young “final girl” has to stand up, as the police officer on Scag’s trail, obviously, can’t kill him. And her dad? A useless puss-bag who, even with his briefcase and tie, is as morally corrupt as Scag: even in the face of a zero-game plague where compassion is key, ol’ pop is still a profanity-abusive husband and father threatening to divorce his wife.
An unlikely heroine: actress Lillian Colvin
While her name isn’t marquee-positioned on the theatrical one-sheet, the most recognizable name here is Cassandra Hayes, whose work we’ve enjoy in the B&S About Movies cubicle farm with the low-budget indies Amityville Death House, Mark Polonia’s Revolt of the Empire of the Apes, and Amityville Island. In fact, it was Cassandra’s presence that advanced Necropath to the top of the digital review stack. Courtesy of my Law & Order: SVU fandom, it was also nice to see her co-star, New York-based actor Nathan Faudree (great here as the dickhead dad), who appeared in “Hell’s Kitchen,” (which just had an off-network rerun this week that I re-watched; so that’s a sign right there) a 2018 episode of that long-running NBC-TV series.
And we’re glad it we advanced the film to the top, as we discovered Joshua Reale has a unique narrative vision and a great cinematic eye. Now, that — it seems — Necropath has reached the end of its path, we look forward to what Reale has in store with his next feature film.
While Necropath is comprised of three shorts — each dealing (realistically) with the opening throes of a zombie outbreak — Reale’s feature film debut isn’t an anthology film. And since I’ve never had the pleasure to watch those three shorts as standalone films, I have no way of knowing where one ends and one begins (since the film runs an hour and a half, we’re assuming each short is at least 30 minutes, with minimal, addition-connective frames shot). And if Reale never disclosed the fact that Necropath — the feature film version — was comprised of three shorts, you’d never know it.
As of late, a lot of short films trickle across the streaming-verse and those filmmakers, looking to increase their opportunities to have their works seen by a wider audience, have worked together to thread their films into a feature film narrative. Of course, most of these “feature films” culled from shorts, tend to have editing issues, inconsistent cinematography, and plots stymied by weak linking devices. Our beloved Amicus omnibuses of the ’70s, with linking crypt and shop keeps, and evil elevators and train passengers, are one thing: those films were scripted that way. It’s another thing to take a grouping of unrelated pieces-parts to make a feature film. And it doesn’t always work. (Editor’s Note: We have not seen the short-anthology Empire of State of the Dead and we are not taking that work to critical task in the context of the opinions expressed in this review.) One of the few times it works (beautifully) is when you have skilled artisans at the center, such as Argentinean Giallo-purveying brothers Nicolas and Luciano Onetti with their 2019 offering, A Night of Horror: Nightmare Radio. And Reale’s film works at that level, even more so, because, as the Onettis required a ne’er-do-well disc jockey to thread a narrative, Necropath has no linking-character for consistency. Reale’s skills in the editing suite is the “consistency” that keeps the viewer engaged in the narrative. No linking required.
And it’s a narrative that is nauseating. I haven’t felt this unsettled by a film since Gaspar Noé’s arthouse-homage upending of the ’70s rape-revenge cycle with 2002’s Irréversible, courtesy of its brutal mix of sound, music, and images. Reale’s utilization of odd-ball lighting, gore, and a crazed sound pallet of perpetual, atmospheric hums, screeches, buzzes, and distorted, disembodied voices (we assume, from the head of Scag), and wailing emergency alert clarions, you’re left feeling as hopeless as the innocents victimized by a serial killer in the midst of a global zombie pandemic. The hopeless darkness of Alexandre Aja’s 2003 New French Extreme hit High Tension, also comes to mind in the frames of Necropath, even a touch of Ryûhei Kitamura‘s brutal (Am I the only one who liked it?) serial-killer trope-upending, No One Lives (2012). (You may see hints of Rob Zombie’s retro-homage oeuvres, as well, and as some who’ve watched Necropath have said. But it’s best not to mention that point and get Sam, the boss, started on Rob Zombie tear. Please, do not get him started on a Rob Zombie tear, for life is too short. Wink: Mum’s the word.)
Necropath is a fucking arthouse war zone that leaves you praying to God that a zombie plague never comes to fruition. Necropath is a film that raises the bar on indie-horror streaming norms — then takes the bar and plunges it through the arduous, rotten corpse of all other poorly-shot and edited and acted indie streaming horrors in its path and forces those filmmakers to step it up to an A-Game or just spare us the pain and go sling faux-Tex Mex food at a Chili’s. (And our irritable bowels kick in and we wipe our asses with their bogus film school degrees.) Necropath lets you know it ain’t gonna be a cool-verse with Jeffrey Dean Morgan swingin’ “Lucille” around and Norman Reedus being all sexy-smoldering, grungy-hot for the ladies in the audience. Necropath is a Private First Class Hudson “Game over, man!” world where you’re fucked. You die. Everyone fucking dies by virus, by drug addiction, by zom, and bye-bye. There’s no Operation Warp Speed to save you. End of story.
Necropath becomes available on all digital platforms on February 9th from Gravitas Ventures and Kamikaze Dogfight. You also can learn more about the film at Cayo Industrial Horror Realm’s official Facebook page and website. You can also visit the film’s official Facebook and Instagram pages for more photo stills. Another Kamikaze Dogfight release we’ve recently reviewed is Don’t Look Back.
Disclaimer: We received a screener from the distributor’s P.R. firm. That has no bearing on our review. We would have loved this movie even without the freebie. And that’s no feldercarb.
Editors Note: Necropath has since made its July 2021 free-with-ads-streaming debut on Tubi. And don’t forget to read our interview with the writer and director, Joshua Reale, for more about the film.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Moviesand publishes short stories and music reviews on Medium.
Oh, you better watch out With Mill Creek sets And those fan-lists Of said Mill Creek sets Because those multiple film titles And plurals Are coming to town
Yeah, when you’re making a Mill Creek list, you’ve always got to check those lists twice to find out which film is the naughty B-Movie or the nice A-List movie.
Mill Creek fans have listed Sly Stallone’s The Specialist from 1994 directed by Luis Llosa (of Crime Zone and Anaconda fame) on their lists for Mill Creek’s B-Movie Blast 50-Film pack. Others noted on their lists — uh, oh, there’s that friggin’ plural “S” again, the same “S” that bit me in the arse during out big, British-produced Satan’s Slave (1976) vs. the Indonesian-produced Satan’s Slaves (1982) snafu with our Mill Creek Pure Terror Month review back in November 2019 — that the film included on the B-Movie Blast set is Sergio Corbucci’s The Specialists (1969; starring French rock singer Johnny Hallyday (French rock singer; later of 1987s Terminus) — a film that we didn’t get around to during our “Spaghetti Western Week”* of reviews.
So, plural “S,” damn you, for ye almost deprived us of an Adam West . . . yes, THE ADAM WEST . . . spy thriller directed by Howard Avedis, he who gave us the epics of Connie Stevens as a rogue cop in Scorchyand ex-Waltons frolicking through the supernatural in Mortuary. Yeah, you know us all too well: we feel a “Howard Avedis Week” coming on, too. I mean, with film titles like The Stepmother and The Teacher (sexploitation time!!!!), and movies starring the B-Movie elite of Sybil Danning, Karen Black, Bo Hopkins, Patrick Wayne, Edy Williams (Dr. Minx!!!), and Angel Hopkins (!) with Jay “Dennis the Menace” North — how can we NOT have a “Howard Avedis Week” of reviews?
But. let’s get back to Adam’s West’s B-Movie milieu (Omega Cop, One Dark Night) in the Avedis schlock oeuvre.
As you can see from the theatrical one-sheet, this is all about Budapest, Hungary-imported bombshell Ahna Carpi, who blazed through 70-plus U.S. TV credits (The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is my fondest Carpi-ory) before retiring from the business. But you know her film work in . . . YES . . The Brotherhood of Satan and Piranha (oops, the 1972 one that Joe Dante didn’t direct — damn you, multiple titles) and . . . YES . . . as Tania in Enter the Dragon. And, would you believe she was a child actor in two episodes of the now Antenna oft-run ’60s series Leave It to Beaver (I just got done watching “Beaver’s Sweater” a few days ago!), but, back then, she was “Anna Capri” and not the more porny-reading Ahna, which is the proper, Euro-ethnic spelling of her first name. Oh, and to continue that Brotherhood of Satan degree of separation: Alvy “Hank Kimbel” Moore is in The Specialist (as blackmailing court bailiff) as well, and Avedis’s Mortuary (and a few others) . . . and Cotton Candy (but no Avedis or Capri on that one).
So, there’s your movie trivia for today: What two movies starred a Hungarian child actor and a Green Acres cast member?
See? Reposting that old Sly Stallone review, in error, would have robbed us of all this fun! But, alas . . . I know, I know . . . get to the friggin’ movie, already, R.D. Hey, I’ve haven’t seen this one either, so, let’s go, Adam West fans! Hit the play button!
Now, based on this still from the film (or promo pack from the film) posted by the Digital Content Management Team at the IMDb, you’d think you’re getting a spy thriller with Adam West as a B-Movie James Bond or as an ex-war vet now a kick ass private eye. Oh, ye Mill Creek grazer of the digital divide, how wrong are ye. For this is a Crown International Pictures — serious — court room drama. I know. I never thought I’d type that sentence in a review either. This from a studio that gives us a steady stream of boobs, vans, cheerleaders, female basketball coaches who have sex with male students, and any -sploitation variant you can imagine.
But this ain’t your granddad’s or great grandad’s Perry Mason, Owen Marshall: Attorney at Law, or Matlock (especially not with Nancy Stafford in the cast). This court room caper, again, looking at the rendering of Ahna in that dress, is an R-rated potboiler. But a Joe Eszterhas Jagged Edge neo-noir legal thriller this is not, Motion Picture Association Ratings to protect us youngins, be damned.
West is “The Specialist,” aka defense attorney Jerry Bounds, who’s in a court battle against fellow attorney Pike Smith (western actor John Anderson), an attorney who wants his job back on the board of a (corrupt) water company. So, to assure he wins the case, Pike recruits a sleazy P.I. (is there any other kind), Alec Sharkey (aka Howard Avedis aka’in as actor Russell Schmidt), who, in turn, recruits Londa Weyth (Ahna Carpi), his blonde-n’-hot operative serving as a juror-ringer on the trial, to seduce Bounds and get a mistrial declared.
So, in case you haven’t figure it out: The “Specialist” isn’t West as a cool-as-steel spy or ex-Special Forces-now-an-Attorney (or P.I.) bad-ass; the well-endowed Londa is the special forces sex kitten in these proceedings. Another sultry kitten in our midst is Playboy and Max Factor model Christiane Schmidtmer, you remember her as the hot stewardess from Boeing Boeing (1965) that got Jerry Lewis and Tony Curtis all hot-n-bothered.
I am sure West, looking to be taken seriously as an actor (and deserved to me), was hoping this adaptation of the best-selling novel Come Now the Lawyers, would become a box office hit and thrust him into a legit theatrical career with the bigger studios. As did author Ralph Bushnell Potts, himself a Seattle-based Attorney-at-Law (learn more about Potts’s interesting life with his 1991 obituary in the Seattle Times). But, alas . . . Potts’s serious book about Washington State’s early courts system was turned into a Crown International exploitation fest that is not the least bit titillating and fails on the salacious scale that Crown in known for via these Mill Creek box sets. In the annals of Crown International public domaindom, The Specialist is a truly odd duck in the Crown celluloid pond.
There’s no freebie rips online to share, but you can check out the trailer and a scene clip on You Tube. Of course, you can enjoy The Specialist as part of Mill Creek’s B-Movie Blast 50-Film Pack.
About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S Movies.
Back in the day, the concert industry wasn’t a Live Nation money pit. And there was no MTV. There wasn’t even a Midnight Special. Or a Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. Or ABC-TV’s In Concert, produced by Don (read our “Exploring: The Movies of Don Kirshner” feature for more on Don’s TV and film exploits).
No, for back in those pre-cable and World Wide Web days of yore, in order to see all of those music stars of the radio, you went to the drive-in. You know the films: Alan Freed’s Mr. Rock and Roll and Rock, Rock, Rock in particular, films that had nary a plot and were padded with musical performances — which were the whole point of the films in the first place: for record labels to promote their artists. And since not everyone had TVs yet, the more accessible movie theater was the next best thing. Oh, yes. These flicks were performance-padded rock concerts that masqueraded as dramatic-comedy narratives . . . well, in reality, aren’t they just rock documentaries?
So, just like Alan Freed gathering up the kids and the artists for a big show in those films, here we have a Hollywood studio wanting to jump on the Elvis-inspired country music crazy and make a movie. So they send out Colonel Feetlebaum (Doodles Weaver . . . Oh, you’ll know his face when you see it; we reviewed his exploitative work in Hot Rod Gang, Trucker’s Women . . . and that’s just two of his 150 TV and film credits) to round up Marty Robbins (who produced this as a vanity showcase) along with Webb Pierce, Waylon Jennings, Bill Anderson, Porter Wagoner, and Dottie West. Of course, no county film is complete without Johnny Cash (in his second film: he made his dramatic acting debut in 1961’s Five Minutes to Live, aka the more sensational Door to Door Maniac; he followed up Road to Nashville with 1971’s A Gunfight). Oh, and did you know this is Marty Robbins’s second bow on Mill Creek’s B-Movie Blast 50-Film pack? And did you know he raced stock cars? Marty did, and he made a film about it (with John Ashley of Blood Island fame), Hell on Wheels, which, if you’re keeping track of our Mill Creek Mania at B&S, that flick is also on their Savage Cinema set.
Oh, the brains behind it all: Will Zens, he who gave such drive-in delights as The Starfighters (1964), the aforementioned Hell On Wheels and Trucker’s Women, as well as the redneck romps Hot Summer in Barefoot County and Redneck Miller.
The cinematographer on this? The legend that Kevin Smith eloquently referred to as “a stubborn old cuss,” aka “ornery old cuss” (depending on the story-version regarding their mutual exploits on Jersey Girl): Vilmos Zsigmond. Cuss or no, ornery or not . . . just wow, there’s so many B&S films Vilmos has done (Psycho a Go Go, for one), as he worked his way up to Deliverance (with Burt Reynolds), Scarecrow (with Richard Lynch and Al Pacino), The Deer Hunter (Robert DeNiro), and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Sam, the Chief Cook and Bottle Washer and Mix Master of Movie Themed Drink for B&S About Movies, is scary-psychic when it comes to my writing assignments. I don’t recall Dennis Christopher and Bruno Kirby ever popping up in conversation . . . Sam, how do you do it? It’s like my head is a Magic 8-Ball and you give it a shake. . . . It’s like Christmas!
Anyway . . . this why I love Mill Creek box sets — in this case, their B-Movie Blast 50-Film Pack — as it gives me a chance to see a movie that I never heard of, or seen. Yes . . . even with the Den and the Kirb in the house, so I don’t know how this one slipped by me. Sure, I’ve seen my fair share of ’70s soft-sexploitation flicks and T&A coming-of-age romps (but beware of advertising department scams) but this one . . . I don’t recall ever seeing The Young Graduates on a home video self. And, based on the college chick (What, high school?) showing off some strappy-sandals leg, along with the dune buggies, cycles, and rails . . . and that Crown International logo, well, what’s not to likey, here?
Now, you know how we are about particular actors ’round the B&S About Movie cubicles, right? In this case, for moi, I was into this lost drive-in ditty from the get, as it features early starring roles for two of my favorite actors: Dennis Christopher (Fade to Black and the really cool 10-Speed romp Breaking Away) and Bruno Kirby (How is Almost Summer not on a Mill Creek set? But, you know Bruno best from City Slickers and Good Morning, Vietnam). See? All actors have to start somewhere — and sometimes it has to be a Crown International flick.
Will you just look at Dennis! He’s just a kid, for gosh sakes! Yep, 16!, and he went on to appear nearly 40 movies and made-for-TV flicks since this debut (he was also in the proto-slasher Blood and Lace that same year). And Quentin? Well, he obviously knows both of Dennis’s 1971 debuts from his video clerkin’ days, so the Q recruited Dennis as Leonide Moguy in Django Unchained. Oh, and Dennis is such a stoner dude that his name is “Pan,” and not a more stoner name there be.
Anyway, while Bruno was a bit older, at 22, he was still able to play “young,” as a high schooler seven years later — at 29 — in, again, one of my favorite of his films, Almost Summer. But I’ll always also remember Bruno for The Harrad Experiment (which, in spite of the title, is not a horror film, but a coming-of-age drama led by James Whitmore and Tippi Hedren . . . with a babe-in-the-woods Don Johnson). Then there’s Bruno’s oft-aired HBO favorite, Baby Blue Marine with Jan-Michael Vincent (that also needs a Mill Creek bow).
Oops. I digress with the Charmin squeezin’ over the actors I dig.
This is loaded with mini-dressed dancing chicks, hippes in flower-power vans, wah-wah psychedelic guitars, and drag-racing rails, hippie chicks, doobies and roach clips, squares in suits and ties who want to be engineers, and those teens who just want to dropout and ride their motor scooters.
Rompin’ through this Partridge Family-cum-Easy Rider-lite world is the requisite sort-of-bad girl, Mindy, who’s like an early version of a romantically confused, can’t-make-her-mind Rachel Green with her endless I-hate-Ross-I-love-Ross insanity. Here, Mindy’s dilemma is between her decent, educated boyfriend Bill or her hunky married-but-he’s-so-hot teacher.
Oops. She’s hot for teacher and the rabbit just hopped in: Mindy’s pregnant. And how does she deal? Well, she runs away with her bestie, Sandy, on motorbike ride to Big Sur, California
Why am I remembering this Canadian-made political thriller from Crown International Pictures as, not a theatrically-run film, but as a U.S. network TV movie? Yeah, I remember watching this William Shatner and Hal Holbrook effort on HBO at one point. . . . Perhaps it’s because director George Mardeluk worked primarily in television throughout the ’80s and ’90s on several TV series, along with LOTS of TV movies into the mid-2000s. He made his feature film debut with the great Richard Crenna (The Case of the Hillside Strangler) in the neo-noir crime thriller Stone Cold Dead (1980) — a film that I also don’t recall being in theaters, but enjoying immensely on HBO.
Well, one thing is for sure: Crown International upped their game with this, Mardeluk’s second thriller, to get their studio out of the exploitation gutter (with fare like Superchick, also reviewed this month) by acquiring the rights to Charles Templeton’s 1977 international best-seller of the same name; not a bad feat for a first-time novelist.
President Adam Scott (Hal Holbrook) is one of those leaders who tosses common sense out the window when it jeopardizes his image in the political arena. So when Secret Service agent Jerry O’ Connor (William Shatner) warns Scott of a potential threat and that he should cancel his state visit to Canada — Scott scorns his protective attache and takes the trip anyway — and is subsequently abducted by terrorists for ransom.
Of course, as is the case with such recent political action-thrillers as the battling destroy-the-Whitehouse features of White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen, we have Ethan Richards (Van Johnson), Scott’s politically ambitious Vice President ready to take his seat of the most powerful office in the world. Meanwhile, O’Conner races against the clock to rescue the President from a booby-trapped armored truck. Ava Gardner practically copies her role as Charlton Heston’s overbearing, bitchy wife from Earthquake. . . as Van Johnson’s overbearing, bitchy Second Lady of the United States. And there’s lots of Canadian actors afoot that you’ll recognize, most notably the always welcomed Maury Chaykin (Def Con 4, WarGames) as the world’s most ill-organized terrorist.
I never read the novel, but critics say the book is better and the movie is slow. Whatever, I liked this movie back in the day and enjoyed revisiting it these years later. In fact, we discussed George Mardeluk’s career and my enjoyment of his first two movies in our review of one of his latest films, Ants on a Plane (2019). For you Lifetime damsel-in-distress fans, his last directed film was The Wrong Babysitter (2017), which currently plays on Netflix.
Look, The Kidnapping of the President is a Crown International flick, after all, so don’t expect Clint Eastwood’s fantastic In the Line of Fire (1993) — and I name drop that flick because, well, take a look at the clip below. Does that guy in the cap with the explosives on his chest look a bit like John Malkovich’s Mitch Leary from that film?
Ugh, again You Tube? Sorry, that clip is gone.
You can watch the full movie on You Tube and get your own copy on Mill Creek’s B-Movie Blast 50-movie set. What? It’s back again on their as part of their Excellent Eighties 50-Film pack? Yep, we reviewed it, again, because anything with Hal Holbrook deserves two reviews.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
And it all began — not just for Matt Dillon, but for all of us — with the greatest, modern juvenile delinquency film of all time: Over the Edge (1979), another one of those poorly-distributed, lost films that found a cult audience on HBO.
Needless to say, the girls loved Matt. And, between my sister and girlfriends, I went to the theaters to see his next four films: My Bodyguard (the best), Little Darlings (too romantic-sappy, but we did have Tatum O’Neal as a hot bad girl), Tex (much better), and this, his fifth and least-remembered film — made prior to his breakout role as Dallas “Dally” Winston in box-office hit, The Outsiders.
Now, if the theatrical one-sheet hasn’t given it all away, we’re dealing with star-crossed lovers from the wrong side of the tracks (set in 1940s Texas): Dillon’s a blue collar teen who elopes with the town banker’s daughter (Cindy Fisher from 1974’s Bad Ronald). (And yes, the “forbidden love” ends up being incest.)
As for the rest of the cast: We have American folk singer Hoyt Axton (of the Gone in Sixty Seconds franchise; best known for Gremlins) in one of his many, likable ’80s acting roles as Matt’s hardworking pop. Christopher Connelly (Atlantis Interceptors and a whole bunch of ’80s Italian stuff) is great in a rare, non-horror/action role as the snobby banker-pop, and film noir stalwart Broderick Crawford shines in his final film role. We’ve also have Susan Tyrrell (Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker) chewin’ the scenery like the pro-thespian she is, as always (yes, when you need the work, even Susan Tyrrell will go “slasher” for a paycheck). And it’s nice to see Yvonne “The Munsters” DeCarlo (Silent Scream . . . but she also made Nocturna) given a decent dramatic role for a change, proving she really can “act” outside of a B-horror flick. And, why yes, that is requisite sci-fi baddie Richard Moll (The Survivor, The Dungeonmaster) in an early role as a police detective. And look out for support roles from Jim Greenland (Joysticks) and Dawn Dunlap (Forbidden World). And, why yes . . . that is Asleep at the Wheel (remember Meatloaf’s Roadie, and their song “Texas, You and Me”) pickin’ and-a grinnin’ up the soundtrack.
You can watch Liar’s Moon as a free-with-ads stream on Roku via your PC or Laptop and get your own copy courtesy of Mill Creek on their B-Movie Blast 50-movie set. It’s also part of their Excellent Eighties box set that we are also unpacking this month; Sam will give us his take on the film for that set because, when you’re dealing in Susan Tyrrell — and that sexy, whiskey-hewn voice — you review her films as many times as you can to celebrate her awesomeness. Hey, she didn’t earn an Academy Award for “Best Supporting Actress” nomination for John Huston’s Fat City (1972) and a earn a Saturn Award for “Best Supporting Actress” for Andy Warhol’s Bad (1977) for nothin’!
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
“A Supercharged Girl! Always Ready For Action . . . of Any Kind!!” — Copywriter innuendo to make you buy that ticket
While this sounds like a female-spun, Sexploitation-era James Bond knockoff, à la Cherie Caffaro’s Ginger McAllister from Ginger (1971), The Abductors (1972), and Girls Are For Loving (1973) — which, along with Ted V. Mikels’s The Doll Squad and Andy Sidaris’s Stacey, foretold Charlie’s Angels — Superchick is actually one of film’s first feminist tomes — this one starring Joyce Jillson in her feature film debut after making her mark with the late ’60s, hit U.S. television drama, Peyton Place.
And since this is a Crown International Pictures release: John Carradine (Nocturna) is in tow — as a worn out “B” movie actor, so, pretty much himself. And yes, there’s nudity from Joyce and cameoing porn star Candy Samples. So there’s that to ponder. Oh, and yes, that is an uncredited Dan “Grizzly Adams” Haggerty as a biker. So there’s also that.
To say this is awful is an understatement. But this is one of those picked-up-for-a-dollar home video rentals with bad acting, worst dialog, and clumsy karate action sequences that gives you a good ol’ time — in a Rudy Ray Moore as Dolemitekind-a-way.
Joyce’s Tara B. True is a “superchick”: a sexually-liberated bachelorette who works her long blonde hair and even longer, silky legs as an airline stewardess to bed three men — a sexy beach bum, a rockstar musician, and an older, wealthy gentleman — during her weekly trips through New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. Why settle down, when each man has the qualities she needs to feel loved and feel free? In between, she earns a black belt in karate and adds frequent flyer miles to her “Mile High Club” membership.
That freedom is soon jeopardized when the loan shark her Floridian beach bum lover is indebted to blackmails her into committing an in-flight robbery. But she turns the tables and stops the hi-jacking . . . so she is a lot like Cherie Caffaro’s ass-kickin’ Ginger McAllister after all.
The influence of this movie can’t be denied: In 2022 D’Arcy Drollinger crafted a bat shite crazy homage the genre with the recently reviewed S**t & Champagne.
Denied! There’s no free rips and it’s been pulled from Amazon Prime. And that’s why we have Mill Creek box sets, such as their B-Movie Blast 50-movie set that we’re reviewing this month. If you need another one — and more of the same, and don’t we all — from director Ed Forsyth, then check out Chesty Anderson, USN.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
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).
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