DAY 15. HELL ON FOUR WHEELS: Must involve characters in wheelchairs.

Also known as Killers Die Hard and Gun Fighter, the title of this movie pretty much tells you the main reason to watch this movie.

It’s really about a crime boss named D’Angelo (Lloyd Bochner, The Lonely Lady), who is smuggling drugs inside cigars, because that seems like the best way to move plenty of product inside the smallest delivery mechanisms possible. One of his smugglers is a student named Ken Wilson (Luke Halpin, who was on Flipper — and stay tuned for why that’s important), who one night gets in an argument with his girlfriend Tina and ends up accidentally killing her. D’Angelo’s men make it look like an overdose, which would be enough in any other reality to get Ken away with it, but Tina’s brother is Andy (pro wrestler Ron Slinker, who helped train The Rock, gave RVD his name and was the stepfather of Dennis “Mideon” Knight), a cop on the drug enforcement squad.

The real excitement of this movie comes in when we meet Mr. No Legs himself. He’s played by Ted Vollrath, a Lancaster, PA native and U.S. Marine veteran who lost his legs after thirteen years after surviving a mortar shell explosion during the Korean War. Despite what some would see a set-back, Ted still became a karate Grand Master and acquired black belts in several disciplines of the martial arts. In 1971, he founded the Martial Arts for the Handicapable Incorporated. He pretty much makes this movie with his extended fight sequences and gimmick-laden wheelchair.

If you don’t think Mr. No Legs isn’t cool enough, how about the fact that he hangs with a guy named Lou, who is played by Rance Howard (Smokey Bites the Dust), the father of Clint and Ron?

Somehow, this movie was able to round up plenty of old movie stars — who one presumes all moved to Tampa, Florida where it was made — including former husband of Shirley Temple John Agar, Richard Jaeckel and Templeton Fox, while also finding plenty of martial artists, including Jim Kelly from Enter the Dragon and a smaller version of him named Tiny Kelly.

Speaking of Florida, this movie feels grimy and sweaty. Much like other Sunshine State scumtastic blasts of insanity like Satan’s Children, the films of Bill Grefé and My Brother Has Bad Dreams, everyone in this movie doesn’t look like anyone you’d see in a Hollywood big budget film. Even the character actors in it have moved on to leading man status just for being in this with them. There are several scenes in bars where nearly every person looks meaner and more dangerous than the next. It feels like murder, sex or murder after sex could happen at any minute.

Sherry flavored sauerkraut. Really.

There are plenty of fights, like one between women who have smashed beer bottles and knives that ends up with nearly everyone in the bar dead and another where a Stingray Corvette faces off with a maniac with a sword. But the real standout is any time Mr. No Legs is on screen, whether he’s firing a throwing star out of his chair, shotgun blasting folks or diving into a pool to kill off two henchmen sent to dispatch him.

That said, there’s plenty of padding, like the band Miracle playing in a club and a ten-minute car chase that ends up smashing into a wall of ice that has a bad guy only loosely tied to the rest of the story. As I grow older, however, I admire these non-sequitur moments, as one looks at old wallpaper in a house that is otherwise completely modern.

Oh yeah — Flipper. Mr. No Legs was directed by Ricou Browning and written by Jack Cowden, who previously created that family-friendly TV series. Cowden also wrote Island Claws and ended up as the script supervisor on Band of the Hand, The New Kids and Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach. And yes, that’s the very same Ricou Browning that was in the suit as The Creature from the Black Lagoon and was the second unit director on Thunderball*).

But man, the real star of all of this is greasy and flopsweat laden Florida.

You can get this from Massacre Video, whose new release has a brand new 2K restoration from an extremely rare French print.

*Browning and Cowden would also work together on Island Claws and Police Academy 5. I also never knew that Browning did second unit on Caddyshack.

DAY 14. THE MONSTER MILE: One about cars or racing.

If you’re going to make a race car movie in 1981 and you’re Anthony M. Dawson — ahem Antonio Margheriti — and you’ve got the Italians, the Spanish and some Mexicans interested in your film, you propose only one actor who can be in your film. Travolta.

Joey Travolta.

And oh yeah, John Steiner. Everyone loves John Steiner!

Paul (Travolta) and Nick (Vittorio Mezzogiorno, The House of the Yellow Carpet) are race car buddies who run afoul of the mob and a double-crossing antiques dealer named Janice (Ana Obregón, who is in Treasure of the Four Crowns and a fixture in the scandal sheets, what with being a Jeffrey Epstein client, a rumored affair with David Beckham that caused his wife Victoria to refer to her as a “geriatric Barbie” and paying her bodyguards to assault reporters). They get the perfect car to be winners — a red Trans-Am — and end up finally racing in the Imperial Crash, which seems like something out of Speed Racer in all the best of ways.

Steiner is Kirby, the person who is buying all the antiques off of Janice. He ends up flooding most of his estate and challenging our heroes to a race that destroys most of his home, crashes his car and drenches his butler. And he loves it!

This is a big dumb Italian version of a big dumb American race movie, which is something I never knew I wanted but totally know that I now love. You know what’s missing from those movies? Model cars and a synth-ed out soundtrack. This one has that, including a model train crash and numerous scenes of firepits being jumped, cars racing down hills, non-stop motor noise and protagonists who whip dynamite out of moving cars like they’re done it a million times before.

I’m not saying that I want Antonio Margheriti to direct everything I watch, but if the ratio was 75% Margheriti, this would be a much better life.

You can watch this on YouTube.

DAY 13. OPEN SOAR: This should focus on flying or aviation somehow.

I’ve gone on record proclaiming my love for the Airport movies, specifically their continual devolution from high end picture to scummy cash-in — and therefore, more awesome films — as the series progressed. By Airport ’77, things had become goofy. And by The Concorde … Airport ’79, any semblance of being a quality picture went out the window, the same one that George Kennedy opened and fired a flare gun out of to throw off a heat-seeking missile.

Which means that of all the four films, the 1979 one — blame a cast that includes Sylvia Kristel, Robert Wagner, Jimmie Walker, Susan Blakely, Martha Raye, Charo, John Davidson, David Warner, Sybil Danning and Harry Shearer (where were Edmund Purdom, John Carradine, Donald Pleasance and Cameron Mitchell and what were they doing at the time to not be in this movie?) — is my favorite.

Let’s smashcut to Italy, where Ruggero “Monsieur Cannibal” Deodato — the very same man who made Cannibal Holocaust; Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man and the astounding Dial Help, amongst others — would join with scriptwriters Ernesto Gastaldi (The Possessed, Day of Anger) and Renzo Genta (Jungle Holocaust) to try and get a few extra kilometers (it does 2,179 an hour) out of the Concorde, which trust me, was all the rage in 1979.

If you could make a Venn diagram out of my film loves — and you totally can — this exists at the absolute center point of Italian ripoffs, American actors in foreign films, disaster flicks and opportunities to dream of making a souffle for Mimsy Farmer.

This film starts with a great disclaimer, which is always the way the best of films begin:

“This story is imaginary, and any reference to actual events or to real persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. The supersonic airliner “Concorde” is a stunning reality, however, the result of space-age technology, it links continent to continent, flying in complete safety at over 1,200 miles per hour. The production wishes to thank “British Aerospace,” English builders of the “Concorde,” for their kind cooperation and for producing film footage and materials.”

I am willing to bet that the makers of this film never spoke to anyone who made the Concorde and my proof is that this movie starts with one of them wrecking, which was the greatest fear of this plane and one they’d probably never want in a film.

L.P.A. Flight 820 is the test flight that has crashed off the coast of French Antilles of the Caribbean, with French air hostess Jean Beneyton (Ms. Farmer, who is also in The Perfume of the Lady in Black Body Count) as the only survivor. She’s rescued by two fishermen who are soon killed to keep any witnesses from learning what has happened.

Moses Brody (James Franciscus, the voice of Jonathan Livingston Seagull) is an investigative journalist on the case, brought on by his ex-wife Nicole (Mag Fleming, who is in everything from Cannibal Ferox to Nightmare City and A Policewoman on the Porno Squad) who dies from a “heart attack” before he gets to see her. As soon as he arrives, he’s attacked by a gang of ne’er-do-wells before he’s saved by a man named George.

We soon learn that two men are behind all of this mayhem: the superstar powered duo of Milland (Joseph Cotten) and his business partner Danker (Edmund Purdom), who are using their Old Hollywood energy and big business scumbag savvy to keep all of this a secret.

Our heroes rescue Jean and find the wreckage of the Concorde underwater, but George loses his arm in the wreckage and gets shot several times because this is an Italian movie. I’m shocked that a turtle hasn’t been ripped asunder or a pig hasn’t been landed on by a jet engine at this point.

From here on out, the movie becomes Venantino Venantini (Father Moses from Warriors of the Wasteland) chasing Farmer and Franciscus while another Concorde, flown by Van Johnson (once second to only Frank Sinatra in bobbysoxer’s hearts), is being attacked by a vial of acid that heats up in the microwave and destroys the electrical lines of the plane. If the science of this all seems way off, welcome to the glorious world of Italian xerox cinema and its utter lack of making any sense. May it never change! And speaking of great things about this movie, the Stelvio Cipriani (A Bay of Blood, Death Walks on High Heels, Baron Blood, Piranha II: The Spawning, Tentacles) score is fabulous!

Somehow, this movie has the budget to have a nerve-wracking landing sequence. Our protagonists aren’t even on the plane, which is kind of an anti-climax, but at least Brody is ready to take down big business now that the henchmen are all members of the choir invisible.

Look for Robert Kerman from Cannibal Holocaust as the London air traffic controller. Years later. Deodato would say that if he had known that Kerman was a porn actor, he wouldn’t have hired him. Oh yeah? Well the other air traffic controller, Jake Teague, was in Debbie Does Dallas and Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle, so I think he isn’t being all that honest and is more upset about the fact that Kerman continually had horrible things to say about the hell he put the cast of the aforementioned human gutmuncher through inside the Green Inferno.

Two years after this movie, Franciscus would star in The Last Shark, making him that part of a very rare breed of actors: those that ripped off two major franchises aided and abetted by Italian magic makers. He’s also the kind of guy that can take over for Charlton Heston — who was in Airport 1975 — not once, but twice, seeing as how he did the honors in Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

This movie makes no sense and spends more time underwater than in the sky on a supersonic jet. 900 thumbs up, 300 stars out of 5, 300/10 would see this again.

PS: I couldn’t find this movie anywhere, so I had to watch it on a Russian video site, which meant that a Russian voice had to say every line a few seconds after it was voice as well as read every single block of text on the screen. The guy doing it even roped a female voice — I imagine it was his bored wife, much like how Becca reacts when I force her to watch Italian blockbuster remixes, to be the Soviet-friendly voice of Mimsy Farmer.

PPS: Keep an eye out for former pro wrestler Dakar as a fisherman. He was the High Priest of the Spider in Ator the Fighting Eagle and also shows up in all manner of Italian films, including Zombie Holocaust, Zombi, Mission Stardust, 2 Mafiosi Against Goldginger and Papaya: Love Goddess of the Cannibals.

DAY 12. THE FIRST WAVE: One by an indigenous filmmaker or indigenous cast members. 

Doreen Manuel is the sixth child of Grand Chief Dr. George Manuel and Marceline Manuel. From perusing her official site, I’ve learned that she’s a graduate of the Aboriginal Film and Television Diploma Program (AFTP) at Capilano University and earned her Master of Fine Arts in Film Production from UBC.

This film is informed by her extensive background working in First Nations education and community development in both rural and urban centers. And beyond that, she comes from a long line of oral historians and factual storytellers.

This is a short film with a big story behind it. The heroine, Mary (Grace Dove, an indigenous actress based in Vancouver, BC and Los Angeles, CA who appeared in The Revenant) and her mother Claire (Andrea Menard) discover the skeletons of children and babies at what is claimed to be a Catholic reservation school but what may as well be a concentration camp.

Despite her mother’s warnings, now Mary must confront the past that Claire has worked so hard to escape. Can the bones being taken away from the school destroy so much pain?

I was shocked just how much story fit into only nine minutes of running time. This deserves to be a much longer — and much more widely seen — story.

You can watch this movie on YouTube.

DAY 10. PLASTIQUE VIVANT: Mannequins are creepy enough standing still but what happens when they come to life?

Stewart Raffill has made a diverse list of films over his career, directing everything from The Philadelphia Experiment, The Ice Pirates, Tammy and the T-Rex, Mac and Me and wrote Passenger 57. Let’s add this movie to the mix, which takes the first film and pretty much does it all over again, but this time inside Philadelphia’s Wanamaker’s department store.

It was produced by David Begelman, who embezzled thousands from Judy Garland before becoming an executive at Columbia Pictures. Actor Cliff Robertson noted that money had been paid to him from the studio that he didn’t receive at one point in 1977, which led to Begelman being let go and a rift within the studio itself. Begelman was more punished for lying about going to Yale on his bio than for stealing money; Roberston was blacklisted for years for speaking up. By 1980, he’d return to the job at MGM, where he lasted for two years and produced Fame and Poltergeist.

He then moved to Sherwood Productions, where he produced WarGames, Mr. Mom, Blame It On Rio and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, another movie that he scammed investors on by reporting inflated costs and pocketing the difference. After an investor pulled out, he started yet another production company where he made Mannequin, Weekend at Bernie’s, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Short Time and the movie we’re discussing right now. After failing to find funding to keep making movies, he became depressed and shot himself at Los Angeles’ Century Plaza Hotel.

A thousand years ago, Prince William (William Ragsdale, Fright Night) of the kingdom of Hauptmann-Koenig wanted to marry a peasant girl named Jessie (Kristy Swanson, the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer). However, his mother (Cynthia Harris, Mad About You) does not approve of the marriage and asks her sorcerer (Terry Kiser, Bernie himself) to turn her into a mannequin for a thousand years or until she finds love in a foreign land.

Ragsdale also plays Jason Williamson, a new window dresser at Prince & Company, a Philadelphia department store. This is unlike any store you’ve ever seen before, putting even the one from A Christmas Story to shame. It’s like a self-contained city and will have a huge reveal of the new windows, which will include a peasant girl mannequin that is, of course, Jessie. Once our hero removes her cursed necklace, he suddenly has a new love.

That said, they must deal with the machinations of Count Gunther Spretzle, the reincarnation of the sorcerer, who wants Jessie for his own. He also has an army of bodybuilders — Rolf, Egon and Arnold — who are as ineffective as it gets.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that Hollywood Montrose (Meshach Taylor) shows up again and pretty much looks at the camera and lets you in on the fact that this happening twice is absolutely ridiculous. Taylor also plays a doorman at a nightclub in the film.

If you watch this and say, “That pink convertible seems familiar,” well that’s because it’s the same one from Raffill’s Mac and Me.

The failure of this film killed off Begelman’s Gladden Entertainment, which led to the end of his life. If you can get past that, this movie is absolutely off the rails. It has no grounding in reality whatsoever, beyond the fact that a mannequin comes to life. I’ve seen it so many times — it’s a Becca favorite so it airs several times a year in the B&S About Movies household — and every time I wonder, did anyone watch this in the edit and laugh that no one had caught on to the fact that they were aliens that didn’t know how humans really behaved?