June 22: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Teenagers!

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 the kind of 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 and 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 made Running Scared (the one with Ken Wahl) and adult movies Parlor Games and Hot Circuit. Other writers were Richard Lerner, Tad Richards and Ace Baandige, a name for someone who claims 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 Kimberly Hyde, was also 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 Graduation 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.

June 21: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Westerns!

“One night, you will see a red star overhead. It will shine like a great diamond. On the night, you will go far away. Further than where you came from. You are a legend, Little Rita. A beautiful legend. You arrived from the void and you’re returning to the void.”

Little Rita wasn’t even five feet tall and weighed around 86 pounds. The Italian/Swiss singer and actress was known as la Zanzara di Torino (The Mosquito of Torino) and Pel di carota (Carrot Hair). Yet she sold 50 million records worldwide and is one of the few Italian singers to score on the UK pop charts. Her release of “Remember Me”, sung in English, with “Just Once More” on the other side, reached #26 in the U.S. and she was a frequent guest of The Ed Sullivan Show. But in Spain, other than Italy, she has the most success. 

In the 60s, she’d make six films — this movie, Clementine Cherie, La Feldmarescialla (The Crazy Kids of the War), Rita the American Girl, Rita La Zanzara (Rita the Mosquito) and Non Stuzzicate la Zanzara (Don’t Sting the Mosquito) — with the latter three directed by Lina Wertmüller.

Like all great Italian singers, she had a scandal. She married Teddy Reno, the man who organized the first song contest she won, a man who was still married. They were married in Switzerland in 1968 and officially in Italy in 1971, a country that had no official divorce law at the time.

In this, she’s Big Little Rita, somehow the fastest and deadliest gunfighter around, the “bestest in the West,” who is helping Silly Bull (Gordon Mitchell, who I imagine loaned his Western ranch set to this) to destroy the white man’s gold, which he believes has ruined the good nature of the world. Somehow, just a few years into the Italian West and not only is it being parodied, it’s also being called out for its anti-authoritarian bent.

This brings her into combat with both Ringo (Kirk Morris, who was really Adriano Bellini, a star of peplum and fumetti) and Django (Enzo Di Natale, who only made this movie, which is odd as I’m shocked more Italian directors didn’t cast him as a fake Franco Nero) in this comedic West. There’s also a character named Zorro, played by Romano Puppo, who was the leader of the zombies in Zombie 4: After Death, as well as showing up in Cop Game, Robowar and Escape from the Bronx as Trash’s father.

After Rita is taken by Sancho (Fernando Sancho, who was in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the rebels and would go on to be in several Italian Westerns, as well as playing the corrupt mayor in Return of the Blind Dead) and his men, she’s rescued by a dashing young cowboy named Black Star, who is Terrence Hill, four years before making what many consider the first Italian comedy Western, They Call Me Trinity.

Yet when they fall in love, that first night, he does what every other white man does and steals the gold. When caught, he’s sent to the Native Americans for punishment, but Rita talks them into letting him go. He feels bad for how he’s treated her and keeps turning himself in to be hanged. It takes him telling her he loves her for this all to end, at which point all the gold is destroyed, and Rita goes somewhere, following that deep dialogue about being a legend. He goes into the stars to get her back.

“A movie should have a happy ending, or no one would go see it.”

That’s what Francis Fitzgerald Grawz, the piano-playing singer from Germany, played by Lucio Dalla, says at the end. His talent caused Pupi Averti to give up music for directing, inspiring his movie Ma quando arrivano le ragazze. Another singer, Teddy Reno, plays the sheriff. Yes, the same Teddy Reno who had the scandal with Rita.

Director Ferdinando Baldi, who co-wrote the script with Franco Rossetti (who had a right to make fun of Django and Ringo, as he was one of the writers of both the original Django, the non-official sequel Django Prepare a Coffin and Ringo and His Golden Pistol, not to mention Zabriskie Point under his Americanized name Fred Gardner; he also directed and wrote Delitto al circolo del tennis and Emanuelle and Joanna, which has Sherry Buchanan in it), also made Texas Adios, Blindman, Long Lasting Days (as Sam Livingstone), Get Mean,  Nine Guests for a Crime, Comin’ at Ya!, Treasure of the Four Crowns, War Bus, Terror Express, Tan Zan: The Ultimate Mission and Just a Damned Soldier (as Ted Kaplan on the last two). I’ve seen tons of his movies!

It was shot by Enzo Barboni, the cinematographer on Django (and Nightmare Castle), so it looks just like the films it’s making light of. Of course, he would go on to make They Call Me Trinity, perfecting what started in this.

In France, after the success of the Trinity movies, this was re-released as T’as le bonjour de Trinita (Hello from Trinity). It was called Enas trellos… trellos Trinita (Crazy, Crazy Trinity) in Greece and Crazy Westerners in the U.S.

How about the fact that Fernanda Dell’Acqua — thanks Spaghetti Western Database — the sister of stuntmen Alberto, Ottaviano and Roberto was Rita’s stunt double? This movie ended her career, as her horse ran toward a ravine and didn’t stop. She barely got off in time, but ruined her leg. She was told, weeks later, that the horse died from regret. But this is Italy…

At one point, Gordon Mitchell’s Chief tells Rita, “You will return to nothingness, because from nothingness you came.” That’s a very sage — and saga — thing to say to a heroine. Also very Catholic.

A musicarello Italian Western with Pink Panther credits with an anti-capitalism streak, golden hand grenades, evil versions of cowboy icons and a gorgeous leading lady who, despite being tiny, gives it her all. I had no expectations and came away inspired.

You can watch this on YouTube.

June 20: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Exploitation Auteurs!

At one point during this movie, I put my head in my hands and took the Lord’s name in vain because, well, I was actually thanking God for the fact that I lived in the same reality that produced Russ Meyer.

This is his last film — whatever it is, I guess a film will describe it — after Meyer’s Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens. From 1979 to his death in 2004, it was a time of announced and never-filmed or unfinished projects. As porn entered the video store and bedrooms, Russ — who had battle censorship for so long — was rich and lived off the sales of the movies he’d already directed. In Jimmy McDonough’s Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film, Meyer said, “I got all the money I’ll ever need. You gotta be hungry to make a movie. I don’t have the desire, the urge.” You could call him and he’d answer the phone himself, ready to sell you a movie. He didn’t have to make Mondo Topless, Too or the color remake of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Reading about Blitzen, Vixen and Harry makes me wistful. So does The Jaws of Lorna AKA The Jaws of Vixen AKA The Bra of God, Up the Valley of the Beyond. Russ was selling old movies for $79.50, way more than other VHS, but he was the only person selling them. No more new films. No more fire, I guess.

Well, there was The Breast of Russ Meyer. Somehow, for the usual money watching Meyer, this cost $2 million dollars and went around the world to find the most incredible breasts Russ had ever seen. It seemed like a vision in his rapidly declining brain, mixing profiles of Meyer vixens who were doomed to later in life back problems, biographical moments of his Army service and even Kitten Natividad and Russ making love on screen. It was 12 hours long at one point and most of it was given to the Museum of Modern Art.

Other than some footage that aired on Johnathan Ross’ Incredible Film Show, the only way to see all this weirdness—just moments of it—is in Pandora Peaks, a movie that Russ shot throughout the 90s, keeping the actress—born Stephanie Schick—on a $9,000 a week retainer. She claims in this that she worked in a bank and had several businesses before making herself her business, expanding her measurements to 72HHH-22-36.

Russ keeps showing up to talk about his life and his past movies. Just when you think you may learn something, we’re back to Peaks dancing or a German girl named Tundi — who may have the Dr. Ruth voice you hear talking of sex throughout and who McDonough referred to as “truly freakish…a nineteen-year-old Hungarian who spoke no English and resembled a giant triangle made flesh” — as well as another cantilevered specimen named Leosha — that was a Russ word, as is gravity-defying — and Candy Samples, relating how much she likes using her breasts.

Another movie starring Meyer’s then-partner,  Melissa Mounds, was supposed to be made as well. Supposedly, longtime collaborator Jim Ryan oversaw this movie. The end of Russ’ life makes me sad — him losing the only person he cared about, his dog Harry; being physically abused by Mounds; the emotional loss of friends he served in the war with. He was a man abandoned by his lawman father, who never mentioned the mental illness his mother and sister battled or his worries that he had it. Instead, he invented himself. So if this movie feels all of the place, strange and perhaps a bit too overenthused by sweater meat, know that’s how its creator wanted it. He did it his way, even when it didn’t make sense.

June 19: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Free Space!

Director Robert Michael Ingria directed one movie.

You’re reading about it.

Manny Diaz worked as a dialogue coach on and wrote The Seven Minutes, was an assistant on Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and wrote the 1989 AIDS movie The Victims.

Somehow, they made a pro wrestling movie.

Hammerhead Jones is the champion of the American Council of Professional Wrestling, based in Miami, the literal heart of all wrestling in this real world. Kayfabe isn’t even a thing because all of the violence really happens to people. Hammerhead is played by Ted Vernon.

Vernon was a professional wrestler and manager for NWA Florida, D1PW and Future of Wrestling (all Florida-based promotions), but he’s done so much more. Let him tell you, in his own words, from his car dealership website, South Beach Classics:

“Ted Vernon has established worldwide recognition as an actor, writer and executive producer, since he played the title role in his own screenplay of Hammerhead Jones, which was released worldwide and still frequents HBO. Ted was the executive producer of the major motion picture of John Carpenter’s Village of the Damned with Universal Films starring Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley and Linda Kozlowski. Ted Vernon’s credits as star, actor and executive producer are in the all time cult famous film Scarecrows as Lead Role of Corbin, Mercenary. As an actor, Vernon filmed South Beach with Peter Fonda, Gary Busey, Fred Williamson; “Silent Hunter” with Fred Williamson and Miles Okeefe; The Unholy with Ben Cross and Trevor Howard; The Victims he played Arnold Cutter, Real Estate Mogul and Tough Guy; Deadly Rivals with Andrew Stevens and Margot Hemmingway; Played Kojak for Kojak Series Commercials on Channel 4 WTVJ; starred in commercial for Arequipena Beer.Vernon also appeared in the popular teen series S Club Seven, as the hilarious bodyguard wearing a dress. (Ted still insists he had the best legs in the group!) Vernon was also executive producer of a horror film shot in South Florida called Angel of Death.

Theatrical Performances include: Twice starring as The King in The King and I, Twice in Annie as Oliver Warbucks; Best Little Whorehouse in Texas as C.J. Scruggs;.Vernon’s additional ventures include two films by Accord Productions; Special Angelz and Death Print, both directed by Aiden Dillard, starring Ted Vernon. And of course, we can’t forget the worldwide hit SOUTH BEACH CLASSICS. Seasons 2,3 and 4 are available on Amazon Prime.

In addition, Vernon has done numerous music videos including “My Blue Angel” with Aaron Tippin; Miami High Boy Music video with Don Johnson and Andrew Hugger and has had his own Rock and Roll Music Band for many years and was lead singer of Ted Vernon and the Bulldogs, The Chromatics and The Autotones. Miami also followed Vernon back in his days of wrestling and boxing. As a boxer, he had a record of 21:1.”

Anyways, this movie.

Numbers Cooper (Anthony Albarino) has inherited the promotion from his kindly father. You know, like that kid in New York. He gets the idea to make all of his fights death matches where people fight with no referee until someone can’t move. Hammerhead retires instead of fighting in matches like that and supports an orphanage until his friend Mark Coleman (Joe Mascaro, the wrestling consultant; he’s also in Invasion U.S.A. and Dutch Treat, two Cannon movies) is put in a wheelchair. And now he has to fight. You’ve seen underground fight ring movies before, right?

The problem is that there aren’t many known wrestlers in this. Hammerhead is built like a car dealer who used to box when he was young because, well, that’s who he really is. But there are some real workers:

Rusty Brooks is in this. He had his own wrestling school and did enhancement matches for the WWF as well as wrestling as Super Duper Mario. Despite being born in Denton, Texas, the home of World Class Championship Wrestling, he was trained by “Gentleman” Jim Isler and Boris Malenko, spending most of his career in Florida.

Ricky Hunter is Butcher Block Barnes, a masked wrestler who wrestled under that name and as The Gladiator (I wonder if he gave that name to Florida wrestler Michael Lee Alfonoso, who wrestled as Mike Awesome in the U.S. and The Gladiator in Japan).

Joe Mirto was a lineman for the University of Miami Hurricanes, lettering from 1965 to 1967, and was a pro wrestler mainly known for doing jobs on WWF TV. He’s a tag team wrestler in this, along with Jim Young, who also appeared on WWF TV in a similar role. Crusher O’Brian is CWF wrestler Big Jim Haley; Joe ‘The Undertaker’ Markowitz is Bryan Carreiro, a former Mr. Jr. Florida who wrestled as The Terminator and The Thing.

Yet final boss Zarek is a very famous wrestler. It’s “Uncle Fred,” Fred Ottman, who wrestled as Tugboat and Typhoon in the WWF before leaving for WCW to become The Shockmaster. He fell face-first during the interview that introduced him, ruining everything. He also wrestled as Sigfried the Giant, Big Bubba and Big Steel Man. Today, he’s a WWE Hall of Famer along with Earthquake, his tag team partner as the Natural Disasters.

What amazes me most — look, I know you take any job — but this was edited by Angelo Ross, whose entertainment career started in the 30s as the dance partner of Rita Hayworth before he became an editor. Beyond this movie, he also worked as the music editor on The Hustler and edited Who Killed Teddy Bear, The Cross and the Switchblade, Smokey and the Bandit (he was Academy Award nominated for this!), Mr. No Legs, Jaguar Lives!, Masterblaster and King Frat. 

Hammerhead Jones loves orphans and is prayed for by nuns, but if he wants to be seen as a man, he’s going to have to do a death match. Kids show up at these death matches — the credit “child at death match” is incredible — and this is the most carny wrestling movie ever, made by guys who would never make the big time, so they’re creating their own. A film where Rusty Brooks has better promos than the hero and little kids love him so much that they buy bald caps at the merchandise table so they can look like him. I bet Hammerhead is making all of that money and if he’s old school enough, he’s sharing a bit with the heel who puts him over strong.

You can watch this on the Crud Buddies YouTube channel.

Tommy Gibbs (Fred Williamson) was abused by a white cop named Captain Jack McKinney (Art Lund) before growing up to become the leader of Harlem’s black mafia. He ends up taking over the world for a while, but you know how gangster movies go.

Larry Cohen, who directed and wrote this, said that Sammy Davis Jr. wanted to be in it. He told Camera In the Sun, “Davis wanted to do a picture in which he was the star, instead of being a flunky to Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. So I suggested that they do a gangster movie like Little Caesar, since he was a little guy, and so was Jimmy Cagney, and so was Edward G. Robinson. And I thought he could play a little hoodlum working his way up in the Harlem underworld.” Davis couldn’t pay, as he had IRS problems, so American-International Pictures was looking for a movie with a black star. The rest worked out splendidly.

Never mind that the movie ends with Tommy’s wife, Helen (Gloria Hendry), getting tired of all the abuse and helping rivals get the job on him. He gets shot a whole bunch of times but just won’t die, even beating the evil cop into gore with a shoebox. Then, he stumbled back into his old neighborhood where a gang beats, robs and kills him. Well, at least in Europe and then when it came to home video.

Never mind that Timmy was alive for the sequel, Hell Up In Harlem, which has him fall in love with religious woman Sister Jennifer (Margaret Avery) and learn that people close to him ordered the death of his wife Helen. I mean, sure. That’s a totally different reality from what I just watched.

It doesn’t matter. Larry Cohen could do no wrong, and Fred Williamson is the king of New York in this movie. Cohen was also bothered by real mobsters while making this, so he gave them parts in the film and put them on the poster. There were no problems after that.

This and Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off are the only movies with a James Brown soundtrack. It’s as amazing as you think it will be.

June 18: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Rock and Roll!

This movie is so much better than it has any right to be. The third movie in a series of air disaster movies with a Hot Topic aesthetic should not be this good.

Slade Craven (John Mann, lead singer of Spirit of the West) is the Marilyn Manson of this universe, set to play his final concert on a TransContinental Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Toronto that will be covered by Z-Web-TV, who has sent cameraman Ethan (Ben Derrick) and reporter Erica Black (Monika Schnarre, who of course we all know from Waxwork II: Lost In Time).

FBI agent Kate Hayden (Gabrielle Anwar) has been trying to arrest computer hacker Nick Watts (Craig Sheffer, Cabal from Nightbreed) and finally tracks him down, just in time for Craven to get replaced by Satanic superfan Simon Flanders, who wants to crash this plane into Stull, Kansas. FBI agents Frank Garner (Joe Mantegna, predating his FBI agent role on Criminal Minds) and Dave Barrett (Mike Dopud) come on board just in time for Satanic agents to blow up a control tower, killing an FAA agent (Brad Loree, who was Michael Myers in Halloween: Resurrection).

When fans see through Simon’s disguise, he reveals that Erika — and co-pilot MacIntosh (Rutger Hauer) — are both part of the plan to crash the plane. Why Stull, Kansas? According to Wikipedia, “Since the 1970s, the town has become infamous due to an apocryphal legend that claims the nearby Stull Cemetery is possessed by demonic forces.” The film even brings up the unproven story that Pope John Paul II refused to fly over the city because of how Satanic it is.

Craven ends up saving the day and with the help of the hacker — and a copy of Flight Simulator — he lands the plane. The hacker is supposed to be arrested, but we’re left with the idea that he’s about to have kinky sex with the FBI agent.

The funniest part is when Temu Marilyn Manson has to land the plane. He takes off his evil necklace and starts to pray to God. This is after a long scene where he gets checked by the TSA and has to show off every evil piece of jewelry he has.

The last movie released by Trimark, this was directed by Jorge Montesi — it has the look of TV shows, like his work on Total Recall 2070, Relic Hunter, Jake 2.0, Mutant X, Highlander, Forever Knight and the TV movies Omen IV: The Awakening and the remake of Mother, May I Sleep With Danger? — and written by Wade Ferley.

Do we not know that Craig Sheffer was in the last movie in this series in a different role? Is this prescient as it pertains to 9/11? Do I like the drugs even if they don’t like me?

You can watch this on Tubi.

June 17: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Lucio Fulci!

This is 39 of 57 movies directed by Lucio Fulci, so I have made my way through all of his genre films and am now in the comedy and musical movies. Like 1960’s Urlatori alla Sbarra, The Jukebox Kids is a musicarello, and Fulci was the first director — with this movie — to make just such a movie.

I Ladri, the first movie Fulci made, flopped. His career was on the line, so this populist film is what emerged. Record company owner Commander Cesari (Mario Carotenuto) and his granddaughter Guilia Cesari (Elke Sommer) are at odds over what music to release. He likes the classics, she loves rock and roll. He goes to jail, she goes out to the nightclubs and starts to sign bands to release; it’s very similar to Urlatori alla Sbarra, but you know Italy. Fin che la barca va, lasciala andare.

You get to see and hear Adriano Celentano and the Modern Jazz Gang,  I Campioni, Fred Buscaglione and his Asternovas, Betty Curtis, Tony Dallara, Gianni Meccia, Ornella Vanoni and more. Plus, Anthony Steffen years before he was an Italian Western star and Fulci himself showing up as a talent show boss.

Basically, Scopitones — a type of jukebox featuring a 16 mm film component; the Italian versions were called Cinebox — with a story between all the songs. It’s funny because the screamers, as these artists were called, were looked down on by adults and said to be so rebellious. Today, they seem quaint. So does the way Fulci shot them. No zooms. No throwing up entrails. Everyone’s eyes are safe.

You can watch this on YouTube.

June 16-22 SNL Week: Saturday Night Live is celebrating 50 years on the air, can NBC last for another 50 years??

I have a love/hate relationship with Saturday Night Live. Maybe because it’s me coming from Pittsburgh, because that’s one of the few places where it didn’t air live, because Chiller Theater was such a big deal. Or maybe it’s because I would switch back and forth to the Youngstown affiliate — WMFJ 21 — and watch some of the original cast. I was so into comedy as a kid that while Steve Martin, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, John Belushi (I mean, he dressed as Godzilla!) and others made me laugh, I was raised on Monty Python, SCTV, Benny Hill and Dave Allen At Large, so SNL gradually impressed me less and less while also obsessing me. I couldn’t stay away from its pull for long. Soon, I was watching it every week, finding every movie its cast found their way into and deifying several of the Not Ready for Prime Time Players (and then hating them when they weren’t who I wanted them to really be).

Over the years, I’ve read just about every book and seen every documentary, and I am frankly at odds with how the show is made. Does it have to be live? Why do they write it in such an insane way, staying up all night? Why does it keep getting worse as comedy gets better? Why is there a messiah cult around Lorne Michaels and the casts of this show that is not shared by other groups he worked with, like the Kids in the Hall?

I also love Dan Aykroyd without reservation, despite his white man appreciation for Chicago blues — I get it, I love Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf too — going out of control and getting commodified into the House of Blues and in movies like this, which I blame for scenes where Anthony Michael Hall acts black and an entire club doesn’t stimp him but instead accepts him. But hey, he was Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute, so I will forever love him. Plus, he believes everything in Ghostbusters and initially wrote it under the name Ghost Smashers and Ivan Reitman said,  “It was set in the future…and it took place on a number of different planets or dimensional planes. And it was all action. There was very little character work in it. The Ghostbusters were catching ghosts on the very first page — and doing it on every single page after that — without respite, just one sort of supernatural phenomenon after another. By the 10th page, I was exhausted. By the 40th or 50th page — however many there were — I was counting the budget in hundreds of millions of dollars.” So fuck yeah, Dan Aykroyd, despite this movie.

I’m getting to it.

I also love the myth of The Blues Brothers, a movie made in chaos, fueled by cocaine, that movie theater owners didn’t want to run because it was too black. According to All the Right Moves, “…Mann Theatres (a major cinema chain at the time) then announced they wouldn’t be showing The Blues Brothers in all of their theatres. Owner Ted Mann believed that white people wouldn’t be interested in such a film, explaining his reasons to Landis: “It’s mainly because of the musical artists you have. Not only are they black. They are out of fashion.” This led to The Blues Brothers opening in less than 600 theatres across the U.S., less than half the amount a big-budget movie could usually expect.”

But don’t feel bad. “Despite this setback, it still managed to make $57 million at the domestic box office, and proved even more successful overseas, grossing $58 million.”

It was the kind of movie that my grandfather would watch over and over on HBO, gleeful at the scenes where the Nazis died, joyous at the cars exploding all over the screen, a movie totally not made for him but one that entertained him just the same, he telling all of us in the room to get ready for another part, giving us play by play of what was happening in his raptuous love of a film that was probably only equalled by The Bad Lieutenant and Terminator 2, the only movie — and thing — I ever saw that made that tough old steelworking man cry.

Seriously, a car blew up on him once, and his back had no skin. He barely registered it. I also once saw him get stabbed in the arm, and he took the steak knife out and kept eating breakfast.

I tell you all this to say that I want the sequel to succeed, but it falls victim to all the problems of the first movie, almost karmically being the recipient of that movie’s excesses.

There’s no Belushi, to start. Not even Jim, who couldn’t fit this into his schedule. Instead, we get John Goodman, who I also like very much, as the new member of the band. This is not an even trade.

It’s dedicated to the cast members who died: Belushi, Cab Calloway, John Candy and Junior Wells. While nice to mention, this is what we call a downer.

Anyways, Elwood (Aykroyd) is finally let out of jail, 18 years later, only to learn his brother is dead and no one is there to pick him up. He’s finally given a ride by Matara, who works for his old drummer, Willie Hall. This starts the movie’s idea of getting the band back together, as well as Elwood mentoring a kid named Buster (J. Evan Bonifant) at the suggestion of Mother Mary Stigmata. By the end, we have The Blues Brothers Band, which includes Joe Morton as Curtis’ son Commander Cabel Chamberlain,  Steve “The Colonel” Cropper, Donald “Duck” Dunn, Willie “Too Big” Hall, Tom “Bones” Malone, Lou “Blue Lou” Marini, Matt “Guitar” Murphy and Alan “Mr. Fabulous” Rubin in a battle of the bands against Queen Moussette’s (Erykah Badu) The Louisiana Gator Boys, who are Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, Gary U.S. Bonds, Eric Clapton, Clarence Clemons, Jack DeJohnette, Bo Diddley, Jon Faddis, Isaac Hayes, Dr. John, B. B. King, Tommy “Pipes” McDonnell, Charlie Musselwhite, Billy Preston, Lou Rawls, Joshua Redman, Paul Shaffer, Koko Taylor, Travis Tritt, Jimmie Vaughan, Grover Washington Jr., Willie Weeks and Steve Winwood.

So yeah, it’s a 63-car pileup—more than the first movie and everything else—but it also has Blues Traveler in it.

Anyways, director John Landis said to the A.V. Club, “We’d always intended for a sequel with John, but of course when he passed away, it was obvious we weren’t going to do it. But Danny had been performing with John Goodman and Jimmy Belushi and the band, and he said, “You know, this is great, because this music is recognized now—let’s do a movie.” I said, “Great, sure, okay,” and we wrote what I thought was a terrific script. Then Universal Studios eviscerated it. That was a strange experience, because the first thing they said was that it had to be PG, which meant they couldn’t use profanity, which is basically cutting the Blues Brothers’ nuts off. The first movie is an R-rated film, but there’s no nudity or violence in it. It’s just the language. Then they said, “You have to have a child, you have to have…” The bottom line was that the only way that movie was going to get made was to agree with everything they said. You know the difference between a brown-nose and a shithead? Depth perception. That’s the only time I never really fought with the studio, because they didn’t really want to make it. So we did every single thing they said. By the time we’d done that, the script was kind of homogenized and uninteresting. Danny said, “It’s about the music. It’s just about the music, John, so don’t worry about it. We’ll get the best people, and we’ll make a great album, and get these people on film. We have to document these people.” It’s interesting because, as much as I make fun of Danny, three or four of those guys have passed away since we made that movie. People say, “Okay, you’ve got Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, James Brown, Cab Calloway, and John Lee Hooker in The Blues Brothers—who’s in Blues Brothers 2000?” The answer? Everyone else. The first movie has five musical numbers, and the second movie has 18.”

He also killed Vic Morrow and made Max Landis, so what the fuck does he know?

A few years ago, Jim Belushi told Cinema Blend that Aykroyd — who makes a marijuana blend with him called Blues Brothers — is constantly pitching new sequel ideas: “Actually, you know, he’s always got ideas. I mean, he’s got this whole thing about, you know, ‘I find Jake’s brother in Albania, you know. I found out there was another brother, a Blues Brother. And I go to Albania and I find him and I bring him out. He doesn’t speak English.’ I mean, he’s got all kinds of ideas. The Blues Sisters, he wants to do one with the Blues Brothers but Blues Sisters. You know, he’s a creative son of a gun.”

There was also a Nintendo 64 game made. It didn’t come out until two years after this, and it made $32 million on a $30 million budget.

At least Paul Schaffer, the guy who got the original band together, finally got to play with them.

June 16: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is ‘80s Comedy!

In 1980, 8-year-old Sam was all in on MAD Magazine—every issue. It’s how I saw so many R-rated movies, as I couldn’t go to the theater but could read them as redone by Mort Drucker. Imagine my joy when the Usual Gang of Idiots decided to make a movie, just like those new kids, the National Lampoon.

A note: MAD has the humor of old school Jewish comedy, teaching me words like schmuck while the Lampoon was rich kids who went to an Ivy League school and did drugs. Also: Oversimplification can be funny.

Publisher William Gaines — yes, the same guy who did Tales from the Crypt — told The Comics Journal, “What happened is that we had a contract with Warner Brothers to put out a MAD movie. It’s like four years old now. They came up with a script that we didn’t like, and then they came up with a script using our scriptwriters that they didn’t like, but meanwhile they threw this script onto our desk … Although there were many things in it that I thought were offensive and should be removed, generally, I liked the script. And I thought, “Well, in addition to a MAD movie, there’s nothing wrong with having something like Lampoon did with Animal House.” Animal House was “Lampoon Presents” and really had nothing to do with the magazine; it was just using their name, and it was a good movie, and it was very successful, and it made Lampoon a lot of money. I guess. So we were going to do the same thing. “MAD Magazine Completely Disassociates Itself from Up the Academy“. But that was too long for them; they couldn’t think in that many words. They put the damn thing out without all the deletions they had promised to make, which means they’re liars. I’m talking about one of my sister companies [laughter] … And there we were connected with it, and there wasn’t much we could do about it. I paid Warner Bros. 30 grand to take MAD‘s name off for television. So, for $30,000, we got out of being associated with it on Home Box Office. It won’t say “MAD Magazine Presents,” and Alfred E. Neuman won’t be in it. And it was well worth $30,000.”

It is quite like many other sex comedies that came after the men of Delta House. Chooch (Ralph Macchio) is the youngest son of an organized crime family; El-Hashid “Hash” Amier Jr. (Tommy Citera) is the son of an oil sheik; Eisenhower “Ike” MacArthur (Wendell Brown) is the son of a faith healer who keeps marrying young wives and Hash keeps schtupping them (see, I did learn from MAD!). Oliver Holt (Hutch Parker) has a governor for a father and just wants to sleep with his girlfriend Candy (Stacy Nelkin, who is Ellie Grimbridge, and if you get that, welcome to the site), except his father doesn’t want a teen pregnancy getting in the way of his re-election.

Chooch wants to go straight, so enter new recruit, Rodney Ververgaert (Harry Teinowitz), who likes to make things explode.

They’re all being brutalized by Major Vaughn Liceman (Ron Leibman, the Emmy and Tony-winning actor who asked for his name to be removed from this movie; he was also married to Linda Lavin and Jessica Walter, which is pretty good when you think about it), your typical bad guy in a teen sex comedy.

Candy ends up getting sent to military school as well, so Liceman sets the couple up and takes pictures of them in the act while demanding that he gets to sleep with Candy to protect Oliver’s father’s election. There’s also a snobs vs. slobs soccer game, Tom Poston playing the most stereotypical mincing gay character ever, Antonio “Huggy Bear” Fargas as a coach, and the mind-blowing Barbara Bach, Lady Starke as Bliss, the teacher every boy in school wants.

Also, it’s not good. It’s aggressively bad.

Directed by Robert Downey Sr., who said it was “one of the worst fucking things in history,” and written by Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses, it was so bad that MAD skipped a letters column to present MAD Magazine Resents Throw Up the Academy, which called out Leibman taking his name off the movie, the fact that actors had to have been pubished by being in it and just two pages of the writers, artists and editors being so mad about the movie that they all quit.

Here’s just a sample of this hit piece:

“Once upon a time, there was a Publisher of a magazine. He was a happy man, publishing his magazine. But one day, he said, “Wouldn’t it be swell if they made a movie and my magazine sponsored it?! It would help sales! Isn’t that a wonderful idea?” All of his Yes-Men agreed that it was a wonderful idea, and so the smart people in Hollywood made a movie, and the magazine sponsored it. But did the Publisher live happily ever after? Not on your life! He overlooked one little thing while summoning images of millions of people rushing to see the movie and then rushing to newsstands to buy his magazine. The thing he overlooked was to find out if the movie was any good! Well? Was it? If you’ve seen it, you already know the answer to that question!”

I had never seen a magazine hype something and then apologize. It really was a big deal to my young brain.

It also has a terrifying real-life Alfred E. Newman, designed by Rick Baker. I can only compare this, as the end of the movie, to taking a painful shit and then wiping, only to find blood all over the toilet paper.

Yes, Rev. MacArthur, Ike’s dad, is played by King Coleman, the man who sang “(Do The) Mashed Potatoes.”

At least the soundtrack is good, filled with stuff like The Stooges’ “Gimme Danger” and “Night Theme,” Blondie’s “One Way Or Another” and “X Offender,” The Kinks’ “Yes Sir, No Sir,” Lou Reed’s “Street Hassle,” The Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner,” David Johansen’s “Girls,” Nick Lowe’s “Heart of the City” and Cheap Trick’s “Surrender.” There’s no reason to have that many great songs in a film this fecund.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

June 15: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Revenge! 

Nu xing de fu chou (New Type Revenge) AKA The Nude Body Case In Tokyo is a 1981 Taiwanese movie directed by Yang-Ming Tsai (Phoenix the Raider, The Legend of Broken Sword) and written by Chen Kuo Tai and Chen-hsiang Tai. Sure, it’s a revenge-o-matic, but it’s also a Taiwan Black Movie, so called because it takes real life and goes hard in its depiction of a woman done wrong going for blood.

Ling (Elsa Yeung) is a dance instructor who has learned that her best friend Meihua has been killed in Japan. To add more pain, Meihua’s sister Meifeng is tied up in this, forced into prostitution to pay for the cocaine she’s stolen. Ling saves her, at the cost of her eye, making her into the Frigga of this film.

This is also wildly unfocused and padded, which I loved, because it includes Ling going to watch a KISS band play in the park and attend a sumo match. How this advances the plot is unknown, but then this goes for broke by having Yakuza gangsters torture women by crucifying them upside down before covering them with ants. After all this lunacy, Ling gets all of their victims together for the eye for an eye that they need. Literally.

You will believe that sexy gymnasts can obliterate evil men. This is how it should be.

You can download this from the Internet Archive. You can also watch it on the TaiwanPlus site.