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).

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.

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.

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 Scorchy and 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.

* You can visit with our “Drive-In Friday: Klaus Kinski Spagetti Western Nite” to get started on your Italian Western travels, pardner.

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.

You can get Road to Nashville with Mill Creek by way of their B-Movie Blast 50-movie set.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

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

Only in the B&S Movie-verse.

You can get this from Mill Creek on their B-Movie Blast 50-Film Pack, but we found a copy on You Tube and an extended teaser on You Tube. Mill Creek also carries the film on their “The Swingin’ Seventies” 50 Film Pack.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

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.