Category Archives: Movie reviews

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Can I Do It…’Til I Need Glasses? (1977)

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The sequel to If You Don’t Stop It… You’ll Go Blind!!! This makes me remember when HBO used to show burlesque, which was weird after porno chic, as it was all these old comedians telling the same jokes and girls barely getting naked, yet at the same time, you could go see full penetration adult movies. However, this film is filled with dirty jokes, one after another, with some minor nudity. It was re-released three years after its initial release because Robin Williams was featured in it before he became a star. That said, he wasn’t in the 1977 version. They went and found the cut footage and put it back out, leading to a lawsuit.

Speaking of stars, L.A. billboard icon Angelyne, Ron Jeremy, Tallie Cochrane (AKA Viola Reeves, Kay Geddes, Grace Turlie, Talia Wright, Silver Fox and Chick Jones) and Uschi Digard all show up.

Director I. Robert Levy transitioned from editing 1970s TV to making these two movies, writing them with Mike Callie and Mike Price. There’s nothing like this today; it’s just a total piece of junk with a great title, a better poster, and an audience that was looking for something, anything, in the days before cable adult films.

You can watch this on YouTube.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Candy Tangerine Man (1975)

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Directed and produced by Matt Cimber and written by Mikel Angel under the pseudonym of George Theakos, The Candy Tangerine Man presents the dual lives of businessperson Ron Lewis (John Daniels). By day, he’s a successful executive, a loving husband and a devoted father. By night, he’s the Black Baron, riding down the Sunset Strip in his yellow and red Rolls Royce to collect the money from his sex workers.

He was a GOOD FATHER by day…and a MEAN MUTHA at night!

Unlike every real pimp in the world, he treats his women right. Sure, some of them try to steal money from him and he has to deal with them, as well as organized crime, but he’s selling sex for the betterment of his family. See? He’s an alright guy. Sometimes, you just need to keep the girls in line as well as protect them from some guy going all The New York Ripper on them.

While this is derivative of every other blacksploitation movie, it does get to the hand down the garbage disposal gore scene two years before Rolling Thunder.

Git Back JACK–Give him no JIVE…He is the BAAAD’EST Cat in ’75!

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Candy Snatchers (1973)

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Possibly inspired by the kidnapping of Barbara Jane Mackle, The Candy Snatchers gets its name because Eddy (Vince Martorano), Jessie (Tiffany Bolling) and Alan (Brad Davis) have kidnapped a young girl named Candy (Susan Sennett) from her Catholic school. They keep her buried alive — with a pipe for air — in a field somewhere in California. Only the autistic Sean Newton (Christopher Trueblood) knows that she’s there, but he’s a little kid who can barely communicate, trapped with parents — Dudley (Jerry Butts) and Audrey (Bonnie Boland) — who seemingly hate him.

Candy will inherit $2 million from her late father when she turns 21. But if she dies before that, her stepfather, Avery (Ben Piazza), gets half, and his wife, Katherine (Dolores Dorn), receives the other. So he doesn’t even tell her that Candy is gone.

Even when presented with a severed ear — the criminals go to a morgue and cut one off a dead body — Avery doesn’t care. He’s already sleeping with an employee, Lisa (Phyllis Major), and doesn’t care that Alan seduces his wife. He cares even less when they kill her.

These horrible people are all determined to destroy one another. I won’t ruin the end of this, only to say that you will have to create your own conclusion to the story.

Bolling hated this, saying to TCM Underground, “I was doing cocaine…and I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I was very angry about the way that my career had gone in the industry…the opportunities that I had and had not been given…. The hardest thing for me, as I look back on it, was I had done a television series, The New People, and so I had a lot of young people who really respected me and… revered me as something of a hero, and then I came out with this stupid Candy Snatchers movie… It was a horrendous experience.”

Director Guerdon Trueblood — that’s his son playing Sean — and co-star Vince Martorano had been best friends at George Washington University in Virginia. They made a bet about who would get into filmmaking first. Trueblood became an in-demand writer for TV series and movies of the week. When he got the job of directing this movie, he asked writer Bryan Gindoff to create the character of Eddy specifically for Martorano, who was working as a commercial fisherman at the time.

CBS LATE MOVIE: Earthbound (1981)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Earthbound was on the CBS Late Movie on July 25, 1986 and April 15, 1987.

Rejected as a TV pilot, Earthbound played a limited release in theaters. In fact, it would be one of the last films that Schick Sunn Classic Pictures made that played in theaters.

Directed by James L. Conway, who would go from Sunn Classics to working on Star Trek and Charmed, this has kindly Ned Anderson (Burl Ives) and his grandson Tommy (Todd Porter) protecting aliens — Zef (Christopher Connelly), Lara (Meredith MacRae), Dalem (Marc Gilpin) and Teva (Elissa Leeds) — from Sheriff De Rita (John Schuck) and Deputy Sweeney (Stuart Pankin) and a Man In Black (Joseph Campanella).

There are all sorts of alien psychic hijinks, a space monkey, and it feels like a 1970s Disney movie, yet it was made after that. If you told me it was Italian, given the references to 1970s U.S. pop culture, I’d believe you. Nope. That’s Park City, Utah. Sunn Classics country.

But hey — Doodles Weaver is in it!

You can watch this on YouTube.

CBS LATE MOVIE: Once Upon a Spy (1980)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Once Upon a Spy was on the CBS Late Movie on January 22 and October 15, 1987 and March 8 and August 2, 1988.

Jack Chenault is a computer genius whom the government wants to be a spy. You and I recognize that he’s Ted Danson and that seems silly to make him James Bond. Maybe with the help of Agent Paige Tannehill (Mandy Pepperidge), he can defeat mad scientist Marcus Valorium (Christopher Lee never says no), who has a motorized wheelchair of death, complete with rocket launchers. He also has a shrinking ray.

Director Ivan Nagy may be best known for his association with Heidi Fleiss. Still, he also directed Mind Over Murder, Captain America II: Death Too Soon , and Skinner, which is a notable achievement. He later, after the scandal, moved on to make nearly adult films, including All Nude Athena, Trailer Trash Teri, Izzy Sleeze’s Casting Couch Cuties, Touch Me, and Wild Desire.

This was written by Jimmy Sangster, so it has that going for it.

There is a universe where Dansen is not known as Sam Malone, but as Jack Chenault.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Going to America (2014)

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July 21-27 Eddie Griffin Week: This motherfucker is funny!

Fumnanya (Eddie Griffin) — a would-be African prince, so this isn’t ripping off the other Eddie’s movie — and Andy (Josh Meyers) escape from their doctor and mental hospital to go on the road with a video camera, making a movie about saving a princess. She turns out to be Candy (Najarra Townsend), a sex worker who is tired of being alive and wants the two to help her end it all. Their movies end up going viral on YouTube and they earn the anger of her pimp Rocco (Dave Vescio), who wants his property back.

Originally titled “Last Supper,” this film was directed by Param Gill, who also wrote the script alongside John Buchanan. It was based on a Slovenian movie, which was supposedly the biggest in the country’s history, yet I can find no information on it online.

This is one of those sweet and saccharine comedies with romance at its core. It’s fine, but it feels like everyone could be doing so much more.

Penny Marshall also shows up in a cameo as herself.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CBS LATE MOVIE: Moon Zero Two (1970)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Moon Zero Two was on the CBS Late Movie on January 26, 1973 and June 7, 1974.

Hammer does science fiction! Directed by Roy Ward Baker and written by Michael Carreras, this promised that there would be moon colonies by 2021. Millionaire J.J. Hubbard (Warren Mitchel) wants space explorer Bill Kemp (James Olson) to capture an asteroid in low orbit that can be transformed into better rocket fuel, allowing people like Kemp to not just colonize or be a tourist to the moon but to go to other worlds. After all, kemp was the first man on Mars.

Kemp lucks out by offering to help Clementine Taplin (Catherine Schell), whose brother owned a nickel mine — and was killed by Hubbard — putting her in the position of being rich once the asteroid lands there.

One of the film’s other writers, Gavin Lyall, wanted this to be much tougher than as glossy as it got. His wife, Katharine Whitehorn, said, “It was about — or supposed to be about — space travel when it had got to the beat-up-old-Dakota stage of grubby reality. The people who made it were dazzled by Kubrick’s 2001 and couldn’t resist trying to make it glossy and improbably perfect, the exact opposite of what the authors intended: all the gritty realism was gone.”

It came out three months after man went to the moon — maybe — which caused Ward to say, “Moon Zero Two was a bad picture. It was hopeless, and never got off the ground. We didn’t have enough money to do it properly. It was crazy – a complete muddle. And, it was undercut by the fact that you could turn on the television and see Neil Armstrong jumping about on the real Moon.”

Maybe he wasn’t totally right, as the sets were so realistic they were reused for years on TV shows like Space:1999, Moonbase 3 and UFO, as well as the movies Superman II, Superman IV and 2009’s Moon.

In the U.S., this was sold as the first space western. It played double features with When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth.

CBS LATE MOVIE: The Idolmaker (1980)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Idolmaker was on the CBS Late Movie on January 31, 1986.

Based on the life of rock promoter/producer Bob Marcucci, whose discoveries included Frankie Avalon and Fabian and who served as a technical advisor for the production, this is the story of Vincent “Vinnie” Vacarri (Ray Sharkey), Gino “G.G.” Pilato (Joe Panoliano) and Tomaso “Tommy Dee” DeLorusso (Paul Land) as they navigate the world of music.

Vinnie ends up being the boss, running a record label through the times of payola and teen magazines, getting involved with an editor named Brenda (Tovah Feldshuh). As Tommy gets too big and starts ignoring his advice, he grooms Guido Bevaloqua (Peter Gallagher), a busboy at his family’s restaurant, into becoming Caesare, the kind of singer whose audiences run onstage and tear his clothes off. He begins dating a reporter, Ellen Fields (Maureen McCormick), but soon everyone abandons Vinnie, and he has to return to the pasta restaurant, singing at night in small clubs while the acts he helped make become stars.

Fabian Forte filed a lawsuit against the film, alleging defamation and invasion of privacy. He had been managed by Marcucci and could be seen as the character of Caesare. Fabian said that the film made him look like “a totally manufactured singer, a mere pretty face without any singing ability or acting talent.” This was settled out of court, with Fabian, his wife, and family receiving public apologies in The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, as well as the full ownership of the film being transferred to Marcucci. If you watched it on the CBS Late Movie, you were giving Fabian money.

So if you didn’t get it:
Vincent ‘Vinnie’ Vacarri is Marcucci.

Tommy Dee is Frankie Avalon.

Guido Bevaloqua is based on Fabian.

Brenda Roberts is based on Marcucci’s real-life assistant, Rona Barrett.

Director — and co-writer with Edward Di Lorenzo — Taylor Hackford also directed The Devil’s Advocate, Dolores Claiborne, An Officer and a Gentleman, Against All Odds, and the video for Lionel Richie’s “Say You, Say Me.”

You can watch this on YouTube.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Brain Donors (1992)

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July 21-27 Eddie Griffin Week: This motherfucker is funny!

Inspired by the Marx Brothers comedies A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, Brain Donors finds Roland T. Flakfizer (John Turturro), Jacques (Bob Nelson) and Rocco Melonchek (Mel Smith) as its heroes, as they screw up an opera being put on by Lillian Oglethorpe (Nancy Marchand), a wealthy widow.

Director Dennis Dugan wanted Adam Sandler for this, but Paramount disagreed. He’d work with the comedy star on several films after this. It was written by Pat Proft, along with some assistance by David and Jerry Zucker, who produced this. When they left Paramount, the name was changed from Lame Ducks and a theatrical run was pretty much shelved, leaving this movie to find its audience on home video.

If you love slapstick humor or are ready to call out the Marx Brothers references in this, you’re going to love it. As for Eddie Griffith, he shows up as a messenger. I love how much fun Turturro seems to be having, as he’s usually in serious roles.

 

CBS LATE MOVIE: Treasure of the Amazon (1985)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Treasure of the Amazon was on the CBS Late Movie on December 13, 1985, May 13 and July 31, 1986, February 4, 1987 and August 17, 1988. 

In this strange world, the Amazon Rainforest is a place rich with treasure and death. There’s a whole bunch of jewels and Gringo the Damned (Stuart Whitman) and Klaus von Blantz (Donald Pleasence) are after it. Gringo just wants the money. Klaus wants to find the Fourth Reich. If that doesn’t put you on Gringo’s side, how about the first thing we see him do is chop a guy’s finger off and throw him in the river to get shredded by piranha?

Along with his partners Paco (Emilio Fernández) and Zapata (Pedro Armendáriz Jr.), he’s on the hunt for the gold. There’s also a crew of Americans — Barbara (Ann Sidne), Dick (Clark Jarrett) and Clark (Bradford Dillman) — who are nearly killed every few minutes. Also, something for daddy: Klaus’ native wife Morimba (Sonia Infante) refuses to wear clothes.

Is that working for you? What if Hugo Stiglitz showed up as a riverboat captain and John Ireland as a priest? What if we threw in some child headhunters? And hey, seeing as how this is a Mexican film, what if snakes get really killed, someone murders and eats a spider on camera and then someone really decapitates an alligator? The special effects for all the gore pale in comparison to this.

We can blame René Cardona Jr., who also showed real animal destruction in Tintorera (a movie more about two dudes using women as a conduit for their passion than a shark) and Night of 1000 Cats, a film in which real cats are thrown and mistreated. But you know, the guy knows how to make a movie. He really does.

You can watch this on Tubi.