EDITOR’S NOTE: Cover Girls was on the CBS Late Movie on March 2 and August 1, 1983, March 21, 1984, December 30, 1986 and June 1, 1987.
Two models, Linda Allen (Cornelia Sharpe) and Monique Lawrence (Jayne Kennedy), are really spies, sent on a mission by James Andrews (Don Galloway) to track down both an embezzler, Bradner (Vince Edwards), and a criminal named Michael (George Lazenby).
This is a failed pilot made in the wake of the success of Charlie’s Angels. You get Don Johnson as an undercover agent posing as a rock star, Ellen Travolta as a photographer and an appearance by Ray Dennis Steckler’s wife Carolyn Brandt!
Directed by TV vet Jerry London and written by Mark Rodgers, this is enjoyable silliness that I wish had become a series, but I say that about every failed pilot.
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.
Kawada (Hiroki Matsukata) is a yakuza member of the Tomiyasu Group, who has been promised by his boss, Mr. Yasuhara, that he will receive control of the security business for the speedboat racetrack in exchange for killing a man. He follows through and pays for the crime by going to jail. Years later, when he’s released, Mr. Yasuhara refuses. No problem. Kawada buries him up to his neck until he gets what he wants.
Yasuhara puts a price on Kawada’s head that is answered by the Kanai Group and their leader, Kanai Hachiro (Sonny Chiba). He sends fifty killers after Kawada while also planning to take over Fukui for his own territory.
Screenwriter Kōji Takada based Kawada on Hiroshi Kawauchi, boss of the Kawauchi-gumi. Takada interviewed the yakuza, who held nothing back. After the Hokuriku Proxy War was released, Kawauchi was shot and killed in the same cafe that he had been interviewed in, just like Kawada is shot in the film. The movie character survived; the real gangster didn’t.
Kinji Fukasaku really directed some fantastic movies. This is but one of them. Seek his work out.
The limited edition Radiance Films Blu-ray release has new interviews with Yoko Takahashi and Koji Takada; a video essay by Yakuza film historian Akihiko Ito on the real-life Hokuriku Proxy War murder case; a trailer; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow and a limited edition booklet featuring newly translated archival writings on the film. It’s a limited edition of 3,000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with a removable OBI strip, allowing the packaging to remain free of certificates and markings. You can get it from MVD.
The Godfather of Hong Kong Cinema, Chang Cheh, had a career that spanned from the wuxia films of the 1960s to the martial arts movies of the 1970s, encompassing a wide range of other genres.
The Magnificent Trio (1966): Starring Jimmy Wang Yu as swordsman Lu Fang, Lo Lieh as Yen Tzu-ching and Cheng Lui as Huang Liang, this is the story of, well, three badass swordsmen who decide to help farmers against the rich people oppressing them.
A remake of Hideo Gosha’s Three Outlaw Samurai, set in the Ming Dynasty instead of Japan, this film features farmers kidnapping Wei Wen-chen, the magistrate’s daughter, in the hope of securing a ransom to feed their children. As for her father, Magistrate Wei, he keeps the poverty of his people a secret from the Emperor, taxing and beating them into submission.
Lu Feng is everything you want in a wuxia hero. To keep the farmers from being arrested, he agrees to take a hundred lashes, passing out from the pain. Man, the things he does to keep these people safe.
Magnificent Wanderers (1977): Nomads Lin Shao You (Fu Sheng), Shi Da Yong (Chi Kuan-chun), and Guan Fei (Li Yi-min) battle the Mongols in this kung fu epic. It’s also a comedy, as the three engage in a fortune-telling scam before meeting wealthy man Chu Tie Xia (David Chiang), who claims they are friends.
However, there’s no real story here; the Mongols are comical morons instead of frightening monsters and I never expect Cheh to do comedy. Working with Wu Ma, there is some action here. I also dig that Chiang’s character has a bow that shoots arrows of gold.
Even if this is a misstep, a year later, Cheh will make The Five Venoms.
This 88 Films set is a limited edition of 2000 copies. It has a limited edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Grégory Sacré; 1080p HD presentations on Blu-ray from masters supplied by Celestial Pictures; audio commentary on The Magnificent Trio by East Asian film expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) and martial artist and filmmaker Michael Worth; audio commentary on Magnificent Wanderers by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema; a video essay by Gary Bettinson, editor-in-chief of Asian Cinema Journal and a limited edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing on Chang Cheh by writer and critic James Oliver. You can get these films from MVD.
The editor of a sports magazine is trying to transform fashion model Reiko (Yoko Shiraki) into a professional golfer, while retaining all the rights to her image. Despite that, she becomes a big star after winning her first tournament. Yet a hit-and-run accident leads to her being blackmailed by an obsessed stalker, Kayo.
After being blacklisted for a decade, this was director Seijun Suzuki’s comeback film. He had been told that his “…films were incomprehensible, that they did not make any money and that Suzuki might as well give up his career as a director as he would not be making films for any other companies.” This led to a lawsuit that lasted three and a half years and barely generated any financial gain for him, despite his victory. His biggest concern was that Nikkatsu, the studio where he worked, would hold all of his films forever, never allowing them to be released.
Written by manga illustrator Ikki Kajiwara, this story revolves around a woman who is seemingly gifted everything to become a star, yet remains unaware of how the machinations of fame will ultimately ruin any hope of an everyday life. It’s not the sports story that you expect.
The Radiance Films Blu-ray release of this film has extras such as audio commentary by critic and author Samm Deighan, a new interview with editor Kunihiko Ukai, a trailers, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sam Smith and a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Jasper Sharp and an archival review of the film. It’s a limited edition of 3,000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with a removable OBI strip, allowing the packaging to remain free of certificates and markings. You can order this movie from MVD.
June 26: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Eurosploitation!
I due superpiedi quasi piatti (The Two Almost Flat Superfeet) puts Terence Hill and Bud Spencer together again (it is the tenth of seventeen movies they would be in together) and sends them to Miami.
In this film, they’re Matt Kirby and Wilbur Walsh, longshoremen who decide to rob a grocery store and, in the process, end up being cops. Look, this is even years before Police Academy, and it has a lot of the same notions.
Somehow, they got David Huddleston to be in this as Captain McBride, who is in charge of the boys. Soon, they all learn that the same criminals who controlled the docks where they worked are behind a lot more.
Also known as Trinity: In Trouble Again, Two Supercops and Crime Busters, this is not related to Miami Supercops, another Hill and Spencer movie. Hill and Spencer made five movies in Miami that are in my favorite genre: Italians making their movies partially in America.
There’s even more meta in here, as a hot dog cart plays the theme song of their movie, Even Angels Eat Beans. During a scene where Matt is trying to get Wilbur to be kinder, he remarks, “He who finds a friend finds a treasure.” That would be a future Hill and Spencer title.
If you’ve seen any of those, you know what this movie is all about. Hill is the good-looking nice one, and Spencer is the giant grump. Somehow, they may not start as friends, but they get that way, which leads to slap fights with bad guys and frequent bean eating. However, a formula is called that because it works, and these movies make me happy as I can be—just joyous, singing along to the music and happy that I live in a world where they were filmed.
This was directed and written by E.B. Clutcher, who also made nearly every union of these two, directed The Unholy Fourand shot movies like Django, Erik the Viking and Nightmare Castle. Yes, that’s the Americanized name of Enzo Barboni, the director of Trinity.
Meanwhile, in the middle of this comedy, Hill’s character becomes involved with an Asian family and works to help them as the criminals target them. Their daughter? Laura Gemser. Throw in some Oliver Onions soundtrack, and there’s no way I could love this more.
Jason (Calvin Lockhart) is trying to make his auteur — or vanity — project, a movie about Baron Wolfgang von Trips. But the studio wants to buy the project and replace him as director and actor. And then the connection to the studio dies, leaving Jason holding the. bill for the mob who was really paying for this. They send Joey (Richard Lynch) to collect the money as Jason gets hired by The Cokeman (Charles McGregor) to service Old Hollywood actress Joan Blondell, who is playing Mama Lou. As you can expect, his girl Caroline (Marlene Clark) can’t understand. Neither can I. That’s Ganja herself! What are you doing, Jason?
Somehow, in the middle of all this, Gil Scott-Heron did the music.
Also, Calvin Lockhart said, “There’s no stopping what can’t be stopped, no killing what can’t be killed,” in Predator 2.
Director Phillip Fenty also wrote Super Fly, and co-wrote this with his wife Linda and Nelson Lyon (the writer/director of The Telephone Book!?!). It’s something—a movie past the blacksploitation timeline but with elements of it, Lynch chewing the scenery, dropping sexist, racist and just plain evil dialogue on everyone.
Also known as SuperBlack and In Your Face, this movie features Dr. Kinkade giving a special formula to his bodyguard, John Abar, to transform him into a black superhero. It was shot in the Baldwin Hills and Watts neighborhoods of Los Angeles without any permits. When the cops showed up, the actors playing the motorcycle gang surrounded them and the crew kept right on shooting.
Directed by white actor Frank Packard, who acted in a few films and was a gaffer on The Runaways, written by J. Walter Smith (who also plays Dr. Kinkade) and funded and conceived by James Smalley, a pimp from Louisiana who had the connections to film this movie in an actual house of the rising sun. He ran out of money before the film was completed and then sold the movie to the owner of a film processing lab to settle his unpaid bills. It played the Southern drive-in circuit and black theaters, then disappeared until it was re-released in 1990.
John Abar (Tobar Mayo) has come to the aid of the doctor and his family after they move to an all-white neighborhood and are treated exactly as you’d expect. He leads the Black Front of Unity (BFU), which sadly can’t save the life of Kinkade’s son. He’s been given superpowers in the hopes that he can combine Dr. King and Malcolm X, along with the invulnerability he needs to not get killed.
He also gets mental powers, the kind that allow him to teach prostitutes how to kung fu their masters — I wonder how Smalley felt about that — and turns a racist’s dinner to earthworms years before The Lost Boys.
To quote Black Horror Movies — and Abar — the powers may have been his all along: “You see, the potion released from my soul an ancient wisdom. My powers are of a divine origin. I’m only a tool, a mirror reflecting man onto himself. By controlling the mind, I can hasten the retributive forces lodged in his unconscious mind.”
He then lets a literal Biblical plague loose on those honkeys.
This movie may appear cheap, because it is. However, it also presents some really great ideas, featuring a hero who brings intelligence instead of violence and offers multiple perspectives on the 1970s black experience. It’s also bizarre, almost unexpectedly so. I found myself loving every minute of this and I think you will as well.
Agents Johnny Hightower (Marland Proctor) and Steve Barrett (James Whitworth) are after a bad guy played by Millard, but to be honest, this movie may claim to be an action film, but it’s in the world Millard, so it feels like you’ve taken the wrong pill that you found on the floor and also someone has injected you with a needle and you wake up in a bathtub filled with ice, minus some parts, and it feels good so you decide to soak.
Is there recycled footage from Criminally Insane? Does Crazy Fat Ethel Priscilla Alden appear? Does everyone have huge hair and an afro? Are there gun training scenes that go on forever? Does a random woman blow a vibrator for longer than you’d expect? Was it filmed inside Millard’s house?
Yes. To everything.
I don’t know if I would recommend this to anyone who hasn’t ingested some of Millard’s drugs before. They would hate it otherwise, and may hate it even if they have. It’s a different world, another place, a weird region of odd magic that can come from having a lunatic make a film.
April 30: Weird Wednesday — Write about a movie that played on a Weird Wednesday, as collected in the book Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday and the Birth of the American Genre Film Archive. Here’s a list.
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. But this film, well, it’s dirty joke after dirty joke with some minor nudity. It was re-released three years after it first dropped because Robin Williams happens to be in before he was 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 went from editing 70s TV to making these two movies, writing it with Mike Callie and Mike Price. There’s nothing like this today, just a total piece of junk with a great title, better poster and an audience that was looking for something, anything, in the days before cable adult films.
B&S About Movies 