Editor’s Note: We first reviewed this Canadian political thriller on February 7, 2021, as part of our unpacking of Mill Creek’s B-Movie Blast 50-Film pack. It’s back again — with new, second take — as part of their Excellent Eighties 50-Film pack. Hey, it’s a Hal Holbrook flick, so we must!
I love my wife so much. I mean, Hal Holbrook is her idea of a crush. So is Gerald McRaney. In fact, so is pretty much anyone that dated the Designing Women. That means that she actually sat and watched this movie, just to see Hal play the President who gets involved in, well, a kidnapping.
At least he has Secret Service agent Jerry O’Connor (William Shatner) — the Canadian side of this American/Canadian production, one imagines — to save his life.
For some reason, this movie reunites two Golden Age MGM stars, as Ava Gardner and Van Johnson — who were in 3 Men in White and Two Girls and a Sailor together — play the Vice President and his Second Lady. As for the First Lady, she’s played by Elizabeth Shepherd from Tomb of Ligeia.
Director George Mendeluk went on to make Doin’ Time, a movie I’ve been trying to find for a long time, and Meatballs III, which is the one where Sally Kellerman plays porn star Roxy Doujor. Strangely, Maury Chaykin is in that movie as well.
A millionaire is suspected of buying an ad agency to use it as a way of brainwashing the public for his political ends. Hmm . . . subliminal messaging through inaudible sounds and images hidden in TV audio signals and magazine spreads . . . John Carpenter’s They Live, anyone?
The millionaire here is the mysterious Ted Quinn (Robert Mitchum) who buys out the giant Montreal ad agency Porter & Stripe where Philip Morgan (Lee Majors) serves as its top copywriter and project manager. Of course, as with any corporate takeover, half of the firm’s staff is soon blown out the door and replaced by “Quinn’s people.” And Morgan is getting the old “do you like your job” trope when he complains about being kept out of the loop on the firm’s new accounts.
Next thing you know, the firm’s geeky-and-too-nosey-for-his-own-good Sam Goldstein (very familiar Canadian actor Saul Rubinek), who discovered Quinn is using the firm’s new slew of commercial spots to influence a political election, ends up dead. Now it’s up to Lee and Valerie Perrine, as his love interest, natch, to get to the bottom of the advertising-cum-political tomfoolery.
I love Lee Majors, and Robert Mitchum is always cool in-the-role (but barely here; this is a Lee Majors joint, after all), but when cheapo Canadian tax shelters films masquerade as an American-made film by casting beloved U.S. actors in lead roles, what we usual end up with is, not a theatrical film, but a telefilm that pisses us off by baiting us with Lee Majors.
If this had been made in the early ’70s by a major U.S. studio, say MGM or 20th Century Fox — and cast Charlton Heston as the ad man discovering the subliminal political campaign — and had Paddy Chayefsky adapt Paul Gottlieb’s superior, best-selling novel for Sidney Lumet to direct — Agency could have been a twisted sci-fi version of the Academy Award-winning Network. Or we could have had Madison Avenue taken to task in a political paranoia thriller that reminded of director Alan J. Pakula and screenwriter Robert Towne’s The Parallax View.
I love my Lee Majors joints, but — through no fault of his own (his Fawcett-Majors Productions didn’t back this one) — Agency is a flat-as-a-pancake conspiracy thriller providing a non-intriguing conspiracy devoid of thrills. If you’re in the market for sci-fi conspiracy thrillers of the ’80s HBO-variety, then stick with Micheal Crichton’s Looker from 1981 starring Albert Finney — at least that one had some computer 3D modeling and funky light-hypnosis guns to wow us. Of course, when it comes to subliminal conspiracies of the Canadian variety, none is finer than David Cronenberg’s Videodrome.
You can watch Agency on You Tube or watch it as a free-with-ads stream courtesy of IMDb TV’s Amazon Prime channel (caveat: both are fuzzy VHS-to-DVD rips). In 2001, Anchor Bay issued a now out-of-print DVD version, which, no surprise, is the best of the DVD transfers in the market. If you’re a Lee Majors Canadian film completist, then you’ll want to seek out the 1984 TV movie The Cowboy and the Ballerina (we found a clip on You Tube).
Luckily, the fine folks at Mill Creek Entertainment come through in the clutch by including Agency on their Excellent Eighties 50-Movie 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.
Galaxina is directed by William Sachs, whose first movie was a psychedelic film called There Is No Number 13. He edited it in Rome, saying “There were three cutting rooms in a row. I was in the middle one. Antonioni was on one side and Fellini on the other. I thought if I could touch both walls at the same time I would be injected with genius. Too bad my arms were too short.”
Yes, the director of The Incredible Melting Man, The Force Beyond and Van Nuys Blvd. could have been the American auteur. Instead, he made really entertaining junk.
This is a movie that has all the humor of Cracked Magazine*, which saw what Mad Magazine did and did a second-rate version that “spent nearly half a century with a fan base primarily comprised of people who got to the store after Mad sold out.” Those are their words, not mine.
I mean, this movie starts with a crawl** because Star Wars did. After reading that, we meet the crew of the Intergalactic Space Police cruiser Infinity is on deep space patrol under the command of Cornelius Butt (Avery Schreiber). If that joke made you laugh, then good news. You’ve found your movie, where that same joke will be made repeatedly.
His crew includes Sgt. Thor (Stephen Macht, The Monster Squad), space cowboy Pvt. Robert “Buzz” McHenry (J.D. Hinton, Night Eyes 3), a combination black man/Vulcan/bat named Maurice and a wise Asian named Sam who quotes Confucius, which is pretty cool, because the actor who played him, Tad Horino, played Confucius in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.
They also have Galaxina (Dorothy Stratten, who was killed by her boyfriend weeks after this movie came out), an android servant on board. She shocks anyone that touches her and can barely communicate, but she’s a vacant beauty that everyone loves from afar.
The crew battles Ordric for a McGuffin called the Blue Star, which should take them 27 years in space to recover. Their sleep chamber malfunctions, leading to Commander Butt to become an old man. Oh yeah — and he also eats an egg and nearly has an Alien moment (the film references that groundbreaking movie numerous times).
This is a movie that has the Batmobile show up in the wild wild, that steals sound effects from Star Trek and BattlestarGalactica, and reuses footage from First Spaceship on Venus, which was a much earlier Crown International science fiction movie.
Despite making fun of every other science fiction movie of the time, as well as westerns and biker movies, this is a movie that never has a secure footing on its own from which it can laugh at others. But man, Stratten is nearly impossibly gorgeous, a vision who should have had a much better life than she did. She didn’t just deserve better from this movie. She just deserved better.
*To be fair, Cracked lasted a long time and had John Severin art in nearly every issue. It was also part of the anthrax scare of 2001, as it shared offices with The Globe tabloid. That meant that the magazine’s archives, containing the original photographic prints of nearly every issue, was contaminated and destroyed.
**I’ll just spare you straining to read it and list it here: The year is 3008. Space travel is now routine. As new galaxies were explored and more civilizations discovered, the traffic in space increased. The United Intergalactic Federation was called upon to create a police force and soon a fleet of ships was patrolling the far reaches of the known star systems. This is the story of one of these ships, police cruiser, Number 308, the Infinity. It is also the story of the ship’s crew and of the ship’s robot. She was no ordinary robot for in the 31st century man finally created a machine with feelings, and her name is…Galaxina.
Toshiharu Ikeda is best known in the U.S. for Evil Dead Trap, but he was making adult films in Japan for years that were horror-influenced before going all the way there wwith films that have giallo in their DNA like XX: Beautiful Beast, XX: Beautiful Prey and The Man Behind the Scissors. He also directed a remake of the Female Prisoner Scorpion series called Female Prisoner Scorpion: Death Threat, which has legendary Japanese female wrestling heel Dump Matsumoto in it.
Many point to the influence of Dario Argento’s Suspiria on this movie, seeing as how it takes place in a dance academy that is way more than meets the eye. That said, Ikeda did claim in an interview never to have seen any of Argento’s films, as he hated horror and had never even watched his own Evil Dead Trap.
Miki, much like Suzy Bannion, is a talented dancer who has been accepted into an exclusice and mysterious dance academy by a woman named Akiko, who is the sister of her boyfriend Genichiro. Seeing as how he’s been missing since an accident, she decides to accept the offer in the hopes that she’ll improve her skills while finding the man she loves.
But kind of like a Japanese funhouse mirror version of one of those randy tales, Akiko has plans to keep Miki against her will and use her henchmen to transform her from the virginal dancer she is now to a sex-craving being that her brother will reject and run right into her loving arms.
By the way, if this upsets you, turn back now.
As for Genichiro, he’s also kept hidden inside the school, in a wheelchair since a recent car crash. He has no idea what’s happening, which goes from BDSM games to outright torture.
Nikkatsu studios, who made this movie, were certainly no puritans, but even they were upset by this movie, demanding that Ikeda tone things down for his next film and sending him to Okinawa with the demand that his next movie, Blue Lagoon: A Summer Experience, have some actual romance.
I debated including this movie in this week of giallo, but decided to include it as it fits in alongside other films we picked like Bizarre and Eyes Behind the Wall. I would definitely include the warning that this is beyond reprehensible in moments, yet still includes some moments of high art, such as the scene where Miki and Genichiro reconnect and make love in the mountains, which you should never do if you’re in a wheelchair. Let this film be a warning (and don’t let it ruin Coca-Cola for you forever, as this has perhaps the most upsetting product placement for that beverage of all time).
Sadly, Ikeda fought depression in his later years and ahis body was found floating in the sea near Shima on December 26, 2010. There was no note and his death could have been an accident, but he had expressed a wish to die in this area in the past.
As for the aforementioned Suspiria comparisons, outside of the setting, the inversion of the characters at the end, with Miki rising above her torment, and the climactic rainstorm feel like they could have been inspired by the film. Otherwise, this is a dark film that hints at the talent that Ikeda would use in his career as he moved out of adult and into more mainstream films.
Bubba Newman (John Ritter) has been in the minor leagues for way too long and if he goes down one more level, he may as well never make it to the majors. So he quits to become the coach for a gang of poor kids — Walter Matthau, look out — and finds romance with Susan Dey. But since this is a TV movie, tragedy is looming and everyone will have to realize that life is not always fair.
Director Peter Levin made plenty of TV movies, everything from My Father’s Shadow: The Sam Sheppard Story, Deadly Nightshade and Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story to Popeye Doyle, The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana and Washington Mistress. He’s working from a script by Joe Landon, who also executive produced this and wrote Ritter’s special, John Ritter: Being of Sound Mind andBody.
This is one to watch for the cast, as beyond Ritter and Dey, there’s Doug McKeon (who everyone else would say was in On Golden Pond, but I remember from Mischief), James Gregory (General Ursus!), Jeremy Licht (a member of The Hogan Family), Patrick Swayze, Angela Aames (Chopping Mall, Basic Training) and Kim Fields before she was Tootie.
Spoiler warning — one of the kids gets killed and it gets really dark. That really shocked me. Otherwise, this is the kind of TV movie that was made for those who couldn’t get HBO and the opportunity to watch Amanda Whurlitzer, Kelly Leak and Timmy Lupis play the Yankees.
After his directorial debut I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Robert Zemeckis would make this comedy which I seem to remember playing on HBO all the time — which is not a bad thing.
With the tagline “Like new, great looking and fully loaded with laughs,” this film is one of those great set up a concept and deliver sight gags and hijinks along the way movies. It was shot in a month at the Darner Chrysler-Plymouth dealership in Mesa, Arizona, with star Kurt Russell producing some commercials for Darner’s inviting customers to come in and shop while the movie was being made.
Russell plays Rudy Russo, who dreams of being a Senator while working for the New Deal used car lot, which owned by the elderly Luke Fuchs (Jack Warden). The old man promises to give Rudy ten grand for the campaign if he keeps his business alive in the face of competition from his brother’s lot, Roy L. Fuchs Pre-owned Automobiles, which is right across the street. Roy is also played by Warden, who only agreed to the role if he could do both parts.
Roy then pays stunt driver Mickey (Michael Talbott, who was Switek on Miami Vice and has some great cameos in movies like Carrie and Manhunter) to drive his brother around in a highly dangerous manner, giving him a heart attack so the evil brother can collect the insurance money. Rudy catches on, steals his boss’s body and buries it in the back of the lot with help from the superstitious Jeff (Gerrit Graham) and Jim (Frank McRae, who was a team with John Candy in both 1941 and National Lampoon’s Vacation). They tell everyone that Luke is on vacation in Florida, including his estranged daughter Barbara Jane (Deborah Harmon), who Rudy quickly falls in love with.
The two lots go to war with exotic dancers and exploding cars being used to drive people into each car lot until the claim that New Deal has a mile of cars is challenged in court and our heroes have to line up an entire mile of cars or lose the lot.
So many of my favorite people are in this, including Joe Flaherty, David Lander, Michael McKean (yes, Lenny and Squiggy), Penthouse Pet of the Year 1979 Cheryl Rixon, Grandpa Al Lewis, Dub Taylor, Betty Thomas, Wendie Jo Sperber (who gets involved with a whole different kind of car mechanic scene in Moving Violations), Marc McClure and Dick Miller. It’s definitely worth a watch if you can track it down and is just as much fun as I remember it from watching it as a kid.
There was once a magical underwater cave located deep where crocodiles were born under a floating magic ball that made the bottom of the ocean, or at least this cave, glow like it was day and not far under the ocean. Here, Chalawan ruled, turning every crocodile into human forms that needed no sustenance. Yet the leader was no Buddhist like his ancestors. He wanted to taste human flesh.
This is really the story of Krai Thong, who must kill Chalawan to win the heart — and some of the cash — of the millionaire Tapaokaew’s daughter. That said, the villain is also killing all sorts of villagers, with his two wives — who can also turn into alligators — helping him in all the human eating fun. Our hero is going to have to make a spear from seven different metals if he wants to put away this weregator for good.
This same story has been told many times, starting with 1958’s Krai Thong. There have been six versions, with the last one made in 2017.
This one was made by Sompote Sands. Way back in 1972, he made another version of this called Chalawan. Sompote is a man that knows monsters, as he pretty much took Japanese kaiju movies to Thailand, making The 6 Ultra Brothers vs. the MonsterArmy, Hanuman and the Five Riders (a bootleg Kamen Rider) and Jumborg Ace & Giant. He also must love reptiles because he also made Crocodile, a children’s movie named Magic Lizard and this film and a sequel in 1985.
This movie has the cheapest — and yet most awesome — sets you’ve ever seen, as well as a bad guy so amazing that he doesn’t just transform into a man-eating alligator, he also has a laser ring that mesmerizes women into marrying him.
Also known as Legend of the Crocodile, this is a movie filled with padding, stock footage of crocodiles, slow motion strip fights between reptile/human hybrid brides of an evil king, people being bit in half, so much blood in the water and — at least in my copy — hardcoded English subtitles and the worst VHS quality ever.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We previously reviewed this movie on December 20, 2019, as part of our “Star Wars Month” of the films that influenced and were inspired by the franchise. Herbert P. Caine – the pseudonym of a frustrated academic and genre movie fan in Pennsylvania – gives us his take on the film for its inclusion Mill Creek’s Sci-Fi Invasion 50-film pack. Either way you look at it: it’s a flawed film that we enjoy and wonder how it even got made in the first place.
Galaxina is a comedy with no laughs, a sex farce with no titillation, and a star vehicle with an absent star. As a science fiction movie, it reminds one of nothing so much as a black hole, sucking up all talent and effort that its cast and crew may have thrown at it. In short, it is a terrible movie.
Galaxina traces the adventurers of the crew of the Infinity, a police cruiser patrolling the galaxy and weakly attempting to maintain order. The ship is captained by one Cornelius Butt, played by Avery Schreiber. (Get it? His name is Butt! The film reminds us of this every few minutes!) However, the real power running the ship is the comely android Galaxina, played by the ill-fated Playboy Playmate of the Year Dorothy Stratten. This hyper-advanced AI can run an entire starship, yet is unable to speak. The plot meanders for a good half hour or so until the crew receives orders to retrieve the Blue Star, a MacGuffin that grants incredible power.
There are numerous flaws in this film to discuss, but perhaps the most glaring is its almost complete lack of humor. William Sachs, the writer and director of this film simply did not know how to pull off a joke. In many cases, the “joke” consists of nothing more than referencing another movie. For example, early on, we hear the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey, only to reveal Captain Butt walking down a hallway. There is no real joke, just a 2001 reference. Now, references can actually be funny if they are done well; consider the Jaws reference at the beginning of Airplane!, which came out the same year as Galaxina. However, there needs to be a punchline to it, or at least some wit.
Galaxina does manage a few humorous bits which land, but they are few and far between. All too often, it drags out sketches for too long, as in an extended dinner scene involving an egg. Although the scene leads up to a parody of Alien which draws a few chuckles, it takes over five minutes to get to the point, stretching things out and boring the audience.
The film also fails as a sex comedy. Although the poster, which features a busty Galaxina, seems to imply that the film will have a good amount of sex and nudity, the movie itself fails to deliver. The only real nudity in the film comes via a holographic message the crew receives in which a secretary flashes them for thirty seconds. Although much of Galaxina’s sex appeal comes from the presence of Dorothy Stratten, the most you’ll get in this regard is a scene in which she wears a French maid outfit.
Galaxina is mainly remembered as being a star vehicle for the late Dorothy Stratten, who was murdered by her estranged husband approximately two months after its release. Many modern viewers are likely to seek out this film solely because of the presence of Stratten. However, even on the level of showing off a rising actress, the film fails. For roughly the first half of the movie, Stratten has no dialogue, as the android is mute until she programs herself to speak. In the few scenes she has in the first half, all she does is walk around and look pretty. There is no real opportunity to develop any interest in her character, and by the time the character develops the ability to talk in the second half, the viewer has already lost interest. A mute android has no real charisma; the character is as empty and vapid as the film itself.
A toast! Let’s raise those waxed cups n’ strawed A&W Root Beers to Harry “Tampa” Hurwitz and his return to the big screen with Robert De Niro starring in the remake of Harry’s 1982 feature, The Comeback Trail.
Prior to his tenure as a screenwriter, director and producer, the New York born and raised Hurwitz worked as a professor of film and drawing at several New York institutions, including a prestigious tenure at New York University.
That’s what I get for hiring a high school kid to do the sign. Eh, you get what you $5.00-buck-an-hour pay for, right? Know your “rose” suffixes, kid.
He made his debut as a filmmaker with 1970’s critically-acclaimed The Projectionist — a film noted as the acting debut for a then unknown comedian named Rodney Dangerfield — in a tale about a lonely projectionist (Chuck McCann) who imagines himself in the films he shows. Hurwitz also translated his life-long love of Charlie Chaplin in the 1972 sophomore effort, The Eternal Tramp.
While his films would see distribution with major studios, such as MGM/United Artists (Safari 3000), and major-independents, such as Almi Pictures, a division of Carolco (The Rosebud Beach Hotel), and Compass International (Nocturna), Hurwitz produced and directed 12 pictures, 9 of which he wrote, independently.
His resume features two films produced with a pre-Empire Studios Charles Band: the late ’70s sexploitation pieces Fairy Tales and Auditions. Hurwitz also wrote and directed 1972’s Richard, a social parody on President Richard M. Nixon. He re-teamed with his lifelong friend Chuck McCann in 1982’s The Comeback Trail, a somewhat semi-autobiographical tale about two independent film executives against-the-odds in producing a western with a washed-up cowboy star.
“Rose” BLANK And the $50 response is . . . “Is a Rose” The$150 response is . . . “Wood” And the $500 response . . . “Bud”
What the hell? Napoleon Solo? Well, it was either Match Game . . . or do a film with Harry. Oh, shite . . . say it ain’t so, Solo! The “comeback trail” isn’t paved with Harry Hurwitz films, Mr. Vaughn. Just ask Christopher Lee. . . .
Repeating the semi-documentary cinéma vérité style of 1978’s Auditions, Hurwitz also concocted 1989’s That’s Adequate; a Spinal Tapish tale about a troubled film studio that features an eclectic cast of comedians with Sinbad, Richard Lewis, and Rick Overton alongside a starbound Bruce Willis, Maureen “Marsha Brady” McCormick as a Space Princess, Robert Vaughn as Adolf Hitler (which is “funny” to fringe movie fans, when we remember Vaughn starred in 1978’s The Lucifer Complex), Susan “Laurie Partridge” Dey as a Southern Belle, and Robert Downey, Jr. as Albert Einstein. (Seriously: the film is that crazy.)
Harry’s most significant screen credit was working as one of the five screenwriters on a tale about the 1939 production of The Wizard of Oz, the 1981 Chevy Chase-starring Under the Rainbow for Warner Bros.-Orion Pictures. And we can’t forget Harry dipping his toes in the Blaxploitation pool as a producer with 1983’s The Big Score starring Richard Roundtree and the late John Saxon*.
Harry “Tampa” Hurwitz passed away on September 21, 1995, at the young age of 57 from heart failure while awaiting a heart transplant at the U.C.L.A Medical Center. This Drive-In Friday is for you, Harry. May your films live on for a new generation of video fringe enthusiasts. And they do!
In the ultimate show of respect to Harry’s imagination, on November 13, 2020**, the remake of The Comeback Trail, starring the Oscar acting elite of Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, and Tommy Lee Jones, was realized by writer-director George Gallo of Bad Boys fame.
Way to go, Harry!
Now, Mr. Gallo . . . about that Safari 3000 remake. . . .
What do you get when you go into business with a noted Las Vegas belly dancer who appeared on TV’s The Beverly Hillbillies . . . then cast Lily Munster, a B-Movie Dracula, and a couple of on-their-way-down ’70s disco stars — and negotiate a deal with MCA Records to release a disco-flavored soundtrack double album to promote the movie?
You get a Harry Tampa box-office boondoggle with John Carradine making back dick jokes. Can Countess Dracula turn her gay singer crush, straight? Do we care?
And to think the Compass International — a studio that had a worldwide hit on their hands with their debut release, John Carpenter’s Halloween — backed this vampire hookers romp. But they also made Roller Boogie, Tourist Trap, Blood Beach, and Hell Night . . . so you know where this disco Dracula romp is heading. Flushing is required.
What do you get when you go into business with United Artists and convince them a Smokey and the Bandit ripoff set on the African tundra will work?
You get a Harry Tampa box-office boondoggle with Christopher Lee frolicking with baboons and the guy who voiced the CP3O knockoff in Luigi Cozzi’s Starcrash. Does the fact that David Carradine is behind the wheel giving us some serious Death Race 2000 and Cannonball vibes save this VHSflotsam? No. And we wished ol’ Dave got off a couple of his dad’s bad dick jokes from Nocturna to compensate for the fact that Stockard Channing’s comedic timing makes the monkeys look good.
Intermission! With the stars of our next feature on tonight’s program! Let the tight pants and smoke wash over you!
What do you get when you contractually flim-flam cinema’s requisite Count, an ex-Runaway, a B-Movie apoc anti-hero, a washed up Tom Hanks TV sidekick, and wardrobe left overs from Glen Larson’s crap-ass Buck Rogers remake for TV?
You get a Harry Tampa ripoff of Bob Clark’s Porky‘s set in a South Beach Miami hotel. Do the adult film actresses working as topless bell hops for Madam Bobbi Flekman from Spinal Tap’s management team seducing Paco Querak from Hands of Steel save it? Do the cut-rate AOR-synth soundtrack ditties from Cherie Currie save it? No. And we wished Christopher Lee stuck to his original plan of torching the joint for the insurance money.
Movie 4: Fleshtone(1994)
What do you get when Harry Tampa answers paid cable’s call for “after hours” erotic thriller programming fodder for the wee-lads who can’t get dates on Saturday nights?
You get the bassist from the bane of our New Wave existence — Spandau Ballet — as a struggling painter twisting down a soft-core film noir spiral in this final, bitter sweet Harry “Tampa” Hurwitz’s effort completed a year before his death.
Truth be told, Martin Kemp, who been in the acting game in the U.K. since the ’70s before finding fame as a MTV favorite, is pretty decent here (he was in Sugar Town with John Doe and Michael Des Barres) as the noir schlub who can’t stay away from dangerous women who enjoy erotic sex games. And it’s nice to see Tim Thomerson (yep, the one and only Jack Deth from Trancers) on top of the marquee in this who-killed-her potboiler.
Do the adult film actresses that Harry likes to cast for that extra titillation-inspiration and lesbian sex scenes helping? Does the fact that the singularly-named Daniella also starred in Anal Maidens 3 and Assy 2 exciting you? How about those exotic Jo-Berg, South Africa locations?
Eh, a little . . . but in reality, this is probably the best of Harry’s films, courtesy of Kemp and Thomerson giving the material some class, and ’80s U.S. TV actress Lise Cutter isn’t so bad, but she’s not leaving the direct-to-video realms any time soon.
Yes! You Tube comes through in the clutch! You can enjoy Harry’s final film on You Tube. You can watch the other films on tonight’s program via the links in those reviews.
* We honored the career of the late John Saxon with our “Exploring: John Saxon” featurette.
**The Comeback Trail premiered at the 43rd Mill Valley Film Festival on October 12, 2020. It was initially scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States on November 13, 2020. However, due to the affects of COVID on theaters, Cloudburst Entertainment has pushed the release date to sometime in 2021.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Moviesand publishes on Medium.
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