Yesterday I was kinda complaining that Evil Dead 1 was hard to review.  Well, Evil Dead 2 is twice as difficult.  I mean I have seen this thing (literally) about 100 times.  You’d think I’d be able to properly analyze it by now, but no.  This is one of those movies that doesn’t need to analyzed.  It just needs to be seen.  Yesterday I described the first film as a rollercoaster.  If that’s so, then Evil Dead 2 is a G-Force simulator.

Let me clue you into how great this movie is.  This month when I’ve reviewed these horror franchise films, I’ve done so with my laptop on my lap, typing notes here and there before finally polishing up a full review.  I did absolutely nothing while watching Evil Dead 2 except just sat there and enjoyed it.  Even though I’ve seen the film a hundred times, director Sam Raimi still kicked my ass.

There are so many great scenes in this movie.  How about when Ash’s zombie girlfriend’s head falls off during a ballet number?  Then the head comes back and attacks him.  While trying to deal with that unfortunate situation (in the “work shed”), her headless corpse comes after him wielding a chainsaw.

Then there’s the classic scene where Ash’s hand gets possessed and starts hitting him with plates so he cuts it off.  Then it gets loose scampering around giving him the finger and causing him more grief.  Or how about when Ash gets trapped inside the fruit cellar with a grotesque demon named Henrietta?  (“I’ll swallow your soul!”)  Or when he slams the door on her head and sends her eyeball flying?  Or when he hacks up a possessed guy that spews green gunk everywhere?  Not to mention the scene where everything in the cabin starts laughing at him.  Or the part where the woods comes to life and attacks a chick (although not on par with the spectacular forest raping from the original). 

Then of course there's the scene where Ash attaches his trusty chainsaw to his arm stump and utters the immortal line, “Groovy!” before doing battle the witch Henrietta.  And the scene where he chops off her head before blowing her away.  (“Swallow this!”)  And that’s not even counting the awesome set-up for the sequel either.

Again, Bruce Campbell plays Ash but this time out he’s given some macho dialogue that perfectly compliments his ever-growing acts of heroism.  (“You’re going down!”)  As with the previous film, he gets every sort of blood, bile, vomit, and gunk shot into his face about every fifteen minutes and he does so like a goddamn pro.  That’s what makes Campbell so great.  I mean you don’t see Olivier doing shit like that, do you?

Then there’s Sam Raimi, The Michigan Madman who films the movie like a jackrabbit hopped up on No-Doz.  There is every kind of crazed camera shot in the book in this movie, along with a couple Raimi had to personally invent to fit his extreme vision.  The man is a fucking genius pure and simple.

Evil Dead 2:  Dead by Dawn is an assault on the senses.  It’s not scary exactly, but it’s disgusting, hilarious, and strangely enough; quite beautiful.  Not only is it one of the greatest horror movies ever made, it also happens to be one of the greatest FILMS of all time.

Evil Dead 2:  Dead by Dawn is Numero Uno on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Films of 1987.

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Army of Darkness>

Here’s another horror classic that somewhat hard for me to review since I’ve only seen it about a bazillion times.  I mean how can you put your finger on what makes The Evil Dead so great?  It just is.  You don’t watch The Evil Dead as much as you experience it.  They don’t call it “The Ultimate Experience in Grueling Horror” for nothing folks.

Everybody knows the plot:  Five people go to a remote cabin in the woods where they find the Necronomicon, The Book of the Dead.  They play passages from the book on an old tape recorder and awaken evil spirits in the woods that possess everyone except for Ash (Bruce Campbell).  Armed with a shotgun and a chainsaw, Ash fends off attacks from his ghoulish, white-eyed, zombified friends and tries to stay alive through the night.

Director Sam Raimi made this sucker on the cheap and gave us one of the greatest horror films of all time.  His crazy camerawork would go on to be copied in numerous films, but nobody can handle that Steadycam like The Master.  The Evil Dead also introduced the key ingredients of the franchise namely:  Scenes of possessed women floating around and telling everyone that they’ll die, the chainsaw, decapitations, and Bruce Campbell getting hit in the face with every form of bodily fluid known to man.

The Evil Dead also gave us one of the most unsettling scenes in the history of mankind.  That’s the scene when Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) gets raped by the woods.  And I don’t mean near the woods, I mean BY the woods.  On top of that we have the gnarly No. 2 pencil into the ankle scene, the part where the possessed chick bites off her own hand, eyes getting gouged out, bodies being totally dismembered, and Play-Doh faced zombies rapidly decaying until coleslaw comes out of their sleeves and demon hands emerge from their back. 

And how fucking great is Bruce Campbell in this movie?  While I prefer his interpretations of the character more in the later films of the series (you know, when he became the wisecracking know-it-all), he’s still awesome here playing the more kindler, gentler Ash.  Plus, nobody and I mean nobody can take gallons of bile to the face like Campbell.

Mostly though, the first Evil Dead belongs to Raimi.  Once he begins cranking out the scares, the movie never lets up.  It’s easy to forget just how creepy this movie is (my favorite creepy moment is when Linda starts chanting, “We’re gonna get you” over and over again), especially next to the two increasingly cartoonish sequels.  With The Evil Dead, Raimi devised one gore-soaked rollercoaster ride that deserves it’s place on the short list for the greatest horror films on the planet.  Incredibly, Raimi actually managed to top it four years later with Evil Dead 2:  Dead by Dawn.

The Evil Dead is Number 2 on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Films of 1983 list, just below Return of the Jedi and right above Scarface.

AKA:  Book of the Dead.

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Evil Dead 2:  Dead by Dawn>

Here’s a nutty Italian giallo that plays more like a Mexican horror movie.  A lunatic wearing a black hood and a skull mask murders women and keeps them perfectly preserved in his lair located deep within the catacombs of Venice.  Meanwhile a womanizing reporter investigates the crimes and tries to bring the killer to justice. 

The Embalmer moves at a sluggish pace but it contains some moments of surreal weirdness that had me in stitches.  Wait until you get a load of the scenes where the killer stalks his prey.  This dude walks around the streets of Venice wearing scuba gear yet he is still somehow able sneak up on his victims.  At one point, he knocks over a trash can with his flippers and the chick doesn’t even notice!  Incredible.  If that doesn’t crack you up, the Ricky Nelson look-alike who croons a song (in Italian) after rising out of a coffin will.

If the flick had more of this goofy shit like this in it, I think we would’ve had some sort of Grade Z masterpiece on our hands.  Unfortunately, the endless scenes of the suave reporter taking beautiful women on sightseeing tours of Venice slowed the movie down to a fucking crawl.  The film does have some atmospheric scenes in the catacombs (the reveal of the skull mask is particularly effective) but the atrocious score, which is nothing more than a bunch of library striptease music, doesn’t go along with any of the action and drains the movie of much of its would-be suspense.  The climax is quite lively though.

Naturally, The Embalmer himself gets all the best (poorly dubbed) dialogue like, “My secret potion will penetrate every cell in your body, keeping you eternally beautiful!”

AKA:  The Monster of Venice.

The Doctor (Joseph Maher) is this stuffy British dude who goes around South America teaching Torture 101 to classes of prospective dictators.  In one such class, he puts electrodes on a reporter’s gonads and tortures him to death.  This was a big mistake because the reporter’s best friend was Charles Bronson.  

If Death Wish 1-5 have taught us anything, it’s that you don’t senselessly kill any of Chuck’s nearest and dearest unless you want The Moustache breathing down your neck with a big gun.

The Evil That Men Do isn’t a great Bronson vehicle but it contained enough moments of badassery from the man that kept this die hard Chuck fan entertained.  The baddest of the badass moves Bronson did in this one came when some jackass tried to hit on his girl.  What did Chuck do?  He grabs onto the guy’s dick and twists on it WITH BOTH HANDS for a good minute or so.  From the looks of things, I bet old Chuck could get a job at Auntie Anne’s twisting pretzels.

This movie also has a sort of Kinjite vibe to it too.  Consider the one scene where Bronson poses as a bisexual swinger to lure The Doctor’s bodyguard into his hotel room where he sticks a knife in the guy’s neck.  You don’t see Chuck flirting with another man very often and when you do, it kinda makes you sick.  You know the guy was going to get killed something fierce if Chuck had to pretend to be a switch hitter in order to get to him.

There’s also a pretty funny scene when Bronson goes to kidnap The Doctor’s sister and hides under the bed to wait for her.  Little does he know that she’s about to get down and dirty with a lesbian (who has a giant bush) and he has to wait until they’re done fucking to make his move.  Chuck’s double take after he crawls out from under the bed was priceless.  I haven't laughed that hard since Obama won the Nobel Prize.

The thing that prevents The Evil That Men Do from breaking out and venturing into classic mode is Chuck’s awful supporting lady.  He dumbly takes her down to South America with him as part as his cover.  He should have dumped her once he got over the border.  This chick is just there to tell Chuck that killing is wrong, bitch and moan, and occasionally translate for him.  Had the screenwriters just wrote her out of the script, The Evil That Men Do could’ve been another Ten to Midnight.

What The Evil That Men Do does have is a killer ending.  Those who don’t want it spoiled, skip down to the next paragraph.  Chuck actually doesn’t get his hands on the killer, which may infuriate some people, but I dug it.  The ending is reminiscent of Freaks as The Doctor’s misshapen and disfigured former patients do a little surgery of their own on him with some rusty pick axes.  This makes sense to let The Doctor’s victims get their revenge because after all, Chuck was just avenging the death of a friend.  Now if Chuck was avenging the death of his wife or something; that would be a different story.

The Evil That Men Do was the fifth of nine collaborations between Bronson and director J. Lee Thompson.  Oddly enough, it was one of the few of their films that weren’t produced by Golan and Globus’ Cannon Films.  The film is a solid Three Star Bronson flick, but one can only imagine how much more sleazier things could’ve been had it been released by those guys.

The awesome Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov star as Paul and Mary Bland, a hard working couple who would do anything to start their own restaurant.  Appalled that their apartment building has become a haven for swingers, they try to keep to themselves.  When one horny guy busts into their apartment and tries to rape Mary, Paul kills him with a frying pan.  Before disposing of the body, Paul steals the guy’s wallet.  Pretty soon, the Blands place a swinger’s ad for themselves and kill the repugnant thrill seekers for their cash.  When a cholo named Raoul (Robert Beltran) stumbles onto their scheme, he offers to get rid of the bodies (he sells them to a dog food factory) in exchange for a cut of the money.  He also falls in love with Mary, which causes some problems for everybody.

Eating Raoul is a love letter to the American Dream gone horribly wrong.  Directed with a lot of style by Bartel on an obviously low budget, the film is filled with moments of delicious black comedy.  As good as the film is, it never quite lives up to it’s potential.  While I wish Bartel had gone a bit more for the jugular (after all, this is the guy who directed Death Race 2000 here), I still admire the flick a lot.  It’s clever and consistently entertaining throughout and the performances are terrific.  Bartel and Woronov had been in a lot of pictures together but their chemistry here is dynamite.  I also enjoyed seeing Buck Henry, Ed Begley Jr., Billy Curtis, and “The Real” Don Steele too.

Jackie Chan and this other dude play a duo of actors who beat up some Japanese soldiers who mess up their play.  They then take off to the country where they befriend a rickshaw driver that lets them crash at his pad.  When the soldiers return to rough up the driver, Jackie and his buddy start mopping the floor with them.  The evil soldiers then kill Jackie, which gets his Chinese chum really mad and he sets out to get some revenge.

Eagle Shadow Fist isn’t really a Jackie Chan movie since he only has a supporting role and dies about an hour into the film.  If you’re watching the flick to see Chan do his patented comedy-oriented Kung Fu shtick, you’ll be extremely disappointed.  I know I was.  The fight scenes are plentiful but they’re all choreographed in the same stunningly average manner.  (The final confrontation will serve as a good reminder as to why you don’t see very many fight scenes that take place while the two combatants are wading waist-high in the middle of a stream.)

There is one thing that makes Eagle Shadow Fist a bit different than most Chan films and that’s the blood.  There are a lot of stabbings, slicings, impalings and even a juicy eye gouging, which results in a healthy spewing of red stuff.  The villain is a real mean bastard too.  He rapes the heroine before stabbing her in the back and at one point tosses some innocent kids face first into a mountain.  Usually you don’t see that sort of nastiness in a Jackie Chan movie.

Overall, Eagle Shadow Fist is just sorta so-so.  The fight scenes are competent but unspectacular and the “plot” scenes are lethargic to say the least.  It’s not great but there are worse Jackie Chan flicks you could waste your time on; that’s for sure.  (The Accidental Spy anyone?)

AKA:  Fist of Anger.  AKA:  In Eagle Shadow Fist.  AKA:  Not Scared to Die.  AKA:  Return to China.

Franco Nero stars as Cole, the Great White Ninja who in the opening scene passes his Ninja Final Exam by Kung Fuing lots of dudes in red pajamas.  Cole’s teacher then sends him off into the world so he can help “less fortunates”.  That means Cole has to hop the next flight to the Philippines to help out his old war buddy whose plantation is struggling to make ends meet on account of a slimy businessman (played to the hilt by Christopher George) who is trying to strong arm his property away from him.  After Cole turns two dozen of his best men into shredded wheat, the bad guy then sends out for the Great Black Ninja (Sho Kosugi) to put an end to the Great White Ninja once and for all.

Enter the Ninja is a worthy entry in Cannon’s line-up of cheesy 80’s action flicks.  It’s popularity led to a glut of Ninja movies, some better (Revenge of the Ninja), some worse (American Ninja); all of which have their moments of sheer Cannon insanity.  This is the one that started it all though so it’s a bit more laid back than subsequent Ninja movies.  At 100 minutes, it’s probably about 15 minutes longer than it really should’ve been and the thin plot; which is more or less just like every episode of The Incredible Hulk (except with ninjas of course) doesn’t really help either.  I'll admit that this baby does have a good half dozen or so things wrong with it.  I’m cool with that though because when it cooks, it cooks with grease.

Director (and Cannon co-founder) Menahem Golan has never been known for subtlety.  (He is after all the man who gave us The Apple.)  This is a good thing when it comes to making a Ninja movie.  The scenes where Nero dons white pajamas and turns people into living shish-kabobs are fairly gnarly and Golan films them with gusto.  Arms get severed, heads get lopped off, faces get tacks thrown into them, ninja stars get planted into people’s chests, and spikes get put into people’s skulls.  Enter the Ninja also features a lot of testicular trauma as boots, hooks, and nightsticks all end up in some poor Joe’s groin at some point in the movie. 

I think my favorite Golan touch though was when Nero ripped the henchman’s hook from off his stump and the soundtrack played the stock comic relief Waa-Waa-Waa-WAAAAA music.  Yes folks, this movie has Waa-Waa-Waa-WAAAAA in it.  And you thought that music was only reserved for Saturday morning cartoons or when a clown gets a pie in the face.

I think the tip-off that I was destined to like this movie was the fact that Christopher George was in it.  Enter the Ninja pretty much solidifies the Video Vacuum Movie Rule that states:  If It’s From the 80’s and Christopher George Was In It, It’s a Damn Good Movie.  If you don’t believe me then check out The Gates of Hell, The Exterminator, Graduation Day, Pieces or Mortuary.  This guy set the bar high when it came to B Movies in the 80’s.  It’s a shame that he died in ’83 because he could’ve made so many more classics.  Golan obviously knew George had loads of talent, that’s why he gave him the best line of the movie:  “This is 20^th century Manila not feudal Japan!”

AKA:  Ninja I.

Edmond (William H. Macy) is a schmo who decides to leave his wife (Rebecca Pidgeon) because he’s bored.  He then heads down to a strip club where he turns down sex with Denise Richards because she’s “too expensive”.  Afterwards, he visits Bai Ling in a peep show booth but turns down sex with her because she’s “too expensive”.  Edmond next goes to a massage parlor ran by Debi Mazar and tries to have sex with Mena Suvari.  Predictably, he turns her down because she’s “too expensive”.

Then Edmond gets rolled by some black dudes and decides to pawn his wedding ring to buy a badass knife to protect himself.  The knife comes in handy when a black pimp tries to roll him and he gets to slash him up while saying a bunch of racial epithets.  Triumphant, he seeks solace in the bed of a lowly waitress (Julia Stiles) who apparently fucked him for free.  After he spouts off a lot of crazy talk, she gets scared and tries to run and he slashes her to ribbons.  Edmond gets picked up by the cops and goes to prison where his big black burly cellmate (Bokeem Woodbine) rapes him.

Moral of the story:  If you express your White Hate, you’ll get Brown Sugar in your ass.

Edmond was written by David (Glengarry Glen Ross) Mamet and directed by Stuart (Re-Animator) Gordon.  At first glance, this may seem like a bizarro pairing but the duo used to run around in the same theater circles back before they got famous.  Although Edmond is more of Mamet’s movie than Gordon’s (it’s no From Beyond I’ll tell you that), it still had enough squirm-in-your-seat moments to make it his best movie in years.

Macy delivers a solid turn as Edmond and keeps your attention throughout his various misadventures.  The best part of the movie though is the supporting cast that’s chockfull of hotties.  Unfortunately, out of all the foxy ladies, only Bai Ling gets naked.  Jesus, and wait till you see Jeffrey Combs in this movie.  Words can’t describe it; you’ll have to see it for yourself.

While the flick coasts on the performance of Macy it’s far from perfect.  Often the movie feels stagy and more than a tad contrived.  Also, a lot of the over the top dialogue is just way too theatrical to be taken seriously.  Then again, I laughed really, really hard at the following exchange near the end of the movie:

Edmond:  Did they tell you what happened?

Prison Priest:  No.

Edmond:  I was sodomized.

Prison Priest:  Did you report it?

Edmond:  Yes.

Prison Priest:  What did they say?

Edmond:  It happens.

With that kind of priceless dialogue, how can I give Edmond anything less than ***.

Christina (Thriller:  A Cruel Picture) Lindberg's massive mammaries ought to be named a national Swedish monument.  She shows off those immaculate puppies over a dozen times in this so-so Scandanavian skin flick.  If you're a fan of Christina, you'll definitely wanna check this flick out, if only to see her bare her beautiful breasts over and over again.

The plot has Christina playing this coy schoolgirl with a boring boyfriend named Jan.  Actually, the shy schoolgirl act is just a front for her more dubious activities.  In reality, she's a plaything for a rich sleazeball named Helge who makes her have sex with his swinging party guests.  When Christina tries to leave Helge and makes a fresh start with Jan, Helge shows up with some incriminating photos of her and threatens to put a damper on her promising future.

What totally pissed me off about this movie is that Christina will be doing something really kinky or dirty and then we find out it was all a daydream.  She'll be getting slapped around by her boyfriend or be getting raped while hitchhiking and just when it really starts getting good, Christina will snap out of it and go back to whatever it was she was doing.  (This is especially cruel during the scene where Helge skillfully ties her up and fucks her.)  This daydreaming bullshit eats up the entire first act of the film and it takes a half an hour for the whole blackmail "plot" to kick in. 

There was also a particularly WTF moment near the end of the film when Christina and Jan go to see a Tarzan movie.  For the next two minutes of screen time, we see a scene from the Tarzan movie in it's entirety.  Not just clips or a brief moment or two.  THE WHOLE FUCKING SCENE!  (Complete with Swedish subtitles!)  Way to pad the running time to the 90 minute mark!

Sure, I got a lot of complaints about this movie.  That's OK though because Christina gets naked a whole heck of a lot in it.  I don't care if she daydreamed the whole thing (which I'm pretty sure she did since the ending is one of those ambiguous deals), as long as Christina was showing off that dynamite figure of hers, the movie was at least doing SOMETHING right.

AKA:  The Depraved.  AKA:  Diary of a Rape.

Nami (Miyuki Ono) is a chick who hosts a Night Flight type of show in which she plays home movies sent in by her viewers.  One night someone sends her a snuff movie of a woman being killed.  Along with some of her colleagues, Nami finds the warehouse where the murder took place and they investigate.  Everyone starts dropping like flies pretty quickly until only Nami is left to contend with the murderer, who has a mother fixation and a really odd brother. 

Despite the title, the film is less an Evil Dead rip-off (although there is a lot of swooping POV camerawork) and more of a Dario Argento style horror flick.  The filmmakers ape Argento’s style left and right and lift a lot of things from Phenomena too.  Seeing an Italian influenced Japanese horror flick is a bit discombobulating to say the least but Evil Dead Trap delivers the goods more often than not, which is more than I can say for most Japanese horror flicks.

The flick does have its share of problems though, chief among them is the fact that most of the cast gets killed off too quickly, leaving the heroine way too much time to hang around and do a lot of nothing.  This makes the second act of the film a bit dull, however once the murderer’s malevolent murderous munchkin sibling makes his messy entrance, things perk up considerably.  The final shot is quite memorable and is really sick too.

Speaking of sick, there’s an eyeball stabbing scene in this movie that ranks right up there with the one from Zombie.  That’s right folks, it’s that gross.  We also get to see a bunch of steel skewers shoved through a girl, a pole punched through the back of some guy’s head and out his mouth, strangulation, decapitation, and a gnarly machete to the face.  There’s also some nudity in there to keep the horndogs in the audience happy as well.

Ono gets the best line of the movie when she tells the killer:  “Split personality or mama freak?  Either way, you’re crazy!”

For the past 9 years I have watched Elves on Dec.23rd as a Christmas Holiday Double Feature.  The second film is usually Jack Frost (the killer rapist snowman one not that Michael Keaton bullshit) but this year we decided to watch Christmas Evil afterwards.  Every year I mean to write the “definitive” Elves review and every year I always end up not writing it because there is no way to definitively review Elves.  You have to watch it at my house with about a dozen or so of my closest friends and family to get that experience.  We sit around the tube, rip it apart Mystery Science Theater style, and laugh, laugh, laugh.

Elves is the 80’s equivalent of Plan 9 from Outer Space.  It is a movie so bad on so many levels that it defies logic.  During the film you doubt your sanity so many times that by the end, you are truly convinced that you have just watched a work of genius.

Basically there’s this girl named Kirsten who “bemoans Christmas” and tries to have some sort of Anti-Christmas demonstration out in the forest with her two bubble-headed girlfriends.  For reasons too stupid to even mention, she ends up cutting her hand and when her blood hits the ground, it causes a rubbery looking elf to emerge.

If you’re waiting for any more elves to show up, forget it.  Despite the title, there is only one damn elf in the whole damn movie.

Anyway, Kirsten’s wheelchair bound grandfather slaps her around a bit before she takes a shower.  Her little brother catches her toweling off and proclaims, “You’ve got fucking big tits and I’m going to tell everybody I saw them!”  During the night, the elf sneaks in and attacks her brother but nobody believes he saw a “fucking ninja troll!”

The next day Kirsten takes a break at her job at “Golem’s” department store to sit on Santa’s lap.  Santa is a perv and she slaps him.  “SANTA SAID ‘ORAL’!”  Santa gets chewed out by the store manager and goes to snort some coke.  Unfortunately for him, the elf has a big time vendetta against him for touching Kirsten so he stabs the Santa repeatedly in the crotch with a butcher knife.

This scene is great not only because of the gratuitous crotch stabbing but for the fact that there’s a greasy looking two foot tall elf running around a department store AND NOBODY SEES IT.

About this time, Grizzly Adams starts hanging around the film as the chain-smoking ex-detective, Mike.  Because Grizzly Adams is fat and has a beard, he’s called upon to be the new Santa.  First kid on his lap mistakes him for a urinal.  “Ho-ho-oh-my-God!” 

While Grizzly is cleaning himself up, he talks to the chalk outline of the deceased Santa (with fresh blood stains on the crotch).  Grizzly also notices a symbol that looks suspiciously a lot like Prince’s former insignia.  He tells himself, “You’re not a detective anymore!”, but still tries to solve the murder. 

Grizzly is homeless so he duct tapes the lock on the back door of the store so he can live in his dressing room.  Kirsten gets her idiot girlfriends to hang out after hours at the store so they can party it up with some guys.  There’s a lot of rigmarole about the damn duct tape so every time you see someone putting the duct tape on the door or taking it off, feel free to take a shot of eggnog.  You’re going to need it.

It’s around this time that we learn that Nazis have bred the elf so it can mate with Kirsten on Christmas at the stroke of midnight.  Their offspring will be the Anti-Christ and will bring about the end of the world.  If you all know me, you know I’m a sucker for a movie in which the titular monster has to mate with the leading lady.

While the girls are shacked up in the department store, the elf shows up with a Santa hat on and...  Look folks, words just aren’t cutting it here.  You have to see this movie for yourself.  Words can’t describe how great the “Elf-Cam” is.  I’d love to express to you how wonderful Grizzly Adams is when he emotes, “What forces?  Who’s trying to destroy me?”, but I just lack the vocabulary.  As much as I want to share with you details of the classic dinner table scene, I know full well that the only way to experience what makes that scene so awesome is by letting you watch it for yourself.

I want you to fully realize how great the final shot of the film is.  I want your mind to boggle at the Chinatown-esque incest angle.  I want you to experience every second of the immortal bath tub death scene.  No matter what I say here people; it just won’t do the movie justice.  You have to see this one for yourself.  If you can’t get a hold of a copy, maybe you can join me next Christmas to watch it.

When I was a kid, every time Christmas rolled around, I’d be glued to the tube watching Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas on HBO.  I bought the video a while back and I still try to make it a tradition to watch it every Christmas.  And every Christmas I do watch it, I always feel like a kid again.

Emmet and his Ma are poor otters who live on the river.  Emmet earns money by doing odd jobs and his Ma brings in the dough by washing clothes.  All Emmet wants for Christmas is a guitar and Ma would be happy with a nice piano, but since they are both poorer than all get out, those are just pipe dreams.  When it’s announced that the town will have a talent contest with the prize being $50, both Emmet and Ma enter to get their ottery hands on the prize money.  Emmet is in a jug band and the only way that he can play “washtub bass” is by poking a hole in his mother’s washtub, a valued source of income in the Otter home.  Likewise, Ma hocks Emmet’s tools so she can by a dress so she can perform at the concert.  Both Otters sing at the show and do a pretty good job, but the contest is won by the single greatest rock group in the history of Christmas specials, The Nightmare.  Even though Emmet and Ma didn’t win, Doc Bullfrog offers them a job singing at his restaurant so they can make money without the damn washtub.

Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, based on the children’s book by Lillian and Russell Hoban is Jim Henson’s best non-Muppet creation.  While Kermit the Frog acts as the narrator, he has little impact on the story and the flick’s success largely rests on the shoulders of Emmet and his Ma.  Henson and his crew create some of the most dazzling puppetry of their entire career.  Each scene is brimming with extra bits of side business (birds, ducks, snowmobiles, etc.) that rely on various forms of puppetry.  We get the standard sock puppet routines, but also marionettes and what looks to be animatronics as well.  It’s hard to tell exactly because it’s all seamlessly blended together.  I still don’t know how they made Emmet sing while paddling his boat in the middle of the river.

Speaking of singing, the truly great songs were provided by none other than Paul Williams.  If Williams has only wrote the songs from Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas and nothing else in his career, I’d still call him a genius.  As I sit here and type this I can’t get that damn “Barbeque” song out of my head.  And even the sappier songs in the flick are great too because they never get overly saccharine.  The fact that they’re being sung by otters probably helps too.

But the song that makes Williams immortal in my book is the “Riverbottom Nightmare Band”.  The performance of this song is some of Jim Henson’s best stuff he ever did.  Imagine Jim Henson channeling Alice Cooper.  That shit is what the true meaning of Christmas is all about.

Clint Eastwood returns in his third go-around as Dirty Harry Callahan.  This time Harry gets saddled with a female partner (Tyne Daly) in order to take out a crazed army of hooligan revolutionaries who steal a cache of military weapons and kidnap the mayor.  It all ends with a big shootout on Alcatraz Island.

The Women’s Lib movement of the 70’s was in full swing at the time The Enforcer was made and I suppose that this flick was a reflection of how Dirty Harry would deal with having a broad for a partner.  While this is a wonderful set-up, very little is actually done with it as it doesn’t take Harry too long to accept her as his partner.  There is one fun scene where Harry sits on a hiring board, screening potential new detectives where he has to contend with the Equal Opportunity recruitment of females and insults just about every skirt in the room.  Also topical at the time of the film’s release was the SLA kidnapping of Patty Hearst, so naturally the villains in this one are a bunch of SLA knockoffs.

Eastwood and Daly have an easy chemistry together even though the script calls for them to pretty much bicker throughout the whole movie.  Daly (who of course went on to fame as Lacey on Cagney and Lacey) isn’t really as annoying as she could’ve been and handles herself well during the action.  Speaking of action, the highlight comes early in the film when Harry crashes a car through a liquor store to break up a robbery. 

The Enforcer is solidly entertaining, no doubt thanks to another stellar performance by Clint.  The flick does however suffer from an overall been-there-done-that feeling of deja vu.  In addition, James Fargo directs the material in a flat style that doesn’t do the movie any favors.  The stunts are nicely choreographed but the action is indifferently filmed.  Another debit is the fact that the villains are just plain boring.  Compared to the skuzzy Scorpio in the first movie and the vigilante cops of Magnum Force, these guys are definitely a notch or two below the usual scumbags. 

I guess the biggest gripe I had with the movie is the tone.  While it’s definitely the most light-hearted of all Harry’s adventures, the downbeat ending seems woefully out of place.  I know Harry has a habit of losing partners, but the ending just seems tacked on to an otherwise comic booky movie.

Yeah it seems like I’m knocking the movie, but The Enforcer still makes for breezy entertainment.  While it’s probably my least favorite in the Dirty Harry series, it’s still fun and features Harry doing what he does best, namely blowing away a lot of scumbags and saying funny shit afterwards.

Harry’s catchphrase in this one is “Marvelous”.  Admittedly, it’s no “Do you feel lucky?”, but it’s the WAY he says it that’s so great.  He delivers the line with his usual laconic style and every time he says it, it doesn’t fail to get a laugh.  The best line though comes when Harry enters the ghetto and tells his partner, “This is the Fillmore chapter of the VFW... Very Few Whites!”

Harry returned seven years later for Sudden Impact.

Rodney Dangerfield stars as a foul-mouthed, hard drinking, pot smoking baby photographer who is in line to inherit a $10 million fortune from his domineering mother in-law.  The catch is that he’s got to stop drinking, quit smoking (cigarettes and reefer), give up gambling and lose a bunch of weight if he wants to get his hands on the loot. 

Easy Money was Rodney’s first starring vehicle and while the scenario seems a perfect fit for Dangerfield’s persona, there’s way too much plot and not enough of Rodney’s one-liners.  Oh sure, the flick is funny and is always watchable thanks largely to Rodney’s considerable charisma, it’s just that the script probably could’ve used another polish or two.  Most of the time, it feels more like a watered-down sitcom than an honest to goodness Rodney movie.  Hey, I’m not knocking it; it’s still a fun flick with some big laughs, just don’t be expecting another Caddyshack or Back to School.

As Rodney’s drinking buddies, Joe Pesci and Tom Noonan get some good scenes and have an easy chemistry with Dangerfield.  A young Jennifer Jason Leigh turns in a nice performance as Dangerfield’s daughter and Taylor Negron is also a hoot as Julio, Rodney’s new son in-law.  It’s a Rodney Dangerfield movie, so of course Rodney’s going to get the best line of the flick when he tells his mother in-law:  “You were the inspiration for twin beds!”

Neal (Tin Man) McDonough is a Seattle based serial killer (nicknamed rather unimaginatively, “The Seattle Slayer”) who likes to hang women upside down and slice them open with a scalpel.  During McDonough’s trial, it’s forensic psychologist Al Pacino’s testimony that convicts him and when he’s one day away from execution, he decides to play a little game with old Al.  On his way to work, Pacino gets a phone call telling him he’s got 88 minutes to live and he spends the remainder of the movie figuring out who is trying to kill him and how they are connected to the psycho he helped put away.

This thriller is pretty inept in just about every way.  It’s thoroughly preposterous and stretches all limits of plausibility, even for movie standards.  The plot has more holes than a miniature golf course.  Seriously, why would a psycho call Al Pacino and tell him he’s going to kill him in 88 minutes and then 54 minutes later try to shoot him?  I mean if the killer was so intent on killing Al at a specific time, then why would he try to blow him up with a car bomb 4 minutes after missing him with the gun? 

And while we’re on the subject of time here, let me go on the record by saying that the movie severely bungles the initial premise of letting Pacino’s predicament play out in “real time”.  This same gimmick was also employed in Nick of Time and was done brilliantly in Running Time.  Here, director Jon (Fried Green Tomatoes) Avnet doesn’t really play by the rules.  I mean if you are going to do things in real time, at least keep your characters in a confined area so it makes their movements believable and congruent with the ticking clock.  Several times during the course of 88 Minutes, Pacino gets in his car and goes across the city in no less than 30 seconds.  C’mon Avnet!

As bad as most of this mess is, Pacino anchors things really well.  He doesn’t resort to any of his overacting theatrics and is good at giving his character various shades of grey.  I always thought that McDonough was one helluva boring ass actor (if you don’t believe me, check out his comatose performance as Lindsay Lohan’s dad in I Know Who Killed Me), but his total lack of a personality makes him an ideal serial killer. 

What really made the movie worth watching was Alicia Witt’s performance as Pacino’s assistant who gets caught up in his life-or-death situation.  I’ve always felt that Alicia had been criminally underused in the past and never really got her due.  This is her first big role in an action movie and she equips herself nicely.  She’s also incredibly hot in this flick too.  Every time the plot dragged out its umpteenth red herring, I didn’t really mind as long as Alicia was on the screen, pouting out her lips and giving me one of those “Come hither” looks.  In fact, this flick didn’t even need a plot, all it needed was 88 solid minutes of Alicia Witt looking dead sexy and I would’ve been happy.

Avnet and Pacino re-teamed for Righteous Kill later in the year.

Emanuelle (Laura Gemser) hates her wealthy hubby cuz he likes to get his friends together and play freaky sex games with her so she hires a greasy hitman to mess around with his airplane engine which leads him to die in a plane crash.  Emanuelle wants all of her dead husband’s money but since he left everything to his underage brat of a daughter (Livia Russo), she has to be content with leeching off the kid’s trust fund.  She also wants revenge on the folks who used to hold her down while hubby beat her like a piñata, but she ends up falling in love with her ex’s confidant (Gemser’s husband and frequent co-star, Gabriele Tinti) instead.  When the meddling hitman shows up and rapes her stepdaughter, it drives Emanuelle on a further quest for vengeance. 

Gemser is as hot as ever and has a couple juicy fuck scenes this time out.  This entry has a lot more plot than your average unrelated Black Emanuelle movie so her sex scenes are spaced pretty far apart.  That won't be too much of a deterrent for die hard Emanuelle enthusiasts though as there are enough scenes of Gemser stark naked to keep them happy.  Luckily the despicable hitman also gets to bed down with an assorted bunch of naked trollops to keep you entertained while you’re waiting for Gemser’s turn to disrobe.

Those used to the sleazier Joe D’Amato lensed entries in the series shouldn’t be too disappointed with this flick as it’s got a creepy pedophilia aspect to it that makes the bestiality in Emanuelle in America seem almost tame in comparison.  In one scene, Emanuelle’s VERY young stepdaughter takes a LONG shower and NOTHING is left to the imagination.  I’m sure she was of age when she made this… uh… right?  It’s hard to tell either way because her itty bitty titties looked a little on the statutory side to me.  Either that or she’s one Hell of an actress.  I won’t even bring up her hard-to-watch rape scene that crosses the line of good taste.  I’ll take the Fifth on that one, your honor. 

I would have been happy with the soap opera melodramatics and the borderline kiddie porn this movie had to offer; sadly though the ending is so abrupt that it’s liable to give you whiplash.  (And I should know as I was rear ended by a pick-up truck last month.)  This will hardly matter though to anyone watching this flick for the sole purpose of seeing Russo’s (hopefully) of age body. 

The asshole hitman gets the best line of the movie when he asks Emanuelle, “You wouldn’t begrudge me a piece of tail?”

AKA:  Emanuelle’s Daughter.  AKA:  Emanuelle the Seductress.  AKA:  Emanuelle:  Queen Bitch.  AKA:  Sexy Moon.

David Niven stars as a winemaker who is summoned back to his ancestral home under mysterious circumstances.  He tells his frumpy wife (Deborah Kerr) to stay put, but she tags along anyway with their snotty kids in tow and is privy to a series of weird shenanigans and going-ons involving a sinister Satanist cult. 

Eye of the Devil has an A-List cast, a healthy budget, and some glossy visual pizzazz, but for a die hard horror movie fan, that won’t mean a heck of a lot.  This is strictly a Hollywood-ized version of a horror flick, and although it does have one or two memorable moments (like when Niven whips the shit out of Sharon Tate with a riding crop or when Tate tries to hypnotize Kerr into falling off a castle turret), for the most part, it’s far too slow moving to be truly rewarding. 

While Eye of the Devil may have made for a mediocre episode of The Twilight Zone or Outer Limits, it’s flimsy premise is stretched too thin for too long for it to make much of an impression.  The film was directed with a lot of style by J. Lee (Happy Birthday to Me) Thompson and while he delivers a slick looking movie, it’s completely devoid of chills.  Thompson does know how to pile on the atmosphere (guys wearing Satanist robes abound), but the pieces really never add up to anything remotely suspenseful or scary. 

Comparisons to The Wicker Man are unavoidable (about every review I’ve ever read about this movie mentions it), but at least Wicker Man had lots of scenes of Britt Ekland running around naked.  This flick features the late Sharon Tate in a skintight catsuit, but that’s about it.  The all-star cast (which includes Donald Pleaseance and David Hemmings) is quite good, but their work is all for naught as the film is just too dull to be fully compelling. 

AKA:  13. 

Lily, a mousy New Zealand girl (Loren Horsley) loses her job at a fast food joint, which gives her more time to ogle Jarrod (Jemaine Clement), a nerdy guy who works in a video store.  At a party where everyone dresses up like their favorite animal (Lily’s a shark, Jarrod’s an Eagle), Lilly impresses him with her video game playing ability so he makes love to her.  They become boyfriend-girlfriend and Jarrod asks her to come to his hometown with him so he can beat up his former high school bully.  During her stay, Lily warms up to Jarrod’s family, gets dumped, sleeps in a tent, gets drunk and eventually gets back together with him. 

This offbeat and frequently funny comedy plays like Kiwi version of Napoleon Dynamite.  While it’s not quite in the same league as that film, it’s still pretty entertaining, thanks largely to some great performances.  Horsley (who also co-wrote the script) is excellent as the shy Lily, but it’s Clement who steals the movie.  If you’ve ever seen him on Flight of the Conchords, you know he can be pretty freaking hilarious and his eccentric performance is easily the best thing about the film.  Naturally, he gets all the best lines of the movie; my favorite being:  “You’re a bitch and you will die of diabetes!”   

Director/co-writer Taika Waititi also turns up in a small role.   

Okay so what’s the first Video Vacuum rule of horror movies?  If it was made in Hong Kong, then it’s probably sucks schlong.  The Japanese can usually crank out a good one every now and then, like Audition or Entrails of a Beautiful Woman, but the horror imports from China are always fairly lame.  Case in point:  The Eye.  With The Eye, the directors, The Pang Brothers, show us that they can make crappy shot on DV horror movies just like us Americans can. 

At least us Americans don’t have to READ our damn movies. 

The Eye is all about a blind chick who gets an operation so she can see again.  While getting adjusted to her new vision, she starts seeing pale faced monkey people, chalk eating children and blurry looking motherfuckers who try to scare her.  Eventually she learns what she’s seeing is suicide victims who are doomed to endlessly repeat their fates over and over again. 

While I appreciated some of the film’s subtle humor (The heroine gets kicked out of “The Orchestra for the Blind” after she regains her sight.  Talk about discrimination!), the film was completely devoid of any horrific moments.  (When are these Asian horror people gonna learn that little scrawny kids just aren’t scary?)  The ending is particularly infuriating.    

This flick was later remade by America with Jessica Alba earlier this year.  Watching this flick didn’t necessarily make me want to put that film on my Netflix queue, especially considering that Americanized remakes of Asian horror films are usually WORSE than the originals.  (The Ring, anyone?)  The Eye is a notch or two better than most Asian horror crapfests, but that is far from a glowing compliment in my book. 

Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as a government agent working with the Witness Protection Agency who “erases” his clients’ identities.  His latest assignment is a corporate whistle blower (Vanessa Williams) who has the goods on some top secret high tech weaponry.  These weapons are so technologically advanced that they have x-ray scopes that can see through buildings and have the firepower necessary (the bullets can travel at the speed of light) to go through said buildings and hit their targets. 

If you’re the kind of person who wonders just how in the heck bullets can be fired at the speed of light, Eraser may not be the movie for you. 

Before too long, Arnold is double crossed by his crooked superior (James Caan) into disclosing Williams’ whereabouts and has to jump out of an airplane without the benefit of a parachute to save her.  Along the way Arnold blows away dozens of people with a very big gun and causes untold millions in property damage in the process.    

Eraser is kind of an unsung classic.  When everyone talks Arnold flicks, they always neglect to bring up Eraser.  No one ever mentions the scene where Arnold dresses up like a ninja and kung fus people like Sho Kosugi.  Nobody ever talks about the scene where a parachuting Arnold plays chicken with a speeding airplane and WINS.  No one ever recollects the scene where Arnie uses a SWAT member as a human shield before pulling the pins on his grenade, tossing him into an elevator and blowing up a half dozen bad guys.  And does anyone remember the great scene where Arnold bursts through the floorboards and guns down a bunch of baddies?  Sadly, no. 

Like most of Arnold’s work, all the action scenes are thoroughly implausible, but their sheer nuttiness is what makes them work.  (Remember those bullets that can move at the speed of light?  Well, Arnold is somehow able to duck and jump out of the way of those bullets.  Does this mean Arnold can move faster than the speed of light?  You’re damn skippy it does.)

Director Chuck (A Nightmare on Elm Street 3:  Dream Warriors) Russell keeps things moving fast and furious and only occasionally lets things slow down for stuff like “plot” and “drama”. 

But oh what dramatics we got in this flick.  The scene where Arnold sits by the fireplace and tells Williams, ”Who you are is in HERE.  And no one can take that away from you!“ is some of the most heart tugging shit the man’s done since the “Oh my God, I can walk again!” ending from Raw Deal. 

Speaking of Raw Deal, this flick also features a great Arnold in a drag club scene too. 

The colorful supporting cast includes James Coburn, James Cromwell and Robert Pastorelli as Schwarzenegger’s comic relief Mafia sidekick. 

Sure it’s no Commando, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t one Hell of an entertaining action flick.  It’s got Arnold blowing things up for two hours and saying funny shit afterwards like “You’ve just been erased!” and “They caught the train!”  The best line of the movie though comes during the awesome scene where Arnie blows away a vicious alligator and quips, “You’re luggage!” 

The Exterminator is bar none, flat out, without a doubt Robert Ginty’s finest 101 minutes. 

It tells the story of John Eastland (Ginty), a Vietnam vet who works on the docks of New York in the meat packing district.  When he was in Nam, he saw some seriously fucked up shit like a dude getting his head cut off, but not cut off ALL THE WAY as the head kinda hung there from an itty bitty piece of neck skin.  This left an impression on him.  So when his Nam vet buddy (Steve James from the American Ninja flicks) gets paralyzed in a brutal assault (they stick a three pronged garden hoe into his spine and twist it around real good) by a vicious gang known as The Ghetto Ghouls, Eastland snaps, grabs his blowtorch and starts roughing up anybody wearing a gang color.  First bunch he finds, he ties them up and lets some rats chew their faces off.  Other gangbangers get blown away or end up flame-broiled in their cars.  Then he sends a letter to the press, calling himself “The Exterminator” and lets everybody know that he’ll be blowing away the scum of New York City for the next 90 minutes or so. 

Next, he targets the Mafia boss (who has a weird comic strip fetish) that runs the docks and extorts money from him so his pal’s wife and kids can eat for the next 100 years or so.  He ties the Guido up and dangles him above an industrial meat grinder and asks him the combination of his safe.  The mobster tells him and Exterminator asks, “Is there anything else I should know?”  The dude says nope, and away Exterminator goes to collect his friend’s future pension fund.  BUT the mobster didn’t tell Exterminator about his bloodthirsty guard dog and after he Old Yellers the dog to death with an electric knife; Exterminator comes back and drops the mob boss into the industrial meat grinder, turning him into Hamburger Helper.  Minus the Helper. 

Then cop Christopher (Pieces) George tries to romance Dr. Samantha (The Brood) Eggar by taking her to jazz concerts and banging her in a hospital bed while simultaneously trying to bring The Exterminator to justice.  We also learn that the Feds are after him too because “it’s an election year” and they don’t want Exterminator to rock the boat or the vote. 

One night Exterminator picks up a hooker and she shows him her mutilated ta-tas.  He asks how come her tits look like Beef Jerky and she says that some “Chicken Farmers” (READ:  Child Molesters!) wanted her to participate in one of their sick orgies and she said no way (She clearly does not do Neverland Ranch Specials.) so they went to town on her melons with a soldering iron.  Exterminator says, “No one will ever hurt you again!” 

I guess you know what happens next.  Sure you do.  Exterminator starts BBQing perverts and shooting child molesters in the groin with mercury laced bullets.  Too bad the FBI gets wind of Exterminator’s activities and shoots a hole through both him and Christopher George.  Luckily for the American viewing public, Exterminator was wearing a bulletproof vest, effectively setting the stage for Exterminator 2.  

Ginty is superb in the lead role.  He definitely does not look, act or sound like a movie star, but that’s his strength.  He looks like a regular guy which makes his transformation from disgruntled Nam Vet to Chuck Bronson Jr. wholly believable.  Who else could deliver lines like “That nigger was my best friend, you motherfucker!” with such impassioned conviction?  George and Eggar are good in their roles, but their characters are completely unnecessary to the plot and only serve as a break in the action to give the audience a chance to catch their breath (or take a leak) after all the mayhem and nastiness director James (Shakedown) Glickenhaus reigns down upon them.  The film also provides a loving time capsule of New York’s 42^nd Street, which at the time was the sleaze capital of the world. 

Of all the Death Wish rip-offs out there, this one is the best.  Even the most jaded of exploitation fans’ jaws will drop on this one (especially during the “chicken” sequences).  The effects are awesome and the decapitation that opens the film is one of the best you’ll ever see on the silver screen.  It should be duly noted however that despite the movie poster, The Exterminator does NOT kill anybody with his trusty flamethrower in this movie.  That had to wait until Exterminator 2, (also with Ginty) which came out four years later.

Planet of the Apes movie number 3 has Dr. Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) and Dr. Zira (Kim Hunter) escaping the total annihilation of the world in Beneath the Planet of the Apes by flying Charlton Heston’s spaceship back through time to the (then) present day of the 70’s.  The military doesn’t quite know what to do with the apes, so they toss them into the zoo where vet Bradford (The Mephisto Waltz) Dillman studies them.  When they reveal their intelligent selves to him, he makes them celebrities.  The public immediately takes a shine to the talking monkeys from the future, but unfortunately Victor from Guiding Light wants them D-E-A-D because he knows that eventually the apes will inherit the Earth.  Things get increasingly complicated when he discovers that Zira is pregnant and that her potential offspring may bring about the downfall of the human race.  When Victor marks the unborn baby for termination, the proud parents flee and take refuge in Ricardo Montalban’s circus where Zira delivers a baby boy.  Victor finally finds the damn dirty apes and guns them down, but not before their primate progeny is rescued by Montalban so he can go on to star in the next sequel. 

Again, the studio saved a bunch of money by setting this in modern times and only having three monkey suits to maintain.  Director Don (Damien:  The Omen 2) Taylor competently handles things in a workmanlike manner and delivers a solidly entertaining entry to the series.  The present day setting actually adds to the fun and allowed screenwriter Paul Dehn to add some sly social commentary that was severely missing from the second installment.  (I particularly liked the way that Cornelius and Zira almost immediately became mass consumers and started sporting funky 70’s fashions and the way Zira became a figure for the women’s movement.)  Unfortunately, things get extremely sluggish after Cornelius and Zira escape the clutches of Victor and the like all of the Apes movies, the ending is a bummer. 

McDowall and Hunter are completely charming and their chemistry together keeps the film afloat whenever it loses it’s way.  The great human supporting cast includes M. Emmett (The Jerk) Walsh and Jason (The Brain That Wouldn’t Die) Evers, and seeing Victor from Guiding Light (minus his trademark moustache) as the slimy villain only adds to the fun. 

McDowall returned the next year in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. 

Olinka Hardiman stars as Emanuelle in this unofficial sequel from producer Dick (Pieces) Randall.  Emanuelle desperately wants to forget her life as a stripper and part time prostitute, so she leaves her manipulative pimp and heads to the Cannes Film Festival where she hopes she’ll be discovered and become a star.  Once there, she dances naked on the beach, balls an actor on a yacht and has a lesbian tryst with a female director.  Even though she gets a part in a movie, she still longs for the indifferent embrace of her misogynistic pimp and in the end, has him fly out to France to pick her up and put her back on the street corner where she belongs. 

You know, for a piecemeal, filmed on the sly, cheapjack sequel, Emanuelle Goes to Cannes works better than it should.  You can tell somebody just took Hardiman to the Cannes Film Festival, filmed her walking around town and then tried to pass it off as an Emanuelle movie.   (The film would make a good double feature with Fanatic in that respect.)  The filmmakers nicely capture the atmosphere of the Cannes Film Festival, although admittedly all they needed to do was grab a camera and walk around their hotel.  It’s fun seeing billboards announcing “upcoming” movies such as Bad Timing, The Big Brawl, and Carbon Copy, all films which found distribution long before this flick did.  We don’t see any human stars walking along the Riviera, but we DO get to see Benji being interviewed!  I don’t know about you, but the cheap thrill of seeing Benji in a low rent Emanuelle sequel is almost enough to make me want to recommend this flick. 

The sex scenes aren’t very titillating, but they have a certain charm about them.  Consider the scene where Emanuelle catches her pimp cheating on her with another ho and he slyly convinces her into having a threesome so he wouldn’t be technically cheating.  It’s far from a realistic reaction, but it’s pretty amusing. 

Although the flick is fun, and whizzes by at a steady clip (it runs a scant 75 minutes), it still has more than it’s share of debits.  The biggest problem is erratic editing.  It looks like it was originally filmed as a hardcore flick because the editing is quite jarring during the sex scenes (especially whenever someone is getting a humjob).  The slipshod cutting diffuses the sexual tension of these scenes and interrupts the flow of the debauchery.  Emanuelle’s constant voiceovers don’t help matters any.  She frequently inform us on all things happening in the past, present and future, but the real reason she’s always narrating is because it saves the producers lots of money on the dubbing.  There’s also an annoying song that goes “Ting-ta-ta-ting-ting-ting!” a thousand times or so, that will literally drive you up the fucking wall.

Hardiman is quite good and carries the movie with a modicum of pulchritude.  She has a sluttiness about her that is very natural and she never once looks like she’s “acting”, which is the best compliment I can give her I guess.  She also gets the best line of the entire movie when she says:  “He had me trained like a seal, only it wasn’t a horn I had to blow!”

AKA:  The Elementary Stud.

A jackass junkie named Daniel (Paolo Giusti) gets pissed because his old lady OD’s on heroin and cheats on him (in that order) so he shipwrecks himself on a desert island.   When he realizes that the only food he brought with him was a bottle of booze and a box of Whitman’s Samplers, he gets kinda crazy and smashes his radio along with a bunch of cocoanuts.  After about twenty minutes of bitching and moaning, he decides to check the rest of the island out and runs into the beautiful Haydee, played by Laura Gemser. 

That’s right folks; it’s another Emanuelle movie where they don’t even bother to call her Emaunelle.  I tell ya, only the Italians could get away with this kind of stuff. 

Arthur (Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) Kennedy plays Haydee’s grouchy dad who wants Daniel off the island, but Haydee and her brother (Nicola Paguone) like him, so they teach him how to fish using a spear.  Haydee and Daniel start making goo-goo eyes at each other and you know what that means:  Pretty soon they’re going to be doing the Blue Lagoon Boogie. 

Little does Daniel know that her brother has also been slipping her the Christopher Atkins special, which makes things kinda awkward for everybody, including the audience.   

For the first part of the movie there’s a whole lot of sub-Cast Away high jinx, except instead of Tom Hanks, we get a nondescript, sweaty, badly dubbed Italian actor.  It seems like forever before Gemser finally shows up, but it’s okay cuz when she does, she rarely wears a shirt. 

I’m not going to rag on the flimsy plot, sluggish pacing, amateurish acting, cruddy cinematography or lamentable dialogue (“You’re a prisoner… of DOPE!”) because honestly, this movie exists for one reason and one reason only, and that’s Laura Gemser getting naked.  She gets naked enough to satisfy her fans and that’s what really counts.  The flick may be as involving as watching splooge stains dry on your jeans, but since Gemser’s tits are constantly on display, I can’t get too mad at it.  Besides you don’t rent an Emanuelle movie for it’s groundbreaking contributions to cinema, you watch it to ogle Gemser’s rack.  And for that reason, I can’t bring myself to give it any less than **. 

AKA:  A Beach Called Desire.  AKA:  Taboo Island.

Laura Gemser returns as Emanuelle in the fifth and final installment of the series from Italian sleaze guru Joe D’Amato.  This time out, Emanuelle takes on the white slave trade but BEFORE she does that, she masturbates while she watches her friend fuck a black mechanic, goes on an African safari, has a lesbian tryst in the shower, balls a wealthy prince, smokes a hookah in India, has a threeway, watches a nude photo shoot in New York and makes love in a darkroom.  THEN she decides to do an expose about white slavers.

When she tries to escape (with the help of a friendly transvestite) she gets captured and nearly gets lobotomized by the evil doctors at “The Clinic”.  Fortunately she escapes in a laundry basket, hops aboard a ship home and balls the crew to pay for her voyage. 

With Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade, D’Amato delivers a rather tame entry in the durable series.  I’ll admit that watching Emanuelle in America probably jaded me (Who could forget the immortal horse masturbation scene?), but EATWST has a feeling of been-there-done-that (D’Amato even takes to recycling whole scenes from Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals) that knocks things down a notch or two.  Having said that, D’Amato does film THE definite tranny kung fu fight in a bowling alley scene in the history of the cinema, so that’s worth something at least.

Although it takes Emanuelle FOREVER to get to the damn slavers, once she does things start to perk up considerably.  (Like my penis.)  Despite the relatively low sleaze quotient in this one, Gemser looks amazing as always and there is plenty of female flesh on display to make any fan of the series happy.  Gemser’s husband and frequent co-star in these movies, Gabriele Tinti has a small role as a slaver.  There’s also a great stream of consciousness theme song called “Run Cheetah Run” that has to be heard to be believed.  Here’s just a sample: 

Run cheetah run on the prairie, Shamu rapid cheetah is here.  

You feel his breath on your back; your heart is breaking, his clothes lapse.

His clothes LAPSE?!?  I’m sure something got lost in the translation there, but “Run Cheetah Run” is a hilarious oddity that will probably stay in your head longer than anything else in the movie. 

AKA:  Emanuelle and the Girls of Madame Claude. 

For my money, Bruce Le was the greatest of all the Bruce Lee imitators.  He was probably also the most prolific, as he starred in no less than FOUR Bruceploitation movies in 1980 alone. 

Now Bruceploitation movies generally fall into two categories.  The first are movies that were made after Lee died that exploited his death by having Lee (played by another actor of course) come back from the grave to kick some ass.  The second kind was movies had nothing to do with Bruce Lee and were re-titled and marketed to make you think he was really in them.  This flick falls in the latter category. 

In the opening credits, Le dresses up in the familiar yellow and black get-up worn by Bruce Lee in Game of Death and practices his nunchuck moves in front of a red background while the credits roll (SUPER Starring: Bruce Le!).  Bruce smashes up some vases, flower pots and sandbags; then the plot begins.     

As the title implies, the film is more or less a mash up of Game of Death and Enter the Dragon, except it takes place during WWII.  After Bruce defeats Bolo Yeung (from Enter the Dragon) in a karate tournament, a mobster tries to hire him to be his bodyguard.  When Bruce refuses, the gangster sends his best men to rearrange his face, but Bruce easily kicks their collective butts.  The British government then gets Bruce to retrieve some “important documents” from the Japanese for them and Bruce says no way Jose.  After some dirty Japanese dudes rape his cousin, he says okay though.   Bruce then has to battle a series of baddies in order to find the documents.  There’s a bald Shaolin monk, a snake charmer who shoots venomous blood out of decapitated snakes, an old man, and a Jerry Garcia look-alike.  There’s even a Kareem Abdul-Jabbar imitator in there too.  He finally catches up to the main Jap villain who of course is the same bastard that raped his cousin, so you just know that Li is gonna tap dance on his sternum like Gregory Hines on Angel Dust.  The government double crosses Bruce so he has to obliterate Bolo AGAIN and hunt down the two-timing government agent who sold him out. 

The set-up is more or less intriguing, but the fight scenes lack panache and get a little repetitive after a while.  There’s no real suspense or momentum to the fights and they are all pretty interchangeable (except the snake dude, he’s cool).  The overuse of irritating super slo-mo gets a little annoying as well because when the fights are slowed down so much the seams in the unremarkable fight choreography show even more.  The only fights that have any oomph to them are the ones between Yeung and Li.  Their brawls are far and away the best thing the movie has going for it. 

Bruce and Bolo have three major fight scenes:  one a forest, another in the ring, and in the final climatic battle, in a handsomely landscaped grotto.  Bolo even has a great extended fight scene where he takes on several opponents in the ring Diggstown style and Steve James, a veteran of the American Ninja series, has an early role as one of the villain’s henchmen.  Both of these seasoned professionals bring something to the table and prevent the movie from being completely forgettable. 

But it’s Bruce Le who kicks the most ass in his fight scenes.  Le has a lot more charisma than any of the Bruce Lee imitators and his considerable screen presence makes what would have otherwise been a lackluster action flick worth watching; making Enter the Game of Death a hair or two better than most Bruceploitation flicks.  Le also starred in the excellent Challenge of the Tiger the same year. 

AKA:  The King of Kung Fu. 

After the success of The Dead End Kids movies, producer Sam Katzman hired several second tier Dead End Kids to star in their own series, The East Side Kids.  This was their first film under their new moniker. 

Knuckles Dolan (David O’Brien from Reefer Madness) is in trouble with the law and his kid brother Danny (Harris Berger) is on the same path.  He gets a concerned police officer (Leon Ames) to help get Danny’s gang of miscreants off the streets by opening a gym for them to all hang out in.  To keep them away from a life of crime he makes the kids all Junior G-Men and they help foil a gang of no good counterfeiters.  

Hardcore fans of the Dead End Kids/Bowery Boys will enjoy seeing this early, obscure entry, but I was severely disappointed because the group’s big guns Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, and Bobby Jordan are sorely missing.  To me, making an East Side Kids movie WITHOUT Gorcey and Hall is like making an Abbott and Costello movie WITHOUT Abbott and Costello.  As a result, there’s hardly any comedy and the “plot” is paper thin.  The ending is also needlessly depressing. 

The kids in this batch of East Side Kids are OK I guess, but they lack the personality and chemistry that Gorcey and Hall had.  At least Gorcy appeared in the series’ next film Boys of the City.

An open letter to David Cronenberg: 

Dear Mr. Cronenberg,

For more than thirty years you have been the greatest horror director to come out of Canada.  With each progressing film, you have stamped your own personal signature and given us some of the most memorable horror imagery in the history of the genre.  In They Came from Within, it was the sex parasite going up the twat of Barbara Steele.  In Rabid, it was Marilyn Chambers’ armpit monster.  In The Brood, there were those terrifying telepathic tykes.  In Scanners, you set the bar for exploding heads.  Who could forget Videodrome, where you made James Woods seem like a NORMAL person, even when he was stuffing handguns into his abdomen and shooting people with cancer bullets?  That same year you gave us The Dead Zone, one of the finest Stephen King adaptations ever made where, again you made a usually psychopathic looking actor (in this case, Christopher Walken) seem NORMAL.  Then, you made The Fly; your masterpiece.  Jeff Goldblum turning into a slimy vomit monster.  Priceless. 

But after The Fly you made Dead Ringers which was all PSYCHOLOGICAL and stuff.  You started moving away from the whole sex parasite/armpit monster/killer kids/exploding heads/cancer bullets/psychic Christopher Walken/insectoid vomit monsters business and started doing more “arty” movies.  While I got a kick out of the whole “Gynecological Instruments for Operating on Mutant Women” thing, it featured not ONE thing nearly as great as the maggot baby scene in The Fly.  You got even artier with your next film, Naked Lunch.  The biggest problem with that film was the narrative: Robocop going back and forth from the real world to the “fictional” world.  I guess it’s not entirely your fault because if you WERE to film a true adaptation of the book, it would probably land you in jail.  Then you did M. Butterfly.  ‘Nuff said. 

You made a return to form with your next film Crash, which is still the best James Spader as a Sexual Deviant That Gets Off on Vehicular Homicide Movie Ever Made.  Then Existenz came along and even though it wasn’t perfect and only played in theaters for about five minutes, it was the closest you’ve come to your “old self” in a long time.  But I’ll be damned; you got all arty on us again with Spider.  At least Spider was vaguely Cronenbergian.  Your next film, History of Violence was pure Hollywood creampuff.  I was hoping you got that out of your system, but not even two years go by and you basically regurgitated that movie and called it Eastern Promises.

How disappointing. 

In History of Violence you had Viggo Mortensen go from being a good natured man who wants to protect his family to becoming a slimy gangster.  In this flick Viggo goes from being a slimy RUSSIAN gangster who becomes a good natured man who wants to protect SOMEONE ELSE’S family. 

Basically if you slapped a bunch of fake tattoos on Viggo, gave him a Boris Badenov accent, and played History of Violence backwards, you got Eastern Promises. 

Just like History of Violence, there are NO surprises in Eastern Promises.  Whereas we pretty much knew from the get-go in Violence that Viggo was not who he claimed to be (more of the preview’s fault than yours), the viewer will recognize right away where Viggo’s loyalties will lie in this one.  The “mystery” father of the abandoned baby will also come as no surprise to any half-intellectual viewer.