"Impulse"(1974)d/William Grefe'

It's a sexy Thursday evening, folks, you can smell the pungent reek of primal lust in the air tonight.A woman's ample, heaving busom rhythymically quaking in a sparkly tube top stretched to the limits by the dinosaurian dimensions of her twin D's to a mid-70's disco bassline laid down by some cat with a caucasian natural 'fro, dressed in some outta sight polyester jumpsuit that'd make George Jetson piss Rosie the Robot into short circuitsville, culminating in a spirited twenty-five minute ham-slamming romp in the backseat of the Cougar behind the club.Solid, baby.Can you dig it?
Any movie directed by Grefe is usually an entertaining one, and when you've got The Shat on board as a sweaty-as-balls, sleazy-as-fuck murderous con artist-cum-gigolo decked out in only the most painful polyester fashions of 1974, well...you're in for a pants-pissing hootenanny, aren't ya.Adding to this Shatnerthon of epic hammy proportions, Grefe enlisted exploitation vets William Kerwin, formerly a H.G. Lewis splatter era leading man, and Harold Sakata, best remembered as the bowler-chucking James Bond Villain,"Odd Job" and a game cast of extras, not excluding Marcy Lafferty, who was later overwhelmed by hairy mygalamorphs in Shat vehicle Kingdom of the Spiders(1977), and oddly enough overwhelmed by Billy himself from 1973 to 1996 in what stands as his longest marriage to date.Tonight's entry suffers from countless gaping flaws in both logic and filmmaking, but Shatner alone is worth the admission price, delivering an unintentionally hilarious, classically hammy study on violent mental illness the likes the cinematic world may never see again, if it's lucky enough.Forward!

William Kerwin went from "long, hard ones"(cases)in Blood Feast, to "long, sharp ones"(Kitana swords) in Impulse.
Via inept black and white flashback,we get a miserable World War II era-slice of the childhood misery that shaped Matt(William Shatner)into the post-credits scuzbucket he grew up to be.Matt's mother,a drunkard in a nightie,serves up booze-soaked gash to the Sarge(William Kerwin),a hooch-hopped soldier who wants the boy's first birds and bees lesson to include his mom as the demonstration fuckdoll.The young Shat-to-be runs him through on a kitana blade for his troubles.Fast forward to present day Matt, a belly dancer-ogling, cigarillo-smoking hot shot, who's just burned his last bridge with Helen,an aging sugar mama who's been footing all of his bills, who he promptly chokes the fuck out of in her own car on the edge of a cliff in broad daylight("Big...tough...broad,aren'tcha!" he says beforehand).With her cadaver floating inside the car he dumps into the nearby drink, Matt wisely chooses to relocate in a hurry.We then meet Ann(Jennifer Bishop), single mother to pubescent clepto Tina(Kim Nicholas), who's soon to accept a ride from Matt wearing a checked blazer left over from the Love:American Style wardrobe rack where the professional chiseler wings a Doberman padding through suburbia with his car and drives off, sucking on his pinky like a pork-based precursor to Doctor Evil("Dogs...lick their wounds...they...clean 'em real good." he explains to the young passenger).When her mother meets him at her clothes boutique,where you can also buy cigarettes apparently(I never got to enjoy smoking during that era.I'm nearly finished completing my Bobby DeNiro Taxi Driver quick-draw sleeve gun that shoots packs of smokes, though.), the lonely young woman is no match for his corny bravado and deafeningly loud wardrobe.

"I ever...show you the...scar...I got from Spock's nerve pinch, baby?"
It's soon painfully evident that Tina is the only one impervious to Matt's over-the-top snake oil salesman bit, with a particularly easy hotel desk clerk(Mrs. Shat herself) and Ann's Maude-esque friend Julia friend quickly falling prey to his charlatanic charms.After Matt pyshcotically spazzes out on a woman who bumps into him with two arms full of balloons at the carnival("Fat... people like you oughta be ground up... and made into dog food!",he barks) ,Tina tearfully bears witness to the interloper running the pantsmeat to her mother in a hotel room,then dispatch his former associate,Karate Pete(!)(Harold Sakata)after what has to be the single slowest car chase through a working car wash ever filmed.When hanging him(!!) doesn't work, Matt simply gives him the Pasolini treatment(!!!), driving over him repeatedly with Tina hiding in the backseat.Matt corners the young eyewitness on her way to school,exclaiming that nobody'd believe a crazy little girl who talks to her father's tombstone in the graveyard.Then he threateningly points at her, pre-dating DeNiro by a few years, before driving off.In an insane headscratcher of a climax,Matt manages to jack ten large off Ann for phony investments, telling her he's flying off to Jamaica for a few days, which roughly translated from psycho means,"I'll be heisting all of your best friend's money and killing her too,so don't bother me."Tina watches Matt stab Julia in the labonza for recognizing the dark circle makeup he'd applied to his eyes, officially signalling his batshit craziness the rest of the way, then she's dramatically chased through a funeral home.While he's trying to drown her mother in the fishtank, she ironically skewers him on a sword, bringing him full cycle.Her mother shushes her ear-piercing shriek(you shanked him,what's he supposed to look like,kid?) as they walk past his lifeless body in fetal position on the floor,cuing an echo-heavy analogy Matt had made about being a puppy left out in the road.Explains everything, doesn't it.

You just don't see a good high-speed car chase moving slowly through a car wash anymore.
We covered Grefe's earlier cult classic,Stanley(1972),last month,so check that out if you haven't already, ferchrissakes.Though nothing that would crack your conventional Top 25 of the seventies(perhaps a Top 50 70's cult classics list,methinks),there's simply too much mint stuff occurring within tonight's frame to not snag yourself a copy of it immediately if not sooner, especially if you're a Shatnerphile of some degree, on top of your well-documented terminal genre addiction.I think we're gonna have to have a Top Lists week here at the Wop sometime in February, since I've always highly dug reading you guys' faves n' rappin' about 'em afterwards.Right now, we've just got too many damned movies to get through.On the scale,Impulse scores a solid double wop,and belongs in every self-respecting woprophile's movie collection, bar none.Seek the effer out, boys n' girls.

"Pinky swear you'll...never dime me out, Tina."