"Spiritual Kung Fu"(1978)d/Lo Wei

The screenshots for tonight's review come from my dvd burned from an original Chinese language print, letterboxed VHS original I snagged out in Manhattan's Chinatown in the early eighties, though I'd never hold such trivia over anybody's head.But I suppose you could say I was a hardcore Chan-man fanatic while you were somehow impressed by Chuck Norris' non-acting and clunky fight choreography on a cable box in your parlor with a bag of Taco-flavored Doritos sitting on your belly and a two liter of 7Up resting against one of your Nike Cortez.And you'd probably be right.Watching Jackie in any of his pre-Yuen Woo Ping movies, while he was under contract to Lo Wei's production studio, is tantamount to seeing Clint Eastwood in Tarantula(1955) or Lee Van Cleef in Beast from 20,000 Fathoms(1953), in that you can sense bigger and better things on his horizon with untapped skill and presence beginning to shine through.This and 1979's Dragon Fist are probably his best efforts under the old man, who was also responsible for Bruce Lee's earliest successes in the early part of the decade.Chan also provides the fight choreography here, which was fairly innovative at the time, but compared to the rollercoaster ride movies he would later produce, it wouldn't be outrageous to hear people call this boring stuff.As it stands, there's a helluva lot of Jackass-style buffoonery, dime store skeletons, poverty-level special ghost effects, and surprisingly good fights on board here, enough to keep you from crashing the fuck out midway through at least, I'd ponder.

This unsuspecting poultry is about to become an ingredient for a Hungry-Chan dinner.
Ye-lang(Jackie Chan) is a mischievous student at the Shaolin temple; when he isn't being naughty, he's being punished for being naughty.The peace-loving monks usually come up with tasks for the young man to do that border on sadistic, whether its balancing a bench with a bowl of water on the end around his neck and two bowls full in his hands while his equally naughty classmates throw him food on the sneak-sneak, or wielding a giant calligraphy brush to stroke tiny, intricate characters on paper.When he's given temple guard duty, a mysterious man in ninjutsu threads breaks in and steals the "seven deadly fists" manual, with every intention of mastering it and using it for evil, as is usually par for the course.Ye-lang is appropriately punished for not performing his job along with the other students who allowed the unspeakable theft, which, it would seem, knocks the yin and yang of the universe off balance, causing a cosmic counter-occurence, where an ancient lost training manual for "five style fist" is unwittingly stumbled upon by...yeah, you know who.The book is protected by five pasty-faced ghosts with magenta wigs, each topped by a toy rubber animal that coincides with the forgotten style kung fu that they've mastered, and white leotards and hula skirts(like some experimental Chinese jazz musical off-off-Broadway or something), who manage to frighten the bejeezus out of just about everyone in the temple with some pretty low-brow holy x-ray paper and plastic skeletons, save for Ye, who's graduated from catching live frogs, snakes, chickens, and eels for a stew and stuffing them into his drawers for safe keeping, loosens his sash and takes a hearty piss(!) on the spirits as they're hiding behind a bookcase in the corner.After being wedgied and grab-assed like a Riker's Island blow up doll by the gaudy-looking ghosts, he bullies them into teaching him their potent styles of kung fu, by apparently tearing open his frog buttons to reveal the manual, the home of the ghosts themselves, tied to his chest.I'm warning you, I'll sweat all over it, guys...you know I will...Come to think of it, that'll probably come in handy later in the film, because...

Better to be pissed off than pissed on:Movement number one, novice Ye-lang(Jackie Chan) pisses on Five Style Fist ghost sifus.
The stolen seven deadly fist manual turns up in the mitts of the diabolical Luk(James Tien), who's perfected the style with full intention of restoring dignity to his family's name by becoming the master of the martial world.Naturally, Luk cannot achieve this without handing out some serious martial beatdowns to the competition, so he does so, every chance he gets.Meanwhile, back at the temple, Ye offers himself as an escort for the hot-to-trot daughter(Mo Man Sau) of a visiting Wu Tang master.He questions whether she's really a girl(!!), then gets his monkey ass handed to him when he tries getting fresh with her.Embarrassed by the prospect of getting housed by a chick, he improves his technique further with the aid of the martial spectres, enough to defeat the fiesty girl and administer a hearty spanking to her wushu-proficient ass.Her father has the nerve to up and mysteriously die, when Ye suggests that he leave the temple to do some detective work on the unsolved murder.The head monk tells Ye that he cannot leave until he's proven his mettle with two tonfa batons against the eighteen lohan priests, all wielding bo staves(one of the better tonfa v. staff displays ever committed to celluloid, I'm here to tell you).Fifteen breath-taking minutes or so later, Ye is on the case.Luk challenges the orphaned girl to a pugilistic square off when Ye jumps in to help out, getting Pwnd instead.The monks recognize Luk's vicious style as the one from the stolen manual, and arrange more fisticuffs between the two, which Ye emerges victorious from, drawing Luk's father(!!!) out from behind his monk disguise and into the fray.With the help of the five ghosts released from the manual tied to his chest, mid-scrap, Ye is able to pulverize the old bastard into the afterlife with leopard fists as his unearthly sifus hold him in place.Afterwards, Ye mistakenly steps on the manual, causing the ghosts to attack him as he jumps into a mid-air freeze frame.We hear the "Goodbye....goodbye" lifted directly from the ending of Close Encounters of the Third Kind(1978).

Snake-style fist says, "Ssssssss.....sssssssss....ssssssss."
Stickler for detail I no doubt am, I added the original Cantonese trailers found at the beginning and end of several of my VHS as extras on my custom disc.There are previews for Fearless Hyena, Half a Loaf of Kung Fu, and an outrageous trailer for To Kill With Intrigue that incorporates a terrible dated pop soundtrack in a miserable pony-tailed period piece where Chan gets his face burned and his ass repeatedly kicked by a sadistic kung fu honey before barely outlasting his final opponent in the final reel.The misleadingly hip trailer is pretty amusing.Yeah, I'm a goober like that.I dug the hell outta this one growing up though Chan's propensity to consistently outdo himself once he'd achieved international superstar status sort of leaves it undeservedly buried in the back of the minor classics closet.Wei would follow this up with three more Chan vehicles(Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin, Magnificent Bodyguards, and the silly, incoherent Half a Loaf of Kung Fu) all in the same year, and one in the next(Dragon Fist).James Tien, who co-starred in Bruce Lee fare early on, has never looked better than when he's been choreographed by the Chan-man here.On the scale, it merits two wops, and comes recommended for Jackie Chan completists and lovers of kung fu movies everywhere.Hunt it down!

Don't you love when guys call out what they're hitting you repeatedly with?In this case it'd be...dragon fist!Dragonfistdragonfistdragonfist!

"Debbie Rochon Confidential:My Years in Tromaville"(2006)d/Troma Team Video

Face it, there are a lot worse ways to pitch a dvd to a guy than plastering the cover with delectable Tromette/Scream Queen/self-proclaimed Queen of independent Cinema, Debbie Rochon, all raccoon-eyed with a length of duct tape slapped across her pretty yap.Sure, it appeals to baser urges usually trapped in the criminal corner of the subconscious, but when has that(or anything, for that matter) ever stopped Troma pioneer and lead pitchman Lloyd Kaufman from using it(and/or any means possible) to milk a few measly bucks out of your wallet?Hey, you could part with the same sawbuck while buying posh wrapping paper n' ribbons for yer Grandpa's special holiday gift this season, when you know damned well the senile old coot probably won't make it through the winter and would much rather a good ol' Troma Team Video, with enough blood, boobs, and toilet humor to keep his Depends Cruisers extra snug around the berries during his last, blustery cold, lonely nights on earth at the convalescent prison you unflinchingly locked him in a few years back, so you could get your life back on track without worrying about diapers, cat food, or nipple-high polyester slacks for awhile.Or something like that, you know.Tonight's review is a veritable eyeball banquet for fanboys(and girls, I'm sure) of Ms. Rochon, whose keen sense of humor and ample physical charms have been on display in Troma films since Tromeo defied the stars.Be sure to look for a special cameo appearance from Lloyd Kaufman.And Lloyd Kaufman.

When she's seducing the Jiffy Pop, it just makes me wanna Redenbacher.
We open with Debbie in a platinum wig, stepping into a shower(with her heels on, for some odd reason), only to be disobliged, Psycho(1960)-style by a cameraman, who she batters repetetively with an impressive flow of profanity.After a brief title sequence, we find our foul-mouthed Tromette toplessly tonguing some Jiffy Pop popcorn, before rubbing the tin foil container suggestively upon her pubic mound and moaning,"Ohhhhh, popcorn!".If that doesn't get the kernels a-poppin', what will? I ask you.She's interrupted by an inquisitive Scream-esque phone call that calls her a "tough nut to crack" due to her aversion to new ultra-hip, ironic slasher movies with four ninety-nine masks.She replies:"Fuckin' A, pal!"She urges the voice to try to scare her.It tells her she's broke.Some repo men arrive to jack her shit.She curses them six ways from Sunday.They tell her she can keep her Troma videos.Whatta gal.We see some quicky video promos with Kaufman's superlative teleprompter reading skills, several scantily sclad Tromettes(Debbie included), and his iconic Toxie for cult hits like Tromeo and Juliet and Class of Nuke 'Em High 3:The Good, The Bad, and the Subhumanoid.Okay, 'cult hits' might be stretching it a little.But everybody's having fun hardselling it for the cameras, so, who am I to judge?The skits continue.There's a bikini-clad board of Troma directors, Lloyd picks his nose on-camera and fumbles through multiple takes in zombie makeup.Debbie interviews Oliver Stone via clips from "Sugar Cookies".More lovingly restored, digitally remastered director's cut dvds are humorously introed by Lloyd and Debbie.Several.

I've seen this particular pair o'bobblers somewhere before.Hmmmmm...
After inspecting a wall of much autographed Debbie-bilia with a pair of hefty fanboys, we come to a video tribute to Rochon that finds her rubbing elbows at a convention with a couple of guys who might want to haunt the circuit less often until they've seen some extensive cosmetic dental procedures.Seriously, bro.The Godzilla vinyl collection'll be there waiting for you when you get out of oral surgery.Debbie's webmaster gets some screen time.Then it's time for footage from her film appearances, like 2007's Poultrygeist where she gets hit in the head with a soft drink while Az-based ginger scream queen Elske McCain repeatedly screams "Fuck you!" while jumping up and down with her tits out.Then, in 1999's Terror Firmer, we find Debbie in a familiar blonde wig getting ploughed in a public toilet from behind as a blind Lloyd Kaufman serves up some urine-based coitus interruptus while offering African bowel-evacuation tips.Nice.Next is 1995's Tromeo and Juliet, where Debbie with faux tats n' piercings goes Chaz Bono on her blonde co-star.Nipples rub together and everything.If you think that was gay, next we find her in a lesbian comedy short by Jamie Greco, where, as Virginia Scum, she's hanky-headed in flannel, surrounded by framed posters of Rosie O'Donnell, and given a vagina-themed bush cake before discovering her goth daughter blows dildos in the stairwell("I'm not a Scum, I'm a slut!").They tie her latest eye patch-sporting piece of meat to a kitchen chair and stuff tampons in his mouth before stabbing each other to death, exclaiming, "We're women!We're women!".Roll credits.

Stay classy, Lloyd.
Don't let that single wop scare you away, friends, as Troma and the much coveted one wop score have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship together over the years.For the throngs of Troma fans out there, there's cheap thrills a' plenty; everything you've come to expect from Lloyd and Co. and more here.Though my generation's scream queens had names like Steele, Pitt, Curtis, and Carlson, I've gotta admit, some of this current wave of models are pretty tasty in their own right, Rochon included.If I were a Ouija Board, and you asked me if I thought she would enjoy even greater success in genre films and media, I'd spell out q-u-i-t-e, instead of sliding over "Yes", just because that's the kinda guy I am.But yes.

Granny's home remedy looks an awful lot like the hair o'the dog that bit me.

"The Boy in the Plastic Bubble"(1976)d/Randal Kleiser

Long before Travolta became the 'creepy, tubby middle-aged guy in the see-thru closet'(Is he out yet?), he portrayed the fabled 'boy in the plastic bubble' in a glorious made-for-television production full of unintentional laughs, bobbler-heavy mid-seventies teen foxes, and an extra-goofy Kotter-era Travolta walking around in public in an orange velour space suit with a tube sticking out of the top of his head, that you could probably pick up a shitty copy of on dvd for less than the price of a can of rash-inducing generic Mexican Pringles(Chingales, I think they're called...) at the local Dollar Store.For serious.I can't recall exactly which discount department store bargain bin I snared tonight's entry out of, for sure, but it was well worth the buck, crappy, washed out direct-from-vhs transfer and all.Helping Barbarino unsuccessfully attempt to tug at my heartstrings here are Robert "Brady Bunch" Reed(with and without paedo-stache and cauco-afro), Glynnis "Ode to Billy Jo" O'Connor, PJ "Halloween" Soles, John "The Wanderers" Friedrich, and even astronaut Buzz Aldrin in a cameo.Director Randal Kleiser has been churning out some headscratching shit for decades, helming tonight's feature before piloting the single most annoying musical of all-time(aren't they all?)just two years later.This is yet another one of those doomed romance tearjerkers tv studios loved throwing at you back in the day, and maybe I'm just a heartless sonofabitch, but it really doesn't work as such.Who am I kidding, "maybe"...

De-germify those righteous bikini-busters and meet me in my bubble, baby...
We're introduced to the Lubitsches, a luckless couple named Johnny and Mickey(Robert Reed,Diana Hyland), whose attempts to conceive a child to this point have ended with immune deficient newborns that stood less chance outside an incubator than a banana snack cake with methaqualone icing in Elvis Presley's lazy susan.They're visited in the seventies-esque-looking fifties by Dr. Gunther(Ralph Bellamy) who fans the flames of hope and informs them they've gotten pregnant again.Maybe this time it'll be diff...yeah, it's not any different from the failed past pregnancies, except that their baby boy survives past birth this time, and blossoms into a teenaged Vinnie Barbarino(John Travolta as Tod) thanks to a hermetically sealed germ-free hamster cage that he's kept in at the house.Tod's parents decide to let him attend high school via live closed circuit television camera feed, but he mostly uses the equipment to further spy on his female next-door neighbor, Gina Biggs(Glynnis O'Connor), who's blossomed, herself, into a foxy cigarette-smoking, make-out-on-the-couch teenager with dynamite jugs.At first, Gina's only interested in teasing her neighbor, strolling in wearing a bikini while he pops and locks to groovy instrumentals in his bubble like a skinny white Rerun from "What's Happening", and holding his rubber glove-hand through his portable incu-bubble on the beach just to win a money bet with her friends, leaving the sterilized sweathog all weepy-like and dramatic.In a low karmic state due to her prior bubble boy-ballbusting, Gina volunteers herself(for cash)to drop off Tod's books everyday after school and in return, Tod tutors her in all the subjects she's failing for the money his father's been paying her.Before too long, Tod's got her galloping around his port-a-bubble in the field on her pony(she's got a fucking pony...did an eight year old girl write this?)and equestrian show-jumping over him to the dismay of his nurse, who just happens to be "Momma" from "Throw Momma From the Train"(1987).

The Friday night Movie of the Week equivalent of Fonzie jumping the shark.
Somewhere along the way, he crosses paths with Roy(John Friedrich), a teen who is also bubble-bound, and discusses masturbation frequency with him.Tod is also visited by astronaut Buzz Aldrin(as himself), who stumbles over dialogue like a couple of sterno bums making a late night racket outside Paulie's window in Rocky III, giving Tod the notion that he should possibly venture out into the world in an orange velour space suit.In public.Where people could see him...in the space suit.You see where I'm going with this.Naturally, all the other twenty-somethings playing teenagers at school gawk and stare at him, and while he's recharging his battery pack, they take him out to the football field where they can burn a quick jibber(cut from some television edits) and ask him some stupid questions.Tod turns down the reefer, as it'd be pretty hard to pull a hit in his fucking space suit, and claims to be from a distant planet in the farthest reaches of space, even challenging Gina's usual love interest, Tom, to a contest of push ups, before his suit goes on the fritz(must have forgotten he was a bubble boy momentarily)and is rushed back to his aquarium, pron-fucking-to.Before too long, the fruits of Tod's tutelage pay off, with Gina's improved report card meriting her a college scholarship away from home.Tod pow-wows with Dr. Gunther, who hasn't aged a minute's worth since the boy was born(how's that done, Hollywood!), about his immunities and how they've strengthened over the years, but speculation concerning bubble-departure should be just that, as he'd surely explode Scanners-style or something if he tried to sneak out.Willing to risk it all for love, Tod strolls out of his bubble in the middle of the night, rousing Gina from her sleep next door, so they can ride off on her pony together as the sun rises.Seriously.If I don't have diabetes after a sugar-coated dump ending like that, I probably never will.

Sweathogs in orange velour space suits turn P.J. Soles on.
Cheers to Cool Ass Cinema, for digging up the vintage TV Guide advertisement for tonight's review.Visit them frequently and let 'em know that Wop sent ya.Kleiser teamed up with Travolta again two years later for that fucking musical-that-shall-not-be-named(no, not the Travolta-in-Divine-fatsuit for Hairspray musical remake, the other atrocity with Olivia Newton John), also directing Brooke Shields in her island cherry-popapalooza, The Blue Lagoon(1980), Big Top Pee Wee(1988), and even two episodes of Family in '76.Travolta enjoyed a months-long liason with Diana Nyland, who was eighteen years older than him(that's right, he passed on the sexy little O'Connor gal for a cougar living on borrowed time) and going through divorce preceedings, before she succumbed while he was filming Saturday Night Fever(1978)."What Would They Say", the theme song as penned and cackled by unlengthy songster Paul"Phantom of the Paradise" Williams, is as unsexy as a Whoopi Goldberg sex tape, to say the least.Reed, a thespian long forced into small screen astroturf hijinks on The Brady Bunch, enjoyed a busy acting career as a secretive homosexual until, hiv positive, he died of colon cancer and lymphoma at age 59.O'Connor has had a long television career, even acting opposite another 70's teen idol, Robby Benson, in a few films.On the scale, Bubble is three wops deep, and a must-see for any self-respecting woprophile out there.Worse things you could spend a buck on, believe me...

Oh yeah?Well, up yer orange velour space suit with a rubbah hose!

"Foxy Brown"(1974)d/Jack Hill

Pillow-chested stick o' chocolate dynamite Pam Grier hit the blaxploitation/Women in Prison scene like a pimpslapped cheek back in 1971 with a role in director Jack Hill's The Big Doll House and established herself thereafter as a familiar and formidable box office draw whose performances dripped with raw sensuality and gritty violence in some of the genre's finest offerings of the decade.Tonight, we'll be viddying what's got to be her crowning grindhouse work, the second of two blaxploitation movies she collaborated on with Hill(Coffy came a year earlier); a
delirious mash up of racial stereotypes, dated boogie-wear, domepiece squib hits, sloppily executed fights, afro wigs, and a pair of girthy mams that'd give Truck Turner heart palpitations, can you dig it?Also on board as Foxy's perpetual fuck up brother is none other than Antonio "Huggy Bear" Fargas, who's never been shiftier, in my opinion.Add to the mix blaxploitation vet Juanita Brown, long-time Hill-faves Kathryn Loder and Sid Haig, and a funkified r n' b soundtrack from Willie Hutch, and you've got yourself 94 minutes of B movie gold guaranteed to satisfy the most jaded genre nut.If only every dame could rock a polyester straitjacket-tittin' action pants suit with complimentary bra gat and be just as quick to judo chop jive turkeys as she was to NY Hustle in silhouette, the world'd be a much better place for cats to get down in, believe me, baby.Let's make it...

Foxy(Pam Grier)and Michael(Terry Carter) enjoy some quality ethno-motorboatin'.Blblblblblblblb, y'all.
Link(Antonio Fargas) likes beddin' hos, slangin' dope, and comin' up short for twenty large to loan sharks.When he's cornered like a 'hood rat at a hot dog stand by two mob-tied bonebreakers, he naturally uses the miraculous appearance of two esuriant honkey pig cops to rotary dial his bad-ass sister, Foxy Brown(Pam Grier), for some math-fast assistance with his burgeoning problems.Though Foxy doesn't dig her bro's unrighteous lifestyle, she doesn't think twice about rolling out of bed, stuffing a pearl-handled gat into her Brobdingnagian bra cup and saving his miserable hide in the nick of time.She lets homeboy crash at her pad until the coast is clear, so long as he doesn't interfere with the return of her fed boyfriend, Michael(Terry Carter), whose undercover work to pinch the mob(coincidentally the same cats Link owes bread to) failed epically enough for him to require a faked death, new identity, and plastic surgified grillpiece.Faster than Usain Bolt in a quicksilver jumpsuit, Link recognizes Foxy's 'new' man and feeds his criminal creditors the valuable skinny to eliminate his debt and effectively number Michael's days at the same time.When Michael eats hot lead-punctured death just outside his girlfriend's pad, Foxy stumbles across the pencil-modified photo clipping of her late lover, as doodled by that no good motherfucker, Link, and puts two and two together.Awww shit.She bursts into his crib as he's horizontal boogieing with his finest white bitch and fucks the place up in a whirlwind of womanhood, squeezing the names of involved mobsters out of his sorry ass before breaking the fuck out like poison sumac.Ain't nothing like some well-calculated revenge on the horizon, y'all.

Even Foxy's tongue is baaaad.
Oblivious to any moral high ground that may have existed prior to said vengeance, Foxy decides that the ultimate infiltrative guise she could don is: hooker.Eh, at least it makes for some near-nude fashion combos with extra emphasis on busty to squeeze into, as she shows up on the doorstep of the crime syndicate's modeling agency front, as overseen by the tyrannical Miss Katherine(Kathryn Loder) and her partner-in-crime, Steve(Peter Brown), who's instantly mesmerized by Pammy's massive mammies.The ever-jealous Katherine sends her out with another abused drug addict ho(Juanita Brown) to hotel room-hustle with a judge who's about to bang the gavel on one of their associates.The hos doublecross the jurisconsult and leave him in the hallway with his pants around his ankles as a small crowd of bewildered boarders approaches.Foxy vainly tries to lie low, but her new partner-in-revenge's wanderlust puts both chicks in a lesbo bar surrounded by aroused dykes who wanna fuck n' fight 'til the broad daylight.The syndicate reaches out to Link for his sister's whereabouts, disposing of him with bullets once the cat's outta the bag.Katherine ties up the meddling negress, fixes her up with a shot of junk, and leaves her to the devices of a pair of rapist thugs, but with the help of one helluva talented tongue, she manages to free herself, claw up some face with a bent-up wire hanger, and set the boys and their love shack on fire, before splitting.After some local would-be Panthers help her to perform a makeshift penectomy with a Bowie knife on a screaming Steve, and she snakes the controls of an amorous pilot(Sid Haig)'s biplane, using it to dice more of Katherine's men into minced mafiosi, she decends on the female crime lord with a jar full o' pickled junk, and just when it looks bad-meaning-bad for our hardcore heroine, she pulls a pistol from her afro and all Hell breaks loose.See for yourselves...

There's one mannekin that'll never see Macy's front window again...
Though you might think Grier's career got a nick o' time jumpstart due to Tarantino's 1997 fanboy tribute Jackie Brown(Great title.Yeah.), the fact is, despite the eventual decline of blaxploitation pictures, Pam never went anywhere, finding a steady flow of television roles on shows like The Love Boat, Night Court, and even MadTV, as well as movies like Ghosts of Mars, Escape From LA, Mars Attacks!, and Fort Apache the Bronx.She's an icon of the decade and a positive role model for women everywhere.You go, girl.Antonio Fargas has remained busy in the industry the whole time, himself, acting in television shows like Kojak and MacGyver(!) and even genre films like The Borrower(1991) and direct-to-video Howling VI:The Freaks(1991), while his son Justin lines up in the Oakland Raiders backfield.Go 'head, son.The legendary Hill has helmed cult classics like The Terror(1963) and Spider Baby(1968), as well as writing the screenplays behind The Bees(1978) and 1980's Death Ship.He's awfully nice on Facebook, too.On the scale, Foxy scores three big ones, packed with exploitative thrills n' chills, a definite treat for fans of such fare.Hell, it might even make a new fan out of you if you give it half the chance.Check it out.

One chick's afro is another's gun holster, diiig?

"The Trip"(1967)d/Roger Corman

Inverse to the producers' warning that precedes tonight's review, a Hollywood flirtation with head-freakin' hallucinogenics as penned by no less than Jack Nicholson, is a short disclaimer from this guy over here:Ah, glorious lysergic acid diethylamide.Where does a guy like me begin to write about our many mind-blowing escapades together over the years.Without your entheogenic pleasures, I might not have ever mooned state troopers from a van window, shouting:"Behold! The fancy ass of the DEVIL!", I might not have been bitten by a pissed off African baboon spider that I thought I was communicating with, I might not have stopped my vehicle in courthouse traffic, worried that the front of the car, engine and all, had just dissolved into liquid metal and poured onto the asphalt.I might never have played naked hide n' seek with my girlfriend all over my apartment, culminating in a vista-revealing bathtub fuck that unlocked the secrets of the universe to me.Oh, you get the idea, already.Potent acid is tits, dudeskis.Tonight's feature focuses on some hip cats of the day and just such a journey to the center of the mind, as portrayed by genre faces Peter Fonda, Susan Strasberg, Bruce Dern, and Dennis Hopper, among others, and as directed by the original Motor City Madman and B-Movie Bishop, Roger Corman, in between his uncredited work in the director's chair on A Time for Killing(1967) and 1968's The Wild Racers.Semi-corny in its posi-delivery of the microgram-laden mirth; it's always a good time to viddy when you're in an altered state yourself.Diiiig...

"Yeah, I was Babalugats in 'Cool Hand Luke', maaann, I'll bogart this spleefie if I want to..."
Paul Groves(Peter Fonda) is a mild-mannered director of television commercials in the midst of a heavy divorce from his unfaithful wife, Sally(Susan Strasberg), a chick who's not opposed to rocking a salmon polyester pantsuit out in public just for kicks.Is it any wonder he's looking for some introspective on his own successes and failures in one o' them there acid trips all them youngins seem to be poppin' off on, in between their flower power and their Lothar and the Hand People records.He enlists his buddy, John(Bruce Dern), as a chaperone for his twelve hour mental vacation, as provided by Max(Dennis Hopper), a babbling, reef-tokin' white Navajo wanna-be in leather dungarees, who owns the local psychedelically painted drug spot frequented by the upper eschelon of turn-onners, tune-inners, and obligatory drop outs.A hot young blonde tells him that she thinks "acid-takers are groovy."Paul retreats upstairs with John and drops with some apple juice, while Max passes around a hog's leg downstairs and mumbles incoherently.John tells his soon-to-be-soaring associate that he probably won't wanna eff with all the recording equipment he's laid out for himself once he's on his trip.Before you can say, "Down on Phillip's Escalator", Paul's starting to see some things over there.John, guarding against a possible freakout, tells him, "I'm gonna be here, man, trust me.", as Paul starts getting into some beautiful stuff, like holding the sun in his hands, and swimming bare-assed and free.He imagines bedding the hot blonde from earlier and his soon-to-be ex-wife at the same time in a groovy ménage à trois until he's being chased on the beach by Templar-esque knights on horseback.Then he's on a merry-go-round with midgets being forced to watch his spouse share adulterous kisses with another man on a big screen, while Max appears and passes hippie judgement upon him for working for a living.John! John, where's that thorazine, maaaaaan!I wanna get off!

Would you let this man chaperone your first acid trip? Me neither.
John pulls the incoherent naked wreck out of the pool and towels him off, then does exactly what he promised he wouldn't do, in leaving Paul alone while he's gone to score some more juice.Paul imagines John is slumped dead in a chair with a paintified headwound, and slips out into the street in the middle of the night, peaking his nuts off.He lets himself into a strange household, rousing the resident little girl from her sleep, watching television with her and getting her a drink until her father wakes up and scares him off.He grooves on the washing machines at a laundromat and suggests to a spinster-in-curlers that they communicate with each other using only their minds, before running off when she calls the police as he tries to free the girl he imagines he sees spinning in a dryer full of the woman's clothes.He snags a table at a psychedelic club on Sunset Strip, but splits prematurely when the cops make the scene, somehow making his way back to Max's place to come down in the process.After he tells the drug dealer he may have led the cops to his doorstep, he's told to head back to the strip where John, who isn't dead afterall, can collect him again.This time, he bumps into the aforementioned hot blonde who speeds off with him in her convertible sports car to her place, where they have all kinds of trippy sex, while he hallucinates about the hooded knights, only they're Sally and the blonde in disguise.The next morning, she asks him whether his trip was a good one or not, and he remarks that though he found love, he may need another day to reflect upon the turn of events, as the screen freeze-frames on his face, then cracks like glass, Fulci-style.Roll credits...

Sex whilst trippin' face? L.S.D.elicious!
As you might have guessed, the flagrant use of boring jazz in the soundtrack was a big red light for me.I'm thinking Corman should have scored some genuine psych rock instead, a la Pink Floyd or the Amboy Dukes, for authenticity's sake, I dunno.You can see Henry Fonda's rebellious son, who's experienced a sort of cinematic renaissance of late, in a treasure trove of genre cult classics;The Wild Angels(1966), Spirits of the Dead(1967), Easy Rider(1969), Spasms(1983), and even the crappy remake of Escape From New York, 1996's Escape From LA.Dern, a premier psycho in television and movies dating back to 1960, was at his genre best in the late sixties/early seventies, scoring credits in everything from Bloody Mama(1970) and The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant(1971) to Black Sunday(1976) and Hitchcock's Family Plot(1976).The curler-coiffed Barboura Morris dates back to early Corman, appearing in The Wasp Woman(1959) and The Haunted Palace(1960).Judy Lang, who plays Fonda's blonde sex-interest, can also be spotted in The Psycho Lovers and Count Yorga, Vampire.Curiously, LSD-25 was last completely legal in the United States in 1966, but you don't have to be a hardcore blotterhead to enjoy the cultish charm of Trip, which earns two double-dipped wops on the ratings scale.Add it to your collection.

Woooooooooow, maaaaahnnnn...

"Laure"(1975)d/Ovidio G. Assonitis, Emmanuelle Arsan

When it comes to favorite Euro sex kittens of the seventies, French-born Annie (Brilland)Belle forever tops my list.Drinking in her faultless face, the aerodynamic curves of her body down to the familiar chestnut-hued pubic shrubbery of her mound, even momentarily, causes my Longinal spear to jut northwards like a natural compass pointing towards hot tantric sexcapades.After working with the late Jean Rollin in Bacchanales Sexuelles(1974) and Lips of Blood(1975) to commence her acting career, the platinum cropped Belle found herself to be one of the most sought after actresses in the exploitation genre once she relocated to Italy, scoring three roles in 1976 alone, with tonight's review, a late night softcore staple on cable during the eighties, released internationally as 'Forever Emmanuelle' to cash in on the carnal craze pioneered by French-Asian author Marayat Rollet-Andriane, being one of them.Rollet-Andriane wrote and appeared in tonight's feature under her nom de plume of Emmanuelle Arsan, and though she's also credited as director on the picture, her husband, Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane, a French diplomat who producer Assonitis claimed to be the true author of all books under the legendarily infamous pen name, handled the task himself, later asking to have his name removed from the credits when the producers toned down his script.Also aboard for this sexploitative little ditty are Al Cliver, Belle's beau for a number of years, whose storied work under Fulci and D'Amato remains among genre fans' fondest movie memories, and the gruff-voiced Orso Maria Guerrini, perhaps best known for his work in Castellari's Keoma(1976).

Annie, Annie, Annie per sempre!Sono pazzo per te, gattina.
Laure(Annie Belle) is a free-spirited minister's daughter, sans panties, in the Phillipines.Her old man, also a christian missionary and the director of L.I.P.S.(Lance Institute of Pacific Studies, seriously), gives an anthropological lecture about the hermetic Mara tribe that exist on a remote archipelago, and how they're spiritually reborn, Phoenix-style, through some fabled secret ritual he'd like to get the skinny on, while Laure handles the A/V aspect of the presentation, and some sapphic young minx performs cunnilingus on her under the table.At her beseeching, the resident philanthropist, a weatherbeaten old hippie, sanctions an expedition to shed more light on the mysterious Mara, because the idea "really turns him on".Not on my personal list, but hey, to each his own.Heading the expedition will be the leading authority on the lost tribe, Professor Morgan(Orso Maria Guerrini) and his Thai-babe assistant Myrte(Emmanuelle Arsan), who will also be providing emergency quim, since his wife finds herself pregnant and thus, unable to tag along.Representing L.I.P.S.(and how!)on the historic journey are Laure, and her latest flame, a filmmaker named Nicola(Al Cliver), that she even exchanges "matrimonial vows"(open to interpretation in this case, as the silver-cropped nymph is free to swap juices with whomever she pleases along the way, as we're reminded by gems of pseudo-intellectual hot air like, "Jealousy is an obscenity.") with, her father overseeing, before the group pulls a bedroom mazurka(Laure on Morgan, Nicola on Myrte in the shower) and finally departs, some fifty minutes into the movie.

"Unlike Matool, my tool is a cool place to hit", remarks Nicola(Al Cliver).
In between more hokey sexual philosophising comprised of dialogue nobody would ever say(“I still see love everywhere, but it’s you who shows it to me because you love everything.”) Laure dry-frigs a Filipino ride-thumber in the backseat of their car, and gives up the goodies to an impoverished Filipino bumpkin in his house while other peons drag the modest residence and set it afloat on a raft, while Nicola seems very content to peep-tom all the action on his telephoto lens-mounted 16mm camera, when he isn't skinny-dipping with her in a grotto swimming pool complete with picturesque waterfall.If the film has a "Holy fuuuuuck!" moment, it's this:Nicola and Laure are picked up in a helicopter as piloted by a drag queen named Dolly(Pierre Haudebourg) who hovers over the city in auto-pilot as a mid-air orgy between he/she, Laure, and his girlfriend(!) ensues in front of Nicola's camera lens, the footage from the adventure later serving as an aphrodisiac for the couple as it's being edited on a moviola.My, oh my.After what seems like a brief, long-winded eternity, the copulatative quartet finally finds itself in the picturesque jungle where Laure gets ample opportunity to skinny-dip, fuck by the campfire, and sunbathe in the buff in between hacking through dense underbrush until they finally stumble upon the mountain-dwelling, Moe Howard-haircut sporting Mara tribe who abruptly paint the young nympho silver and tag team her on the ground.That's the kind of rebirth I can get behind, folks.

Yeah, baby, just like that, but only in alpine white chocolate with a wicked Peyronie's hook to the right...
Tragically, Belle hasn't appeared in front of a camera since 1989.She followed up her star turn here with Annie(1976), Velluto nero(1976), and Un giorno alla fine di ottobre(1977), before later appearing in Deodato's La casa sperduto nel parco(1980), Rosso sangue(1981) and L'alcova(1985) for Joe D'Amato.Always a favorite of mine, for sure.Cliver's filmography includes Deodato's Ondata di piacere(1975), Velluto nero(1976), Mondo cannibale/White Cannibal Queen(1980) for Franco, L'alcova(1985) for D'Amato, and then there's his Fulci work:Zombi 2(1980), Il gatto nero(1981), L'aldila(1981), I guerrieri dell'anno 2072(1984), Murder Rock(1984), Touch of Death(1988), Il fantasma di Sodoma(1988), The House of Clocks(1989), and Demonia(1990).Safe to say he was one of Lucio's favorites, too, eh?If you buy what Linda Lovelace's autobiography, 'Ordeal', tells you, she was the original actress hired to play Laure, but refused to partake in the hardcore goodness found in the script rewrites, so she was given a lesser role instead, and dropped out of the production altogether soon after that.Assonitis claims it was her drug problem that sealed her fate, and that you can still catch a glimpse of her in the movie if you're sharp of eyeball.Face it, if this movie consisted of ninety-three minutes or so of Annie Belle sitting in a chair in various states of undress and cracking her knuckles, I'd still be enthralled enough to not only watch all the way through, but to think very favorably of both the performance and also the production itself.Luckily, tonight's movie, though somewhat flawed and slow to pay off, is a pretty artistic, well-photographed stab at sexuality which helps it achieve some of the top rankings of its genre class.On the scale, three sexy, sexy wops.Hunt down the definitive Severin dvd release, sharpish.

I'd totally throw on a Beatle wig and some Indio-in-a-can for some of this action.

"Leatherface:Texas Chainsaw Massacre III"(1990)d/Jeff Burr

By 1990, American moviegoing horror fans had fully passed over from the Golden Age of Splatter into an era which saw the studios franchising of popular genre icons such as Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, and Jason Voorhees, in an unscrupulous duckat-snatch that had thus far defecated eight Friday the 13th's(Jason Takes Manhattan, the worst of the lot, was released a year earlier), five Nightmare on Elm Street's(I gracefully bowed out on the second one, thanks), and five Halloween's(any which way you slice 'em up, the fourth and fifth movies are crap-garbage) into the waiting faces of willing wanks.It seemed that the only horror classic that hadn't had the last millilitre of piss taken out of it McDonald's-style, was Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre, boasting of only one (relatively well-done)sequel up to that date.New Line Cinema was about to change all that, hiring director Jeff Burr, an Ohio native who never met a sequel project he didn't like, to figure out a way to resurrect everyone's favorite buzzsaw-wielding, hog-squealing retard in human skin masks(if you've been keeping score all along, Bubba(now 'Junior') technically ate explosive shrapnel-death while skewered on a Poulan in the second movie).With the help of the effects wizardry of KNB and a cast that included a post-'Death Spa' Ken Foree and a pre-'Reflecting Skin' Viggo Mortensen, Burr does more than that.He somehow manages to find the formerly-dead, lumbering, homicidal oaf with a penchant for human taxidermy and ruining front doors an entirely new family of cannibalistic psychopaths(Plentiful as armadillos down in Texas, reader Misti tells me...)!Raped repeatedly of worthy splat-tastic content by the MPAA, Leatherpiece would make less than six mil at the box office, proving that, perhaps, the majority of the American horror community are sticklers for detail, afterall.What's that?Rob Zombie's Halloween(2007) grossed fifty-eight??!!Okay, take any credit I may have just given you, and fucking bung it right down the lavvy...

Don't blame Ken Foree, he's just paying the bills.
At the outset, we're introduced to a pair of brabbling California yuppies(you're supposed to like these two, apparently) named Michelle and Ryan(Kate Hodge, William Butler)as they drive across what's supposed to be Texas(it's not, it's California), listening to a radio jock relaying news about an alleged recently discovered pit o' dead bodies that's causing traffic to move like molasses in January.Cut to nighttime, where we find our doomed dyad driving past said corpse chasm's security checkpoint.The next day, they make road-DiGiorno out of a hapless armadillo that Ryan mercy-snuffs when Michelle doesn't have the cazzies to do it herself.It's at a bedraggled roadside gas station that Michelle finds herself being peep-tommed by Alfredo(Tom Everett), the Last Chance's greasy petrol-pumpin' pervert, who's cockblocked by a ride-thumbin' cowpoke who'd given them directions earlier, named...drumroll... Tex(Viggo Mortensen).How apt.Michelle and Ryan speed away just as Alfredo seemingly gives Tex a hot lead injection.The grease monkey named after one of my favorite sauces decides to give chase that night(nothin' like a good head start), teaching them a valuable lesson by slapping a dead coyote on their windshield after somehow catching up to them.At this point their flat-changing experience is interrupted by ol' Leatherface(R.A. Mihailoff) himself, and they drive off before the big galoot can do more than limply rub his saw against their vehicle.They're suddenly joined by a black survivalist with no back story named Benny(Ken Foree) when a sanguinary Tex jumps out and causes an accident, which in turn causes Ryan and his unlikely new ethno-pal to go back and look for Tex, instead meeting a hook-mitted tow truck driver named Tinker(Joe Unger) who offers to set down some road flares.Benny notices a suspicious chainsaw in the back of Tink's truck, and grabs an automatic rifle from his own overturned jeep.Shit gon' be jumpin' off now, baby.Benny joins forces with a girl named Sara, who's entire family ended up as makeshift Ben Cooper Halloween masks for the homicidal lummox, who later pins her to a tree and dissects the bitch with his trusty Homelite for her troubles.

"Leath'-baby(R.A. Mihailoff), it's Beatrice...Yeah, from Custom Chainsaw Fabrications R Us?That antic eighty lb piece with engraved blade is ready for you to pick up, sugar..."
Ryan gets himself caught in a bear trap, his own misfortunes clearing an escape plan for Michelle, who stumbles upon a house in her panic, that...yeah, it's the wrong house to stumble upon in a panic.She gets shanked by a creepy little blonde girl(Jennifer Banko) in a room that's brimming with animal remains(always a bad sign in Texas), then crucified to a kitchen chair by Tex(yeah, he's one of 'em!) and introduced to Grandpa, who's dead, but still enjoys a regular sip o' the red stuff.Mama(Miriam Byrd-Nethery) and her electronic voice box make the scene, and so does Tinker, with mortally injured Ryan in tow.Tinker and Tex suspend the dying yuppie upside down from a doorway by meathooks, and when Leatherpiece shows up, Tex presents him with a nifty custom chainsaw with "The Saw is Family" engraved on the blade, as fabricated by Tinker.Meanwhile, Benny finds the admittedly less yummy version of Alfredo outside, and sinks him in a bog where he'd been dumping corpses when interrogation proves fruitless.Inside, the little girl, who's Leather-puss' daughter(!), creams Ryan into the afterlife with a swinging sledgehammer contraption, while Leath' moves towards dispatching the ball-gagged she-snob, just as Benny busts in with guns a-blazin', shooting up Mama, Grandpa's corpse, and fingers n' ear off of Tinker, allowing Michelle to pull herself loose(ouch) and shank Tex in the labonza, before escaping.The ensuing goosechase leaves Tex doused in gasoline and burnt to a crisp, and Leath' and Benny in a righteous bog-brawl where the black man's head is somehow sawed by 'Face's bog-proof implement of Hell.Michelle manages to bash the killer's dome in with a rock, leaving him to sink unconsciously into the mire, and reach the main drag as dawn breaks, only to be surprised by a still-breathing Benny, who's driving Alfredo's pick up.Oh yeah, that guy.Well, he ain't exactly coffin material either, as he springs up with a sledge only to get blasted by a shotgun-wielding Michelle.She remarks about all the roadkill in Texas as they drive off to safety, unaware that Leathergrill is still alive, revving his chainsaw in the distance...

"Nostril piercing??!!I was looking for a grill with a hella choice metal-skewered septum, goddamn it."
As overwhelmingly un-good as this chopped n' garbled incoherent mess no doubt is(the alternately edited, falsely advertised 'uncut version' on laserdisc and dvd is like a less sizeable turd with a Glade Plug-In sitting next to it), the next entry in the series, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre:The Next Generation"(1994), makes it look like Dances with Wolves, ferchrissakes.Seriously though, fuck Kevin Costner, and motherfuck Waterworld, too.While Mortensen has familiarly spent his time distancing himself from the stink of his TCM stint with good roles in decent movies like Petey Jackson's Ring trilogy and Cronenburg's A History of Violence(2005), Hodge has gone on to prolific television work in tv movies and soaps.Mihailoff has stayed put in genre films, scoring roles in fare like Pumpkinhead II:Blood Wings(1994), and Hatchet II(2010).You might remember Jennifer Banko as young Tina in Friday the 13th Pt VIII:The New Blood(1988), and you might not.Foree has been recently spotted toiling away in Rob Zombie garbage and that unimpressive Dawn of the Dead remake by Zack Snyder in 2004.At least he's working.Burr is also responsible for Stepfather II, the aforementioned Pumpkinhead direct-to-video sequel, Puppetmasters 4 and 5, and Mil Mascaras vs. the Aztec Mummy.Orson Wells he isn't.On the scale, Leather scores a single wop.Avoid it, trust me.

Hey Leathergrill, what's with the fucking leg brace, anyway?

"Martial Club"(1981)d/Liu Chia Liang

If you woprophiles dig your kung fu movies(like I know you do), then I've got one you're really gonna blow yer glassies on tonight, one of the most paramount efforts from apex Shaw director Liu Chia Liang, showcasing what certainly has to be one of the top five cinematic fights of all-time, in what's arguably one of the all-time most exemplary offerings that the Asian action genre has ever offered, period.You don't get much better than that, folks, and I ain't just whistlin' Dixie.Take the assemblage of physical talent that appears in this Liu vehicle(besides Liang, never less than amazing himself): Liu Chia Hui, Wang Lung Wei, Hui Ying Hung, Hsiao Ho(who provides the breathtaking choreography, as well), Mai Te Lo, Ku Feng, and even Wilson Tong, to that you can add an original, highly entertaining screenplay centered around the famed lion dance ceremony(where sin qua non screen villain Johnny Wang does not play the antagonist for once!), and then there's the fights.By 'fights' I mean the unsurpassed non-stop action sequences on board that'll have you repeatedly hitting the rewind button on your remote until the pièce de résistance alley brawl between youngest Liu and Johnny Wang unfolds upon the screen.That the movie focuses instead on a message of respect and apology between martial artists, a la Liu's earlier Challenge of the Masters(1978)(which could be seen as a sort of prequel to this one), instead of the usual blood vengeance angle the world had seen at least thirteen thousand times over by 1981, is just one more facet to this rare and wondrous gem guaranteed to leave your lower jaw hanging loosely somewhere down around your sash by the time it all wraps up.

You havent seen a lion dance until you've seen one of Sifu Liu's.
After an educational introduction to the Chinese Lion Dance, as given by director Liu himself against a stark white background, where we learn the various improprieties one group of lion dancers might perpetrate against another if they were interested in causing them to lose face.Sniffing around the rival lion's ass means you find it to be feminine, whereas blinking your lion's eyes in its direction would be an open statement of contempt towards the other group's ornately decorated costume, and finally, lifting your leg in the rival lion's direction, well that'd be spending a proverbial penny on the other fellows, obviously.With this martial protocol in mind, our story begins with two rival clubs, one particularly amibitious and bully-heavy club belonging to Master Lu(the unfortunately named Chu Tit Wo) and one less treacherous one run by Master Zheng(Wilson Tong), performing their own ceremony, and competing against each other when the aforementioned Lu's discourtesies cause one helluva gravity-defying rowdydow between the two groups.Neither school's participants suffer from vertigo, that's for damn sure.Enter Yinlin(Mai Te Lo), a student of Zheng's, and Wong Fei Hung(Liu Chia Hui), a student of Master Wong's(Ku Feng), both top martial proponents forever in competition with each other and each willing to stoop to nearly any low just to one-up the other.Both men are in the habit of paying other martial artists off to take dives in their fights in attempts to snag bragging rights over which of the two took less blows to defeat their opponent.Unlike Wong, Yinlin's also got a propensity to show off his chi kung to the sluts at the local whorehouse, his home away from home, where Lu and his cronies set him up for a hearty beatdown after paying the whores to tie him up, leaving him vulnerable to sneak attack.

Wang Chu-Ying(Kara Hui-Ying Hung) wields as mint a Southern Hung Gar spear as any male practitioner.
The mostly goofy Wong is blamed for Yin's bone-shattering comeuppance by Zheng's students, of which Yinlin's own sister, Wang Chu-Ying(Hui-Ying Hung), also ranks among; a leggy kung fu cutie of great renown in her own right.Lu's strategy is deviously simple: Coax Zheng's school and Wong's school into destroying each other, so that his martial club will come out on top in the local gung fu prestige sweepstakes.He even invites both masters and their pupils to his operahouse as his guests, then tries to get them all incarcerated for not paying for their tickets(!).His trump card is Master Shan(Wang Lung Wei), a powerful expert visiting from the North who nearly killed Yinlin with a well-placed eagle claw to his throatpiece when the impetuous kung fool mistook him for one of his easy pay offs(Fei Hung takes the blame for that one, too).Shan gullibly falls for Lu's deceit, finally challenging Fei Hung to a Northern v. Southern duel that takes place in a stretch of winding back alleyway that narrows as it goes.Both fighters spin and whirl their way through the backstreet with expert proficiency, exchanging dragon fists for mantis and eagle claws, testing each other's stances, and glancing lightning-fast wheel and crescent kicks into the bricks, barely missing each other.In the end, Shan defeats Wong, but stands well-impressed of the young man's skills, never intending to kill him, but merely curious as to what level he had attained thus far.He suggests to Lu and company that they learn the meaning of honor and martial spirit and generally stop being assholes out to spoil everyone's good time.Cue:Obligatory Shaw Brothers freeze frame ending.

Wong Fei Hung(Liu Chia Hui) and Master Shan(Wang Lung Wei) test each other's geographically opposite pugilism skills in close quarters.
As hard as Martial Club is to overshadow, director Liu somehow managed to do so in his very next effort, Legendary Weapons of China(1982).Coincidentally, the Wong Fei Hung character was an actual person, the son of one of the Ten Tigers of Kwantung(the real ones that the Chang Cheh movie was based upon), who lived from 1847 'til 1924, practicing medicine, an expert in many gung fu styles, as well as lion dancing.The name probably sounds familiar to most kung fu fans as he's been depicted in martial arts movies countless times, dating back to 1949, the eighty-five Wong movies over the following twenty years(mostly starring a gaunt old fellow named Kwan Tak Hing, who you might remember in a cameo as Wong in Samo Hung's excellent Magnificent Butcher(1978), and a White Crane style master himself) helped serve as the foundation for modern Chinese martial arts movies as we now know them....Just some interesting minutiae I thought you might like to wrap your collective brainpieces around tonight.What else can I say about this entry?It's got slapstick humor, and showcases some of the best performances you'll ever see in a kung fu movie.On the scale, it's a perfect four wops, and highly recommended by yours cruelly.You'll love it!

My favorite cinematic kung fu fight ever deserves two screenshots.

"The Car"(1977)d/Elliot Silverstein

There have been a lot of comprehensive comparisons drawn between tonight's review and Spielberg's Duel(1971) or even Jaws(1975), but I'm gonna have to step in at this point and close the case.Elliot Silverstein's 1977 stab at horror is pretty much "My Mother, The Car", only instead of Jerry Van Dyke's deceased mother, you get Satan.That's right, the dark lord and master has given up the little horns, red pajamas, and trident in favor of a 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III, as customized by none other than George Barris whose vehicles graced the sets of The Munsters and Batman television series, copping out of possessing little kiddies and breaking the spirit of fallen priests to instead play 'hogs of the road' somewhere in Utah with James Brolin, a guy who's apparently been making bad career decisions for over thirty years.Streisand...coughcough...sextape...coughcoughcough.Now, Satan doesn't possess the admittedly very pimpodocious coupe, mind you, he is the coupe.I can only imagine the quaalude/cocaine intake that must have gone down when this project was dreamed up, adapted from a story by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack.I'm sure there were a few dead rat-gnawed hookers with broken necks fished outta the dumpster behind Studio 54 that could tell you some stories...or something.It would seem that the only actors that looked favorably at the hellish script on wheels were also the cast that could never pull it off for a minute, despite marquee names like John Marley, Ronny Cox, and R.G. Amstrong at the hub.I'm gonna take this opportunity to say that, when I dragged my poor old man off to see this one in the theaters way back then, as a seven year old kid, I thought it was the most amazing movie ever made...at least for the two weeks until Star Wars came out.That must count for something, I guess.Let's head on out to the highway then, we've got nothing to lose, afterall...

Gas, grass, or your soul burning in the abyss for all eternity.Nobody rides free.
Judging by the unimpressive LaVey quote that kicks off our feature("Oh great brothers of the night, who rideth out upon the hot winds of hell, who dwelleth in the Devil's lair; move and appear." Huh? Whaaaat the fucketh is that gibberish supposed to meaneth, anyway...eth?), it seems the fictional town of Santa Ynez has become the preferred stomping grounds for the Devil himself, shrouded in metal and rubber and disguised as a sleek black custom coupe that's quick to murder the shit out of any luckless fool that happens to venture out on its roads, as two bikers soon find out when it pushes them off a high bridge.The local constabulary make the scene and have very little to go on, with the hit and run driver at the wheel of an unidentifiable car, customized to the gills, with no visible license plate.Next to be transformed into a road pizza is a french horn-tooting hitchhiker(John Rubenstein) after being scolded by local wife abusing explosives peddler(!) Amos Clements(R.G. Armstrong) who warns the unappreciated troubadour: "If I hear another sound out of that thing, I'll ram it so far up your ass you'll be farting music for a year."(Possibly the best line of dialogue of 1977)He doesn't get the chance though, as the coupe rolls up, and after barely missing the hitcher, who flips the mysterious black vehicle the bird, it backs into him, then serves up a Pasolini treatment to the downed traveler, running him over back and forth several times before speeding off and triumphantly laying on its signature horn.Bah-bah-bah-baaaaaah.Yeah, that's gonna get old in a hurry.Enter Deputy Wade Parent(James Brolin), the porn-stachioed single father of two young girls(as portrayed by the wee Richards sisters, Kyle("Halloween") and Kim("Escape to Witch Mountain")), who's duking a modern young educator named Lauren(Kathleen Lloyd) whose groovy hip huggers are so tight, I swear I can see her urethral meatus in there.Lauren's a modern gal whose thirteen year old music students are drawing cartoons of her teaching in the buff(I blame the hip huggers).She just happens to be rehearsing her marching band for an upcoming parade.You know, I'll bet any money that damned car is gonna show up and ruin everyone's good time...

Teen angst '76:Blowing into a stupid trombone all afternoon,instead of staring at the Tiger Beat centerfold of Shaun Cassidy on her bedroom wall.
Meanwhile, the sheriff(John Marley) gets mowed down in the street while sorting out some wholesome family abuse between the Clements, and a Navajo woman sees the whole thing.It's a damn fine thing there happens to be a Navajo deputy to translate her experience for the targeted pale faces.Isn't there always some all-knowing Indian or two standing in the wings in these movies?The titular ride rumbles up and pisses all over the town parade, sending groovy citizens scattering into the nearest cemetery, which the Car won't enter, as it's hallowed ground, giving Lauren the opportunity to curse the vehicle six ways from Sunday, effectively sending the eight cylindered Satan on an angry bender of bloody retribution; pushing one of the deputies off the edge of a steep mesa(cue:seventies exploding car sequence), and in the movie's "Fuuuuuck, that was tits!" moment, turns sideways at high speed into a barrel roll of destruction, killing several roadblocked officers and ending up wheels down, driving off afterwards.Wade squares off against the Car, only to realize his bullets have no effect on the windshield or the tires, and when he tries to open the car door, he gets kayed the eff out by the door, which opens by itself.Bah-bah-bah-baaaaaah.Then it stalks Lauren(Ronny Cox later straightfacedly suggests that the car is evil, and targets Wade's squeeze for the earlier verbal diarrhea she unloaded on it.His character's also a sauce fiend.) and stunt jumps through one of her walls to mow her down where she stands.While Amos and company rush to set up an explosive trap around the rim of a box canyon, the Car sneaks up Speed Buggy style on Wade and traps him in his garage until he manages to dive out a window.Cue:Not so epic car-motorcycle chase through the canyon, where the dynamite hasn't all been set yet.Wade and Luke(Cox) manage to pull a toreador pass on the unholy wheels that sends it plummetting over the cliff.Amos pushes his plunger, setting off enough dynamite to get me off my lethargic ass on Sunday...or something like that.The ensuing mushroom cloud has a momentary scary devil face and roars menacingly before dissipating into the smoke.The end.Cut to familiar unearthly driver's eye-view of the Car, now speeding through the streets of a big city...

Do you remember where you were when you first heard they'd cancelled 'Welcome Back, Kotter"?
Brolin is recognizable in genre hits like The Amityville Horror and Night of the Juggler.The utterly loverly Kyle Richards, who'd appeared a year earlier in Tobe Hooper's Eaten Alive, would also play little Lindsay Wallace in Carpenter's Halloween a year later, even acting along side grand dame, Bette Davis in Disney's Watcher in the Woods in 1983.Genre vet R.G. Armstrong was in everything from Devil Dog: Hound of Hell to Evilspeak and The Beast Within, later scoring a role on Millenium, one of my favorite recent tv shows.Despite the utterly preposterous premise and the unconvincing execution of such by all involved, there are unintentional laughs a' plenty, and even a moment or two of un-PG technicolor stage grue that might leave you snickering, as well.I have a soft spot for this particular crap-garbage after my theatrical experience, followed shortly after by about thirty more viewings in the cable box days.On the scale, Car stalls out, its self-sealing tires mostly flat out of the starting gate, with a single wop.

"I shall return, you puny, worthless mortals, and next time, I'll be a Monza Spyder Hatchback.Fuckin' bet on it."