B.W.'s Top Twenty Sex Sirens of Cult Cinema : The Top Ten

                    10) Adrienne Barbeau

                              9) Gloria Guida
 
                 8) Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith

                        7) Rene Bond

                       6) Corinne Clery

                        5) Madeline Smith

                             4) Ewa Aulin

                             3) Annie Belle

                      2) Francoise Pascal

                   1) Christina Lindberg

"duBEAT-e-o" (1984) d/Alan Sacks

From a half-completed "Day in the Life"  musical comedy about Joan Jett's former band, The Runaways, comes this rarely seen hodgepodge of video clips and Polaroids that stars Ray Sharkey and Derf Scratch, bassist/founder of L.A. punk band, FEAR, was co-written by Marc Sheffler (or "Junior" Stilo from Wes Craven's Last House on the Left), and boasts of a soundtrack that features some early tracks by Social Distortion, topped off with narration by director Sacks, Scratch, and El Duce of the Mentors. I'm pretty sure you could put the Three Stooges in a room full of aristocrats and banana cream pies, and the result would be less of a friggin' mess. The adrenaline rush of finally nailing down a copy after twenty-plus years of hunting was long over even before the opening credit sequence, truth be told.


SEE! Sleazy photographs! Uhr-HURRR!
duBEAT-e-o(Sharkey) is an underground filmmaker with just thirty-one hours to complete his latest project, a documentary about the next big thing in the music scene, Joanie Jett(!), or face the possibility of getting another clip-on earring torn off by Hendricks' (Len Lesser) hefty henchman, Wolfgang (Joe Herrera), or worse. Sharon (Nora Gaye) stumbles in on her way to a Weight Watchers meeting, and is double-talked into duBEAT-e-o's entourage, then later given a punk makeover and subsequent horizontal bop by the ambitious and abrasive would-be director. He rescues his editor, Benny (Scratch), from a homeless squat, and soon the trio is desperately scrutinizing lip-synched footage of Joan on stage with a fake backing band (The actual Runaways called it quits long before the original movie was dreamed up), running around the crummier-looking parts of Los Angeles, and squaring off in a moving school bus against a gang of butch lesbians.


"Duce suggested that I ask you to be my stupid, air-headed girlfriend..."
Many black and white montages of back alleys, roadkill animals, passed out winos, and chicks booting heroin, set to narrated bickering and horribly mixed music tracks, later, we see a clip of Duce (with hair!) rambling down the boulevard, sickened by the advent of new wave/glam rock faggots, then suddenly sloppily twirling drumsticks for the Mentors (yeeeaaash), while rotten things happen, montage-style, to women: the face of a chick on a leash is booted repeatedly into a bowl of dog food, as another sucks a dildo full of prop-spunk, and yet another gets her fingers chopped off. Ultimately, duBEAT-e-o completes his movie just in the nick of time, as Hendricks joins a small crowd packed into theater seats to watch another fake performance clip of Jett and company, demanding another film from the director, who rejects the offer, unveiling a clip of the low-life producer making out with a guy on a mattress, while Duce and Scratch add their own coarsely colorful commentary in voice-over. Roll credits.


"Joan, did anyone ever tell you that your drummer bears a striking resemblance to Cinderella?"
You'll remember Ray Sharkey from The Idolmaker (1980), Wise Guys (1986), or his legendary coke/heroin habit, whose dirty, shared needles would result in the actor contracting AIDS and dying prematurely at the tender age of forty, just nine years later. You'll remember Eldon "El Duce" Hoke as the frontman/drummer for hooded rape rock trio, The Mentors, or perhaps, from his premature alcohol-soaked death on the railroad tracks at the ripe old age of thirty-eight. Yeeeaaash. Derf Scratch would also pass away in 2010 from liver disease, only fifty-eight. Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith lost her life to complications from hepatitis in 2002, at the age of forty-seven. This wrap up is turning out to be one helluva bummer, huh. Joan Jett's still alive, though, so put anothah daaaahhhhme in the jukebox, baybuh! Worth a look if you're into drug abuse, the eighties L.A. punk scene, or a big fan of Joan Jett, I suppose, but otherwise, you'll probably just come away from this wreckage with a killer migraine. Solo woppo.


"Actually fucking", as a title card informs us, amidst drunken cackles from a hooded narrator. 

"Vice Squad"(1982)d/Gary Sherman

"Bang! Bang! Shoot 'em up, talkin' about crime! Somebody just bought it in a neon sliiiiiime!!!" From the instant your ears wrap themselves around lead antagonist Wings Hauser's uneven voice, cracking, as it dramatically belts out the obvious lyrics of the title tune from tonight's review, you should already know you've got a minor eighties exploitation classic on your hands, and one that features one of the great deranged cinematic performances of the era.Nevermind that it was helmed by director Gary Sherman, of Raw Meat(1972) fame, or '70s supporting actress extraordinaire, Season Hubley, in the female lead, or even the appearances within by pioneer MTV vee-jay, Nina Blackwood, Fred "Rerun" Berry of "What's Happening", and a nondescript cameo by a nearly unrecognizable Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith.It's Wings Hauser you're gonna wanna get a load of in this one, trust me.After toiling on television crime dramas like Baretta and Magnum, P.I. for several years, his breakthrough role came in tonight's entry, in the form of a scumbag named Ramrod, who looks like he might be the illegitimate father of record breaking Detroit Lions' franchise quarterback, Matthew Stafford, if he was a coked-out psycho pimp that wore a turquoise cowboy shirt, drove a personalized monster truck, and terrorized his stable of money bitches with an unpredictable steak of debilitating sexual violence, that is.Hauser's Sunset Strip sociopathic slut-slinger effectively takes the cartoon stereotypical movie pimp with his ostentatious polyester evening wear and catty pimp slaps and sends him scurrying for the nearest street lamp to hide behind.Because of him, Squad is sleazy, tension-packed exploitative gold that'll leave you on the edge of your seat.Onwards...

Sorry, Nina, but the pimpstick didn't wanna see "I Ran", by A Flock of Seagulls twice last hour...
After seeing a lengthy title montage of the colorful pond life that made Sunset Boulevard after hours the sideshow it was famous for being at the outset of the eighties(no big deal these days, as any 3 am trip into WalMart will illustrate, really), we're introduced to "Princess"(Season Hubley), a single mother forced to send her tearful, young daughter off to stay with a relative while she overapplies her makeup and wears a lotta purple, pissing on strangers and getting her toes shrimped for cash as a Sunset Strip outlaw(def: sans pimp) streetwalker.She receives a distressing phone call from fellow hooker, Ginger(Nina Blackwood), who's bolted on her sugar daddy, a sociopathic hillbilly named Ramrod(Wings Hauser), who gleefully takes it upon himself to mutilate her money-making mound with a folded up wire hanger for jacking his ends (and not being as adorable as Martha Quinn), resulting in her premature death at the local hospital.Walsh(Gary Swanson), a vice cop, coerces Princess to partake in a sting operation to snare her friend's killer(by repeatedly shoving her face into Ginger's lifeless cadaver on a gurney), but Ramrod is no easy collar, headbutting the arresting officers with the whore's forehead, and generally making a nuisance of himself before being hauled off in an unmarked cruiser, where he cowboy boots one officer in the face and slaps a submission choke on the driver from the back seat with his legs(!), escaping into the night from the accident scene, unbeknownst to Princess, the target of his suicidal vengeance.Meanwhile, it's sex trade business as usual on the streets, and after wolfing down a friendly hot dog with Walsh, Princess is back at it, herself, turning tricks for amputees, attending mock funerals for rich old pervs, getting her piggies tooted on by wallflower foot fetishists, and robbed by finicky overweight convention attendee/johns, oblivious to the fact that Ramrod is on the loose, getting his handcuffs sawed off, and scoring the weapons that he plans to use in paying her back a thousand fold, from tattooed fetishistic perverts.

"Does Wings Hauser have to foot rest a bitch's head in, in front of the King, to get his point across?!! Well, DOES HE?!!!?"
From here on in, it's a race to Princess, with Walsh, laden with guilt over allowing the psycho-pimp to escape, filling the strip with a rainbow platoon vice unit to find her as she makes her nightly rounds, while Ramrod beats the snot out of one of her Asian colleagues, Coco(Lydia Lei), dumping her in the street like a bag full of discarded Burger King wrappers, and even removing her former sugar pimp's(Fred Berry) jewels with a switchblade in zeroing in on her whereabouts(I always wanted to see somebody do that to Rerun, unimpressed by his jiggly poppin' n' lockin' for laughs and silly beret on What's Happening, for the record.).There's a crowded precinct sequence, for those who expect that sort of thing in movies like this, complete with brazen white prostitutes(Cheryl Smith), sassmouthed teen smack-veins(Stacy Everly) handcuffed to benches, and giant negroid cops inquiring about the whereabouts of their missing paper clips.Then Ramrod snatches Princess up into his stolen vehicle and the film races towards it's commodious climax where Ramrod blindly fixates on laying the pimpstick treatment to the cash-for-gash thorn in his side, nonchalant to the vice cops that have him hemmed in on all sides.Will Walsh save his flat-chested new gal-pal before the monster mack can add her to the growing list of uppity bitches he's brutally iced just for kicks?How much abuse can Ramrod's turquoise cowboy shirt endure during his mad dash to final judgment before he decides to put something else on?Most importantly, once it's all been said and done, will we be graced with a reprise of Hauser belting out "Neon Slime" over the end credits?I'll leave the experience to you, the readers, this time around.Give it a look yourselves, would you, ferchrissakes...

Pimpin' Hint #117: Neuter Rerun with a stiletto to show bitches you mean business.
The gritty script was co-written by Robert Vincent O'Neill, the writer-director of the first two "Angel" movies(Angel(1984), and Avenging Angel(1985), respectively), interestingly enough.Most of you will remember Season Hubley as the Chock Full'O Nuts girl who gets pulled through the floor by the cannibalistic 'Crazies' in front of then-husband Kurt Russell's eyes in Escape From New York(1981), though she's also appeared in Hardcore(1979), the Humanoids From the Deep remake(1996), and various cash-in horror franchise sequels like Children of the Corn V:Fields of Terror(1996), and Stepfather III(1992).Wings, who supplies one of my favorite on-screen villains of all-time here, a long-time television staple, also showed up post-neon slime in John Bud Cardos' Mutant(1984), direct-to-video sleaze Bedroom Eyes II(1990) with Linda Blair, and recent horror-comedy, Rubber(2010).Sherman also directed 1981's Dead and Buried, Poltergeist III(1988), and even an episode of the Poltergeist:The Legacy tv series.For me, this one goes back to the cable box days, where I must have watched it twenty times if I saw it once.On the scale, Vice plays the lamp post three Wops worth, a ballsy effort, full of the realistic grit that fans of exploitation flicks crave.Recommended.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboy/psycho pimps that swim in the neon slime, like Ramrod(Wings Hauser).

"Laserblast"(1978)d/Michael Rae

Tonight's review, not to be confused with the Activision Atari 2600 cartridge of the same name(Yeah, I scored a million on it back in the day, what's up, bitches.), was all over the pages of Famous Monsters and Starlog growing up, and with glorious color pictures of Dave Allen's stop motion alien handiwork fresh in my recent memory, I bought the Media VHS print when perhaps fifteen titles on video existed in total.Sort of a bullied-Mark Hamill-lookalike-finds-a-cheap-looking-laser-weapon-in-the-desert-and-blows-lots-of-shit-up-with-it movie, cheap n' silly, with lots of genre value and a cast comprised of former Jeff Beck frontman, Kim Milford, Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith, Roddy McDowall, Keenan Wynn, and longtime cinematic nerd, Eddie Deezen in his film debut, as...yeah, the gangly, obnoxious nerd he always plays.There's a shocker.Despite having the dubious distinction of being "the worst sci-fi movie ever made" in some circles, it really isn't all that bad, once you put aside the badly matched laser explosions, one-time director Michael Rae's uncanny ability to make explosions seem boring, the hokey alien makeup fx by Steve Neill, the plastic space-weapon(that resembles one of those NERF cannons they were pimping years ago) and matching intergalactic grenade necklace, Gianni Russo as a poor man's Dirty Harry with a peacock's ass worth of leisure suits...okay, okay, the movie sucks, but it's a bad that could be enjoyable to revisit every ten or fifteen years, perhaps, and here's to hoping I'm partying with Keith Moon by the time the next screening rolls around.Two sci-fi reviews in the same month?What the hell is going on here.Onwards!

Yup, Eddie Deezen just burned you.How's that feel right about now...
We see a green-tinged gent(fx man Steve Neill in a cameo) with a laser cannon on his arm being pursued by a spacecraft, whose occupants are turtle-aliens in gold and silver lame' gloves n' boots, respectively, and who zap the piss out of their greenish target and abruptly blow the earthly clambake for space, leaving the weapon and gaudy necklace combo behind in the smoldering pile of ashes in the desert sand.Enter Billy Duncan(Kim Milford), a Luke Skywalker-looking chap who's constantly getting mucked about by everybody, as in the town's two drawl-spittin', jibber-reefin' deputies(Dennis Burkley, Barry Cutler), his girlfriend Kathy(Cheryl Smith)'s shellshocked grandfather, Colonel Farley(Keenan Wynn), and even local gearhead/rapist, Chuck(Mike Bobenko) and his wiry weenbag pal, Froggy(Eddie Deezen).If a guy like Froggy is harrassing you, well, you'd better score yourself a sweet intergalactic weapon of mass destruction while feeling sorry for yourself and kicking around the dust bowl, which is exactly what Billy does.He finds that when he dons the ugly pendant that accopanies it(and looks like something you'd find around the neck of Joanne Worley on an episode of "Love:American Style!"), the cannon obliterates all in its path, with a cheap slo-mo explosion sequence, to boot.Back aboard the spacecraft, the aliens are alerted to the weapon's misuse by their leader via a video screen playback of Billy shooting up tumbleweeds and the like, and they turn their ship around, new mission in place.After Billy takes it upon himself to blow up Chuck's convertible real good after he and Froggy try to spring some surprise sex on Kathy at a groovy pool party, the scene is made by Tony Craig(Gianni Russo), a government agent who puts the town on lockdown, from the smart comfort of a leisure suit.

"Dispose of that infernal weapon...and bring me some lettuce..."
After Kathy discovers the strange inflamed growth on his chest while tonsil-jousting in the grass with him like a couple of Dead show stragglers, Billy visits Dr. Mellon(Roddy McDowall) who surgically removes a small metallic disc from the wound, but gets blown up before he can deliver it to the local police lab tech(Mark the McDowall electric bill:paid).Craig investigates the crash scene and skirts away the perplexing metal to the tech, who determines that it is indestructible, of otherworldly origins, and redeemable for six coin-op arcade games of your choice at participating Top Dog chain restaurants.Just kidding.The next day, Kathy unwittingly props the space grenade on her boyfriend's chest while they're rolling around in the grass again, this time causing him to spring up from the blanket, green-grilled with pointy teeth and colored contacts.Now you've done it, woman.Billy goes on a drawn-out laser-fuelled vendetta against everyone and everything, from gas stations and police cruisers to cherry '55 Chevys and cheap billboards announcing the coming of "Star Wars" to theaters(get it?ehhhh).Craig and Kathy trail him into town, where he's been prancing around, laser-cannoning junk cars and newsstands, slo-mo victory jumping, until the aliens make the scene and blast him with a pleasantly pink-blue destructo ray from a matte painting of the city buildings, effectively killing him and destroying the weapon, before breaking the fuck out like poison sumac, in the process.Scrolling futuristic end credits interrupt Kathy, weeping over the lifeless body of her boyfriend on the street.

"Did I really use that much electricity this month?" thinks Roddy McDowall.
Rae never directed anything else, for those of you that think we've got nothing to be thankful for these days.Milford would ironically play the antagonist to Mark Hamill's lead in Corvette Summer(1978), before succumbing prematurely of heart failure at thirty-seven in 1988.Rainbeaux Smith, always one of my favorites, would follow up her panning here at the fingers of vicious movie critics(leave mah Rainbeaux alone, ye bastards) with roles in Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke(1979), and Vice Squad(1982), before succumbing herself in 2002 due to complications from liver disease and hepatitis from her long-standing problems with heroin.We'll be looking at another feature with McDowall, another favorite of mine, later this month.Then there's Eddie Deezen.Grease(1978), Grease 2(1982), 1941(1979), Wargames(1983), Zapped!(1982), if there's a late seventies/early eighties social misfit in the script, chances are, he's it.After cutting his stop-motion teeth in Equinox(1970), David Allen would lend his talents to films like Flesh Gordon(1976), The Howling(1980), Caveman(1981), and Q(1982).As you woprophiles might have figured, Laserblast earns a single Wop on the ratings scale(I never go too hard on the seventies stuff, old softie that I am), for Allen's excellent stop-motion alien footage, and schlocky fun all around.

Weeeeee-ooooooooo!Sumbitchin' gas station blowed up real good, dadgummit.

"Lemora:A Child's Tale of the Supernatural"(1973)d/Richard Blackburn

Before the dynamic dvd release by the folks over at Synapse a few years back, tonight's review was a long standing lost vampiric cult classic of the early seventies that many hadn't seen nary a frame of since the late night television circuit of the same era(that was my experience, anyway!).It enjoyed regular truncated screenings under various re-titlings(Lemora-The Lady Dracula was one I remember distinctly) on the platform of a highly popular local horror host,WNEP's Uncle Ted's Ghoul School, where the late Ted Raub in a signature red fez told corny jokes and did magic tricks on a threadbare dungeon set and showed B horror movies every Friday night for years(1974-1982 to be exact).He was no Dr. Shock or Zacherle by anybody's standards, but I got to enjoy those two hosts growing up as well(Shock on WPHL and Zach on WWOR and WPIX),so it all worked out in the end.Now, about the movie itself...
To say Lemora was a low budget feature is like saying that snorting bath salts for kicks might make you hallucinate about multiple strangers living in your walls and conspiring to kill you(or so I hear on the local news, anyway) .With it's visible dimestore fangs and ghoul makeups(reminiscent of Ormsby's work in CSPWDT,I've gotta say), it's practically budgetless.Lead actress Lesley Gilb graces the screen for most of the running time like Sigourney Weaver's blink-resistant older sister who would have done well to get some acting lessons under her belt(one brutally embarrassing and amateurish line delivery that me and the boys are still quoting between laughs comes to mind),and no one could accuse exploitation vet Hy Pike(in his first major role,howabboudat!) of being much more than a budget hunk of ham, but the entire cast seems pretty game with the material they're given.Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith is appropriately innocent and adorable as always, though her eighteen year old curves must have been pretty hard to cover up while portraying a thirteen year old character(she has more than one nipple slip in this production, originally rated PG!Those were the days.) With that obviousness out of the way, let me go on to say that Blackburn's period vampire fairy tale oozes heavy duty atmosphere in every color-drenched frame, in the same way a movie like Suspiria does, rising above its budgetary constrictions on more than one occasion, ultimately making for a decent seventies horror-exploitative experience.

"Would you like a chocolate...or some inappropriate sexual innuendo with that bus ticket?"
Career do-badder Alvin Lee(who's just blasted his adulterous wife and her latest bedroom conquest to high heaven), while on the run from the authorities haphazardly finds himself a prisoner to Lemora(Lesley Gilb),a vampire who surrounds herself with a posse of hooded confederates and several gleeful dead children, ultimately ending up on the silk-clad nosferatu's personal wine list.Lemora glimpses a picture of Alvin's angelic teenaged daughter,Lila(Cheryl Smith), a sweetheart who's been living with the local reverend(director Blackburn himself) and singing hymns during his religious services, as distanced from her father's life of evil criminality as she could be.Lemora writes a letter to Lila urging that she come right away to hear her dying father's confessions and apologies as per his wishes.The irreproachable child stows away in the car of a couple for a ride to the bus station,with the driver making offcolor remarks about the girl's upright nature and joking about her ostensible sexual relations with the reverend.At the station, the ticket vendor comes on to her before offering her candy with sexual connotations attached.She boards a rickety antique bus,the only one of the night bound for Astaroth(nice name),when the capricious driver(Hy Pike)warns her of the surrounding countryside during the midnight hours;roamed by multitudes of beastmen overcome by an inborn need to shed human blood, who drag him off screaming in front of the girl's very eyes when the bus breaks down.

"Astaroth...that's gotta be six or seven branch shadows past the windows away from here."
Lila gets herself locked in a small room, and harrassed by a cackling,toothless old hag who preys on her fears until Lemora is content to let the young abductee into her home.Lemora offers her a change of clothes,an endless flow of obsequious banter, and finally presses her to join the vampire and her merry band of cherubic corpses in a chalice full o' blood.When Lila gets dizzy from the plasma cocktail, Lemora spins her wildly in a maypole dance to a victrola recording, bathes her in a copper pot, then tickles her.Maybe Lila would have been better off with some of the perverts from earlier in the movie.Just sayin'.The reverend, lost without his delicate, young flower, sets out in his car to find her, just as she attempts a daring midnight escape from her pale captor in purple nailpolish, whose eyes rarely nictitate.There's a beastman v. vampire rowdydow that momentarily aids the pubescent church singer in her skedaddle, with her own escaped father fighting for the beastie cause, but Lemora ends up on top, as she always has.Lila takes part in a weird silk-based(where are these dust bowl bloodsuckers getting these elaborate silk outfits anyway?) vampire ritual according to Lemora's wishes as the reverend appears on the scene.Lila(wearing silk,natch)jumps into the holy man's arms and smothers him with kisses to his initial dissapproval, but he soon gives in and starts making out with the child(!), who rears back and displays her nifty new pointy eye teeth, just before she goes in for a drink.Credits,anyone?

Lilah(Rainbeaux Smith),naked and crammed into an uncomfortable tub,and still looking less uncomfortable than Lemora(Lesley Gilb) does.
The late cult goddess Cheryl Smith appeared in countless horror and exploitation flicks in the seventies and eighties:Caged Heat,Swinging Cheerleaders,Massacre at Central High,Incredible Melting Man,Laserblast,Cinderella,Up in Smoke,and Vice Squad,to name just a few, before succumbing at 47 to complications from her long battle with heroin addiction in 2002.She's still one of my very favorite actresses,and will probably always be.Sadly, Lesley Gilb herself was killed in a car accident two years ago.Director Blackburn only ever directed an episode of tv's Tales From the Darkside apart from tonight's review, but to his credit, co-wrote and produced the Paul Bartel cult classic "Eating Raoul",as well as scoring a cameo within.The venerable Pike appeared in cult favorites such as Dolemite,Spawn of the Slithis,Vamp,Hack O'Lantern,and even Blade Runner before he passed away in 2006.Wow, this update paragraph is turning out to be a real drag with all this death already, isn't it?Let's wrap it up before I do a screaming header out the bedroom window myself.Seek this out and give it a look, I think you'll find a lot to like about it, despite its visible flaws.Two wops.

I suppose those could pass as fangs.Yeah, I'm feeling charitable.

Massacre at Central High(1976)d/Rene Daalder

Nearly everybody has seen Heathers(1989),the film that launched Christian Slater's non-career as a Jack Nicholson imitator,but relatively few saw the film that that particular film spoofed in doing so.Former Russ Meyer cameraman Daalder's small tale of revenge generated a cult following for many years,playing on the midnight circuit and enjoying a re-release during the slasher heyday of the early eighties.A nifty little picture about high school pecking order and what power does to one's behavioural interactions with his or her peers once it has been achieved.Adequate performances by a cult-esque cast of actors,inventive deaths,some gratuitous nudity(in Italy it was released as "Sexy Jeans"! with hardcore insertions),and a script full of twists combining the horrors of adolescence with a political subtext, make this one for your dvd player that comes with recommendation by ol' Wopifex himself!

David(Derrel Maury)doesn't look at high school in the conventional way.
David(Maury)is a transfer student to Central High,a school terrorized by an elite clique of rich snobbish bullies.After reuniting with Mark(Andrew Stevens) who he'd attended another school with previously, in the student lounge,he realizes his former friend is part of the problem group.Mark begs him to enjoy his status at the top of the pecking order with him,but the fringe benefits are short-lived as David cannot stand idly by and allow the other students to get bullied for no reason.He beats the antagonists in a fight,rescuing Mary(Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith) and Jane(Lani O'Grady from Eight is Enough!) from certain rape in an empty classroom.He is smitten with Mark's girlfriend Theresa(Kimberly Beck),and when Mark catches the two skinnydipping in the ocean at night,his jealousy leads to indifference when his gang takes revenge on David as he's repairing a bullied student's car in his garage,crushing one of his legs under a bare drum rotor.When he is later released from the hospital,he does not implicate the students in his unfortunate accident.He has other plans entirely for them.

Forecast for that crushed leg:Limpy followed by prolonged periods of gimpy.
One by one,the bullies fall prey to David's ingenious plans of revenge.Severed hangglider cords lead to high tension wire electrocution,empty pools serve as a waterless grave,as Mark realizes his friend is behind the murders but guilt disallows him to report him to the authorities.Once the bullies have been eliminated,the victimized students now vie for the positions of power,becoming bullies themselves.David sees that the downtrodden he once championed are in reality no better than the elitist thugs he'd murdered,causing him to snuff the latest wave of social climbers.David finally decides to destroy the structure itself with explosives during the school dance,but when Mark and Theresa show up at the dance and refuse to leave,he has a change of heart,removing the bomb and blowing himself up outside the school instead.

Might wanna make sure there's water in the pool before you go diving in next time.
The movie looks at the social infrastructure from all angles,the far-left,the-far-right,before settling into a nihilistic warning:there's a fine line between utopia and dystopia afterall.Stevens went on to a career in movies and television,Beck later starred in Friday the 13th:The Final Chapter,sadly Lani O'Grady and Cheryl Smith both lost their lives due to drugs.A solid movie that still satisfies thirty-plus years later,though it has become something of a holy grail to horror fans,as it has yet to be released in America on DVD,leaving collectors to scramble for grainy old VHS copies or bootlegged discs.You won't be disappointed when you snag your own screener,as it merits a very respectable Wopsploitation scale rating of:

The explosive end to the Central High dance.

"The Incredible Melting Man"(1977)d/William Sachs

Long before FX master Rick Baker won accolades for "An American Werewolf in London"(1981) or "Harry and the Hendersons"(1988),he toiled away in low budget flicks like John Landis' "Schlock!"(1971),"Octaman"(1974),and this William Sachs film,to the delight of little horror nuts like myself.Lately he's been toiling away in crappy Eddie Murphy movies,but the guy is a true artist,regardless of whether he's associated with "Norbit"(2007)or not.Some memorable cult cameos include Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith,Janus Blythe(Ruby from "The Hills Have Eyes"(1977)),and Jonathan Demme,who later directed "Silence of the Lambs"(1992)!

Truly scary fatso nurse runs directly at the camera in slo-mo.Terrifying.
So they send a team of astronauts to Saturn,despite the fact that the planet is a ball of gas and has no surface whatsoever to land on,you with me so far?When the rocket closes in on its target,some wiseguy has transformed the planet's normally icy rings into firey ones,causing a strange phenomenon to occur.Steve West(Alex Rebar) bugs his eyes out looking at stock footage of solar flares and gets a slight nose bleed.Yeah,he's in all kinds of trouble when he somehow returns to Mother Earth.Doctors back home know these symptoms all too well,explaining that the heavily bandaged man in the hospital bed has started to melt like a pint of Turkey Hill Moose Tracks ice cream.Naturally the doomed astronaut gets out of his bed,unwraps himself,and takes a gander in the mirror.His rugged seventies looks...his porn stache...turkey sandwiches,turkey stew,gone,all gone!Bumpuses!Sons a' bitches!Sorry,wrong movie.Anyways,he goes crackers and a rotund nurse gallops down a long hallway in slo-mo,screaming(and no doubt wheezing from the exercise)as she smashes through a glass door.The titular melting man has been unleashed on an unsuspecting local populace.Since he's dripping all over the place,he needs "cells" from his victims,which he obtains by partially eating them.Makes sense.

The finest decapitated head cascading over a waterfall and smashing on the rocks below in slo-mo I have ever seen.
So Melty wanders around searching for victims to eat to slow his melting process,and thanks to the massive continuity problems of the film,dusk becomes the middle of the afternoon,and then back to night.Mindless fans of films like "Men in Black" might not notice such a faux pas,but I digress.He stumbles onto a fisherman in the wilderness,and dispatches him off-camera,but not before he can send the angler's decapitated,bloody head downstream,where it goes over a waterfall and dashes on the jagged rocks below,all in beautiful slo-mo.He then interrupts a group of well supervised little kids,who playfully smoke cigarettes together,and spares them,knowing the cancer will take them all out in years to come more painfully than a melting,flesh-eating astronaut ever could.He also snuffs a couple of lemon-thieving horny old codgers.No,I didn't make that up.He inadvertently interrupts a photographer and his comely,young subject(provocatively portrayed by the late Cheryl Smith)as he struggles to wrestle her tube top down so he can photograph her chachabingos against her will(artistic license,sexual assault,all the same).She backs into a disembodied arm whose hand grabs her ankle.Even disembodied body parts love boobs.

What's cooler than little kids smoking? Nothing,that's what.
Meanwhile,in the world of folks who aren't currently melting all over their groovy leisure suits,Steve's best friend,Dr.Ted Nelson is distraught over his friend's low drippy state and the fact that he's got no crackers in his house.No,I didn't make that up either.To make matters worse,a NASA general eats his last turkey leg,then West scarfs down Nelson's in-laws(the aforementioned oldies who're out trying to heist lemons).At least the guy isn't melting,right?Out of crackers,turkey legs, and in-laws,the good doctor sets out to find his snot-like chum before it's too late.

Astronaut Steve West needs a nip and tuck,courtesy of FX wizard Rick Baker.
In the finale,Nelson finds the melting man at the local power plant,surrounded by cops who plan on filling the oozing astronaut full of lead.He pleads for West's life and gives the lawmen his credentials.The cops naturally shoot the doctor instead.Also not made up,folks.The enraged melting man converges on the absent-minded cops who shoot him to no effect.He kills the officers,throwing one onto some power lines below,electrocuting him real good.Then he finds a comfy wall to fully melt away into nothing against.The next day,a black custodian cleans up the astronaut pudding as a radio announces another mission to Saturn about to take place.Oh sweet irony.

The late,great Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith,topless,as usual.
A pretty good,if somewhat disjointed time to be had revisiting this one,kiddies.Baker's makeup and gore effects(!) are pretty effective for their time,the logic-bereaft script contains several good unintentional laughs,and it all moves along quickly and painlessly.You could do worse than sitting down to this one,like...for example,"Octaman"(1974) or even worse,"Norbit"(2007).Sorry,Eddie.

Clean up in aisle nine...