"Humanoids from the Deep" (1996) d/ Jeff Yonis

In 1996, schlock god Roger Corman remade a few of his earlier B-movie classics for Showtime cable network under the "Roger Corman Presents:" banner, tonight's review being one of them; an update of sorts on the 1980 cult classic starring Doug McClure and Vic Morrow. After having read an online review of this one that boasts it's "more consistent, realistic, and mature" than it's predecessor, it's kinda startling to see so many blind waterheads with internet access these days. Maybe even more so to see people who've dropped their collective entertainment bar so low that a fucking stinkbug couldn't limbo underneath it, even if he was sucking his gut in.


He looks as bored, dead, as I was, watching him die.

At the outset, we see some military types shooting up and flamethrowing an oversized container only to notice that whatever was housed inside has made a beeline for the convenient manhole escape route located a few feet behind it (that the soldiers apparently never scouted out). One of the soldiers sticks his head down the manhole. Au revoir, la tête! Then it's business as usual, with government cover ups and environmentalists protesting the local hatchery, where unscrupulous white guys, led by Bill Taylor (Mark Rolston, from 'Aliens'), count money and wantonly dump a synthetic growth hormone  named Synestin (as kept in empty-looking fifty-five gallon drums, naturally)  into the surf even after they've been videotaped in the act by the young activists, one of which happens to be dating  the daughter (Danielle Weeks) of a local fisherman named Wade (Robert 'Revenge of the Nerds' Carradine, looking appropriately grizzled here) and Ron Howard's weird-looking brother Clint is also aboard as some sort of  mostly useless law enforcement officer.

"Hold 'im in, Ellie Mae, you don't wanna lose yer Jazzy privileges at thet thur K-Marts, now..."
Emma Samms shows up as a genetic scientist posing as a news reporter and straightfacedly reveals the government's evil plot to transform five death row inmates into amphibious super soldiers, except, they fucked up and created these humanoids from the deep, instead. The horny fishmen abduct some local females and goop them together into a big latex pile in a cave on the shore, then familiarly attack the town's waterfront fair in a sequence directly snatched from the original movie. A chick gives birth to a fish-baby on a pool table at the dive bar, and later, Samms hatches her own tadpole at a midday traffic light. Typing finger suddenly compelled to hit the Z key, repeatedly.


Sometimes you get to play Fallon Carrington-Colby in Dynasty, sometimes you share a latex cocoon with a variety of half-nude twenty-something bimbos.
If you're going into this one with fleeting hopes of revisiting the exploitative levels of nudity, gore, hokey ignorance, and horny fishman sex that the original delivered, you're not gonna experience a single one of those things here. Even the creature effects (when the crew could be bothered to shoot new footage, lazily relying several times on whole sections of footage cut directly from the 1980 effort) look worse, as you can see for yourselves, below. On the scale, the Humanoids remake baits a familiar hook, struggles for eighty-six minutes, and pulls an old boot out of the foam for it's troubles. Goose eggs.


It's work like this that reminds me how much I liked Rob Bottin.

"The Pom Pom Girls"(1976)d/Joseph Ruben

 As summer approaches fast in the rearview mirror, we'll take a look at another seventies-tastic Crown International drive-in hit from Joseph Ruben, reminding us just how unforgettable those girls that turned us on really were, in another teen sex comedy starring a cast of familiar genre actors including Robert Carradine, Bill Adler, Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith, and Jennifer Ashley; centered around high school hijinks between rival football squads, and peppered with genre staples of the day like make out vans, dope-smoking, beer-chugging, littering, drive-in restaurant sex(never gets old, just wish they'd stop serving it up with ugly-looking fast food), tits n' asses, stolen fire engines, limp fistfights, games of 'Suicide Chicken', and a total disregard for all things education and authority in the country's bicentennial year, man.Probably the wrong flick to get into if you're looking for logic and cohesion, but a helluva good-often raunchy,  time capsule of reckless youth of the happening seventies.Let's get this started, now who's rollin' the hog's leg to pass around...

 Wood(would) times five.
 School is in for the senior class at Rosedale High, and for Johnnie(Robert Carradine), a loose wire that ain't afraid to take a piss out a classroom window,  with a cherry '55 Chevy and goofy overbite,  it's an opportunity to show off to Sally(Lisa Reeves), Duane(Bill Adler)'s sweet blonde arm decoration, and best his rival in the process in a series of chest-puffing feats of bravado and stupidity.Johnnie's pal, Jesse(Michael Mullins) has designs on getting this happening brunette named Laurie(Jennifer Ashley) onto the air mattress in the back of his love machine, but fellow promiscuous Pom Pommer, Roxanne(Rainbeaux Smith) and drive-in waitress Sue Ann(Susan Player) will do, if that frigid bitch won't put out.With "the big game" with rivals Hardin High approaching fast on the horizon, a prank war has commenced between the schools, and harmless mascot effigies hung burning from nooses and car vandalism soon escalate into sloppily choreographed Western saloon-level fistfights and hosing down rival players and pursuant officers of the law from a stolen fire truck Johnnie and Co. end up in(big deal, they didn't do it naked.).To these fun-loving young tearaways, quadratic equations are for squares.Did I just make a fucking mathematics joke?Where's that cyanide capsule...
 
 The one and only Rainbeaux I'd ever be interested in chasing, thankyouverymuch.
 Of course, we get to see lots of reckless driving, an obligatory gross cafeteria food fight, pop-top beer-chugging(Johnnie's shirt ends up drinking more beer than he does, if you're keeping score the way I was, the way grizzled veterans often do), beach frolicking, some amusing soul sistahs trying out for the cheer squad, Jesse slugging the cocky football coach in the mush, some spirited joint passing, Laurie obliviously failing to notice Jesse and Sue Ann backseat boogieing right in front of her classroom window, then giving him her own goodies under her sleeping parents' noses, followed by a chuckle-worthy breakfast table sequence in it's own right.The football game degenerates into a battle royale after a single play, and Duane channels Brando in challenging Johnnie to a dangerous game of suicide chicken near an oceanside cliff.Johnnie drives Duane's car off the edge, jumping out at the last possible moment to live and torture him about bagging his girl yet another day.All's well that ends well, I guess.
 
 Sheesh, he's outta position on the MLB blitz, and he's a jibber bogart.
 Though I was never much for cheerleaders growing up(they always seemed a bit too shallow and saccharine-flavored for my 'refined tastes', apart from one or two rare birds that really layed it on me), I could watch the drive-in movie variety all day long.Especially when one's Rainbeaux Smith, one of my all-time favorite chicks, at her sweet n' sensual peak here, despite being mostly overshadowed by her co-stars, the wholesome brunette, Jennifer Ashley, who you'll remember from stuff like Phantom of the Paradise(1974), Tintorera(1977), and Horror Planet, aka/Inseminoid(1981), and leggy blonde, Lisa Reeves, who you probably won't remember from You Light Up My Life(1977) and the 1977 San Pedro Beach Bums tv series.Robert Carradine has been in everything from the iconic cult classic, Massacre at Central High(1976) and Orca(1976), to Revenge of the Nerds(1985) and the Humanoids from the Deep made-for-tv remake(1996).Hell, he even played a skinhead in Carpenter's Escape from LA(1996).Adler, who we just saw in Van Nuys Blvd.(1976), also featured prominently in genre fare like The Van(1977), Blue Sunshine and Malibu Beach( both 1978).On the scale, Pom Pom scores an average two Wops for technical skill, which doesn't make itself very apparent here, though entertainment-wise, it would easily earn another, a cult classic, perfect for the impending hot weather and hot babes that go hand-in-hand with it.See it.
 

Stealing a fire engine for a joyride?Oh, you crazy high school kids.

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.