"Sharks' Treasure" (1975) d/ Cornel Wilde

The last time we saw Cornel Wilde here at the Wop, he was keeping slo-mo gargoyles from clawing up Jennifer Salt's groovy sash-topped boobs in the desert-based television horror movie of the same name. This time around, he's the writer, producer, director, and star...hell, he even wrote the godawful theme song, "Money, Money", as sung by Ken Barrie, who also happened to sing the unforgettably titled "I Love You Baby, Oh Baby I Do" in 1979's Silent Scream. Released two months before Jaws, Treasure enlists the familiar faces of Yaphet Kotto, David Canary, Cliff Osmond, and John Neilson in purveying the adventures of some hard luck treasure hunters for the mid-seventies drive in crowd, and ultimately missed out on the summer box office bounty that the former film managed to snag in droves. Still, it goes like this...


They're having more fun than I did watching them.
Adventurer Jim Carnahan (Cornel Wilde) is approached by a wet-behind-the-ears punk named Ron (John Neilson) who's turned up a few gold doubloons while scuba diving off the coast of Honduras, and is looking for a business partner to split the rest of the lucrative unrecovered treasure with. Along for the ride and a percentage, are Ben (Yaphet Kotto) and his stammering Vietnam vet buddy, Larry (David Canary). Jim wastes no time stripping down to a terrible creole accent and a Speedo while doing one handed push ups on deck to establish his dominance over the crew, even chucking Ben's smokes into the ocean after refusing to allow the guy to smoke anywhere on his boat. Compounding the captain's assholery is Ron's sudden inability to discern the surrounding rocks from the two that mark the spot where the treasure lies, sending everyone into an outside voiced confrontation of less-than-epic huffing, chest-pounding, Speedo-clad proportions that could have been edited down by half, as they float around in circles. When they finally do find the site, to their indifference,  it's regularly patrolled by numerous reef sharks. Luckily for the treasure hunters, it's still 1975, and no one'd much care if they murdered a great deal of them, so they oblige, with floating hooks and spear guns a' plenty.


"Parker'd like to discuss the bonus situation, Cap'n..."
They're attacked multiple times, but only by obviously deceased sharks, discolored and limp, being pushed at them unconvincingly off-camera, but they still manage to bring nearly a half million dollars worth of baubles and trinkets to the surface. Almost instantly, Carnahan's innate assholism kicks in, and he accuses Ron of stuffing a gold cross down the front of his swimmies, only to find that the crew was about to present it to him as a gift. Ben jockeys for a bigger cut, which results in more corny posturing, and that's about when the boat gets boarded by a motley gaggle of cartoonish outlaw bandidos, as led by the burly, boy-hungry Lobo (Cliff Osmond), who's got his reluctant blond boy toy from prison, Juanito (David Gilliam), at his side, ready to ashamedly bikini striptease upon command. After Carnahan's booty (the treasure, not his ass, in this case) is discovered, he lies about further treasure down below after being clumsily KTFOed by Lobo on deck, while the pirates sloppily drink and chow down on all of the supplies in front of the bound prisoners. I'm not gonna elaborate any further at this point, if you wanna know how it all ends up, you'll have to sit through it the same way I did.


"I shoots anywhan who go nears my little mans!", exclaims Lobo (Cliff Osmond).
Wilde would turn up next in The Norseman three years later. Apart from the aforementioned Gargoyles (1972), genre-wise, he showed up in an episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1972) and lent his voice to No Blade of Grass in 1970. Yaphet Kotto, who's pretty much Parker from Alien (1979) in swimtrunks here, also appeared in an episode of Night Gallery (1971) himself, as well as providing memorable turns in things like Truck Turner (1974), Live and Let Die (1973), Monkey Hu$tle (1976), and Blue Collar (1978). Canary's main claim to fame is his recurring role of Adam Chandler on popular soap opera, All My Children. Some movies exist where one man handles the majority of cinematic duties out of budgetary confinements and are infinitely easier on the viewer than this one is. This just plays like an hour and a half of Wilde's ego on parade, a pissing contest that ends in a draw, and anybody watching is ultimately the loser. What is it about boats and sea-faring blokes? Are they chick-repellent or something? I can only recall one scene with a girl in this seven seas sausage fest, despite having screened it again last night with friends over (spoiler: I conked the fuck out the second time around.). One Wop for this vintage adventure-less adventure.


"We're taking in water! Somebody lighten our load and throw Wilde's ego overboard!"

"Hey Good Lookin' "(1982) d/ Ralph Bakshi

Following the success of Heavy Traffic the previous year, Ralph Bakshi began work on tonight's review, a feature that would incorporate animated main characters who would interact with a live-action supporting cast, initially completing the film in 1975 for Warner Brothers, who repeatedly postponed and pushed the project back for various reasons, until it was finally granted a limited release seven years later as a much different film than the one it began as. I remember excitedly snagging a VHS copy off the shelves at Wyoming Valley Video, a favorite hole-in-the-wall shop of mine at the end of an avenue strip mall in the eighties, only to walk away feeling mostly indifferent about the entire experience in the end. I really hadn't watched it in thirty years or so, but since we're on a Bakshi kick here of late at the Wop, and my recalcitrant Libran values demanded a revisit before casting a final judgmental stone, here we are...


Oblivious to Mr. Kotter's pleas, Barbarino prepped for the big rumble with Boom Boom.
We see a garbage can and some trash having an existential debate before the trash hears an epiphany or an approaching garbage truck, and hops on, shouting "Fuck this city!". What an opening. In 1980's Brooklyn a shadowy figure rendezvous with a washed-up-on-the-beach (Eyyy-yo, Slade!) dame under a streetlamp, throwing her a chunk of biker leather, which she sobs over as he takes us back to the fifties, and the coat's origins. Vinnie (Richard Romanus) is the leader of a gang called The Stompers, his best friend is a Joker-esque cat called "Crazy" Shapiro (David Proval) whose homicidal father is a badge named Solly (Angelo Grisanti). When Vinnie's attempted coitus with a local kosher dish named Roz (Tina Bowman- later Romanus) is interrupted by her smothering papa (he chains her to her bed), the guys score some hookers and crash on the beach, waking up in the middle of a mafiosi beach party that Crazy eventually beats to death in a bloody brawl. On the run, Vinnie bumps into none other than Boogaloo Jones (Philip Michael Thomas), the head of the Chaplains, on the black side of the beach, leading to an inevitable rumble.


"When Milton Berle Ran with Street Gangs" will return after these messages...
After Crazy ices a couple of Chaplains while on a double date with Vinnie, Roz, and Eva, his father investigates the murders and is pointed towards the Stompers by Boogaloo. Roz tells Crazy that his best pal is ditching town, making him the new head of the gang, entitled to her goodies as such, and he breaks himself off a warehouse piece upon hearing the news. Solly makes the scene and beats his son like a rutabaga until he sells Vinnie down the river over the double moidahs. As Vinnie's about to break the eff out like the measles, he unwittingly bumps into his old crew as they're about to rumble with the Chaplains. Crazy lives up to his nickname and busts wild shots from a nearby rooftop just as his old man is about to arrest Vinnie, and in a surreal swirl of psychedelia, swan dives on top of the detective, killing them both. As a heartbroken Roz makes a song request for her lost love, Vinnie leaves the city. Back in the eighties, the overweight has-been reveals herself as Roz and fingers the shadowy stranger as Vinnie, who decides to stick around this time, bringing the story to a happy ending of sorts...


I think you know which side of the beach towel I'd be on.
There are a lot of good ideas and nice visuals here, but they seem disjointed by time, and further hindered by an unflattering, mismatched score that wears a synth-soaked eighties stamp even when recalling sounds from three decades earlier. Bakshi probably should have paid the licensing fees for the original tunes he wanted on the soundtrack, for better results. I would have liked to see the live action sequences with Yaphet Kotto and the New York Dolls that were ultimately cut from the film, too. When talking about this one, I find myself saying "I would have liked" more often than any of the other Bakshi films, and that ought to tell you something. On the scale, Good Lookin' earns a pair of Wops; not entirely unattractive, by anyone's standards, but far from gorgeous.


"Somebody dosed Kid Creole's drink! Get the Coconuts, he's freaking out!"