"Skins" (1994) d/ Wings Hauser

Here's a rarely-seen exploitative oddity from the mid-nineties that was written, directed by, and stars one of my favorite bad guys of the eighties, 'Ramrod' himself, the one and only Wings Hauser. Of course, he also croons a tune, "Walking on the Right Side of the Devil", for the production, but it pales in comparison to his unforgettable "Neon Slime". Also singing (sort of) her way through a co-starring role is Linda Blair, of "The Exorcist"(1973) fame and "Exorcist II: The Heretic"(1977) infamy. She gets 'em out, here, too, and it's always a good time, whenever she does do just that, in my estimation.


"Fruit cocktail?? Thanks boys, but I'm watching my figure...", laughs Bentz (Cole Hauser).
A gay kid named Marjoe (!) gets fagbashed by a gang of skinheads and left to die, naked and spray painted in an alley. His mother, Maggie (Linda Blair) pollutes the air in honky tonk dive bars with something vaguely resembling singing, while his father, Joe (Wings Hauser), an alcoholic ex-cop, spends his nights knackered in Mexico, while the skins brazenly terrorize Hollywood Boulevard, kicking over trash cans, slamdancing to the house band (the singer says "Oi!" a whole lot) at their elaborately decorated clubhouse (Nazi stencils, swasti-curtains abound, and even a dramatic hulking floor-stika) and spray painting the obligatory swastikas over Walk of Fame stars, those bald-headed bastards. When Maggie travels down to Mexico to enlist her drunken sot of a husband, he calls his own son a fag(!!) before finally agreeing to dry out and get involved.


"I'll climb outta this jumpsuit if you're bringing something like this to the table..."
When Joe's first attempt at drunken payback goes miserably wrong at the clubhouse (the leader, Bentz, played by his real life son, Cole, beats him bloody then pisses on him...jeez, that must have been a fun shoot), he makes a teary-eyed vow to his wife and recovering son to turn things around, by cutting off the hooch, and repeatedly stumbling up a steep hill while dressed like Richard Simmons, being cheered on by his flamboyant son at the top, in one of several montage sequences. Meanwhile, the skins are raping the female half of an interracial couple, and later getting off the hook when the girl is too intimidated to finger the responsible eggheads. Maggie, impressed by Joe's sweaty efforts and improved relationship with Marjoe, gives her husband a piece of montage-pussy, as a reward. At the climax, Joe turns the usual Hollywood Boulevard rabble into a lynch mob, jogging down the middle of the street with bats and weapons to the clubhouse, where they take it to the bellicose bootboys, in a pro-wrasslin' style free-for-all. The reunited family walks off, arm-in-arm, while Bentz, who ducked out on the beating, and his rottweiler move on towards a whiter, brighter future...Skins 2? Never happened.


"Can I marinate both of these in neon slime?", ponders Joe (Wings Hauser).
Besides Wings and Cole, the film also features Wings' partner/wife, Cali Lili Hauser as the skinheads' punky plaything, and his daughter, Bright Hauser, as a "Young White Angel", sieg heiling in a swazzy armband, and reciting "America, the Beautiful". It's nice to see families working together like this. Interestingly, Cole would again portray a skinhead gang leader just a year later in John Singleton's lifeless imbroglio/ethno-wank, Higher Learning (1995). As far as skinhead-related movies go, this one's not as engaging as 16 Years of Alcohol (2003) or Romper Stomper (1992), but it isn't quite as mephitic as cine-turds like Pariah (1998) or Greydon Clark's legendarily laughable Skinheads (1989). Still, it's closer to the latter two than the former, with unintentional laughs galore and Linda Blair's bountiful bobblers. There's a region 2 dvd out there, should your curiosity win out. Two wops.


The one at the front, giving it the mouth, but at the end of the night, we'll all shout...

"Vampire Cop" (1990) d/ Donald Farmer

From the guy who gave you Demon Queen (1986) and Cannibal Hookers (1987) comes this no-budget SOV vampire opus that's tit-heavy with the heavy tits of cult face, Melissa Moore, who you might recall from things like Sorority House Massacre II (1990) and The Invisible Maniac (1990), lots of spurting stage blood and prop fangs, and a cameo from none other than Mal Arnold, who apparently hadn't learned a thing about acting in the nearly thirty years since he first graced the screen as H.G. Lewis' homicidal Egyptian caterer, Fuad Ramses, in Blood Feast (1963). Chances are, you won't mistake this movie for Herzog's Nosferatu.


I haven't seen that much hanging ham since I walked past the slaughterhouse that time.
...So after seeing a sleeping blonde dreaming of an acid-washed denim-wrapped arm (it's 1990 all day) reach down to silence her and some prop fangs,  there's a bikini contest at a club full of mulleted mooks and meatheads shaking their asses and then this vampire cop named Lucas (Ed Cannon) interrupts an abusive guy forcing himself on a skinny redhead, tearing his shooter hand off and giving him a bloodless neckbite for his troubles. The dreaming blonde (I'm not sure if her dreams constitute nightmares, save for the viewers themselves) turns out to be a reporter named Melanie (Melissa Moore) who's in cahoots with Lucas; their hotel room sabbaticals packing less heat than the Larry O'Brien Trophy Ceremony this past week.


"This was my only role ever!", hisses Lucas (Ed Cannon) of Vampire Vice.
Anyway, lots of dialog is lifelessly delivered by embarrassingly dressed people on depressing-looking sets, some of these people may or may not be drug dealers seeking vindication by kidnapping a prying Lt. Ryan (Mal Arnold), who's getting too close to their operations with his live news commentary, and off-camera chainsawing him up like so much firewood, which his squinty, hesitant line delivery reminds one of at times. There's a featureless finale where Lucas pits his Party City vein-drainers against these polluting palookas, one of which goes vampire himself, and gives a slo-mo plastic-toothed kiss to Melanie before Lucas can overpower him, ending up in a lackluster flaming latex-y sunlight purge and a news report that Joe Dante more effectively showed you nine years earlier. Eject.


"Garbage compactor-cam, after all these years you've caught up to me..." says Fuad Ramses, errr..Lt. Ryan (Mal Arnold).
I probably picked this one up during my storied rental run at Gateway Movieland Video on morbid curiosity born from the words of Michael Weldon's Psychotronic magazine, long-time staple food for my brain, and the opportunity to revisit a guy like Mal Arnold, whose on-camera ineptness kept every kid in my neighborhood in stitches in the early eighties during my parlor screenings. Whatever the case was, it still wasn't worth it. Flesh-wise, it didn't dent the armor of Cinema 309's selection of sin of which I was well familiar with by then, and my ample blood supply from superior underground lenses of the likes of Buttgereit and Peter Jackson (then) remained monopolized, as one might expect. One might also expect the paltry score of a single Wop on the ratings scale for Vampire Cop, and they wouldn't be wrong in doing so. Skip it.


"Look at me, I'm Dee Wallace!", exclaims Melanie (Melissa Moore).

"Voices of Desire" (1972) d/ Chuck Vincent

While on the subject of Sandra Peabody/Cassell a few reviews back, you may recall my remark that her engaging and tragic turn as Mari Collingwood in Wes Craven's Last House on the Left (1972) probably stands as the classiest production she ever acted in, when you look at some of the sweaty softcore sexploitation she left behind, in comparison. Some stuffy moralistic drapes would include tonight's review in the latter column, the first feature from prolific porn director Chuck Vincent (as Mark Ubell here), a grainy, scratchy, choppily-edited documentation of the former actress' assets shot the same year as Last House, available directly from those exemplary film folks at Something Weird.


Anna (Sandra Peabody, as Liyda Cassell) derives masturbatory manna from a bunch of grapes while she fellates a banana.
We meet a shaken Anna Reed(Peabody) as she relates her unbelievable story to a city detective, flashing back to the first time she heard those mysterious voices, breathing heavily on a pay phone, no less. Talk about getting your dime's worth. The walk home isn't any less strange, with mismatched foley footsteps, whispered beckons and brief images of a guy wearing a hangman's noose as a neck tie and a chick getting c.t.f.o.ed cut in for good measure. At home, her magazine time is interrupted by the pesky voices, who, combined with footage of a pair of average-looking folk copulating on a black backdrop, possess one of her hands that strips her naked so she can writhe around in bed with a bunch of grapes in her crotch as she gives a nearby banana a blowjob while awkwardly rolling an apple around on her ass.


You're so tiny and adorable. Can I put you in my pocket?
As she tries to duck out on her horny inner voices, she's drawn instead to their house of origin, where, after drinking a glass of the house wine, she goes into erotic spasms, and gets stripped and shrimped on camera by a couple of greaseballs by black candlelight. Her gross hippie piggies get a thorough once over while an orchestra plays and psychedelic lights flash. A groovy simulated threesome follows, with a brief lesbian sequence and obligatory orgy scene hard on it's heels, then the house's occupants all menace her with butcher knives, followed by a red-tinted fake romp with some dude with a mustache. There's always at least one in these movies, isn't there? She escapes to tell the tale to the detective, who tries to put it all into perspective for her, then is influenced once again to run (she runs like a gimp with a dump in her panties, for the record) back to the house, as a romantic piano plays in the background. Makes sense.


"After I pop my cookies on your belly, will you wear my Mood Ring, baby?"
Make no mistakes, Chuck Vincent's work in adult films is distinctive, with an experimental, arthouse feel unlike many of his straight forward porn peers of the era, and his unmistakable flair is evident here, with the use of classical pieces in the soundtrack, sprawling, picturesque exteriors shot guerilla and filled with magnificent metropolitan architecture, and weird insert shots. It doesn't hurt having a little sweetie like Sandra Peabody to focus your lens upon, either. If light fiddle-fodder for the raincoat crowd was the only kind of gig that the pixie-esque Peabody/Cassell was getting offered, no one could blame her for walking away when she did, for more fulfilling climes. Overall, Voices is a curious piece of vintage forty-deuce sexploitation, worthy of a pair of Wops on the scale, and definitely worth checking out if you're an admirer of Sandra (who isn't?).


While you're in a walkies kinda mood, cupcake, Scranton's only one hundred twenty-eight miles away. Just sayin'.