The Perfect Weapon (1991)
Dir: Mark DiSalle
"No gun. No knife. No equal."
Real-life karate champ Jeff Speakman (Street Knight, Escape from Atlantis) stars in this minor action flick as...um...Jeff, a former JD kid who learns discipline through studying the martial art kenpo and grows up to become a kenpo-fighting construction worker (yes, really). He returns to his old L.A. neighborhood when his old mentor (Mako, Midway, Conan the Barbarian) is murdered by Korean gangsters led by James Hong (Blade Runner, Big Trouble in Little China) and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Showdown in Little Tokyo, Mortal Kombat). In a vaguely Yojimbo-inspired plot, he pits two families of gangsters against one another and teams up with his cop younger brother (John Dye, Best of the Best, TV's Tour of Duty) and a foul-mouthed street kid (Dante Basco, Hook, Fist of the North Star). Professor Tanaka (Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, The Running Man) plays Hong's unstoppable, superhuman henchman, who speaking defeats by lighting on fire and exploding(!). It all ends in a relatively exciting nighttime showdown at the docks.
The Perfect Weapon is a perfectly acceptable low-budget 80's-type action flick, released in the waning years of the genre's popularity. Speakman (who looks and sounds A LOT like a buff Perry King) is likeable and, while not a fantastic actor, has enough charisma to carry this type of role. An accomplished martial artist, his action sequences are fairly impressive and well-coordinated (though Kickboxer director DiSalle tends to overindulge in slow-motion shots). The barely 80 minute movie does suffer from some pacing issues and wastes A LOT of time on flashbacks showcasing Speakman's troubled youth. Mariska Hargitay (TV's Law and Order: SVU) appears in two scenes as a kimbo student. Acceptable Saturday afternoon action fare.
Enter...If you dare!
Big thanks to "Diamond" Dave Wheeler for the bitchin' logo!
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Monday, July 18, 2016
Entry 121: Inserts (1975)
Inserts (1975)
Dir: John Byrum
"A degenerate film with dignity."
In a bizarre prologue, a group of men (including what appears to be an uncredited Bill Murray, who was a good friend of both writer/director Byrum and Richard Dreyfuss) gather in silhouette to watch a 16mm stag reel. They cheer the violent sex (during which the man chokes his female partner with a necktie), but boo and walk away in disappointment at the lack of a cumshot. The remainder of the film flashes back to 1930 to show us the origin of the clip. We are introduced to Boy Wonder (Richard Dreyfuss, directly before Jaws made him a star) sitting alone at a piano in his decrepit Hollywood mansion. Once a great silent-era filmmaker, some unnamed trauma has left him broken and impotent, an alcoholic who never leaves his house (or even changes out of his bathrobe). He now makes his living shooting porno reels out his home and is awaiting the arrival of his star, one-time lover and only friend Harlene (Veronica Cartwright, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Alien), a silent-era actress whose grating voice has left her jobless and addicted to heroin. In the middle of shooting the scene from the beginning of the film, a violent, energetic encounter between Harlene and her brutish, stupid, vain co-star Rex the Wonder Dog (Stephen Davies, The Long Good Friday, The Nest), Boy Wonder is paid a visit from Big Mac (the late Bob Hoskins, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Super Mario Brothers, in his film debut), the thuggish gangster who finances Boy Wonders films (they have a "six picture contract!"). Big Mac is accompanied by his fiancee, Cathy Cake (Jessica Harper, Phantom of the Paradise, Suspiria), an up-and-coming actress. Big Mac doles out money to Boy Wonder and Rex and heroin to Harlene and, while Mac argues with Boy Wonder over the merits of his filmmaking style, Harlene OD's upstairs. When Boy Wonder fails to make a case for finishing the picture with her still-warm body, Mac and Rex leave to hide the corpse, leaving Cathy and Boy Wonder alone. Cathy is eager to learn from the once-great Wonder, whose specialty, even in disgrace, is helping actors reach their "peak," the point at which the barriers separating performance and reality fall away. She convinces Boy Wonder to use her to film some "inserts" for the reel, and her purity and enthusiasm arouse him for the first time in ages. Seducing Boy Wonder into making love to her, Cathy brings him to his own "peak," and he believes that, with Cathy by his side, he can give up booze and solidarity and return to making "real" pictures. Alas, Cathy becomes enraged and drops her facade when she realizes Boy Wonder didn't have the camera running during their encounter, an enraged Big Mac returns and confiscates Boy Wonder's camera and film and departs with Cathy and Rex. The already damaged Boy Wonder is left thoroughly destroyed and alone again at his piano, leading to a final line that's both devastating and laugh-out-loud funny.
Inserts is a supremely odd film. Made for almost nothing on a backlot in the UK, it was conceived as a film yet feels extremely theatrical; it's one-house setting is VERY stagey and no attempt is made to make the audience feel like it isn't looking at a set, and it's dialogue is delivered with a pitch and rhythm more associated with stage plays. The film was part of a cycle of films produced as the 60s bled into the "cynical 70s" that reveled in taking the piss out the romanticizing of "Old Hollywood (notable among them Peter Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon and John Schlesinger's adaptation of The Day of the Locust). This certainly makes sense, as 70s "New Hollywood" was built upon the ideal of "freeing" filmmakers from the old studio style. Inserts tears into it's glamorous targets with reckless abandon, taking (usually sexual) shots at legends like DeMille, F.W. Morneau, Lillian Gish and, most frequently, Clark Gable (a recurring subplot involves Gable seeking an audience with Boy Wonder).
Inserts was a passion project for Dreyfuss; in addition to starring, he helped with the casting a ghost co-wrote the script with Byrum (he's credited as "production associate). Although shooting on this film wrapped shortly before Jaws began principal photography, it's release was held up for a year due to censorship and rating issues and Dreyfuss used his newfound Jaws stardom to relentlessly promote it. Despite his efforts, the film was met with lukewarm reviews and catastrophic box office failure. Part of the fault certainly lays with the film's X-rating; by the time the film was released in 1976, "porno chic" was on it's way out, and while earlier X-rated films had been released by major studios to great success (1969's Midnight Cowboy and Medium Cool, 1972's Last Tango in Paris), the "X" novelty had by this time worn off and stigma had set in. The rating also kept the film from finding new life on home video when it was released in 1988, as it was relegated to "adults only" back rooms, to be rented only by the bishop-boppers who were no doubt pissed as fuck when they discovered they'd rented a black comedy with two (brief) sex scenes instead of a hardcore fuck flick. When the film was finally issued on DVD in 2005, Dreyfuss, perhaps hoping it'd finally find an audience, successfully lobbied to have it resubmitted for an NC-17 rating, which it now carries.
I suspect more than the rating is to blame for the film's failure to find an audience. For one thing, very little happens in the film. It's pleasure stem primarily from the quirky, rapid-fire banter between it's down-and-out characters, and what character development does take place is subtle (but, in the case of Boy Wonder, crucial). It's also an exceedingly ugly film, from the faded walls and broken furniture of Boy Wonder's mansion to the excessive makeup applied to the actresses to Boy Wonder's saggy, puffy alcoholic's eyes and five o'clock shadow. Above all else, the film is, quite frankly, bleak as fuck. It's a movie about broken, pathetic, self-loathing and self-abusing characters. Only Boy Wonder raises even the tiniest modicum of sympathy from the audience (and then only in the film's final act), and for our modest investment in him we're treated to watching him torn completely apart. At the end of the film, he's jobless, soon-to-be homeless and what shred of dignity he'd held onto has vanished with his career.
If you haven't gotten a sense of this from the proceeding paragraphs, Inserts is a comedy, and it's funny as hell. The performers are all excellent, and the fast-paced, period-appropriate, and often cleverly-repetitious dialogue remind me very much of Clue, which was also an enormous box office flop a decade later (that film, at least, eventually found a very appreciative audience over time). Harper in particular is revelation and should've become a genuine star. While perhaps off-putting at the time, it's ribald humor concerning subjects such as necrophilia and what, exactly is the proper dirty euphemism for the female sex organ ("Cunt? Slit?") are perfectly at-home in a post-Troma, post-Tarantino society. If you're reading this blog I know you're not a prude, so please, check this movie out. Don't concern yourself with where it's going, just enjoy the ride and delight in the clever dialogue and character interactions. I'd love to see this film gain a bit more recognition.
Unless I missed my guess, it's almost time for lunch...
Dir: John Byrum
"A degenerate film with dignity."
In a bizarre prologue, a group of men (including what appears to be an uncredited Bill Murray, who was a good friend of both writer/director Byrum and Richard Dreyfuss) gather in silhouette to watch a 16mm stag reel. They cheer the violent sex (during which the man chokes his female partner with a necktie), but boo and walk away in disappointment at the lack of a cumshot. The remainder of the film flashes back to 1930 to show us the origin of the clip. We are introduced to Boy Wonder (Richard Dreyfuss, directly before Jaws made him a star) sitting alone at a piano in his decrepit Hollywood mansion. Once a great silent-era filmmaker, some unnamed trauma has left him broken and impotent, an alcoholic who never leaves his house (or even changes out of his bathrobe). He now makes his living shooting porno reels out his home and is awaiting the arrival of his star, one-time lover and only friend Harlene (Veronica Cartwright, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Alien), a silent-era actress whose grating voice has left her jobless and addicted to heroin. In the middle of shooting the scene from the beginning of the film, a violent, energetic encounter between Harlene and her brutish, stupid, vain co-star Rex the Wonder Dog (Stephen Davies, The Long Good Friday, The Nest), Boy Wonder is paid a visit from Big Mac (the late Bob Hoskins, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Super Mario Brothers, in his film debut), the thuggish gangster who finances Boy Wonders films (they have a "six picture contract!"). Big Mac is accompanied by his fiancee, Cathy Cake (Jessica Harper, Phantom of the Paradise, Suspiria), an up-and-coming actress. Big Mac doles out money to Boy Wonder and Rex and heroin to Harlene and, while Mac argues with Boy Wonder over the merits of his filmmaking style, Harlene OD's upstairs. When Boy Wonder fails to make a case for finishing the picture with her still-warm body, Mac and Rex leave to hide the corpse, leaving Cathy and Boy Wonder alone. Cathy is eager to learn from the once-great Wonder, whose specialty, even in disgrace, is helping actors reach their "peak," the point at which the barriers separating performance and reality fall away. She convinces Boy Wonder to use her to film some "inserts" for the reel, and her purity and enthusiasm arouse him for the first time in ages. Seducing Boy Wonder into making love to her, Cathy brings him to his own "peak," and he believes that, with Cathy by his side, he can give up booze and solidarity and return to making "real" pictures. Alas, Cathy becomes enraged and drops her facade when she realizes Boy Wonder didn't have the camera running during their encounter, an enraged Big Mac returns and confiscates Boy Wonder's camera and film and departs with Cathy and Rex. The already damaged Boy Wonder is left thoroughly destroyed and alone again at his piano, leading to a final line that's both devastating and laugh-out-loud funny.
Inserts is a supremely odd film. Made for almost nothing on a backlot in the UK, it was conceived as a film yet feels extremely theatrical; it's one-house setting is VERY stagey and no attempt is made to make the audience feel like it isn't looking at a set, and it's dialogue is delivered with a pitch and rhythm more associated with stage plays. The film was part of a cycle of films produced as the 60s bled into the "cynical 70s" that reveled in taking the piss out the romanticizing of "Old Hollywood (notable among them Peter Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon and John Schlesinger's adaptation of The Day of the Locust). This certainly makes sense, as 70s "New Hollywood" was built upon the ideal of "freeing" filmmakers from the old studio style. Inserts tears into it's glamorous targets with reckless abandon, taking (usually sexual) shots at legends like DeMille, F.W. Morneau, Lillian Gish and, most frequently, Clark Gable (a recurring subplot involves Gable seeking an audience with Boy Wonder).
Inserts was a passion project for Dreyfuss; in addition to starring, he helped with the casting a ghost co-wrote the script with Byrum (he's credited as "production associate). Although shooting on this film wrapped shortly before Jaws began principal photography, it's release was held up for a year due to censorship and rating issues and Dreyfuss used his newfound Jaws stardom to relentlessly promote it. Despite his efforts, the film was met with lukewarm reviews and catastrophic box office failure. Part of the fault certainly lays with the film's X-rating; by the time the film was released in 1976, "porno chic" was on it's way out, and while earlier X-rated films had been released by major studios to great success (1969's Midnight Cowboy and Medium Cool, 1972's Last Tango in Paris), the "X" novelty had by this time worn off and stigma had set in. The rating also kept the film from finding new life on home video when it was released in 1988, as it was relegated to "adults only" back rooms, to be rented only by the bishop-boppers who were no doubt pissed as fuck when they discovered they'd rented a black comedy with two (brief) sex scenes instead of a hardcore fuck flick. When the film was finally issued on DVD in 2005, Dreyfuss, perhaps hoping it'd finally find an audience, successfully lobbied to have it resubmitted for an NC-17 rating, which it now carries.
I suspect more than the rating is to blame for the film's failure to find an audience. For one thing, very little happens in the film. It's pleasure stem primarily from the quirky, rapid-fire banter between it's down-and-out characters, and what character development does take place is subtle (but, in the case of Boy Wonder, crucial). It's also an exceedingly ugly film, from the faded walls and broken furniture of Boy Wonder's mansion to the excessive makeup applied to the actresses to Boy Wonder's saggy, puffy alcoholic's eyes and five o'clock shadow. Above all else, the film is, quite frankly, bleak as fuck. It's a movie about broken, pathetic, self-loathing and self-abusing characters. Only Boy Wonder raises even the tiniest modicum of sympathy from the audience (and then only in the film's final act), and for our modest investment in him we're treated to watching him torn completely apart. At the end of the film, he's jobless, soon-to-be homeless and what shred of dignity he'd held onto has vanished with his career.
If you haven't gotten a sense of this from the proceeding paragraphs, Inserts is a comedy, and it's funny as hell. The performers are all excellent, and the fast-paced, period-appropriate, and often cleverly-repetitious dialogue remind me very much of Clue, which was also an enormous box office flop a decade later (that film, at least, eventually found a very appreciative audience over time). Harper in particular is revelation and should've become a genuine star. While perhaps off-putting at the time, it's ribald humor concerning subjects such as necrophilia and what, exactly is the proper dirty euphemism for the female sex organ ("Cunt? Slit?") are perfectly at-home in a post-Troma, post-Tarantino society. If you're reading this blog I know you're not a prude, so please, check this movie out. Don't concern yourself with where it's going, just enjoy the ride and delight in the clever dialogue and character interactions. I'd love to see this film gain a bit more recognition.
Unless I missed my guess, it's almost time for lunch...
Thursday, July 7, 2016
Entry 120: Sorceress (AKA Temptress-1995)
Sorceress (AKA Temptress-1995)
Dir: Jim Wynorski
"She gets what she wants. She keeps what she gets. She never lets go."
Well, it's been about six weeks of silence, but I can remain silent no longer. I've felt like something's been missing from my life, and I knew that the only way to fill that hole was to journey back into the Basement of Sleaze, but I couldn't do it alone; this trip would require me to once again enlist the aid of BOS all-star Linda Blair. Join me now, as I journey down into the basement and attempt to resist the supernatural wiles of the Sorceress...
For obvious reasons, this movie was a Cinemax staple in the mid-90s, and even had a brief showing (in a heavily truncated form) on USA’s “Up All Nite” programming block before it’s demise. This is a straight-up T&A flick, but director Wynorski (who, inexplicably, is a close friend of legendary SF author Harlan Ellison in real life and also made the highly-undervalued Return of Swamp Thing-yes, you read it here; if you’re not down with Return of Swamp Thing, I have no use for you), along with Strain and most of the cast, is aware enough of what kind of movie he’s making to raise the camp value of the picture to near-eleven volumes, making this at least mildly entertaining for folks who aren't part of the typical "Skinemax" jerkoff crowd. The same cannot be said of Blair (very near her current, born-again Christian phase), whose boredom/indifference clashes with the “fuck it, let’s have fun!” nature of the rest of this ridiculous movie. I truly believe that, had she given her all in D-level films like this, Blair would've received some sort of (at least minor) career revival by now. Wynorski wrote the screenplay for 1982's Sorceress, which is a sword 'n sorcery flick that has absolutely nothing to do with this movie.
Dir: Jim Wynorski
"She gets what she wants. She keeps what she gets. She never lets go."
Well, it's been about six weeks of silence, but I can remain silent no longer. I've felt like something's been missing from my life, and I knew that the only way to fill that hole was to journey back into the Basement of Sleaze, but I couldn't do it alone; this trip would require me to once again enlist the aid of BOS all-star Linda Blair. Join me now, as I journey down into the basement and attempt to resist the supernatural wiles of the Sorceress...
This “film (and I use that term lightly)” begins with with an extended full-frontal scene of an exceedingly-sweaty Julie Strain (Double Impact, Heavy Metal 2000) gyrating and fondling her silicon-enhanced body while indulging in some sort of satanic ritual designed to bring harm to her ex-husband (Edward Albert, Galaxy of Terror, Killer Bees). It totally works, as his car goes careening off of a mountain road! Julie is caught in the act by her current husband (Larry Poindexter, Night Eyes, Dead of Night), who slightly overreacts by pitching her off their deck railing to her death! Months later, Albert is recovering from his accident with some help from his current wife (Blair) and his law partner (motherfucking Blacula himself, William Marshall), while Poindexter (now a junior partner at Albert’s firm) is haunted by visions of Strain. Being a softcore flick, the visions this “haunted” man experiences consist mostly of tit-bouncing fuck scenes. Deciding that “the best way to get over someone is to get under someone,” Poindexter enters into an affair with ex-girlfriend Rochelle Swanson (star of Illicit Dreams and T-Force which, sadly, has nothing to do with Mr. T) and we’re treated to more softcore sex, including Swanson kissing Poindexter’s ass for an uncomfortably long time. Poindexter takes a case defending a man accused of murdering his family (Then Came Bronson’s Michael Parks, in the middle of a post-Twin Peaks, pre-Tarantino/Rodriguez career slump), who claims that Strain was the real murderer and attempts to kill Poindexter! Jesus, for a movie designed primarily to allow adolescent boys lucky enough to grow up in a house with cable the opportunity to see a couple of boobs, this thing is goddamn convoluted! Beyond the aforementioned, the following things occur in this movie:
-Poindexter does the bone dance with yet another woman (43 year-old Toni Naples, Deathstalker 2, Chopping Mall, who, like a white, female Danny Glover, looks too old for this shit) who has a vague link to Strain.
-Parks threatens Albert and Blair and heat-packing Blair blows him away with a hand cannon!
--Blair uses a bloody pentagram to somehow eavesdrop on Pondexter and Swanson’s pillow talk and forces Swanson to masturbate to visions of leather-clad Strain and Naples (the first thing I’d do if I was granted Satanic powers!). I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that this scene features an uncomfortably long shot of Strain licking Swanson’s ass.
-Swanson gets possessed by Strain, dyes her hair black and tries to rape Poindexter.
Not that ANY of this makes sense, but it turns out that Strain, Blair and Naples are witches from the same coven; Blair has been manipulating Poindexter and Swanson in retaliation for what Strain did to Albert, and “good” witch Naples has been trying to stop it. It turns out that Blair, not Strain, has possessed Swanson, and she uses her to murder two of Poindexter’s friends (who were only guilty of helping him paint his house). Will Linda win, or will someone save Poindexter at the last minute? Will this movie end with a bizarre, inexplicable plot twist? You bet your ass it will!
For obvious reasons, this movie was a Cinemax staple in the mid-90s, and even had a brief showing (in a heavily truncated form) on USA’s “Up All Nite” programming block before it’s demise. This is a straight-up T&A flick, but director Wynorski (who, inexplicably, is a close friend of legendary SF author Harlan Ellison in real life and also made the highly-undervalued Return of Swamp Thing-yes, you read it here; if you’re not down with Return of Swamp Thing, I have no use for you), along with Strain and most of the cast, is aware enough of what kind of movie he’s making to raise the camp value of the picture to near-eleven volumes, making this at least mildly entertaining for folks who aren't part of the typical "Skinemax" jerkoff crowd. The same cannot be said of Blair (very near her current, born-again Christian phase), whose boredom/indifference clashes with the “fuck it, let’s have fun!” nature of the rest of this ridiculous movie. I truly believe that, had she given her all in D-level films like this, Blair would've received some sort of (at least minor) career revival by now. Wynorski wrote the screenplay for 1982's Sorceress, which is a sword 'n sorcery flick that has absolutely nothing to do with this movie.
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