Comedy

Narco Shark (2023)

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When he’s not practicing black magick, the “perfectly oiled killing machine” Ricky Valente fights the Mexican yakuza. They’re a cult of red-robed ninjas who deal coke and worship a shark god. Ergo, Narco Shark.

Lest ye think Gerardo Preciado’s $10K epic is yet another lazy exercise in microcinema’s put-on-a-shark-on-it obsession, the ocean predator is incidental, even removable. The flick would work just as well without it, being a gleeful genre parody informed by a lifetime’s consumption of direct-to-video Mexitrash action, half-assed kung-fu tapes, Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II, Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. And yeah, probably something with a shark.

Valente’s gift is neither his mullet nor his fanny pack, but his hypnotic pull on others by playing “the sexy sax.” Just witness the boiling horniness of his fully naked wife as he blows the instrument an inch from her Barbie-smooth ladyparts. (She’s played by a department-store mannequin.) Her brother, Tico Suave, desperately wants Ricky to teach him how to be cool instead of a bucktoothed, bespectacled, friend-free weirdo who, I suspect, collects orders from area grammar schools establishing acceptable radii. Ricky eventually relents; the lesson involves breakdancing.

Presented as a VHS cassette from 1989, Narco Shark opens with a (fake) note that Suave died during the film’s making, so Preciado has used all the tools at his disposal — alt takes, doubles, mo-cap recreations and other Furious 7-sounding tricks — to allow for completion. A title card promises, “You will not be able to tell the difference,” which of course sets up a running joke that never tires.

That goes for the movie’s whole as well. Usually these spoofs with few resources have one joke to tell and stretch it past a breaking point, often by the 10-minute mark. Remarkably, Preciado knows just when to quickly pivot to something else, whether cutting to commercial or even fast-forwarding itself.

No matter how lo the fi, Preciado isn’t dicking around; this is at least a couple levels up from that. So boneheaded and yet sharp-witted, it earns a spot in the same league as similarly minded ’80s pastiches Dude Bro Party Massacre III and Lethal Force. Narco Shark’s faux FBI warning orders in part, “Do not see this film by yourself. It is meant to be seen by a party of at least 4 people.” Although I endorse that thinking, I had a blast watching all by my lonesome. —Rod Lott

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Western

Santo vs. the Riders of Terror (1970)

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Maybe I’m wired differently, but hypothetically speaking, if I were sheriff of a wee town in the late 1800s, and six lepers escaped our local hospital, I doubt I’d ever arrive at the solution of “I know how to find this dirty half-dozen and keep their gnarly disease from spreading. If only I could locate a masked wrestler who rides horseback while wearing white pants.”

But who am I to question the great René Cardona? Basically the Roger Corman of Mexploitation cinema, he’s at the helm of Santo vs. the Riders of Terror, one of the silver-masked superhero’s scant few Westerns.

As word of the free-ranging lepers leaks, the townspeople rile each other up with the fearmongering fury of a thousand Infowars broadcasts. Despite the sheriff (Armando Silvestre, Cardona’s The Batwoman) pleading for compassion, even his best gal (Mary Montiel, Santo in the Vengeance of the Mummy) buys into the mob mentality by wrongly assuming those goddamn lepers are to blame for the fatal gunshot in her papi’s back.

Fresh from donating a match’s winnings to some nuns, Santo (Santo) finally shows up to render aid to the sheriff — and presumably to Riders of Terror. But instead of leaping into action, Santo goes full Science Corner by visiting the doctor (Carlos Agostí, Cardona Jr.’s Guns and Guts) for a sit-down lesson on leprosy. Per Cardona’s typical peso-pinching ways, the lepers’ sores look like each actor fell asleep into a plate of room-temperature ground round.

The issue with Santo vs. the Riders of Terror isn’t Santo’s anti-violence stance nor Santo’s unexplained existence in a prior century. It’s that the movie is as dull as the dirt beneath the horses’ collective clopping feet. End to end, it’s among the least engaging outings I’ve seen from the genre-hopping film series. If you do watch it, go for the longer version.

You read that correctly: longer. Because it adds three recently unearthed sex scenes. Similar to the magical switcheroo of Cardona’s Santo in the Treasure of Dracula into the NSFW El Vampiro y el Sexo via Russ Meyer-ian mammaries, a spicy version of Santo vs. the Riders of Terror exists under the unappetizing title of Los Leprosos y el Sexo. However, it mines a level or two of explicitness deeper than Treasure, especially in a fully nude makeout session ’round second base between the physically gifted Montiel and a lottery-lucky Silvestre. —Rod Lott

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Action

The Big Switch (1968)

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After a decade of directing such saucy shorts as For Men Only, Pete Walker finally cracked the hourlong barrier with the Carnaby Street crime caper The Big Switch.

One night, professional ad exec and unprofessional blue-eyed fuckboy John Carter (Sebastian Breaks, The Night Digger) leaves a London discotheque with a lovely bird (Erika Raffael, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush). They head to her pad for a proper shagging. Whilst Carter first goes ’round the corner to grab some cigs for post-coital smoking, she’s shot dead by a hitman hiding in her shower. Talk about a case of the blue balls, mate — when Carter finds her body, no wonder touches the gun left behind and vamooses without phoning the authorities.

Which is exactly what local gangster/club owner Mendez (Derek Alyward, Walker’s School for Sex) counts on. He blackmails Carter into a secret assignment with a beautiful model named Karen (Virginia Wetherell, Walker’s Man of Violence). Neither Karen nor Carter have a clue what they’re in for — and I ain’t telling, either — but they hope it doesn’t involve their deaths.

This sleek, quick pic is a real fanny-slapper, like a men’s pulp paperback come to life. On cheap paper, those hard-charging, easy-bedding heroes could trot through formulaic exploits dozens upon dozens of times. The Carter character could have fronted an equal amount of adventures, yet went no further.

I enjoyed Walker’s first true feature from start to its photo finish, a marvelously fun sequence that places its climactic chase and shootout within a boardwalk arcade and ghost train attraction. After the baddies are dispatched or discombobulated, the po-po show up and invite Karen and Cater to the station for a cuppa tea.

“Sounds groovy,” Karen says earlier in the film, to which Carter coldly replies, “It is.” They may as well be talking up The Big Switch. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Masters of the Universe (1987)

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While people re-evaluate their opinions of Masters of the Universe due to the new movie, I’ve always liked the property on-whole — not just the 1987 filmic adaptation, but the cartoons and toy line, too.

That being said, it’s been around 40 years since I last saw the movie, on broadcast television one afternoon because my parents wouldn’t pay for first-run movies, dollar movies, premium cable or, even worse, basic cable. Yeah, for many years, we were a broadcast-only family and, consequently, I missed out of most of the MOTU studio Cannon Group filmography. Chuck Norris be damned!

I remember it being “all right” for what it was. Which was okay, because most adaptations at the time were very fast and loose and needed serious legroom to stretch out their fantastical concepts. You dealt with it. In preparation for the 2026 remake, I rewatched the original and, I gotta say, with all the limitations like budget constraints and unworkable screenplay, it’s actually pretty good for what it was.

The movie starts with a Superman-like title crawl that prepares us for Skeletor (Frank Langella) and his baddies to take the mythical wasteland of Eternia. The only thing that can stop them is a cadre of cannon-fodder soldiers, allies like Teela and Man-at-Arms, and, of course, muscular himbo He-Man (Dolph Lundgren).

During the battle, they find li’l Gwildor (li’l Billy Barty) and his fantastical tool to travel though strange dimensions and the like. With Skeletor on their brawny tails, they go through the machine and accidently find themselves in … a fried-chicken restaurant in Anytown, U.S.A.

Here is where most people have a problem with the movie: He-Man is given a backseat to his own movie to Courteney Cox and her boring boyfriend and their relationship problems, most of which stem from her wanting to leave to the big city after the death of her parents.

During a tearful moment at their grave, Courteney and said boyfriend find the dimension-hopping instrument and naturally decide it’s a new Japanese synthesizer to fiddle with. This sends out a beacon to He-Man, but also to Skeletor, sadly. Monitored chaos ensues, with Skeletor marching down city streets as he gives He-Man laser-lashes on his bare bottom. Or something like that.

The movie doesn’t really break new cinematic ground, but the characterizations of both He-Man and Skeletor are virtually spot-on. I like these characters and even though the costumes aren’t exactly right, they work. Even Teela, Man-at-Arms, Evil Lyn and the barrage of low-rent, bargain-basement, completely original villains (like Lizard Man, Eyepatch Man and Guy with Old Lady Hair) are fine for the material. Even li’l Gwildor.

No, the movie’s real problem is this: It’s soooooooo boring.

The characters — especially the humans — have no depth or meaning. Truthfully, I would have been good with the earthbound story if they had given us more than two dead parents, a depressive complex and a bucket of chicken to go.

I assume the new Masters of the Universe movie helps alleviate that, but surprisingly, it’s not doing well with movie critics or movie fans, with most saying it’s too faithful to the toys and cartoons.

By the power of Grayskull, what more do you want from me, Hollywood? —Louis Fowler

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Thriller

The Manhandlers (1974)

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When her uncle is gunned down by the mob, Katie (the utterly ravishing Cara Burgess) inherits his business, the Loving Touch “massage parlor” offering “special handling,” if you get the drift. (And if you don’t, maybe the photo of W.C. Fields on the wall helps? No?)

Kicking the working girls and their johns to the curb, Katie vows to turn the fleapit brothel into a legit rubdown provider. For help, she recruits two gal pals: a sexually harassed secretary (Judith Brown, Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off) and a failed vaginal-spray commercial actress (Rosalind Miles, Shaft’s Big Score!). They reopen the place as Soft Touch — a terrible name, if you ask me, but their matching caveman-cheerleader outfits accentuate enough cleavage that I’m willing to let it be.

At any rate, the syndicate tries to muscle its grubby paws back into Katie’s honey pot of a biz, even enlisting the kingpin’s nephew (Vince Cannon, 1967’s Trackdown) to seduce her into submission. Each woman gets a romantic subplot, none more entertaining than Miles’ cherry-popping a virgin customer (Peter Fitzsimmons, 1987’s The Principal) so inexperienced, his response to her kiss is, “Sure was slippery, wasn’t it?” (Moments later, as she doffs her top, his agog line is, “Breasts!” And it’s stated not with joy, but with the shock one might reserve for stumbling across a corpse.)

Lee Madden, whose career would crater two films later with Ghost Fever, directs The Manhandlers with little to no verve, opting for about two angles unless it’s time for a sex scene, which suddenly sees him get all dark and arty. At least he knows the ol’ exploitation-pic axiom of when in need of production value, shoot the climax at an amusement park. Or perhaps he’d just already had his fill of paisley and wicker, and needed to get outside.

Cribbing elements from soaps and sitcoms to pad the running time, the movie rides the Ms. magazine wave of feminism by presenting its leads as take-no-guff ladies with sharp minds … except when they fail to comprehend the true intentions of the gregarious and gargantuan Texan bursting through their door as their inaugural patron, with all the hypothetical bluster of Joe Don Baker invading a Hometown Buffet on Fried Shrimp Fridays. Oh, well, girlbosses gotta start somewhere, as Burgess does here in her first film. Unfortunately for us, it’s also her last. —Rod Lott

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