All posts by Rod Lott

Death Promise (1977)

Bruceploitation veteran Charles Bonet (Fists of Bruce Lee, et al.) graduates to his own vehicle in the modern-day Death Promise as — now here’s a stretch — Charley. The young Puerto Rican is living his best life in the worst of Manhattan when the landlord of his shitbox apartment tries to force out all the tenants; when shutting off the electricity, gas and water doesn’t work, a dusty box of rats let loose in the halls is Plan B.

As Charley’s Pops (Bob O’Connell, The Sting II) learns, the blame is on the “landlord syndicate” dba Iguana Realty. With a multimillion deal at stake, Iguana needs to level the place. Pops pushes back, saying they’ll only be able to demolish “over my dead body” — a proclamation the syndicate takes as an open invite. After consulting his local dojo master, Ciabatta Shibata (Thompson Kao Kang, The Black Dragon), on next steps, Charley vows to take out all responsible for Pops’ murder.

With the help of his bell-bottom jeans and his best pal, Speedy (Speedy Leacock, he of the monogrammed karate uniform and an Afro somehow parted down the middle), Charley makes a list and checks it twice — five times, actually, as his targets include:
• a Cameron Mitchell-esque, cigar-chomping archery buff (Tony De Caprio, Wanda Whips Wall Street)
• a judge by day and philatelist by night (David Kirk, Putney Swope)
• your garden-variety sleazeball, complete with disgustache (one-and-doner Thom Kendell)
• a smack dealer (one-and-doner Abe Hendy)
• and their Hal Holbrook-ian, cane-wielding figurehead, Alden (Vincent Van Lynn, Fuzz), who, until he’s felled by ninja stars seemingly cut from a cardboard box in the alley, takes orders from a Blofeld-ian mystery man — complete with kitty cat

The only movie directed by one Robert Warmflash, Death Promise is dirtier-than-dirt cheap. From its look, sound and vibe, you might think it were made by Fist of Fear, Touch of Death crew members on a potty break. And yet, the martial arts performed by Bonet, the Latin Panther, are impressive. His inevitable showdown against Bob Long (The Super Weapon) and others is especially satisfying because of the feral, crazed noises his foes emit, and because Warmflash isn’t one to move the camera much, that inexperience actually plays as a strength since we can clearly see each fighter’s moves.

In other physical news, many scenes include two- and even three-man walking hugs. Take it as the urban trash classic’s harbinger of charm. As the catchy, soul-infused theme song bellows, it’s gonna blow your mind — that’s a promise! —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Only the Good Parts (2015)

WTFWhen people talk trailers, someone inevitably scoffs, “They show all the good parts.” As if that’s a bad thing? It certainly isn’t in the world that exists underneath mainstream motion pictures. From blaxploitation to sexploitation with a whole heap o’ horror in between, Film Trauma’s Only the Good Parts dishes out a feature’s worth of proof — 39 trailers in all, roughly organized in themes that include badass broads, possession pics, killer kids, Italian ick and sacrilegious sinners.

Like the pair of Colour Correct My Cock compilations, the general selection is noteworthy for overall naughtiness and alternative versions. For example, prepare those loins for the one-two pubic punch of the French trailer for Jess Franco’s Barbed Wire Dolls and the German trailer for Franco’s Love Camp. Those are followed by the Franco-adjacent rump romp Rolls Royce Baby, in which muse Lina Romay is so naked so often, you’ll have (to quote ourselves) “an image of her vagina so thorough and vivid, you could accurately draw it from memory.” Look for Franco’s less dirty-minded but no less nude Demoniac later in the program.

For other name-brand directors, we get Ted V. Mikels’ 10 Violent Women and Al Adamson’s Nurse Sherri, heavy on comparing itself to The Exorcist. A rung — if not an entire ladder — higher on the credibility ladder stands David Cronenberg’s The Brood and Larry Cohen’s creatively effective campaign for It’s Alive and It Lives Again, matched in advertising genius only by whoever wrote the tagline for the X-rated slasher Evil Come, Evil Go: “She’s a Man-Hating, Hymn-Humming Hell Cat!”

Finally, when it comes to the grail of coming attractions — I speak, of course, of obscurities — Only the Good Parts giveth and giveth. I wouldn’t swear on this in the court of law, but I don’t recall even hearing of the likes of The Johnsons, Alley Cat and Beware My Brethren. That goes quadruple for Parts’ greatest piece, She Did It His Way, a 1968 vehicle for seriously stacked stripper Kellie Everts filmed at the Miss Nude Universe Pageant. I’m still not sure what the movie’s about, but it looks life-changing.

All this plus Roger Moore as The Man Who Haunted Himself, the pencil-eraser nipples of Werewolf Woman, a whip-crackin’ Coffin Joe and so much more. And remember, “You’ve not seen all of Marilyn Chambers until you’ve seen Angel of Heat.” —Rod Lott

Get it at Film Trauma or Amazon.

Irezumi (1966)

WTFFrom Japan’s venerated Daiei studio, Yasuzô Masumura’s Irezumi wastes no time in setup, as young lovers Shinsuke and Otsuya run away from their village to elope against parental wishes. Shinsuke (Akio Hasegawa, Navy Yokosuka Prison) is a lowly apprentice to a pawnbroker; Otsuya (Ayako Wakao, Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo ) is that pawnbroker’s daughter, arranged to marry another man. To hide for the night, they stay at an inn run by Shinsuke’s friend Gonji (Fujio Suga, Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in the Land of Demons).

Happily ever after? Hardly. Gonji hires an assassin to kill Shinsuke and sells Otsuya to the wonderful world of prostitution. Her pimp (Asao Uchida, Samurai Reincarnation) orders a tattooist (Gaku Yamamoto, Zatoichi and the Chess Expert) to chloroform Otsuya and ink her back. He does just that, pouring his literal soul into an elaborate, shoulder-to-shoulder tat of an orb-weaving spider bearing a woman’s fanged head — the Peeing Calvin of the samurai era, I’m sure. When she awakes, he tells her the spider will gorge on the corpses of her lusty clients.

Boy, won’t the memoirs of this geisha be something else!

Although definitely categorizable as a “weird tale,” Irezumi never becomes what you expect it be, so don’t come looking for horror. Even with the obvious influence of Edgar Allan Poe — and, in turn, Edogawa Rampo, whose Blind Beast Masumura would adapt within three years — the stab-happy film stops shy of entering Kwaidan territory, instead taking the guise of melodrama and dipping itself into a vat of the perverse. Fantastical elements are lined up, but never called onto the field; the spider supposedly moves and grows with each kill, but Masumura ladles not even half a teaspoon of the supernatural. At least Hikaru Hayashi’s eerie musical score finally finds a visual match in the chilling penultimate shot.

Regardless of expectations, the vibrantly colored Irezumi is well worth the watch, as picturesque as Wakao is luminous. Her progressive performance provides the magic at which the script continually winks. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Deep Blood (1990)

Four boys who look they slam pogs at recess are sitting on the beach, wieners in hand. Unprovoked, an old Indian shaman shambles over and starts rambling about warriors in the sky, which isn’t weird at all, and tells them to make a blood pact. Whipping out their respective pocketknives, they do. Kids, welcome to the world of pediatric AIDS!

Er, I mean Deep Blood. Welcome to the world of Joe D’Amato’s Deep Blood.

Years later, those four boys are four young men, each with their own problems. One is grieving a dead mom. One has to attend a military academy. One attends college, but just wants to golf. One is named Miki. One has a dad named Shelby. I may have mixed them all up, which is only natural, seeing how D’Amato (Emanuelle in America) rushes into things. It doesn’t help that each man acts with the verve of a pre-fairy Pinocchio, but it also doesn’t matter. Besides, one of them succumbs to a shark on the loose comparatively early in the film, which leaves us only three people to discern.

The first shark attack is the best, as a rafting woman is eaten while her little kid watches emotionless from the shore, as if Mom were doing something as benign as cutting the crusts from his PBJ. It’s not that her death is depicted realistically; quite the opposite, it looks as if D’Amato just had someone underwater open a jar of Ragu. Here, as throughout Deep Blood whenever shot from the shark’s POV, we can clearly make out the side of the swimming pool in which D’Amato filmed in broad daylight.

The actual shark content of Deep Blood is rather shallow, especially when so much of its stock footage comes pilfered from another Italian Jaws rip-off, Great White. Like that 1981 romp, this one includes a helicopter scene, too, but here the whirlybird is employed only to let the ever-perspiring Krupke-esque sheriff (Tody Bernard, Hologram Man) berate our protagonists via megaphone for going shark-hunting: “Get back to the harbor immediately. We know what you’re up to. Shelby, you should be ashamed of yourself.”

Same goes for you, Joe! This is one of Italy’s shakiest sharksploitation efforts — and that’s saying something. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Escape Room (2017)

Setting a horror film inside an escape-room attraction is such a good idea, multiple movies have done it, including the 2019 theatrical hit Escape Room. Generically enough, two films from 2017 are simply titled Escape Room, too.

This is one of those — the one starring former Scream king Skeet Ulrich.

As Brice, Ulrich is the owner of the escape room Deranged, the logo of which adorns his ever-present black hoodie. With attendance having significantly cooled since the previous Halloween, Brice is desperate to get Deranged some new buzz to bring in the kids. Instead of offering free beer, booking a band, incorporating strippers or pursuing any valid idea, he goes browsing for antiques. At his first stop, he immediately gets worked up over a skull box behind the counter, but the shop owner (Sean Young, 1984’s Dune) says it’s not for sale, because it’s one of the world’s most cursed objects, what with housing a demon and all.

One stolen skull box later, Deranged welcomes new customers in Cutout Bin Brad Pitt (Randy Wayne, Hellraiser: Judgment) and Junior Varsity Danny Masterson (Matt McVay, TV’s Lovecraft Country) as a pair of total horror bros. The boys have brought their less-enthused girlfriends (Hometown Killer’s Ashley Gallegos and Animal Among Us’ Christine Donlon) who, in real life, would not only be attending Wine Wednesdays, but would be with other guys.

As they try to uncover clues to unlock the door within 60 minutes, Brice watches from the comfort of his office, pumping his fists whenever they jump in response to a chintzy scare effect, as if to say, “Crushing it, dude!” Chained to the wall of the escape room is a sack-headed employee our foursome christens with the franchise-ready name “Stitchface” (Taylor Piedmonte, Mimesis). Unbeknownst to them, Stitchface has been possessed by the demon from the skull box; this only becomes apparent when he starts stabbing them to death while they attempt to solve puzzles. As Billy Joel put it, one-two-three-four-PRESH-SHURE!

How’s that for a premise? If you answered “about two levels beyond what I’m willing to believe,” you clearly stole my notes. For his first feature, writer/director Peter Dukes demonstrates skill in keeping the disposable cast’s hourlong challenge to more or less just that. Dukes’ decision may be strategic to stretch the running time, as the ridiculously needless Middle East prologue certainly suggests. Either way, that doesn’t make the movie interesting; watching the customers think aloud in real time about shapes and colors amounts to a taxing sit. The effect is like watching someone play a video game, in that at least someone appears to be having fun — it just isn’t you. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.