All posts by Rod Lott

Action

Dixie Dynamite (1976)

Leave a comment

In the Deep South, because where else, Tom Eldridge (Mark Miller, Blonde in Bondage) runs a moonshine business on his 7.5-acre property … until the town sheriff (Christopher George, Mortuary) shows up to throw a wrench in the works. As Tom panics and tries to flee Johnny Law, he’s shot dead by a lummox of a deputy (Wes Bishop, who wrote and produced the film).

Daddy’s death is the first domino in a string of troubles in motion for Tom’s two daughters, Dixie (Jane Anne Johnstone) and Patsy (Kathy McHaley). They face eviction from their home, thanks to the local greedy banker (R.G. Armstrong, Evilspeak), and can’t find a job — cue the montage of the ladies walking past multiple “NO HELP WANTED” signs. When close family pal Mack (Warren Oates, Stripes) fails to win the $1,000 grand prize at The Moto-Cross Big Race — seriously, that’s what it’s called — the Eldridge girls decide to resort to the ol’ standby. No, not prostitution: revenge.

A knee-jerk reaction would be amazement that Dixie Dynamite works as well as it does. But Bishop and frequent director Lee Frost made B-movie magic almost every time at bat in their long and fruitful partnership, which included horrors that shocked (Race with the Devil), schlocked (The Thing with Two Heads) and stripped (House on Bare Mountain). This proto-Dukes of Hazzard entry into the hicksploitation contender is no different. In fact, it’s one of the better ones, comfortably forming a wheel-centric companion to Chrome and Hot Leather, Frost/Bishop’s 1971 biker pic.

Plus, with Oates as something of a third-lead ringer, Frost/Bishop were able to anchor the film with more talent than the duo’s lesser efforts. If Dixie Dynamite holds any sort of surprise, well, it actually has two. The first is that one of the racing cyclists is Hollywood legend Steve McQueen; don’t bother looking for him, because he’s hiding uncredited underneath a helmet. The other, larger surprise is not that Johnstone and McHaley had zero movie credits before this, but that they had zero afterward, as both women are radiant. The screen clearly adores them, making their vanishing act from it all the more criminal. And speaking of, the final reel’s heist sequence cleverly pulls a Quick Change/Inside Man trick years before either had the chance. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Kitchen Sink

The Fiend of Dope Island (1961)

Leave a comment

WTFSomewhere in the Caribbean, psychotic pot farmer and arms dealer Charlie Davis (Bruce Bennett, The Alligator People) is The Fiend of Dope Island, who physically abuses the native slaves he calls his employees. (Comparisons to Michael Fassbender’s Oscar-nominated role in 12 Years a Slave are not out of line.) Meanwhile, right-hand man David (Robert Bray, My Gun Is Quick) tries to right his boss’ wrongs. Besides being the only white guy on the payroll, David stands out for wearing a yacht captain’s hat as if he’s the top half missing from an “& Tennille” marquee.

One day at the isle’s bamboo-walled cantina (and the movie’s primary set), in sashays Glory La Verne (Queen of Outer Space’s Tania Velia, billed here as “the Yugoslavian bombshell”), a shapely firecracker Charlie has hired to perform hoochie-coochie dances for his viewing pleasure to the point of literal exhaustion for her — a weakened state making it all the easier for him to attempt rape.

Although directorial duties fell to oater specialist Nate Watt (Hopalong Cassidy Returns, et al.), the script was co-written by Bennett, who sure gave himself a meaty part as the antagonist. Seeing him bark orders — each punctuated with the crack of his trusty whip — is one thing, but Bennett is at his ham-hock best during the dance numbers, maniacally laughing and feverishly bongoing his way into an orgiastic frenzy as Glory shakes her groove thang. Dope Island may be nothing more than a melodrama, but his Reefer Madness-styled overdelivery infuses the picture with a nutty flavor, kicking it over into the stuff of many a men’s adventure magazine cover. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Martial Arts

DOA: Dead or Alive (2006)

Leave a comment

Finally, one of mankind’s greatest mysteries is solved by the film DOA: Dead or Alive: What would happen if a ninja princess, a leggy cat burglar and a star-spangled-swimsuit-clad pro wrestler were invited to join a high-stakes martial-arts competition on a hidden island?

The answer: Kicking.

Based on a video game franchise, the Maxim-rific DOA sat on the shelf for a number of years before quietly receiving a theatrical release. That suggests the flick is unwatchable; in truth, it does exactly what it sets out to do: titillate.

Kasumi (Devon Aoki, Sin City) is the aforementioned princess who leaves her Asian homeland to avenge the rumored death of her brother. Because she abandons her people, she is pursued by an assassin with pink hair.

Christie (Holly Valance, Taken) has just pulled off a lucrative heist when she’s questioned by police in her hotel room. She manages to fight them off while naked, simultaneously grabbing a falling gun as she puts on a bra.

And Tina (Jaime Pressly, Torque) is a beer-guzzling redneck wrassler who’s just defended her yacht from a band of pirates.

All three lithesome ladies are recruited — via electronic throwing-star invitations, naturally — to be among a handful of combatants in the winner-takes-all “DOA” competition, which promises a $10 million prize. No one said this makes any sense, but it all happens over the course of the film’s first 10 minutes, so at least it wastes no time.

On the island, a squeaky-voiced roller skater introduces them to Dr. Victor Donovan (Eric Roberts, Sharktopus), the mastermind behind the games. Yes, he’s evil, with the sport merely a cover for his greedy, misguided machinations.

With snot-slick visuals and leaden attempts at slapstick comedy, DOA: Dead or Alive plays like a marriage — or at least a one-night stand — between Mortal Kombat and TV’s Charlie’s Angels. It’s the kind of movie that keeps cutting away from a karate-laden fight scene to a women’s beach volleyball match because … well, hey, bikinis!

At least DOA wears its T-and-A intentions on its thong strap, not pretending to be anything but a made-for-cable-level exercise in action and eye candy. The DOA logo even appears full-screen at several points, handily suggesting where commercials could be inserted for airings on Spike TV.

It’s mindless, sure, but it cannot be accused of being boring. The actresses are easy on the optical orbs, and up to all the upskirt wire-fu that director Corey Yuen (The Transporter) has in store for them. For the viewer, that also means bright colors, quick cuts, slow motion and other shiny things to keep you entertained while dissuading you from applying logic.

If the shenanigans leave you in the mood for a much smarter film centered around three lovely ladies who know how to throw a punch, rent 2002’s So Close, also directed by Yuen. It may not have a wisecracking black guy in a shark-fin mohawk, but you can’t win them all. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Thriller

Zipperface (1992)

Leave a comment

For her heroic efforts in a hostage situation, the Heather Langenkampy policewoman Lisa Ryder (Donna Adams) is immediately promoted to detective after shooting the crazed gunman dead — and I do mean immediately, as she and her fellow California cops are still at the crime scene!

Her first assignment is to find out who is behind Palm City’s string of prostitute murders. As viewers, we know who’s to blame … kinda: Zipperface, a dude decked out in S&M leather, head to toe. Imagine if the Gimp from Pulp Fiction got his own spinoff movie. That’s what Zipperface is — and also more fun to say than watch.

Ryder’s investigation leads her to local photographer Michael Walker (Jonathan Mandell, California Hot Wax), who’d be creepy even if he didn’t sport a butt cut. Despite being on the authorities’ radar for the serial killings, Walker thinks it’s a good idea to lure Ryder into posing for risqué photos by telling her he’s shooting an “Women of Valor” exhibition for an upcoming gallery show. Despite a rep as a top-notch member of law enforcement, she not only falls for it, but falls head over heels for the goob. Sigh, ain’t love grand?

Directed by Mansour Pourmand (not that that means anything), Zipperface plays like the average Skinemax erotic thriller with below-average lighting. In her lone film credit, Ryder does okay for a neophyte, but the romance forced upon her could curdle milk. The movie is sleazy enough to make one believe the scenes of Zipperface assaulting hookers were Pourmand’s top priority, and anything in between was gravy, however ill-whisked.

Lending credence to this theory is that when Ryder’s William Devane-esque partner (David Clover, Kentucky Fried Movie) unmasks Zipperface, he more or less exclaims, “Hey, it’s that guy you probably don’t remember, but he’s related to that prominent character you do!” Otherwise, the viewer would be confused, since Day-Job Zipperface basically shows up in one scene early in the film — a cheat as egregious as the denouement of the first Saw. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Horror

El Vampiro y el Sexo (1969)

Leave a comment

Leave it to Mexploitation king René Cardona Sr. (Night of the Bloody Apes) to deliver the single Santo movie with something the other four dozen or so do not have: sex. It’s even in the title: El Vampiro y el Sexo.

Although a nuclear physicist by trade, Dr. Sepulveda (Carlos Agostí, Guns and Guts) dabbles in the metaphysical. And who should partner with him on such studies but that noted scholar, Santo (Santo), lookin’ sharp in a two-piece business suit and, yes, his sparkly wrestling mask. To Dr. Sepulveda’s assembled guests, Santo discusses his theory of “dematerialization,” by which people can be sent back to their previous lives, and — oh, hey, he just so happens to have built a reincarnation time machine in hopes of doing just that. He just needs a willing female to test it, because why jeopardize a dude, right?

So off goes the doc’s daughter (Noelia Noel, Carnival of Crime) to the tail end of the 19th century, when she encountered/encounters none other than Count Dracula (Aldo Monti, The Book of Stone). Actually, he introduces himself as Alcuard; it takes her peers a hot minute to realize that’s the backward spelling of Dracula, once a professor has the outta-nowhere idea to put crayon to paper and hold it up to a mirror.

Meanwhile, back at the lab in present day, Santo somehow watches all this unfold on a TV, as big nerd/beta male Perico (Alberto Rojas) earns his stripes as a comic-relief sidekick by swallowing a whistle.

To address the “sexo” portion of the title, El Vampiro y el Sexo is the spicy version of the mild Santo en el Tesoro de Drácula (aka Santo in the Treasure of Dracula). Repressed since its limited theatrical release, el Sexo contains several minutes of Playboy-style nudity. Dracula clearly has a type: Russ Meyer’s. His victims, whom he feels up before biting their necks (“My teeth have inoculated your flesh!”), are so top-heavy, they’re anachronistic.

So much of so many mamacitas is on parade that for a while, you may forget you’re watching a Santo movie. When the inevitable wrestling scenes arrive, viewers may be whiplashed back into reality. It’s not your fault. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.