All posts by Rod Lott

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The Tower (1985)

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Shot on video for Canadian television by the catchpenny production company known as Emmeritus, The Tower has nearly as many establishing shots of the building in question as its home country has provinces. According to those shots, the titular site varies in size between “skyscraper” to “office complex,” with only one thing for certain: It’s a building, eh.

Written and directed by Ghostkeeper’s Jim Makichuk, the movie opens with two men discussing possible problems with the tower’s safety, considering three people have vanished inexplicably from its floors of late. One of the guys declaratively states twice, “There is nothing wrong with the security of the Sandawn Building.” You know what that means: There is totally something wrong with the security of the Sandawn Building! And you, the viewer, stands to benefit.

Touted for its energy efficiency, the place is run by a $30 million computer system named LOLA (disembodily voiced by Monique Verlaan), developed by the blinky-eyed, mumble-mouthed boy genius Watson (Alfred Topes, punchable). What Watson somehow fails to notice is that LOLA has discovered sweet, sweet sentience, acquiring increasingly higher reserves of power via murder. After scanning various workers for potential heat gain, she absorbs them whole when they flip an electrical switch, press an elevator button, fuck against a copier, what have you.

On this particular Friday night, a soap opera’s worth of characters are trapped and in danger of LOLA vaporizing them for their BTUs, including:
• the dorky nightwatchman (George West) and his incredibly sexy girlfriend (Zuzana Struss, sexy) who sexily drops by for a sexy dip in the top floor’s pool;
• a past-his-prime ad man (Ray Paisley, Cold Creek Manor) and the sassy new copywriter (Kenner Ames, Canadian Bacon) working overtime on a Magic Marker posterboard campaign for something called Sparkle;
• the secretary (Jackie Wray) whose single-mom status will not surprise you when you see her hair;
• lovers (Jennifer Cornish and Paul Miklas) who plot to kidnap Old Man Sandawn (George T. Cunningham, Emmeritus’ Shock Chamber), who dips his ink in the company well because he’s married to a frowny crone (Dorothy Clifton, Emmeritus’ The Hijacking of Studio 4).

There’s also a black stripper/video vixen (Charlene Richards, Emmeritus’ Mark of the Beast) who legitimately wants to bed Watson, but we don’t have time to get into that.

Not to be confused with 2012’s Korean Towering Inferno rip-off or the 1993 Paul Reiser vehicle (although that Fox prime-time pic bears a plot similar enough to raise eyebrows) or any of many, many films bearing the same name, The Tower stands tall on its own. What other movie would show you computer graphics continually drawn and re-drawn, as if Makichuk were squeezing every penny out of the license for some AutoCAD shareware knock-off? Would have the balls to lure an elderly woman to her grave with the promise of a feather boa? Would dare present the same shot three times of two ladies climbing down a flight of stairs? Would stop itself to have a character literally look up the definition of “snake” … and then share the results?

As terribly dated as it is terribly acted, this Tower harnesses the power of pure entertainment — often accidental, but thoroughly genial. These days, that’s enough. —Rod Lott

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Action

Death Race: Beyond Anarchy (2018)

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If the Fast and Furious movies are the cool jocks who get good grades and homecoming honors, then the Death Race films, Universal’s other gas-powered cash cow, are the near-invisible stoner kids who spend breaks between classes smoking outside. And this one, Death Race: Beyond Anarchy, tries so little, he flunks woodshop.

In this fourth and fetid entry, the titular competition now takes place within the walls of The Sprawl, an 88,000-acre home to 220,000 hardened criminals. You do the math (because the target audience sure can’t). Metal-masked Frankenstein (Velislav Pavlov, Lake Placid vs. Anaconda) may be the prison sport’s reigning hero, but he’s no longer our main character — hell, he’s no longer the good guy, which seems pretty counterproductive, but whatev. That task falls to a not-up-to-it Zach McGowan (Dracula Untold) as Connor Gibson, a black-ops specialist sent undercover to take down Frankenstein and the race. This requires Connor to earn a contestant’s slot via a preliminary game of Capture the Keys, whose officials do not want “to see some MMA-submission bullshit.”

Fans of the previous Death Race pictures are bound to express disappointment with where director Don Michael Paul (Half Past Dead) and co-writer Tony Giglio (S.W.A.T.: Under Siege) take their first turn at the direct-to-video franchise’s wheel: to something resembling fanfic, built upon the visual equivalent of STDs and self-pleasing dialogue like “Well, ain’t this a rainbow of fuckin’ ugly?” So skeevy and scuzzy is this “effort” that the returning character played by Danny Trejo (L.A. Slasher) appears to want little to do with it, spending most of his runtime literally watching the action from bed!

Early in, someone remarks that it doesn’t matter who’s behind Frankenstein’s mask, because duh, it’s a mask. However, Paul proves that theory untrue — Luke Goss, we hardly knew ye! — and not just because the mask looks positively Predatory this time around. The previous entries may be junk, but they are fun junk; this grimy, slimy one forgets and/or forgoes the fun. In its place? Decapitations, misogyny, face piercings, sub-Slipknot metal, Purge-level beatdowns, talk of taxes, more misogyny, dramatic rain fighting, Danny Glover, motocross, ziplining and some MMA-submission bullshit. —Rod Lott

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Horror

Terror at Red Wolf Inn (1972)

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One of the more frequent robocalls I receive promises a “free” fabulous vacation as a thank-you for recently “staying at one of our resorts! Press ‘1’ to be connected to an operator …”

Even if I had stayed at any resorts of late, which I have not, I’m smart enough not to fall for this scam. My teenage daughter, on the other hand? She fell for it. She pressed “1.”

I tell you this because, God love her, my daughter is basically Regina, the main character of Terror at Red Wolf Inn. As played with total golly-gee-whiziness by Linda Gillen (Black Rain), Regina is a college student majoring in advanced gullibility. In her dormitory mail slot lands a letter informing her she’s won a trip to the site of this film’s title. Despite having entered no sweepstakes, she gleefully accepts the sketchy invitation — made even more suspect by its must-leave-today catch — and celebrates her good fortune by exclaiming to all fellow dorm residents within earshot, “I’m a winner, everybody! I won something!” (Alas, if only the prize were a brain-to-mouth filter.)

The Red Wolf Inn is a quaint bed-and-breakfast establishment run by the kind, doddering old couple Henry (Arthur Space, The Bat People) and Evelyn Smith (Mary Jacobson, Audrey Rose). Per the inn’s guests already there, Evelyn is “the world’s greatest cook,” to which Regina replies, absent of irony or sarcasm, “I’m the world’s greatest eater!” (Stupidity loves company, as a guest played by The Centerfold Girls’ Janet Wood introduces herself to Regina with a smile and these three words: “I’m a model!”)

Evelyn’s secret recipe? Well, it’s hardly a secret when the poster gives it away, not that a delicate touch ever was listed on the film’s call sheet. The surprise of Terror at Red Wolf Inn is not its cannibalistic theme, but how much of this B-grade obscurity will remind you of a certain drive-in classic that arrived two years later: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Like Tobe Hooper did on that terrifying touchstone, director Bud Townsend (Nightmare in Wax) milks his movie’s most unsettling moments out of its dinner scenes, with rib-chewing, soup-slurping, lip-licking, corn-on-the-cob-smacking mastication depicted in revolting close-ups.

Fish is also on the menu, albeit when the Smiths’ weirdo grandson, Baby John (John Neilson, Sharks’ Treasure) unleashes some serious rage on a baby shark he’s reeled in. After hitting the life out of it on the beach, he turns to Regina and offers the only logical explanation for such a bonkers display of unjustified animal cruelty: “I think I love you.” Being as dumb as the piece of wood Baby John beat Baby Shark against, yes, of course she’s smitten.

The events within The Terror at Red Wolf Inn may not exist on our plane of reality, but I’m glad the film does; it’s a bit different from the horror norm, including by having its token black character (future Oscar nominee Margaret Avery, The Color Purple) be the smartest character. Although it possesses a devilish sense of humor, it is not a comedy, much less a parody as some critics have claimed. Now, if its innards contained the literal wink at the audience that closes the credits, that’d be a different story. As is, Townsend’s spookhouse of a picture straddles the Hollywood hagsploitation efforts that had been in vogue and the teen slashers that were about to be, and gives you a hearty slap on the back to let you know it’s all in good fun. And to quote Regina, “I love parties!” —Rod Lott

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Comedy

The Wrecking Crew (1968)

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Dean Martin plays Matt Helm (or vice versa) for the fourth and final time in The Wrecking Crew, the most lackadaisical of the series, yet mojo-charging all the same. Sixties spy spoofs are the true chicken soup for the 21st-century battered soul.

In Denmark, a billion bucks of American gold bars get poached from a train headed for London. It’s all the doing of Count Contini (Nigel Green, The Skull), whose name sounds like a brand of low-cost marinara, whose head resembles a salt-and-peppered Will Ferrell, and whose voice pronounces “schedule” as “shed-ule” a lot, so you know he’s a pompous ass. So that news of the heist doesn’t spread and send the world’s financial markets into a friggin’ death spiral, the United States’ Intelligence Counter Espionage agency (ICE for short) makes the bullion’s retrieval a one-man job. The man is Helm, natch, and he’s given only 48 hours to complete the task.

Pulled away from a sex picnic with his harem of “Slaymates,” Helm immediately is briefed and jetted to Copenhagen, but he’s not deployed without mission-aiding mechanisms. In fact, he’s given three: a camera that shoots a flume of knockout gas, handkerchiefs that explode upon impact when thrown and, deadliest of all, Sharon Tate! The Valley of the Dolls doll exhibits considerable comic flair as ICE-assigned assistant Freya, although director Phil Karlson’s gambit to shield her beauty from audiences is laughable, for reasons not involving pratfalls and one-liners. Carlson (absent from the series since, um, helming the first one, 1966’s The Silencers) even pulls the ol’ trick of equating glasses and hair buns with frumpiness, thereby asking us to believe Tate is beautiful and/or sexy only when she Rapunzels her hair, and shakes and shimmies her rear in extreme close-up.

Giving Tate a run for her moneymaker are a never-more-hourglassy Elke Sommer (House of Exorcism) as Contini’s partner in crime, Tina Louise (SST: Death Flight) in a largely wordless appearance and Nancy Kwan (Wonder Women) as — hold your horses — Yu Rang.

A running gag has Helm croon parodic ditties in his head upon meeting each lovely. (A sample: “If your sweetheart puts a pistol in her bed / You’ll do better sleeping with your Uncle Fred.”) Another running gag has Helm being unable to do the deed with any of them, but certainly not for a lack of trying. Nearly every line of dialogue Martin utters to the fairer sex is not just dripping in innuendo, but also rolled in crushed Rohypnol; in today’s climate, any one of them would earn him a write-up from ICE’s HR department, which would have put the brakes on the secret agent’s career. In real life, the 007-a-go-go Helm movies were put out to pasture after The Wrecking Crew’s release. The closing credits promise Matt Helm would return in The Ravagers. He did not. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

Shark Kill (1976)

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Jaws wasn’t even a year old when NBC debuted Shark Kill on May 20, 1976, making the telefilm likely the first contestant in the still-ongoing sharksploitation sweepstakes. And that’s about all William A. Graham’s (Beyond the Bermuda Triangle) cash-in has going for it.

At an oil rig under repair in the Pacific Ocean, young marine biologist Rick Dayner (Phillip Clark, 1982’s Alone in the Dark) spots (stock footage of) a Great White shark, but blue-collar boss Banducci (Midnight Run’s Richard Foronjy, the Luis Guzmán of his day) won’t have any of it, claiming the kid just “sees sardines,” and orders his men to keep working. Dayner is adamant: “Mister, I know what I saw!”

Eventually, they listen to him … but only after the (stock footage of the) shark eats one worker and amputates the leg of another. The latter fellow’s brother, Cabo Mendoza (Richard Yniguez, The Deadly Tower), joins Dayner on a $20,000 bounty hunt for the shark. When Dayner answers Mendoza’s question about the size of their target (about 15 feet), we know this is a BFD because the music score wakes up just long enough to punctuate Mendoza’s face pause with a “dun-dun-dunnnnn!”

Scheider and Dreyfuss, they ain’t. Hell, Lorraine Gary and Mario Van Peebles, they ain’t. I’m sure I would have loved it at age 5. —Rod Lott

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