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All posts by Rod Lott
College Girls Confidential (1968)
On the basis of College Girls Confidential, I clearly went about my higher education all wrong, as my four-year stint at a university was nothing like this. Then again, I didn’t pledge a fraternity, whereas sexploitation specialist Stephen C. Apostolof (Orgy of the Dead) sets most of the black-and-white tomfoolery within the walls of one: Lambda Sigma Delta, for the record. (For those slow on the draw, that shortens to LSD and passes for cleverness.)
But first, Professor Bryce (Sean O’Hara) has eyes (among other parts) for his female biology students. (We know this because of the “Boing!” sound effect Apostolof employs.) One of those young women is failing the class and, therefore, dooming graduation, so a fellow coed encourages her to use her coochie-coo to sway Bryce into passing her. She does; he accepts; and the following conversation takes place in his office as clothes are shed:
Bryce: “You are a lovely biological specimen.”
Clueless Student: “Oh, professor, what a tiger you are! I didn’t know that advanced lab required so many experiments!”
The rest of Confidential — some prints drop that word from the title like trou — is one big-breast fest that interprets the “big man on campus” label anew. A guy rolls around on a bed with two busty babes, who then go downstairs to put their goodies in the face of LSD’s newest pledge. Apparently, this passes for initiation. (What, no latent elephant walk or circle jerk with a saltine?) A real happenin’ shindig is thrown, with topless girls bouncing around everywhere, and one dude taking a bad enough trip to end up in the hospital where he is admonished by a real tsk-tsk of a doctor.
Only at this tail end does Apostolof seem to condemn the behavior of the student body upon which he has capitalized in the preceding hour; you won’t buy his sudden about-face, but you’ll certainly enjoy it. Go looking for skin, not plot, as the characters have about as much need for identities as they do belts. —Ed Donovan
The Visitor (1979)
With only five helming credits to his name, Guilio Paradisi — aka the Americanized Michael J. Paradise — had an undistinguished career as a director, mostly of comedies long forgotten, if ever recipients of attention. Luckily for us, in the center of that short list stands The Visitor, a way-out blend of science fiction and horror. While Paradisi displays as artistic a touch in the Italian-made mind-melter as the budget allowed, the true guiding hand appears to belong to producer Ovidio G. Assonitis, whose story credit fits well within the weirdo vibe of his screenplays for Beyond the Door and Piranha Part Two: The Spawning.
In Atlanta (as in Georgia, the titles make clear), a precocious, pigtailed and potty-mouthed girl named Katy Collins (Paige Conner, Fast Food) lives in a spacious, mid-century-modern house complete with a front-projection, big-screen television on which she plays Pong. Katy looks a lot like The Exorcist‘s Regan MacNeil, but behaves more like The Omen‘s Damien Thorn. For starters, she telekinetically causes the basketball to explode in the final second of a pivotal pro game; later, at her own 8th birthday party, she “accidentally” shoots her mother, Barbara (Joanne Nail, Switchblade Sisters), with a gun, paralyzing the utterly lovely woman from the waist down.
Barbara’s delicate condition is good news for boyfriend Ray (Lance Henriksen, Alien vs. Predator), the hoops team owner tasked by some super-secret, super-wealthy organization to marry the woman so that he can put a baby in her. See, although Barbara doesn’t know it, her womb is special in that it can “give birth to children with immense powers.” Even kreepy Katy encourages Mom to do some cushion-pushin’ so Ray can dump his seed and give her a little brother.
More insanity is to be plumbed from The Visitor, including vengeful ice skaters, flocks of killer birds and interdimensional warriors who work for Jesus Christ (an unbilled Franco Nero, Django). Legendary director John Huston (The African Queen) plays one of those angels and is just one of many old-age Hollywood personalities taking a lire-converted paycheck, including Glenn Ford (1978’s Superman) as a detective, Mel Ferrer (Nightmare City) and The Wild Bunch director Sam Peckinpah as doctors, and Shelley Winters (Lolita) as a new nanny who, despite being Caucasian and far from indentured, likes to sing “Shortnin’ Bread.”
This interesting casting is right in line with the ambitious (but not always successful) story’s hallucinogenic visuals and narrative hysterics that forever threaten to go into panic mode. So insane it should be committed, The Visitor isn’t worth watching once. It requires multiple viewings. —Rod Lott
Scream Park (2012)
Once upon a time, aspiring filmmakers wanted to make movies. Today, it seems they only want to make one kind: the slasher film. That would be fine if the young pups came equipped with a new twist to offer; barring that, I’d settle for capable execution (no pun intended). In Scream Park, neophyte writer/director/producer Cary Hill obviously has the subgenre’s recipe in pocket, but doesn’t necessarily pay attention to the proper amount of ingredients. Therefore, it comes out of the oven hardly resembling what it was intended to honor.
Due to dwindling (read: nonexistent) attendance, the Fright Land theme park has filed for bankruptcy and is going out of business. On its final night, the high schoolers who work there conspire to hold an after-hours liquor party, with their butt-cut-haired manager (Steve Rudzinski, Everyone Must Die!) supervising. Making their young lives miserable are a killer in a raggedy burlap-sack mask and a killer in a more fashionable creepy-bird mask. It’s the former, however, who is more creative, what with shoving the post-coital girl’s face into the boiling grease of a deep fryer. No more fries for you, hon!
And no fun for us! With an actual amusement park in Pennsylvania as his setting, Hill makes good use of the merry-go-round, roller coaster, haunted house, etc. in the various kills, and poor use of Doug Bradley, the Hellraiser series‘ Pinhead, who cameos as the park owner who proposes a tough-to-swallow solution for turning his business around. It’s even too incredulous to ask of an audience — even one just waiting for the next onscreen slaying.
Those grisly scenes are pulled off without any panache. Free of scares or suspense, Scream Park is flat and ponderous, with some sleepy performances to match. As is the case with the majority of low- to no-budget slasher homages these days — hitting DVD within a few months’ time frame were the near-interchangeable HazMat, Murder University, Bloody Homecoming, Sorority Party Massacre and the very similar Killer Holiday — the order of the day is wasted creative force: no imagination, all imitation. That, to me, is depressing. —Rod Lott
Horror of the Blood Monsters (1970)
Even compared to Al Adamson’s other cheap films, Horror of the Blood Monsters is shameless. A patchwork stitching of new scenes by Adamson; a 1965 Filipino oddity titled Tagani; Hal Roach’s 1940 classic, One Million B.C.; and at least three other flicks, it should be called Horror of the Stock Footage. No matter how many movies incorporated, it would not make sense.
Its opening would have viewers think they’re being presented with a modern-day tale of vampires in an urban setting. Don’t be silly — that’s merely a prologue stuck atop the mission of American spaceship XB-13 to explore the heretofore “unknown solar system” discovered by Dr. Rynning (John Carradine, seen that same year in two other Adamson pictures, Five Bloody Graves and Hell’s Bloody Devils). En route, the crew members are thrown to the floor by space lightning, prompting the “funny” one to crack, “Next time I’m going to go Greyhound and leave the driving to them.”
XB-13 lands on a prehistoric planet that, depending upon where one looks, appears in a top-to-bottom tint of red, blue or green. (This is because Tagani was shot in black and white, so Adamson solved the conundrum with the “color effects” miracle known as Spectrum-X.) While Dr. Rynning stays behind due to risk of coronary, the crew traverses the area and witnesses such sights as primitive men fighting, lizards wrestling and little bat-people swooping through the air.
Unfortunately, most of such scenes appear in two bursts, leaving narrative stretches as dry and barren as the planet’s desert landscape. To pad further, Adamson occasionally cuts back to ground control, where two technicians take time out from XB-13’s emergency situation to boff. Yet even sex is boring when it’s had in Blood Monsters. Let’s put it this way: When the DVD started to pixelate and skip forward in snatches of double-digit seconds, I did not mind. —Rod Lott