All posts by Rod Lott

Mystery

The Case of the Bloody Iris (1972)

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casebloodyirisBruno Nicolai’s theme to The Case of the Bloody Iris is a jaunty, joyful number I never tired of hearing, even when it is not appropriate to the flavor of the scene, which is to say each and every one of its appearances, opening credits included. I hardly minded.

The film itself hits another of my pleasure centers: high-rise settings. In this case, it’s an apartment building home to a couple of recent tenant murders committed by a man in black — and that includes his hat and panty-hosed head, making him look like the DC Comics character The Question, if dipped in India ink. One poor woman was offed in the elevator; the next, tied up and drowned in her own bathtub.

casebloodyiris1On the plus side: Hey, ladies, a vacancy! And in moves Jennifer (Edwige Fenech, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key), a lovely young model trying to escape her abusive ex. Making a play for her is the building’s architect (George Hilton, I Am Sartana, Trade Your Guns for a Coffin), a real gentleman, but a real wuss when it comes to the sight of blood. However, when Jennifer’s daffy roommate (Paola Quattrini) becomes the killer’s next victim, the architect is offered up as one of many likely suspects.

For once, the mystery’s solution was not startlingly obvious to me, but maybe I was too busy soaking up the film’s groovy, dreamy visuals to notice. Alternately known by the utterly incredible title of What Are Those Strange Drops of Blood Doing on Jennifer’s Body?, this giallo from Giuliano Carnimeo (Exterminators of the Year 3000) is eye-popping in its Pop Art veneer, its moments of shock and its leading lady, who has the worst luck in keeping her clothes from being torn by the greedy hands of others. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

Chatterbox (1977)

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chatterboxChatterbox wastes no time with its setup, so neither shall I. This infamous comedy begins when pretty Penny (Candice Rialson, Hollywood Boulevard) discovers she has a talking, singing vagina.

Its first words come right after Penny has had sex with her boyfriend, Ted (Perry Bullington), about whose bedroom performance the vagina complains. Ted’s immediate reaction is anger, prompting the vagina to chide, “Can’t you handle a little wisecrack?”

I could not.

chatterbox1While Virginia — as the speech-imbued genitals are dubbed — goes from medical discovery to the talk-show circuit, the viewer is assaulted with essentially the same joke told dozens of times. Worse, while the movie moves fast from scene to scene, the proceedings are slow. The material might make a great sketch, but as a full feature, it feels interminably humorless. When the end arrives, it does so with a threat of a gender-flipped companion piece, eventually carried out by 1988’s equally patience-taxing Me and Him.

Director Tom DeSimone (Reform School Girls) should thank his lucky stars the radiant Rialson agreed to star in such drivel — nonpornographic, it should be noted — as the put-upon salon employee whose parts interfere with her customer service, but who knows what he was thinking by casting comedian Rip Taylor as her boss. Putting Rip Taylor in a movie about a vagina (no matter its skills) is like adding bacon bits to a bowl of Froot Loops. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

Grand Slam (1967)

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grandslamFreshly retired from a school in Rio de Janeiro, history professor James Anders (Edward G. Robinson, see?) will not go gently into gardening and bingo games. Instead, he returns to New York with a proposition for a childhood chum who’s grown into an über-wealthy corporate criminal (Adolfo Celi, Thunderball): Let’s steal $10 million in diamonds from the place across the street where I used to work, whaddayasay?

Twice a year on the dot, as Anders has noted across three decades of observation, such shimmering loot arrives for lock-up. The upcoming transaction happens to coincide with Rio’s annual Carnival celebration, which could provide welcome distraction for a team of hired experts to carry out the mother of all heists. One of the young guns is an arrogant prick played by real-life arrogant prick Klaus Kinski (For a Few Dollars More).

grandslam1The value of any heist film, needless to say, resides in its heist sequences, and here and elsewhere, Grand Slam delivers on the promise of its title. Our master thieves have allotted themselves nary one second beyond 20 minutes to crack the safe. It’s newly equipped with a series of super-sensitive microphones that trip an alarm upon the slightest sound, and their way around it involves toilet plungers, shaving cream and, in a roundabout way, Janet Leigh’s genitalia.

Directed with an inordinate amount of superimposed frames by Machine Gun McCain‘s Giuliano Montaldo, Grand Slam could have gotten away with letting Rio’s sunny backdrop do the legwork, but chooses to go all in, thereby establishing a solid framework for many a colorful caper to follow. It’s not perfect — from one character’s immediate about-face, the twist is evident in the first hour — but it comes damned close, placing it among the all-time heist classics. It also contains what is, for my money, Ennio Morricone’s all-time greatest theme. To hear it is to know joy. —Rod Lott

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Martial Arts

Man of Tai Chi (2013)

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mantaichiTo paraphrase one of Keanu Reeves’ more famous lines from The Matrix, he knows kung fu … so why not make his own martial-arts movie? In that directorial debut, Man of Tai Chi, he proves competent behind the camera, which automatically places him above his skills in front of it. In the department of delivering lines, Reeves does a poorer job here than ever.

His Beijing businessman Donaka Mark is as wealthy as he is secretive, bankrolling an underground fight club broadcast overseas via pay-for-view, for which he constantly seeks contestants … partly because he keeps killing the losers. Fresh talent arrives in lowly courier Tiger Chen (played by stuntman Tiger Chen, House of Fury), who practices the same style of tai chi as 21 generations before him. To get paid to fight using tai chi would be dishonorable, Tiger tells Donaka, but when the young cub’s temple is served with a 30-day eviction notice, he quickly changes his stripes.

mantaichi1No matter what ‘roided foe or fightin’ style Donaka throws his way, Tiger emerges victorious — ironic since tai chi is something your grandma does at the Y for exercise. Tiger wins the bucks needed to save the temple, but at a price: running afoul of a Hong Kong police inspector (Karen Mok, Shaolin Soccer) who’s been investigating Donaka’s biz plan for quite some time and is looking to take down the arrogant Yank.

The big plus of Man of Tai Chi is that in the fight sequences — and there are many — viewers can tell what’s happening. In today’s rat-a-tat editing world, that’s a near-novelty. How much of that is the doing of Reeves or his action director, HK legend Yuen Woo Ping, is unknown, but we’ll give Reeves the benefit of the doubt … because we shall cut no slack for his performance. At one point, he laughs at Tiger with a scoff, and does so stiltedly, the audience practically can see Reeves reading a cue card on which is written, “LAUGH MEAN.” Our Man of Tai Chi, Chen, also is a man of few words, but he does okay — as long as we leave his haircut out of it. —Rod Lott

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Horror

Vacation of Terror 2: Diabolical Birthday (1991)

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vacationterror2Epic mullet intact, Pedro Fernández is the lone cast member of René Cardona III’s Vacation of Terror to return for the wonderfully titled sequel, Vacation of Terror 2: Diabolical Birthday, again as Julio. Alternately (and unimaginatively) known as Pesadilla Sangrienta (Bloody Nightmare), this second helping may be an improvement over the original, but let the record show that no one takes a vacation.

Now under the guiding hand of another director with Roman numerals in his name, Pedro Galindo III, the Mexico-made monstrosity puts Julio in the antiques biz. What to his rapey eyes should appear in his store one day but teen tart Mayra (unimonikered singer Tatiana). He gives her a free plant worth 60,000 pesos in hopes of getting into her pantalones; instead, he gets an invitation to hear her sing that night at the birthday party for her 7-year-old sister, Tania (Renata del Río).

vacationterror21The shindig is horror-themed — because if there’s one thing all little girls love, it’s monsters — and being thrown at the movie studio owned by their father, producer Roberto Mondragón (Joaquín Cordero, Wrestling Women vs. the Murderous Robot). Mayra takes the stage to belt a tune whose pure pop pep belies such grim, gibberish lyrics as “Boys, boys, boys / Clumsy and aggressive / Poor boys / Neurotics, all lost / Boys, boys, boys / Super guys / Surprised by Sunday crisis.”

Then Papa Mondragón wheels out a grande-sized strawberry cake, underneath which hides the creepy doll from the first film. Consuming a swiped handful of the cake causes the doll to lose its hair and shed its skin, thus revealing its true self: a goopy demon with horns, tail and all. (Don’t question it.) Tania vanishes within a wall and Julio swoops into he-man mode, strutting around the grounds in a trench coat, as if he were Van Helsing … but played by comedian Paul Rodriguez.

Making cameos in this frivolous spectacle of special effects — “special” as in “special education” — are Tom Cruise and Heather Thomas, albeit via posters: respectively, the Cocktail one-sheet and the smashed-pancake/white-bikini shot that got me all hot and bothered at the onset of puberty. You know, when I was neurotic, all lost, surprised by Sunday crisis. —Rod Lott

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