All posts by Rod Lott

The Playgirls and the Vampire (1960)

playgirlsvampireBearing more than a passing resemblance to the Mickey-Hargitay-goes-bonkers B-fave Bloody Pit of Horror, Piero Regnoli’s Italian erotic-horror number The Playgirls and the Vampire plunks five easy-on-the-eyes dancers and their Norman Fell-esque chaperone in a spooky castle during inclement weather.

The castle’s host, Count Gabor Kernassy (Walter Brandy, Island of Lost Girls), is all too willing to have these lovelies shack up at his place for the night, but warns them not to leave their rooms under any circumstances. Doing as women do, however, one ignores this piece of advice and gets bitten by a vampire. The next night, she’s already become an official member of the undead, sporting sharp new teeth as she walks around in her birthday suit.

playgirlsvampire1With not much to do, the four remaining gals practice their dance steps, but each in a different style, reminding one of that rehearsal scene in A Charlie Brown Christmas. One decides to break out into an impromptu striptease. You’d think their goofball manager might take advantage of his position, but he’s perfectly happy sleeping next to a girlie magazine that he props up on a pillow and calls “Sweetheart.”

In the underground-catacombs climax, Count Kernassy and the vampire duke it out, with the latter becoming impaled on a conveniently wall-mounted spear. Via the magic of cheap animation, he degenerates into a skeleton — easily Playgirls‘ coolest scene. Only a smidgen less talk and a helping more of nekkid vampire chicks could make this obscure, black-and-white tale more fun than it already is. —Rod Lott

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The Driver (1978)

thedriverWhy isn’t The Driver mentioned in the same breath as Dirty Harry, The French Connection, Dog Day Afternoon and other bona fide ’70s crime classics? It’s excellent and — sorry, Warriors fans — easily Walter Hill’s personal best as writer/director.

Never a great actor, Ryan O’Neal (Barry Lyndon) also is atop his game here because he has so little to say. With a stoic face and shirt unbuttoned to his chest, he plays a professional getaway driver, perhaps the finest for hire on the West Coast. We see why almost immediately, as an underground casino heist gives way to an incredible nighttime chase through the streets, alleyways and parking garages of L.A.

thedriver1At the scene, a woman (Isabelle Adjani, Ishtar) clearly sees the wheelman’s face, yet lies to the corrupt police detective (a scary Bruce Dern, Silent Running) about it. This so infuriates the cop that he plots a big-score bank robbery specifically to “catch the cowboy that’s never been caught.”

Moody, confident and quiet until tires squeal and sirens blare, The Driver is awash in so much atmosphere that lots were left over for others to soak up, most notably Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, the 2011 film whose taut opening pursuit in particular pays transparent homage. Until the end, I hadn’t noticed that Hill failed to give his characters actual names — they’re credited with crime-fic descriptors like “The Player” and “Exchange Man” — which only goes to show how engrossing this undervalued gem is. —Rod Lott

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Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses — Roger Corman: King of the B Movie

crabmonstersAnyone who writes off Roger Corman as just a schlockmeister is woefully ill-informed. Whether as producer, director, writer and/or distributor, the man is responsible for some god-awful movies … but he’s also responsible for some legitimately great ones. And even his god-awful ones can be terrific fun to watch.

Because he revolutionized the indie film biz and birthed many A-list careers, he deserves all the accolades he gets, including that honorary Academy Award from a couple years back. Let’s not forget the books, too; many have been written, but Chris Nashawaty’s Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses might be my favorite of them all. It’s definitely my favorite book of the year, fiction or non, for many reasons.

For starters, it’s an oral history of Corman’s career and legacy. Whether the subject is SNL, MTV or ESPN, oral histories on some aspect of the entertainment field are infinitely readable, and Crab Monsters is no exception, star-studded as it is with Corman grads Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, Joe Dante, Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro, Gale Anne Hurd, James Cameron and a mind-boggling many more.

Sylvester Stallone puts its best on page 145: “Roger was a launching pad of unguided missiles to be launched into space. We were the seeds, and he owned the farm.”

For another reason, it’s also an art book, jam-packed with photos but more importantly, lobby cards and posters — oh, posters, glorious posters! That’s an area in which Corman always excelled; not only would they promise more than the product delivered, but he often commissioned a script after the one-sheet was made.

With coffee-table books, one often finds the text surrounding the visuals to be secondary, if not skipped altogether. That’s not the case here. So well-designed you might mistake it for the work of Chip Kidd at first, Crab Monsters can be enjoyed separately as text or visuals, but is deliciously sublime when consumed altogether as intended.

I fell in love with the book almost immediately; less than halfway in, that affection had blown up into obsession, and I devoured the entire thing in one incredibly enjoyable Saturday. I’ve admired Corman’s work for decades, and Nashawaty’s book sums it up even better than the joyous 2011 documentary Corman’s World.

For movie lovers, Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses not just gets, but earns my highest recommendation. For the Corman faithful, it’s simply an absolute must. —Rod Lott

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Wanna Win Bounty Killer?

bountykillerUPDATE: Winner is Sherri Montgomery!

We’re giving away a copy of Bounty Killer on DVD to one lucky summabitch in these United States of America. How to enter? Easy!

Just leave a relevant comment on any review on this site before next Saturday, Sept. 14. That’s when one lucky commenter will be picked at random to have this movie shipped to his or her door. Winner will be notified via email, so make sure the email address you leave to comment is a valid one.

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Mondo Sleazo: The Sleaziest Trailers in the World (2010)

mondosleazoWTFI am a sucker for trailer collections. The problem with that is one tends to see the same coming attractions pop up, ad infinitum. That is not the case with Video Dimensions’ Mondo Sleazo: The Sleaziest Trailers in the World, which immediately became apparent, as electroshocked nipples tend to do. Even better, unlike a majority of the movies it features, it lives up to its title!

The program’s two hours are separated loosely into six categories that collectively represent a hodgepodge of weird genres, from kung fu (The Flying Killer) to blaxploitation (Disco Godfather), and weirder subgenres that include the sexy swashbuckler (Tower of Screaming Virgins), the spoof film (The Sex O’Clock News) and even puppet porn (Let My Puppets Come), the latter of which can’t be unseen and forces me to rethink my stance on yarn.

mondosleazo1By the time you get to the third grouping, their interchangeability becomes startlingly obvious. See if you can guess what theme links these titles: The Smut Peddler, Blazing Stewardesses and Another Day, Another Man. If you guessed “sex,” you’re correct, and possibly gutter-minded.

Yes, as something titled Mondo Sleazo should be, it is filled with flicks about Child Brides and Street Girls, about Caged Virgins and Girls for Rent. Mind you, this is no complaint — not when something like Sugar Cookies dares to compare itself to Hitchcock (not once, but twice) and when Mundo Depravados pits stripper Tempest Storm against “a sex fiend killer,” the former playing Agent 48-24-36. That’s exploitation genius, as much of this disc is. —Rod Lott

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