All posts by Rod Lott

Mystery

The Pyjama Girl Case (1977)

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Ladies and gentlemen, introducing Academy Award winner Ray Milland in one of his final features … giving the universal hand gesture for masturbation. Based loosely on a 1934 true crime in Australia, the Italian-made The Pyjama Girl Case is a methodical mystery cast in a quasi-giallo style by director/co-writer Flavio Mogherini, who puts his art and production design experience to fine use.

On the beach, a woman’s body is found charred, violated, shot and with her head bashed in. The uncharacteristic brutality of the case prompts retired inspector Thompson (Milland, Dial M for Murder) to come out of retirement on a volunteer basis to help local police sort this puzzler out.

Meanwhile, we meet Linda (the striking Dalila Di Lazzaro, Phenomena), whose sexual partners always hide her panties, and believe me, she has many — partners, that is. Despite being married, she’s still sleeping with past lovers, who include a physician sugar daddy and a lovely woman with a pair of yellow PJs.

Linda’s several conquests are poorly introduced, but not in a way that clouds the narrative. Besides, like a skilled police procedural should, the focus is on Milland, pursuing leads such as grains of white rice. Mogherini pulls off a near-masterful turn in the final third, but even if you see it coming, you’re bound to genuinely be disturbed by the public gawking at the body on display, and even more at Linda throwing all reason away in a moment of self-destruction. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967)

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I hate to spoil it for you, but in Hillbillys in a Haunted House, some hillbillies visit a haunted house. Reprising their role from 1966’s Las Vegas Hillbillys are actual country singer Ferlin Husky and Don Bowman as, respectively, fake country singer Woody Wetherby and Jeepers, his manager. Jeepers is aptly named because he’s a coward. Traveling with them is another singer, Boots, who’s one consonant away from being aptly named, because she’s played by 38.5-23-35 Scopitone siren Joi Lansing.

On their way to Nashville for a jamboree — whatever the hell that is — the three experience car trouble. With a storm coming, a local recommends they take shelter for the night in an empty mansion, but forgets to inform them that it’s haunted. They see a skeleton, a gorilla and bats that Jeepers suspects can’t all be him “imaginatin’,” and he’s right: It’s the work of a spy ring in the basement trying to scare them off.

As padded as Lansing’s front is, the film is padded even more, with musical numbers; the last 15 minutes are literally a concert! Good thing most of the songs are good. See if “The Cat Came Back” doesn’t stick in your noggin. See if Merle Haggard’s two appearances doesn’t make you wish the genre never changed from there. See if Lansing’s ode to gowns while she’s imagining herself decked out in Southern belle regalia doesn’t make you stand at attention.

The sexy, super-stacked Lansing is the main reason to watch cornpone comedy. The second may be the novelty of seeing horror icons John Carradine, Basil Rathbone and Lon Chaney Jr. as members of the baddies in the basement, which is decked out with various torture devices. For some, Hillbillys in a Haunted House is torture on its own, but for me, it’s too good-natured to provide any pain. —Rod Lott

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Horror

Slashers (2001)

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Taking reality TV to its logical, inevitable extreme, Slashers is presented as a live Japanese game show, in which six American contestants are trapped in a maze for an hour and a half with three masked serial killers. Whoever — if anyone — is left standing at the end wins a $12 million booty. There are no rules, other than trying to stay alive.

The cameraman follows the contestants as they’re chased by Dr. Ripper, Preacherman and Chainsaw Charlie, whose redneck accent, red hair and Alfred E. Neuman mask make him a dead ringer for comedian Carrot Top. Running and running are Tough Black Guy, Fat Hispanic Guy Who Sounds Exactly Like Dennis Franz, Asshole Frat White Guy, Whiny Jewish Girl Who Keeps Losing Her Shirt, Hot Model Girl Who Runs Around in Her Bra, and Tough Butchy Girl with Multiple Sclerosis.

The concept is original, the sets are impressive, the gore is good ’n’ gory and, best of all, there are a few true jolts. Essentially, there are only two drawbacks to Slashers:
1) the idea of having only one cameraman following six people is absurd, and
2) all the contestants are terrible actors. And I mean terrible — awful, stinky terrible.

But Slashers is worthy viewing, primarily because it’s the rare shot-on-video feature that doesn’t overreach and pretend to be a slick, glossy thriller. A live show would be shot on video rather than film, so director Maurice Devereaux is able to use that to his advantage, given a low, low budget. Extra credit is awarded for its dead-on parodies of Japanese television. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Maximum Overdrive (1986)

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Stephen King never should have been allowed to direct, but we have Maximum Overdrive in our lives anyway. It’s about how machines get minds of their own during a nine-day period in which the tail of a comet passes over Earth. And the movie is trash — occasionally enjoyable trash, but trash nonetheless.

If you were to judge Overdrive from its first 15 minutes only, it’d be an awesome spectacle of technology gone mad. A drawbridge opens on its own without warning, causing a major car smash-up and Marla Maples getting smashed by a watermelon. A steamroller bursts onto the field of a Little League game, shortly after the coach is felled by a soda machine violently shooting out pop cans like cannonballs. A waitress is attacked by an electric knife. A black guy gets turned extra-crispy by a video game.

But then there’s the rest of the running time to contend with, as fry cook Emilio Estevez and company — including Yeardley Smith, the voice of The Simpsons‘ Lisa Simpson, best heard and not seen — hole themselves up in a truck stop while the semis — including one with a Green Goblin face on its front grill — circle outside without drivers, awaiting fresh prey.

This is where Overdrive — remade for TV in 1997 as the inferior Trucks — downshifts into severe repetition, drawing out its scenario to the point where it ceases to be fun, even the mindless kind. Although I like the clever touch of the runaway ice cream truck eerily playing “King of the Road,” the bombastic AC/DC score is enough to make one pull out his hair. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

The Queens (1966)

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Italy is home to some of the sexiest women in the world. So why does less than a fourth of the crazed-hormone comedy anthology The Queens satisfy? Cartoon credit interstitials depict a super-horny guy, which will have to pass for amusement in this Italian/French co-production telling four tales of the female species’ comely powers over the male.

First, Queen Sabina (Monica Vitti, Modesty Blaise) is saved from rape by a passing motorist. As he gives her a ride, she teases him with her cleavage and legs and moaning, which drives him to madness, to the point where he pulls over to chase her. And another motorist drives by to save her, but instead of continuing the cycle, the tables are turned.

Queen Armenia (Claudia Cardinale, Once Upon a Time in the West) is a poor and incredibly manipulative woman who endangers infants, much to the chagrin of a visiting physician. Queen Elena (Raquel Welch at her va-va-voomiest) flirts with a married man in her kitchen; a fizzing Alka-Seltzer tablet is this film’s “train going through a tunnel.”

Finally — and I do mean finally — Queen Marta (Capucine — not a capuchin monkey, but the Pink Panther actress) is a professor’s wife who toys with a servant at a lavish party, being passionate one moment (“Bite me until I’m out of my mind!”) and ice-cold the next — an apt description for the film itself. So much promise exists, so little actually works. Underwritten and underwhelming, this crown is fatally rusted. —Rod Lott

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