All posts by Rod Lott

Hot Rods to Hell (1967)

If you’ve ever wondered what Cape Fear and/or Duel might have been like by way of Leave It to Beaver, by all means check out Hot Rods to Hell, a hilariously outdated, candy-colored creed against juvenile delinquents and their red jalopies.

Dana Andrews (Airport 1975) and Jeanne Crain (Skyjacked) portray the Phillips family heads who decide to buy a motel after Mr. Phillips injures his spine in an auto accident. En route to their new home, they’re menaced by three clean-cut youngsters in a red hot rod who don’t like the idea of such squares taking over the motel at which they hang. (Hanging out at a motel? Who’s the square?)

First, they bean the little boy with a thrown beer can, prompting him to scream, “All girls are nuts!” Then, they try running the Phillips clan off the road several times, as well as engage in games of chicken. The crotchety highway patrolman gets in a speech: “These kids got nowhere to go, but they want to get there going 150 miles per hour.”

Andrews is certainly no hero; every time he springs into action, he has a back spasm. Plus, everything he says sounds drunk. Crain overemotes at every opportunity, but she’s hot in that middle-aged, snotty, redhead-housewife way, so I’m cutting her slack. —Rod Lott

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DarkWolf (2003)

If I were in charge, I’d give DarkWolf the more appropriate title of An American Werewolf in Do-Rag, as Kane Hodder (Jason Voorhees in several of the Friday the 13th sequels) plays his role as the horny-werewolf-disguised-as-human with a blue handkerchief tied around his thick noggin for the whole movie.

Hodder is the “DarkWolf” — a hybrid werewolf, explains an all-too-knowing policeman — who must mate with a chosen female in order to ensure the survival of its species. (Its acquisition of a capital W goes unexplained.) The chosen female is a blonde waitress (Samaire Armstrong, TV’s The O.C.) who has no idea of her fate, but soon learns when her “protector” — The Birds‘ Tippi Hedren as cinema’s most well-dressed homeless woman — is slain by the creature, as is the cop’s partner, airheaded Playboy Playmate Jaime Bergman.

Everyone in this straight-to-DVD pile of wolf poo is so unlikable, you wish the DarkWolf would kill them all, and then do himself in. But yet, DarkWolf feels the need to plod along on its grubby paws for an hour and a half, occasionally throwing in just enough gratuitous nudity to keep you from hitting “stop.”

The acting is atrocious, even for a straight-to-video movie of this kind, and the werewolf transformation scenes are downright embarrassing. Whenever it’s time for one of those, the movie turns into a poorly computer-animated cartoon! —Rod Lott

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Viva! Django (1971)

Roughly the 24th Django sequel, Viva! Django — alternately known as A Man Called Django and the confusing W! Django — puts Anthony Steffen (The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave) in the character’s saddle for his fifth and final ride. The title says it all.

Here, the drifter Django rolls into a town all but abandoned, save for morbidly obese saloon owner Paco (Donato Castellaneta) and his too-hot-for him wife, Lola (smoldering Esmeralda Barros, King of Kong Island), who works there as a, um, “feisty little filly.” Django tells Paco he’s looking for the four men behind the Four Leaf Clover Gang, who murdered his wife. Our cigar-chomping hero carries his smokes around in a music box that displays his dearly departed’s photo and, when opened, conveniently plays the film’s über-hummable Piero Umiliani theme.

After disguising himself as a friar and igniting much dynamite that sends hapless citizens through candy-glass windows, Django meets Four Leaf vet Carranza (Stelio Candelli, Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires). Django knows Carranza was the only one who had nothing to do with it, but demands his help to find the other three.

Simple plot, simple pleasures, gringo. Director Edoardo Mulargia (Tropic of Cancer) lightens the mood of the original with noticeable comedy upfront, but that doesn’t mean violence takes a backseat. Although not particularly bloody, the flick delivers plenty of gunshots, most of which hit their greasy targets. Not a single one is Django, of course; he’s too much of a badass, like when he uses a branch to rig a fake arm in his coat to make it look like he’s surrendering. Silly villains — Django surrenders to no one. —Rod Lott

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Mirageman (2007)

One of the best superhero movies you’re likely never to have seen hails from South America: Mirageman, one of a number of kick-ass collaborations between Chilean writer/director Ernesto Díaz Espinoza and star Marko Zaror, aka the Latin Dragon.

Here, Zaror plays Maco, the strong, silent type who lives alone and earns a meager living as a bouncer, and whose life is given purpose after thwarting a home robbery while out for a night run. One of the victims in that incident is foxy newscaster Carol V. (María Elena Swett), who later sings his praises on TV, but has no idea who he is, because Maco had donned the blue ski mask of the first criminal he foiled.

Setting up an email account, the superhero soon known as Mirageman becomes a public vigilante, but mocked by the media. His missions increase in severity, from sparring with a gang of breakdancers to rescuing a 6-year-old kidnapped by a pedophile network. Along the way, he (briefly) acquires a sidekick, Pseudo-Robin.

Realistic and original by comparison to Hollywood’s comics-spurred tentpoles, this scrappy, low-budget effort — shot partly catch-as-catch-can — soars on the sure hand of Espinoza’s vision, which comes infused with a dose of good-natured humor, and the broad shoulders of the instantly endearing Zaror, who’s an Expendables-worthy real deal. He speaks very little throughout, but lets his martial-arts expertise — and his homemade Spider-Man goggles — do the talking. —Rod Lott

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