One of many jungle bungles shot in the Philippines, Savage Sisters is a women-in-prison picture with a difference. And that difference is a pinch of Ginger: the star of the sleazy Ginger saga, Cheri Caffaro.

Sorry to disappoint potential viewers, but the Savage Sisters? Not real sisters. (Insert snare drum riff here.) They are subversive liberator and Navy daughter Jo Turner (Caffaro), political fanatic and commando Mei Ling (Filipino starlet Rosanna Ortiz), and their initial enemy, testicle-torture expert Col. Lynn Jackson (Gloria Hendry, Live and Let Die).

Believe it or not, but the story is too political for an AIP exploitation film. It has something to do with a hustler trying to smuggle a million bucks out of a banana republic — the country, not the clothing store — and naturally, everyone wants their hands on it. Everyone also wants their hands on these lithesome ladies, but that’s beside the point.

Jackson is assigned to find the two “hardcore insurrectionists” — revolutionaries Turner and Ling — and find out who they’re working for, or something like that; it doesn’t really matter. Ultimately, the scattered story is all about good vs. evil, with the latter being Capt. Juan Morales (Eddie Garcia). You know he’s bad, because who else wears those orange-tinted sunglasses?

Hidden in a poncho, WIP vet Sid Haig (The Big Bird Cage) is in this confused mess, and he plays his part as if he we were in a screwball comedy. He may be on to something. That would explain Caffaro’s ‘tude with the lines she so unconvincingly growls at her he-man opponents, from “No comment, pork chop,” to “You’re pissin’ in the wind, little man.”

And so does director Eddie Romero (the Blood Island trilogy), who helmed this disappointing flick. He not only forgot to deliver a coherent plot, but also — and most importantly — the nudity. —Rod Lott

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Hellbound opens with a Star Wars-esque crawl that reads in part, “When time began the soul of darkness was thrust into the depth. Its evil split from the light of humanity to be called forth in times of weakness and despair. Satan’s emissary, Prosatanos, would prowl the Earth searing all before him with fire and blood.”

Blah blah blah. That’s a dull, wordy way of just spitting out the movie’s lone selling point: Chuck Norris battles the spawn of Satan. Hell, yes.

The evil dude in question is Prosatanos (Christopher Neame, Licence to Kill), who’s a lot balder than I would’ve pictured the devil’s envoy to be. Sealed in a tomb in a Crusades prologue, he vows revenge and gets it after pesky minorities unknowingly let him loose in 1951, and he shows up in modern-day Chicago to ball a hooker (Zoe Trilling, Night of the Demons 2). Nearby are two of Chi-Town’s finest: Sgt. Shatter (Norris, natch) and his cornrowed African-American partner, Jackson (Calvin Levels, Adventures in Babysitting). The duo battles drug suppliers and pimps with their fists, feet and tuff-talkin’: “Watch this, you little piece of shit!”

Prosatanos rips the heart out of a rabbi and high-tails it to Israel, where Shatter and Jackson are summoned for questioning. While there, they attempt to track down the supernatural slayer — or at least Shatter does; Jackson just wants to eat, but the white man keeps foiling those plans. Food is all Jackson talks about, but at least it makes for the film’s best lines, from “Why don’t you just cut my nuts off with a dull-edged butter knife?” to “Either this guy’s nuttier than a Snickers or there is some real heavy shit goin’ down.” (Note I didn’t say they were any good — just the best of what there is.)

A similar sentiment could apply to Hellbound, which finds Norris squarely in both the phases of mullet-donning and formula-tweaking. With his bankability days behind him, the bearded big cheese experimented beyond mere action, but action with kids (Sidekicks), canines (Top Dog) and demons (this). It is as silly as you would expect, which is precisely what makes it stand out among his filmography. Where else will one find such a matchup of the prince of darkness vs. the prince of Cannon Films? (Just to clarify amid his extreme right-wing views of today, Norris was the latter at the time.) —Rod Lott

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