All posts by Rod Lott

Nancy Drew … Reporter (1939)

As the title so blatantly gives away, Nancy Drew … Reporter finds America’s sweetheart sleuth giving journalism a try. Not for altruistic reasons, but for the local newspaper’s prize of “$50 and a gold medal.” Leave it to Nancy (Bonita Granville) to pull a switcheroo so she can cover a front-page murder investigation.

Ignoring all journalism ethics, Nancy throws the concept of being unbiased out the window so she can work to free the woman she’s just sure is wrongly imprisoned: “Isn’t it a whopper?” In doing so, Nancy gets in a fender-bender, drives dangerously, meets a boxer named Soxie, and even eats breakfast cereal annoyingly. You know, come to think of it, Nancy’s kind of a manipulative nag, but boy, she sure can solve a mystery!

The second of the four-film series proves as frothy and accessible as the first, if you can get past the Asian stereotype who pops up at a Chinese restaurant where Nancy and friends are short by 65 cents. Thus, she, Ted (Frankie Thomas, whose character is suddenly no longer named Ned), Ted’s little sister and her pal Killer literally sing for their supper, and the crowd digs Killer’s killer Donald Duck impression.

The sequence serves no other purpose than to wedge in a musical number, which audiences of the era apparently ate up. Crack open the Flick Attack fortune cookie for my verdict: “I’ll allow it.” (Also, your lucky numbers are 07, 16, 33 and 84.) —Rod Lott

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Angst (2003)

While being date-raped, heretofore virgin Helen (Fiona Horsey) notices suddenly that the pain has suddenly stopped. That’s because her date has been eaten in full by her very hungry genitalia. Such is Angst.

“He vanished, into thin air,” a baffled Helen relates to her doctor, who answers, “Inside your vagina?” Then he, too, tries to molest her, and is, er, snatched up as well. Same goes for her stepfather when he tries to put the moves on her. Once Helen’s private parts start talking to her (“Feed me!”), she tries to silence it by spraying bleach all up in there.

And when that doesn’t work, she simply gives in and becomes a ho-bag to keep her vagina satisfied. About the most graphic it gets is when a john can’t get his now-ridiculously elongated tongue loose from that which exists between her legs. The image is like something out of a Tex Avery cartoon … well, if not for the vagina dentata plot, the rampant nudity, the exploitation of women, the rough language, and all that other stuff.

Originally titled Penetration Angst, this shit- shot-on-video snorer is hardly the first talking-vag flick (Chatterbox, anyone?), but it’s definitely the worst. “What a fucking mess!” screams one woman with about eight agonizing minutes left to go. My sentiments exactly. —Rod Lott

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Terror Beneath the Sea (1966)

How do you know Terror Beneath the Sea is science fiction? For starters, newspapermen aren’t proactive adventurers. They’re lazy asses. Unless they’re played by Sonny Chiba, of course, as in this harmless, colorful Japanese/American production that offers a rare glimpse of Chiba keeping his hands and feet mostly to himself.

As Ken, he and fellow journalist Jenny (pretty Peggy Neal, The X from Outer Space) attend an underwater, press-only demonstration of the Navy’s new, state-of-the-art homing torpedo, the Bloodhound, the shape of a man flashes across the screen. What could it be?

Later, Ken and Jenny check it out by boating over to the island where atomic waste products are dumped and get their answer: shiny, silver Sleestak-like creatures with crossed eyes too close together, mouths that do not move, and no genitals whatsoever.

And 3,000 feet below underwater city ruled by Dr. Rufus Moore (Erik Neilson), they respond to turns of the dial, i.e. “WORK” and “FIGHT.” There, madman Moore changes the physical structure of humans into these mutated gill-men. That gives way to weird sequences of stop-motion arm pustules, perhaps topped only by cool scenes of underwater miniatures action, as only the Toei Company could do. —Rod Lott

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