All posts by Rod Lott

Sex

Delinquent Schoolgirls (1975)

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What happens when you mix escapees from the State Asylum for the Criminally Insane
with the worst-behaving students at the Oxford Corrective Institute for Young Women? The super-sleazy Delinquent Schoolgirls, in which they show up their “chauvinist pig” principal by not wearing their bras to exercise class; in which one fears having her vagina torn apart by a large partner; and in which an elderly herpetology professor (Ralph Campbell, Superchick) hypnotizes a student (Jane Steele) to have his way with her — watch out for snakes, dear!

Acting not entirely unlike The Three Stooges, the crazies — leader Clooney (Michael Pataki, Easy Rider), African-American Big Dick (Bob Minor, Escape from New York) and flaming homosexual Bruce (Stephen Stucker, Airplane!) — first invade the home of nympho housewife Ellie (Julie Gant), whose husband (George “Buck” Flower, They Live) can’t satisfy her needs: “Sex, sex, sex, that’s all you ever talk about: sex,” he says, telling her to stop watching her her “soap oprys.” Big Dick shows her what she’s been missing as Bruce plays the piano and Bruce does a Daffy Duck impression. Screams Ellie mid-rape, “This is positively indecent!”

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The guys then infiltrate the school during a holiday, where the bad girls have not been allowed to go home. Wacky music plays as the comically large-breasted ladies are molested against their will in the kitchen. Big Dick does so much squeezing, I wonder if Minor contracted carpal tunnel. The next scene, the rapists and their victims are all enjoying a meal together. Later, there’s a slap fight at gunpoint. Good times.

It took three men to write something as misogynist as this, giving Big Dick a refractory period that must hover around two minutes. His appetite for laying pipe inspires most of his dialogue:
• “Hey you guys know somethin’? Well, I’m gonna tell you anyway: I want some pussy!”
• “I never made it with a chick in a trance before.”
• “Aw, man, I don’t want wheels — I want some nookie!”
• “Fantastic! Grapefruit city!”
• “Look at all that young, tender, gorgeous snatch!”

Admittedly, Delinquent Schoolgirls — aka Carnal Madness — is bursting at the seams with beautiful, buoyant babes, including pin-up legend Roberta Pedon, Sharon Kelly (Russ Meyer’s Supervixens) and Brenda Miller, so it’s tough not to appreciate it on an eye-candy level. Just note that doing so may make you feel like, to quote Bruce, a “demented crouton!” —Rod Lott

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Horror

Night Train to Terror (1985)

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I defy you to name one other film that offers as much breakdancing, animated monsters, spandex, gushing blood, naked breasts and Bull from Night Court as the diabolically incompetent and massively entertaining Night Train to Terror. Destination? Hilarity!

It’s a horror anthology film, built out of one unfinished flick and two existing films severely edited to the point that they play like extended trailers. The wraparound segment has God and Mr. Satan — played, according to the credits, by Himself and Lu Sifer, respectively — sitting on a moving train, debating for the souls of each story’s characters, while a musical group with way too many guys wearing headbands and aerobic outfits sings the same damn song over and over and over in the next car.

The first case they pore over – the incomplete Scream Your Head Off – stars Barbarella’s John Philip Law as a salesman who ends up in a mental ward and is coerced by the hot middle-aged nurse to go out and drug young women so that they can be strapped to tables naked and have their internal organs harvested to the highest bidder. Oh, and Richard Moll is in it.

Next comes the heavily abbreviated version of 1983’s Death Wish Club, in which Gretta, a skank with bad teeth, makes porno movies until she meets frat boy Glen. Gretta takes her new beau to a strange suicide club, at which one member is dispatched each time via some bizarre method, whether that be a giant winged beetle with a sting of death, electric-chair Russian roulette or lying in sleeping bags until your head is crushed by a wrecking ball.

Last is a chunk of 1980’s Cataclysm, in which a Nazi war criminal with a cloven hoof continues to live — and murder — in the present day without having aged. Cameron Mitchell investigates, and finds stop-motion monsters and open-heart surgery footage. Oh, and Richard Moll is in it.

Between each vignette, That Damned Band “sings” that “song,” engages in semi-Laugh-In bits and breakdances in slow motion. At the very end, a model train car crashes, presumably killing all aboard, which is a good thing. In its own fucked-up way of utter incompetence, Night Train to Terror is genius. —Rod Lott

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Martial Arts

Fists of Bruce Lee (1978)

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The bad guys in Fists of Bruce Lee don’t seem all that threatening, what with their pink telephone and idling time playing bumper pool. But the woods outside their hideout are a different story, booby-trapped with sandbags, pitchforks, rope and logs!

We’re introduced to our hero — Bruceploitation star Bruce Li — via a credits sequence in which he, wearing a blindfold, spars with another guy wearing a girdle, while Average White Band’s “Pick Up the Pieces” blares. The film is produced by Woo Ka Chi, which also accurately describes how the music score sounds.

Li meets an effeminate guy with a name like Poochie Chan, who wears a white suit and continuously dabs at his face with a handkerchief. Li also falls for a woman who has a doll in her room that shoots metal darts out its head. How all these characters come into play with the story is a moot point, because there is no story. They simply amble amount and speak in generic terms and, every few minutes, a fight breaks out.

One colorful brawl takes place at night at an amusement park; another on a playground, predating a similar scene in Jackie Chan’s Police Story 2, except Jackie’s scene didn’t steal John Barry’s 007 musical cues, nor did it have a preceding foot chase scored to Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die.” One guy gets shot with an arrow by a dude who looks like either the construction worker or the motorcycle rider from the Village People. Some random minion gets a pitchfork deep in his ass. Story schmory, slightly snory. —Rod Lott

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