All posts by Rod Lott

Action

Policewomen (1974)

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Let’s get one thing straight: my penis Despite the plural title of Policewomen, Crown International Pictures’ playful drive-in actioner is really about a singular police woman, and it’s not Sgt. Pepper Anderson. It’s Lacy Bond (Sondra Currie, star of Al Adamson’s rape-revenge Western, Jessi’s Girls), and after thwarting a prison riot, she’s recruited to bring down a gold-smuggling operation run by an old racist coot (“Who’s the black?”) and comprised of babes in bikinis.

The cops give Lacy some gadgets that would make Q semi-erect, and in she goes, using her martial-arts skills to kick various baddies into submission (and one ally in the balls, just for fun). All the while, she rarely wears a bra, but does squeeze her curvy hips into a pair of very 1974 pants whose pattern presages the AIDS quilt.

Speaking of STDs, writer/director Lee Frost (The Black Gestapo, The Thing with Two Heads) packs in some loose love scenes for Lacy, including a partner who post-coitally orders her when the shit starts to hit the fan, “Get me some white pants!” This is actually the flick’s second-best line, behind the aforementioned coot’s insistence that “Nobody gives a shit what happens to an old Volkswagen!”

But they do give a shit about Policewomen. At least I do. It’s hard not to when the screen is set ablaze by Currie’s ridiculous, redheaded hotness. —Rod Lott

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Documentary

Grizzly Man (2005)

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Many things of beauty exist that man simply was not meant to fuck with: thunderstorms, fire, waterfalls, Jennifer Lopez, grizzly bears. The latter proved the last of Timothy Treadwell. As Werner Herzog’s wildly acclaimed documentary Grizzly Man proves, the self-appointed bear protector/failed actor knew this — absolutely knew he could be bitten, decapitated, eaten, shish-kabobbed, what have you — and yet put himself in harm’s way, on purpose, for 13 years, until one of the bears finally got tired of him being around.

Sporting a haircut that screams “Jeff Daniels in Dumb & Dumber,” Treadwell shot his own field movies, which show the drama queen hanging out with the bears in a proximity that humans should do only when friggin’ zoo bars exist between the two. He talks to the bears like a would-be Dr. Dolittle, granting them them cutesie names: Grinch, Aunt Melissa, Mr. Chocolate, Freckles. (Ditto for foxes, i.e. Banjo.) I can guess how Sgt. Brown got his moniker; he’s the bear that defecates a lot while fighting with one Mickey Bear.

Speaking of poop, Treadwell is shown touching a fresh, steaming pile because he thinks it’s beautiful it came from the butt of his beloved Wendy. If you think that’s weird, wait until he sheds tears over a dead bee. Yes, there’s something that wasn’t right with the man; apparently, he drank too many brain cells away to think he had forged some relationship with them that they understood his words. He’s like The Crocodile Hunter without the cable contract.

That makes Herzog’s doc fascinating and infuriating. If you’re looking to get off on grizzly footage of Treadwell’s death by furry creature, you’ll be disappointed; seek solace in your Faces of Death collection, perv. (You will, however, find an extended story about exploding soup, if you’re into that sort of thing.) Still, the movie is unsettling, and not just because of an unblinking mortician. Moral of the story? Please do not feed the bears. —Rod Lott

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Horror

The Eerie Midnight Horror Show (1974)

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Rip-offs of The Exorcist are a fascinating subgenre all their own. So many were made in that blockbuster’s wake, it’s difficult to keep them apart. It doesn’t help that so many of the foreign imports played in the States under a litany of titles. Originally L’ossessa, Italy’s Enter the Devil can be found as The Tormented, The Devil Obsession, The Obsessed and, best of all, the rather misleading The Sexorcist. But it’s the moniker of The Eerie Midnight Horror Show under which this mess is mostly widely available — a sheer marketing ploy of association with Rocky Horror, with which it shares nothing but color.

According to the opening credits, this one’s “based on a true story.” Because no doubt, every art student like Danila (Stella Carnacina) has been raped by an arched-eyebrow Satan (Ivan Rassimov, star of Umberto Lenzi’s Eaten Alive!), who inhabits a 15th-century, wooden crucifixion sculpture and makes it come to life to show her wood of a different kind. From there, her face goes flush and she begins exhibiting strange behavior.

You know the drill: gaping stigmata, thrashing bed, scab-ridden lips, emission of more orgasmic cries than there are minutes in the movie. Her parents catch her masturbating, but wait for an uncomfortably long time before doing anything about it. (That could be because her mom is a bit of perv herself, a cheating whore who likes to be whipped, played by The Arena’s Lucretia Love, a name that sounds like a Sucrets fetish.)

Before long, it’s “Get thee to a nunnery!,” where the nonsensical script kicks into narrative overdrive and crackles with compelling dialogue, like this exchange:
“Good morning, Father Xeno.”
“Good morning, gentlemen.”
“Good morning.”
“Good morning, Father Xeno.”
“Morning.”

The last 15 minutes find said Father Xeno (Luigi Pistilli of For a Few Dollars More) in the inevitable good-vs.-evil showdown. The possessed Danila wants to give him a beej, then foams at the mouth and vomits great, green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts or something of that sort. Don’t pretend like you don’t want to see that. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

Double Vision (2002)

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If Seven had more of a supernatural bent and was heavily steeped in Asian culture, it might look like Double Vision, a superb serial killer effort from Hong Kong and Taiwan. The killer first strikes when a CEO is discovered in his office dead from drowning, yet with no signs of water to be found. Later, a senator’s mistress is burned to death in her apartment, but with no indication of fire present.

Troubled cop Tony Leung (Red Cliff) is baffled, as is the rest of the force, so they call on the expertise of American FBI agent David Morse for help. What they discover in their investigation proves more complicated than anything they’ve encountered in their work before.

The reveal of the killer proves to be anticlimactic, but then the film makes up for it by throwing a huge, steel-plated monkey wrench into the plot that really shakes things up – something I would never expect. The last act isn’t as good as the setup since the focus shifts from suspenseful to spiritual, but Chen Kuo Fu’s film as a whole is extremely well-crafted and anchored by two solid leads. —Rod Lott

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