All posts by Rod Lott

Martial Arts

Kick to Death: Death Kick (1998)

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Give Kick to Death: Death Kick this: It tells you upfront redundancy and ineptitude are afoot. What it doesn’t tell you: Prepare to see one man’s ego deep-tissue massaged as his apparent sexual fantasies are enacted. I speak of former St. Louis cop Michael Hartig, credited as the movie’s writer, main producer and lead actor. Considering this marks director William Patrick Crabtree’s lone IMDb entry, I wouldn’t be surprised if that were Hartig’s pseudonym.

Although he looks more like a toupée model or someone who must knock on doors to inform you he’s moved into the neighborhood, Hartig plays kickboxing attorney Adrian Lane, who’s pissed off too many clients: five, to be exact. So two of them, Robert (Chickboxer’s Jesse Bean) and Teal (Earnest Hart Jr., “Four Time World Kickboxing Champion” according to the opening credits), organize quite the revengefest by kidnapping Adrian — while what sounds like a rejected B-side to Alannah Myles’ “Black Velvet” cassingle warbles on the soundtrack — and tying him up in a federal safe house located in the back of a tile store. (Hardened criminals never purchase tile, right?)

All attractive women, the three other clients plunk down $50,000 apiece for a turn torturing Adrian with drills and spray-can flames before a hired fighter kicks his ass — to death, if we’re to believe that title. Instead, the ladies tease him with their nude bodies, which is an unusual play, but we’re in the Show-Me State, after all. With an oddly specific sexual kink repeated throughout like a spank-bank deposit committed to film, his narcissism makes that of attorney-at-law John De Hart — and his respective vanity project, GetEven — look tame. Death Kick plays like the Craftsman power tools catalog accidentally printed a rambling missive from Letters to Penthouse.

A choice exchange of dialogue between captor and captive as “Revenge time starts at 9”:

Robert: “I have a plan.”
Adrian: “The best laid plans of mice and men.”
Robert: “What? What? Shut up! Fuck the mice and fuck the men! You’re going down!”

Up first, a redhead (White Palace stripper K.C. Carr, reading her lines like a 45 record run at 33 1/3 speed) is so angry about losing custody, she unhooks her bra, straddles Adrian and says, “If I had spurs, we’d go for a ride.”

Sexier by a mile, a wealthy blonde (frickin’ gorgeous one-timer Corinne Malcom) in a purple leather suit walks in heels so slowly that she looks in fear of forgetting the foot order required for the act of walking. Upset because post-divorce, she no longer gets invited to the right parties, she and her sizable bust put on a “private fashion show.” In between changing four outfits, she wavers between complimenting Adrian’s “tight ass” and threatening, “I’m gonna eat from your eyes.”

Speaking of eyes, a literal tear is coaxed from Adrian’s by the exposed breasts of Matty (Deborah E. Loveless), whose Taco Tico wrapper-patterned blouse screams “PTA treasurer.” In between these teasing faux seductions, the aforementioned freelance tuffies force Adrian to:
• spar with a hired stickfighter in genie britches (Terry Cramer, “American Kumite and Kata Champion”)
• trade blows with a guy in an ill-fitting Everlast shirt (Michael Stocker, “North American Light Heavy Kickboxing Champion”)
• and nut-punch a sweaty, coked-up mullet man (Greg Oldham)

Are you not entertained? Because Robert also saws a board in half, then roars through gritted teeth, “JIGSAW PUZZLE, ANYONE?” At the end, everybody fights everybody else while Adrian’s noosed, presumably to give him time to go flaccid. Naturally he escapes and quips, “Whaddaya think — is it too late for med school?” Fade to the rest of your life.

The last two and half minutes of credits have no actual credits, because Hartig lets the song he paid good money for play out, by gum. Since Kick to Death: Death Kick kicked its way into, I dunno, maybe 14 or 15 VCRs nationwide, Hartig hasn’t appeared in front of a camera — a damn shame, especially if you’re sitting on a script for a John Astin biopic. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Comedy

Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama 2 (2022)

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Fans of the VHS classic Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama were clamoring for a sequel. Well, in 1988, maybe. Three decades too late comes Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama 2.

Caught committing sex crimes against the sorority members of Pi Epsilon Delta, three frat boys thirsty for T&A agree to join the ladies in a little B&E: an after-hours trip to the local bowling alley to retrieve a hallowed trophy. Yes, it’s the same trophy that unleashes the same foul-mouthed imp, now made of minimally articulated foam, quoting MLK and voiced by Derek Jeremiah Reid (Bad Impulse).

One by one, the imp grants their wishes as literally as possible, to fatal results. Por ejemplo, a guy expressing desire to be “a famous rapper” is magically and moronically turned into a — wait for it — candy bar wrapper, which the imp then eats.

Scripted by Full Moon regular Kent Roudebush (Ooga Booga), Bowl-O-Rama 2 isn’t so much written as it is written over. More remake than sequel, it repeats the events of the original, but shorn of half an hour, the horror elements and, frankly, all of the fun. Given its general nonchalance and low production values, you’d be forgiven for assuming David DeCoteau returned to the director’s throne, but those duties fell to Brinke Stevens. She and fellow Sorority Babe Michelle Bauer reprise their roles in cameos, albeit separate from the action since they’re ghosts and not on the set. Linnea Quigley, however, is a no-show, so Kelli Maroney (Slayground) takes her part as the Pi Ep house mom.

Unless you want to see what Full Moon’s round of starlets look like in a group shower, skip it, as Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama 2 rolls straight into the gutter. Its use of clips from the ’88 film serve as flashbacks, as well as a sad reminder of how producer Charles Band keeps lowering the bar for the Full Moon brand. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Action

Rage (1995)

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In a right-place/wrong-time scenario, family man and schoolteacher Alex Gainer gets kidnapped by an enigmatic tech company secretly developing a super-soldier serum. After injecting illegals in this clandestine experiment, the firm moves to perfect physical specimens like Gainer, seeing how he’s portrayed by British kickboxer and American straight-to-video action hero Gary Daniels.

Gainer has everything to lose, so when he’s framed as a cop killer, he’s willing to do anything to avoid capture and clear his name, like:
• steal an 18-wheeler to penetrate a police barricade
• then steal a school bus as a follow-up
• fight an S&M-practicing couple in their own kitchen
• scale a skyscraper while being shot at from a helicopter
• trust a TV journalist (Kenneth Tigar, Phantasm II) whose camerawoman (Jillian McWhirter, Strangeland) wears a vest that might be a Pizza Hut tablecloth

Rage isn’t content with stopping there. Perhaps out-Commandoing Commando, the climax’s all-out brawl takes place in a multilevel shopping mall with many, many plate-glass windows for Gainer and his pursuers to bust through — some in glorious slow motion. No freestanding table or merry-go-round in the place is spared, nor are the VHS shelves of the video rental store offering only PM Entertainment titles, like Zero Tolerance and C.I.A. Code Name: Alexa.

Naturally, Rage not only was built at the PM Entertainment action factory, but more than competently directed by PM co-founder Joseph Merhi. In its decade of pumping these scuffles-and-’splosions pics out for Friday-night Cinemax premieres, his production company caught flak as a purveyor of schlock, but that reputation wasn’t always warranted, with Rage serving as proof. Presumably, its price tag came in below seven figures, yet the movie doesn’t act like it; with actual scope and scale, Rage is barely discernible from lower-tier wide theatrical releases that year — I speak of Fair Game, Top Dog and The Hunted. The one glaring exception: the lack of a household name.

Not that Daniels didn’t try! Like many of his co-stars in The Expendables, where he played the antagonist, he may not have razor-sharp thespian skills, but he’s got something. In Rage, that’s apparent right away — not in a kablooey set piece, but in teaching second graders about monkeys, even if it takes a dark turn into Jeffrey Dahmer’s dietary choices. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Sex

The Golden Box (1970)

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Come spy with me, beckon Marsha Jordan and Ann Perry to curious viewers of The Golden Box, a secret-agent sexploitation caper from Her Odd Tastes director Don Davis. As a fan of Jordan, the Jayne Mansfield of ’60s softcore cinema, I was double-O ready for it.

In L.A., shortly after getting serviced while sitting on an all-gold toilet, the sideburnt musician Kirby (Forman Shane, College Girls Confidential) is shot dead by a mob enforcer. The murderer absconds with Kirby’s sheet music — actually an encoded record of the organization’s illegal wire transactions. In paragraphs of exposition he stays alive just long enough to blurt to the ladies before gurgling some ketchup, Kirby admits to skimming off the top of mob money.

With that, Diane and Donna (Jordan and Perry, respectively) embark on a mission to find Kirby’s killer, the silk-kerchiefed Slade (Jim Gentry, Hollywood Babylon). This endeavor takes them from Washington, D.C., to, um, Grand Rapids, Michigan, testing mattress-spring durability along the way. Scenes shot in the latter constitute Box’s most entertaining stretch (not involving the law of gravity), as our plump-chested pair tails Slade. At one point, to avoid being made, they duck into “one of those sexy adult movie theaters” showing none other than Jordan and Davis’ other 1970 collab, Marsha the Erotic Housewife! Amusingly taking the in-joke further, the box office gets a refund request.

Although its occasional change out of bedrooms and into the streets makes The Golden Box novel, it still isn’t remotely as fun as it sounds, not even with spinning interstitials à la TV’s Batman and the liberal spritz of a literal seltzer water bottle. Alas, this film marked Jordan and Davis’ fifth and final T&A team-up. Perhaps Jordan didn’t like sharing the spotlight with Perry (The Bellboy and the Playgirls)? Everything about Jordan is big — her hairdo, her personality, her line readings, her … well — so it’s not like she leaves much room onscreen for anyone or anything else. Her visual appeal aside, Box’s greatest asset is the score from Davis’ regular composers, Chet and Jim Moore; it’s as bouncy as its stars. —Rod Lott

Get it at dvdrparty.

Thriller

Trauma Therapy: Psychosis (2023)

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Dubiously, Trauma Therapy: Psychosis bills itself as “the very final film for the late Tom Sizemore.” Yet at press time, IMDb shows he has 28 forthcoming titles in various stages of production, an alarming number of which co-star Bai Ling. But please don’t take any of that as a reason to watch this wretched sequel, easily one of 2023’s worst movies.

“Wait, sequel?” you say. I get it; I never heard of the original Trauma Therapy, either, but IMDb confirms its existence since 2019. Prior viewing is unnecessary, in part because Trauma Therapy: Psychosis appears to be templated: same scenario, different setting.

A few losers are chosen to attend an advanced-treatment retreat of The Vance Institute. It’s named for Tobin Vance, the world-leading self-help guru, so Zig Ziglar can go fuck himself. Many harboring unresolved Daddy/Mummy issues, the participants are yelled at by a scowling Vance (Tom Malloy, The Alphabet Killer) to face their fears in order to be the person they want to be. It’s basically like every episode of Oprah, if Oprah were a histrionic dude-bro in a hoodie.

The anti-Hippocratic challenges Vance puts his patients through involve hallucinogenic drugs and hungry leeches before escalating to being poisoned and forced to chase a rabbit with antidote-infused blood. If you haven’t already guessed, yes, Vance’s “therapy” methods play for keeps.

Trauma Therapy: Psychosis feels it exists because co-writers Malloy and David Josh Lawrence (who plays an undercover Vance Institute enforcer) caught Squid Game on Netflix and got really jelly: “We can afford half a dozen matching track suits, too, right?”

Flat, unoriginal and so listlessly paced it often appears actors are either waiting for their cues or counting to 10 between lines, Psychosis has some interesting imagery, but dreadful execution — perhaps the most botched since Mary, Queen of Scots. Speaking of bad head, in spliced-in interview segments, Sizemore’s talk-show host sports a Mohawk by way of Travis Bickle. You deserved better, Tom.

We all do. —Rod Lott