All posts by Rod Lott

Comedy

A Swingin’ Summer (1965)

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Six months before William Wellman Jr. and James Stacy went all Winter a-Go-Go in a Beach Party knockoff, they had themselves A Swingin’ Summer in a Beach Party knockoff.

As the respective Rick and Mickey, Wellman and Stacy play different characters than they would that Winter. With Rick’s scorching-hot redheaded girlfriend in tow (Quinn O’Hara, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, the California teens head to Lake Arrowhead for the weeklong job at its dance pavilion. When that gainful employment opportunity suddenly dries up, they decide to run it themselves, Andy Hardying the heck out of the place. That way, the likes of Gary Lewis & the Playboys, The Righteous Brothers and The Rip Chords can give full performances — each rockin’ and rousin‘ — to fill precious running time.

No doubt director Robert Sparr (Once You Kiss a Stranger …) was all for that plan, seeing as how the script is absent a plot. Prepare for one light kidnapping, some fistfighting, one instance of asphalt surfing and a lot of butt-shaking, not to mention gratuitous Frugging with a side of Watusi.

Not long after Mickey creepily takes a tape measure to girls’ bikini-topped busts (two decades before Screwballs‘ similar but rapeier breast-exam prank), he engages in a “poultry contest,” which is to say a game of chicken on water skis. Most teenpics would slate such an action-packed sequence as the climax, but A Swingin’ Summer instead sticks it in the middle section. That leaves room for quite the twist ending: that the psych student played by a debuting Raquel Welch — shrinking heads while enlarging others — is actually hot, once she removes her glasses and shakes her hair out of a bun. Can you fucking believe it?

Fun enough and equally inconsequential, Swingin’ dog-paddles behind the aforementioned AIP fare. Still, by recruiting Pajama Party’s Diane Bond as The Girl in the Pink Polka Dot Bikini, it’s doing something right. Pop a cap on a return-for-deposit bottle of Bubble Up, then press play. —Rod Lott

Get it at dvdparty.

Action

Smokey & the Judge (1980)

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Of the many Smokey and the [Insert Noun Here] movies that followed Burt Reynolds’ Bandit box-office bonanza, Smokey & the Judge is arguably the most obscure. Oddly, it’s the only one that stars a music group with a Billboard hit: Hot, the R&B trio of Gwen Owens, Cathy Carson and Juanita Curiel.

Yeah, I hadn’t heard of them, either.

At any rate, their one and only movie (aka Makin’ It, Runnin’ Hot and Strong Together) follows the three ladies of Hot as they pursue chart stardom. Margo (Owens) and Carol (Carson) just have to get out of prison first. While behind bars, Carol responds to a computer dating ad by giving answers like “peanut butter underwear.” This matches her with Morris Levy (Darrow Igus, John Carpenter’s The Fog), who happens to be a talent manager and promises them an L.A. recording contract.

Once they’re out and joined by Carol’s pal Maria (Curiel), Morris books them into a dumpy bar where a construction worker in a hard hat brings his beer-drinking pet snake. With great voices to make up for no personalities, the girls are a hit with the crowd! If only they can keep from running afoul of the redneck sheriff (Gene Price), the corpulent judge (Joe Marmo, American Drive-In), their bitchy parole officer (A’leshia Brevard, TV’s Legend of the Superheroes) and other miscreants, they may just make it after all.

So much for story! The running time is padded with half a dozen more-than-competent song performances, plus weak car chases, a Volkswagen Bus explosion, a biplane explosion, non-exploding motorcycles, gas siphoning, dog pissing, hot pants wearing, Harper Valley P.T.A.-ready sex pranks and one aggressive act of pouring ketchup down the crotch of Hack-O-Lantern’s repellent Hy Pyke.

Just as Hot was a one-hit wonder (“Angel in Your Arms”), Smokey & the Judge is Dan Seeger’s only movie as director. Having edited Al Adamson’s Death Dimension, he’s as terrible behind the camera as you’d think. Although some of the jail scenes are shot in a genuine clinker, others clearly were done in an apartment, complete with a “NO TOUCHING” sign Sharpie’d by hand. None of this amounts to a recommendation, not even for nondiscerning hicksploitation fans. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Horror

Hi-Fear (2022)

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What are you afraid of, asks the horror anthology Hi-Fear. A comic-book publisher poses the question to Natalie (Kristen Lorenz, 2019’s Bliss), a freelance illustrator hired for same-day-turn work. She’s told to draw whatever scares her most, with each round of real-time hot sketchbook action segueing into one of four tales.

First, a virgin is gifted “the Hope Diamond of pussy” for his birthday by friends. However, the whorehouse is staffed with killer prostitutes. Todd Sheets (Final Caller) quickly turns his ’80-style T&A comedy into extended gore, gleefully practical. Next, the legendary Tim Ritter (Killing Spree) turns his camera on a pastor with a bad toupée — and even worse temper — who kills his “jezebel” of a wife. This occurs after a confusing mélange of snake handling, eyeball puncturing and side-boob drug injecting. At least the pastor’s dialogue is far-right riotous: “This is the attire of a whore!”

Sodomaniac director Anthony Catanese’s segment is the shortest, but also boasts the best camerawork, as a young woman is terrorized by a mentally ill homeless man known on the streets as Krazy Killer Karl. Finally, in the most unconventional story, Camp Blood creator Brad Sykes (also responsible for the Natalie wraparound) depicts the making of an indie movie on a mountain where it’s never night. Maybe that cosmic ball of light has something to do with it?

Capping the trilogy, Hi-Fear follows 2013’s Hi-8 and 2018’s Hi-Death. A perceivable improvement over Hi-Death, it still suffers from a decreased story count set by the original’s octet. Ironically, as the Dogme 95-style shot-on-video rules established for Hi-8 have loosened considerably with each franchise installment, overall levels of quality and fun have decreased. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Kitchen Sink

Garbage Day! (1994)

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WTFIn an obsession that’s just plain unhealthy no matter how you slice it, a Brian Bonsall-ian 5-year-old boy worships Gus, his friendly neighborhood garbageman. Said fixation burns at such a white-hot intensity, the tot sets his alarm early for garbage day, starred with serial-killer detail on his bedside calendar. With the pee-your-pants anticipation of Christmas morning, he rouses his father from sleep with “Dad! Dad! Wake up! It’s garbage day!”

I, for one, believe it’s safe to say this is why the straight-to-VHS children’s program bears the title of Garbage Day!, exclamation theirs — and, we can be certain, the misguided youth’s. Let’s call him “Kid” since he’s not given a name. In that spirit, for reasons you’ve already surmised, neither a writer nor a director is credited.

Dad (William Schreiner, who also produced) happily helps his son (Quinn Schreiner) tote their trash receptacles to the curb to await the arrival of their sure-to-stink pal in public service. Kid even has a Thermos of coffee tied around his neck for Gus’ consumption.

“I wish I could see everything on garbage day,” says a starry-eyed Kid, a budding li’l John Hinckley Jr.

“You do?” answers Gus (Steven Diebold), in an overtone decidedly hushed and sinister. “Well, maybe we can work something out.”

We’re spared the fevered negotiations and whatever exchange occurs. Instead, we leap right to Dad and Kid as they follow Gus on his route. Gus fills his truck with water balloons and lets his mentees watch them explode in the trash compactor. Do the taxpayers know Gus engages in such rascality on their dime?

Lest you risk injury, make sure you’re properly seated before the riotous bloopers involving the inability of the truck’s automated arm to lift cans correctly. Scoring this montage is a Yello-styled synth track that swaps hooks for the disturbing coos and giggles of an unseen baby. Sequence complete, the lid on an unsanitary garbage container lifts, revealing Kid. Way to supervise, Dad.

Informing his passengers that milk bottles are recycled to make Frisbees, Gus asks, “Why throw anything away when it can be made into something else?” I know Gus’ line is rhetorical, but does the oily man live in some fantasy land where used condoms, tampons and toilet tissue don’t exist?

To demonstrate how bulldozers crush refuse pancake-flat, Gus smashes a line of perfectly good watermelons instead of, oh, I dunno, actual trash.

As the poignant 20-minute video reaches its end, our trio stands atop a landfill at sunset, looking over the fetid pit of filth as if it were the goddamn Grand Canyon.

To pay Gus back for the field trip, Dad and Kid have a crazy surprise awaiting him the next week: a trash bin filled with colorful balloons! Not only that, but the guys have gone to the trouble of getting them custom-printed with the line, “Have a nice GARBAGE DAY!” While this gesture may have come from the heart, it’s pretty stupid if you ask me. My reasons number three:

1. Because the balloons are helium, they immediately float away. Some gift!
2. Think of all the birds soon to be killed by the string-tied rubber orbs of death. Suffice to say, those avians will not be having a nice garbage day.
3. Even if Gus grabs a couple of balloons, you know he’ll waste no time popping them with his vehicle of doom, grooming Kid for the day they inevitably move to heads. —Rod Lott

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Documentary

Mansfield 66/67 (2017)

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Did Jayne Mansfield really join Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan? Was she its high priestess? Did the two have an affair? The documentary Mansfield 66/67 poses these questions, yet offers no definitive answers. Clever title aside, it skims along the surface level.

Pegging itself as “a true story based on rumour and hearsay,” the film shares what even those who haven’t seen a Mansfield movie may know: She was addicted to alcohol and attention, not necessarily in that order. Likewise, LaVey was her near-equal in the department of Publicity Whoredom. But only one of them went around wearing a ridiculous horns-and-cape getup, and he’s written off as, hilariously, “more Count Chocula than Charles Manson.”

As padded as Mansfield was bosomy, this film from House of Cardin co-directors (and spouses) P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes features well-informed commentary from the well-informed likes of Mamie Van Doren, John Waters, Mary Woronov, Kenneth Anger and Tippi Hedren.

On the other hand, the participating academics’ opinions — peppered with phrasings of “sex-positive” and “occupational patriarchy” — feel out of place in a doc that includes a poor-taste cartoon recreation of Jayne’s son Zoltan mauled by a zoo lion, not to mention the interstitial musical numbers and interpretive dances by men and women dressed as the camp sex symbol. While Mansfield 66/67 is pretty painless, it lacks so much insight, your time is better spent watching Mansfield’s movies. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.