All posts by Louis Fowler

Documentary

Mondo Balordo (1964)

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Following closely to the perversely entertaining Mondo Cane and with a title that roughly translates to “crazy world,” Mondo Balordo is one of the earliest exploitative travelogues to offer shocking glimpses of the misbegotten world of 1964 that was only really brandished about in the nudie-est of men’s magazines.

Hosted by the effortlessly charming Boris Karloff, we’re taken to a large swath of Europe to see sexy transvestite Spaniards on stage, the smoking-hot German lesbian scene, stuffy British bankers dancing like penguins, and Italian strong men throwing fake boulders on a film set — it’s a crazy world!

Meanwhile, in America, women raise money for the pyramids of Luxor by having their own pyramids of flesh judged and rated; an elderly man is married by a lady of the night and is then dumped at an old folks’ home; and a sexualized little person is taken to the abandoned back seat of a car parked in an alley and illicitly made love to — it’s a crazy world!

In India, hungry fisherman pull giant turtles out of the sea and tear them apart flipper to flipper; a little person sings terrible rock ’n’ roll on stage; and some random crooner tries to recapture the success of Cane’s “More” by singing a ballad that rationalizes all that is about to visually scar you in this film — it’s a crazy world!

With terrifying trips to an opium den, a ladies’ balloon-wresting ring and plenty of dirty streets filled with a mix of three-legged dogs and one-legged humans, all directed by Robert Bianchi Montero (of Sexy Nudo fame, of course), Mondo Balordo, like many of the mondo flicks of this era, is an acquired taste of delicate putridity that will willingly seduce any less-traveled pervert after 3 a.m. After all, it’s a crazy world! —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Sex

Hot Chili (1985)

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Whereas most directors would typically fill a mid-’80s teen sex comedy about a quartet of slobs working the summer at a hotel south of the border with near-constant Mexican stereotypes, not every director is Galaxina’s William Sachs, who inexplicably fills the flick with so many sexed-up European characters that you almost want to give him some sort of award for his wokefulness.

The movie is the extra-spicy Hot Chili and its big star is Allan Kayser, who you might remember as Bubba from TV’s Mama’s Family … well, that’s where I remember him from. He’s the leader of this motley crew of horny high schoolers, including those oft-repeated tropes of the cool guy, the fat guy and the nerdy guy. As much as these guys talk about “fucking,” they all seem to be totally afraid of sex.

Which isn’t to say there’s not a good reason for their erectile frights, especially given the oversexed ladies who are remarkably booked at the same time; this includes the accomplished-but-horny musician, the muscular-but-horny workout queen and the German-but-horny dominatrix who wants to do Mapplethorpe-esque things with bullwhips to the fat guy’s ass.

A set of parents — the cool guy’s parents — show up and they’re erotically horned-up as well; even his little sister is sexually vapid, taking a video camera and making homemade revenge porn to show on the television screens at a modest dinner in the hotel’s restaurant where everyone is eating the titular magical fruit.

As you’d hope, Kayser is basically Bubba on vacation, while the chubby Joe Rubbo spends most of the movie in ill-fitting boxers. Add to the pot a trio of stacked blondes — Bea Fiedler, Victoria Barrett and Taaffe O’Connell — and, well, you still have a very dumb movie, but the type of movie that only Sachs could have ever made. ¡Olé! —Louis Fowler

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Comedy

Impractical Jokers: The Movie (2020)

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If you’ve ever been in a hospital — multiple times for me — you probably know there’s really nothing to do except watch the most basic of cable television for hours on end. But, it was there I discovered truTV and its nearly constant airings of the reality show Impractical Jokers, starring Long Island comedy team the Tenderloins.

With a premise of four friends who compete in various challenges to embarrass and humiliate each other, every laugh, guffaw and chortle was always one step closer to busting my surgery stitches, but it was always a hilarious way to pass the body-aching time.

In Impractical Jokers: The Movie, their film debut, the four jokers — Murr, Q, Joe and Sal — mix a mostly fictional story in between their nonfictional stunts, as the guys try to make their way to Miami to see a Paula Abdul show. I guess she fit perfectly in the truTV budget.

And while that part of the flick is somewhat weak, opposites attract, because the pranks are some of the funniest since Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, including a birthday party at a strip club where Murr’s entire family — including some children — shows up while he’s in the middle of a lapdance. It’s a disturbingly hilarious bit that hurts my gut just writing about.

Still, at an hour and a half, Impractical Jokers: The Movie eventually wears out its welcome with overkill, while any TV episode’s 22-minute running time is enough to keep you binge-watching. Regardless, this flick came out at the worst time possible — COVID, y’all! — with most people missing it during its short theatrical run.

So, I guess the joke’s on them? —Louis Fowler

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Kitchen Sink

Street Survivors: The True Story of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash (2020)

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WTFWhen most popular musicians face a major death in their band, many times it’s best if they just break up and go their separate ways, especially when the leader of the group has just had every bone crushed in an airplane disaster, like, for example, Ronnie Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

That rock ’n’ roll fuck-up of Oct. 20, 1977, is finally portrayed in the nail-biting Street Survivors: The True Story of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash. The incident killed lead singer Van Zant and a few others, and the movie is told through the eyes of drummer Artimus Pyle and his well-worn vegetarian T-shirt.

A replacement drummer who’s thrown into Skynyrd’s lifestyle of booze and broads on the road, Pyle (Ian Shultis) is the band’s moral conscience, often telling wasted bandmates they need to “slow it down.” It doesn’t help, because soon enough, their ramshackle plane is out of gas and going down over a Louisiana swamp.

But that’s just the beginning of Pyle’s problems, because after single-handedly rescuing all the survivors of the wreck and then running some 20 miles through the marshlands, he has a near fistfight with a deadly snake and is subsequently shot for trespassing on some dude’s land.

If it sounds like Pyle is the hero of the story, it’s because he is; interspersed throughout the movie is an interview with the real-life Pyle, giving himself well-earned props for being the man who saved (most of) Skynyrd, although with plenty of tortured screaming at God along the way.

The band should have broken up for good after this accident, but, of course, embarrassingly kept going on down that road, forgoing any possible legendary status for the ticket sales of state fair shows. Regardless, you can still hear “Free Bird” on the radio 10 or so times a day. Can your band say that? —Louis Fowler

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Horror

Horrors of Spider Island (1960)

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Perhaps a more fitting title for the German horror flick Horrors of Spider Island should be Hard-Ons of Spider Island, as in between the scant spider-man — with great power comes great perversity! — there are fantastical amounts of Teutonic skin, sex and sand to keep even the most passive of viewers somewhat intrigued.

Hot-shit nightclub producer Gary (Alexander D’Arcy) is planning a big song-and-strip showcase in Singapore, hiring a dozen or so sexy sirens with names like Babs, Nelly and Gladys. But, wouldn’t you know it, their plane goes down somewhere in the Pacific; as they’re arguing over water rations, a large island is spotted in the distance.

After finding an old scientist drained of his bodily fluids in a big spider web, Gary is bitten by the uranium-enriched spider and becomes an amazing spider-man. But instead of dealing with this monstrous blight of subhumanity, for the next few weeks the gang frolics and fornicates with a 1960s-style sensuality that shouldn’t really titillate but, boy, does it ever.

Also released in the U.S. under the name It’s Hot In Paradise, the lack of sturdy spider-scares is more than ably surrendered by the statuesque skirts that lounge about in garters, girdles and other essential tropical island wear, so much so that about 45 minutes into this, I forgot this was supposed to be a horror flick.

But, you know, I’m guessing the filmmakers probably did, too. It’s like the old saying goes: When life gives you lingerie, make linger-ade. Or something like that … —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.