The cop killers of Cop Killers number exactly two: Ray and Alex, respectively played by Flesh Gordon himself, Jason Williams, reunited with his producer, Bill Osco. With this pair, coke is it! In fact, the film opens with them closing a $100,000 drug deal when the po-po show up to preempt their celebration. Four dead cops later (hence the title), Ray (the one with the ’stache) and Alex (the one with sideburns the shape of lamb chops) decide to Thelma & Louise their way toward the border of Mexico.

From there, Walter Cichy’s lone directorial effort plays episodic in execution, with the on-the-lam men driving from one situation to another, leaving multiple felonies and misdemeanors in their path. That includes tormenting an effeminate ice cream truck driver (James Nite, in a jaw-dropping performance of ineptitude), forcing a kidnapped blonde (Diane Keller) to read aloud from a trashy paperback novel and making a bloody mess of a convenience store, before finally reaching a hippie den to make a couple of transactions — only one in the financial sense.

Befitting of grindhouse fare, every frame of the independently produced Cop Killers is coated in grit and grime, in part due to its unwashed, grease-caked stars. If it feels like a Bonnie and Clyde riff made by porn producers, that’s because it is. Williams’ inexperience may have worked for the spoofery of Flesh Gordon, but he’s in over his head here; that said, he acts Osco off the screen. The performance most likely to leave your mouth agape can be witnessed — and oh, how it must be — at the hippie den, when a gourd-stoned plaything named Becky (Judy Ross) gives Pespi what would go unchallenged as the company’s most awkward pop-culture moment until 1983, when Michael Jackson’s non-flame-retardant hair knocked it off its perch.

For all of Cop Killers’ rough edges, I found the first half quite enjoyable because the damn thing kept moving forward — not propulsively so, but enough to keep boredom at bay. Then the action pauses for Alex to give their comely captive a step-by-step tutorial on snorting cocaine, and it never recovers, progressively becoming more downbeat. The ending is a foregone conclusion, but gives future multiple Oscar winner Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London) an early chance to develop his makeup-effects muscles. —Rod Lott

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Forty-three years before Captain America and Spider-Man stood on opposing sides in Captain America: Civil War, they did so in 3 Dev Adam (aka Three Giant Men). The former is a billion-dollar blockbuster with enough star power to fuel a thousand suns. The latter is from Turkey. Yet only one opens with Spidey motorboating a woman.

And I don’t mean in the sense of sexual slang, but pushing a motorboat’s whirring engine smack into the face of a distressed damsel buried neck-deep in sand. This Turkish Spider-Man (Tevfik Sen, Yor, the Hunter from the Future) is a real asshole. Captain America (Aytekin Akkaya, another Yor vet) is the good guy.

That’s not the only edge 3 Dev Adam has over the mighty Marvel movie. Far from it. Does Civil War — or any Avengers film — give you:
• Cap joining forces with masked Mexican wrestler Santo (Yavuz Selekman, Tarzan the Mighty Man)?
• Spidey involved in a counterfeit currency scheme?
• Spidey behind the theft of historical artifacts?
• a fashion-show fracas on a yacht?
• Santo pulling guard duty at a post office box?
• a newsboy crying out, “Latest news! Rich woman killed in her bathroom!”?
• Spidey letting hungry mice gnaw on a captive’s face?
• superhero costumes made by a third grader’s stay-at-home mom?
• a frickin’ strip show???

I think not! Keep your Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen. I’ll take Deniz Erkanat and Dogan Tamer. —Rod Lott

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Though usually pretty laid-back, easy rider Peter Fonda jumps into the role of a two-fisted action hero, surprisingly ready to take on a quartet of small-town goons when they try to run from a fender bender in the first few minutes of Fighting Mad.

Directed by future Oscar winner Jonathan Demme for, of course, Roger Corman, here Fonda is farm boy Tom Hunter, returning from the city with his bratty kid after a relatively painful divorce; within minutes of a happy reunion, his brother Charlie (Scott Glenn) is murdered by the aforementioned goons who work for a local land developer.

Taking a page from the book of Brad Wesley, this developer Crabtree (Philip Carey) thinks he owns the town, disinterring an old lady’s makeshift cemetery, causing a rockslide that destroys a family’s home, beating up Hunter’s dear old pop and setting his barn on fire.

At first, Hunter was merely mad — but now he’s fighting mad, hence the title.

Shot and edited in that atmospheric style many of Corman’s New World pics had, Fonda is at his most energetic here, whether he’s running from killers on a dirt bike with his son on his lap or shooting various guards outside of Crabtree’s dwelling with a bow and arrow, delivering a country-fied revenge flick that actually gives us a happy, if mostly nonsensical, ending. —Louis Fowler

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Since the fatalistic conclusion of Easy Rider, few actors had as many downbeat cinematic endings as Peter Fonda did, with the explosive train collision in Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry one of his depressive best that, at least, would go on to be anonymously immortalized in the intro to TV’s The Fall Guy.

Here, Fonda is the titular insane Larry who, along with a reptilian Adam Roarke, is part of a pair of groovy grocery store robbers who specialize in highly intricate — almost too intricate — capers that almost include the murder of a little girl, all to pay for their future NASCAR needs.

On this particular getaway, they’re additionally saddled with the filthy Mary (Susan George), a sexual conquest from the night before. As the trio speeds off in their incredibly impressive Dodge Charger with eccentric police tactics constantly trying to chase them down, including one dude in a high-performance interceptor and the quirky sheriff himself trying to run them over in a helicopter.

With Fonda at his coked-out best and George at her wide-eyed worst, they’re a couple with nothing but softball barbs to sling between them, with the saving grace of sorts being Roarke as a lizard with something of a heart-on for the stowaway.

But that out-of-nowhere ending, man … even for a Fonda flick, it’ll still shake the entire room. —Louis Fowler

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With an English title that basically translates to Slut Commando — my favorite kind of commando, natch — this shot-on-video movie from Mexico stars Jenny Lore as conservative teacher Brenda. When one of her pupils is kidnapped by a devil-worshipping drug lord — a narcosatanico! — she must go undercover to track this little girl down.

And where does her investigation lead her? To a strip club in some dude’s living room where no one ever actually gets nude, but there is an owner who snorts copious amounts of nose candy and forgives easily. Brenda, after singing a song of romance instead of getting naked, eventually tells the other dancers about her life before she was a teacher.

Seems that, as a child, Brenda and her brother were taken in by a highly secretive arm of the Texas Rangers that teaches things to children like martial-arts skills, computer hacking and I think medical training; even worse, while on a mission, her brother was killed by a narcosatanico — the very same one who has kidnapped said little girl!

After a montage of Brenda training the strippers to become expert ninjas and prime marksmen, they break into the drug lord’s barely guarded fortress — which resembles a theater-in-the-round, actually — and all hell breaks loose, literally. Thanks for nothing, Satan.

If you can get past the cheap-looking wipes and fades, there is a stupidly intriguing story here, one that is padded with so many watchable scenes of fully clothed sensuality and Luciferian spin kicks, it’s hard to hate it. Throw in the most miraculous ending ever — a cripple walks! — and Commando Zorras is guaranteed to bump and grind for a caustically throbbing 80 minutes. —Louis Fowler

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