After graduating from X-Men: First Class, director Matthew Vaughn returns to Kick-Ass territory — that is, adapting the gleefully profane work of comics’ enfant terrible Mark Millar — with Kingsman: The Secret Service. In theme and structure, it bears the buttoned-up look of TV’s The Avengers and the well-tailored derring-do of 007’s adventures … if John Steed and James Bond were keen on shooting puppies and penetrating anuses. (Caught off-guard? You had to be there.)

Looking like co-star Michael Caine in his Harry Palmer heyday, never-more-likable Colin Firth (2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) stands front and center as Harry Hart, a “knight” in the London-based spy organization Kingsman. Its gentleman operatives wear bulletproof suits and oxford shoes concealing poison-tipped blades, and they carry umbrellas that double as gun and shield. While on assignment in the Middle East in 1997, Hart makes a mistake that gets a colleague killed, so he vows to repay that debt to the dead man’s son.

Seventeen years later, that happens with the reformation of Eggsy Unwin (newcomer Taron Egerton), a hot-tempered juvenile delinquent whose street smarts Hart manipulates into secret-agent material, taking him from loser (his surname suggests as much: Unwin) to veritable princess magnet. Coinciding with the recruiting process is the nefarious rise of lisping tech entrepreneur Valentine Richmond (Samuel L. Jackson, Avengers: Age of Ultron), who with rapidity moves forward with his plan for world domination via mind control via SIM cards via free WiFi for life. (Looking at my most recent AT&T bill, I fully understand why the public would flock to such a strings-attached ruse.)

This being the start of an intended franchise, Vaughn spends much of the first hour laying the groundwork through the Kingsman org’s training sequences and unconventional tests of feats both physical and psychological. It’s not until hour two that the true plot kicks into gear. At 128 minutes, Kingsman is too long by a quarter, yet curiously, the movie is back-loaded with slam-bang. Until then, it cruises along on roguish charm without fully committing to tone; it failed to make much of an impression beyond my marveling at tailored clothing I can ill afford.

Not unexpectedly for viewers of Vaughn’s previous work — in particular, his 2004 debut, Layer Cake — the best scenes depend upon the jolt of pop music on the soundtrack; they even may have been built around the cuts. Although not necessarily for the right reasons, the showstopper is a church shootout in which nearly 100 God-fearing Kentuckians die graphically at Harry’s lightning-quick hands while Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” wails away. The intended effect is laughs — and they do come — but like that iconic Southern-rock tune, it just doesn’t know when to quit, thereby giving you time to recall real-life church massacres that aren’t funny at all. That somewhat sours one’s enjoyment of what essentially is a spoof of itself, but should we really be surprised? For all who have collaborated with Millar in his career thus far, restraint has not been among them. —Rod Lott

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Your first sign that John Derek’s Tarzan, the Ape Man is the legendary bungle in the jungle as reputed: the film’s literal first image, of MGM’s iconic Leo the Lion opening his mouth to emit that famous growl … only to be overdubbed by that old-school Tarzan yell.

Set in 1910, this adventure of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ most lucrative literary cash cow focuses on Jane (Bo Derek, the director’s wife), a blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty with sun-kissed cheeks who has come to West Africa to find the father she’s never known. He’s James Parker (Richard Harris, Gladiator), an eccentric explorer who’s somewhat of an elephant whisperer and completely a “first-class bastard.” Jane joins his expedition to bond.

Forty-five minutes in, Mr. Derek finally gives his audience what they want: Tarzan and tits. The two (three?) elements arrive in the same scene, as a bathing Jane is threatened by a lion (this one growls in its own voice), yet saved by Tarzan (Miles O’Keeffe, Sword of the Valiant) — a putative half-man/half-ape, James warns his daughter. James wants to capture and stuff the feral man; Jane wants to be stuffed by him. Because children do the opposite of their parents’ wishes, a grateful Jane lets the mute Tarzan feel her up. Somewhere, Rosie the Riveter weeps.

Acting as his own cinematographer, Mr. Derek photographs his spouse as if everyone wants to bed her. And back then, millions did; they just didn’t see the need to pay for it when there was a perfectly good Playboy tie-in pictorial awaiting back home. Thus, Tarzan, the Ape Man died on the vine, putting out the fire kindled just two years earlier, when Blake Edwards’ 10 made Bo an overnight sex symbol, despite those godawful cornrows.

The spouses’ Tarzan collaboration is a laughable, misguided exercise in ego-fluffing, nipple-tweaking and monkey-loving. Its opening suggests grand-scale prestige; its comic-book transitions promise something pulpy; and the finished product is neither. Keeping O’Keeffe quiet was a move for the best, but giving Bo the lion’s share of dialogue was asking for it. As if to compete with the “scenery” for attention, Harris makes sweeping gestures with his arms as he shouts his lines.

All that limb flailing counts as the most (nonsexual) action the movie achieves. Mr. Derek squanders a dandy sequence in which Jane is embraced by a deadly python, and it’s Tarzan to the rescue! But in slow-motion — so slow, the serpent could have been a puppet. So could O’Keeffe. Him Tarzan; Bo Jane; you bored. —Rod Lott

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What, if anything, does the title Everly convey to you? By that, I mean, shouldn’t an action film carry a name that suggests — if not promises — y’know, action? In that aspect, Everly arrives holding an enticement level of zero; at most, it sounds like a music biopic of those brothers who kindly told Little Susie she needed to wake the eff up.

I don’t want to see that. I do, however, want to see a balls-out ammo-fest starring Salma Hayek as a prostitute with remarkably good aim. That’s what Everly is — or at least strives to be — but with a moniker like that, it is all but counting on audiences to ignore its existence. To paraphrase the film’s running gag, A Lot of Dead Whores would look better splashed across a one-sheet, not to mention weed out a sizable chunk of viewers who would find the flick tasteless. While Everly’s crassness is debatable, it’s not exactly defendable, either.

Returning to those Desperado days that helped make her famous, Hayek gives it her all and gets physical — really physical — as Everly, a high-class sex slave who finds herself in a do-or-die situation, so she chooses “do.” She’s trapped in an apartment building infested with members of the Japanese yakuza crime syndicate. With animal-print heels on her feet and weapons in her hands, she fires away with abandon in an attempt to escape. Don’t expect a floor-by-floor takedown like The Raid: Redemption — she rarely and barely leaves the room.

That’s about all there is to it. Director/co-writer Joe Lynch (Knights of Badassdom) tries to wedge some family drama in there, but that peg doesn’t fit the slot. Hard-wringing and heart-tugging have no legitimate claim to a battlefield strung with jacked-up sadomasochists, costumed warriors and bounty-seeking strumpets. And yet by sidestepping the one issue that would give Everly more purpose (her rape, unseen but used as a starting line), Lynch denies her deeper character motivation. We’re left with much go boom about nothing.

Although funny in quick bursts, Everly is never as fun as it believes itself to be. For example, it is set at Christmastime for no other reason than to allow for multiple ironic uses of holiday tunes to score scenes of splatter. Once is cute; beyond that pushes it. For a project that seems to have been engineered as the Most Awesomest Movie Ever, Dude, some ingredient is lacking to hold the thing together, so it feels utterly pointless. Violence for violence’s sake can work — see 2007’s self-parodying Shoot ’Em Up for proof — but Lynch wants to play up the gore at times purely for laughs and at others purely for disgust; the problem in doing so is that both instances share a trough on the tonal wavelength. After a while of so much assault, you may wonder which reaction he wants, so you choose neither. —Rod Lott

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Following the previous year’s Black Samurai, a post-Enter the Dragon Jim Kelly re-teamed with schlock director Al Adamson to go all 007 with Death Dimension. They were off by at least six points.

Kelly’s police detective lives by the credo, “The name of the game is Save Your Ass.” His captain (George Lazenby, the one-and-done James Bond from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) assigns him the case of The Pig (Harold Sakata, aka Goldfinger’s Odd Job), a crime lord looking to sell a “freeze bomb” to any country willing to shell out $30 million. The scientific weapon turns anything within an immediate radius to absolute zero; under an Adamson budget, this is depicted by throwing fake snow within the frame.

Although Adamson was behind the camera, he was not responsible for the screenplay. That batch of incoherence can be blamed on Death Dimension’s own producer, Harry Hope, the man who unleashed a real weapon in 1972: the unwatchable Doomsday Machine. While Death Dimension shares that sci-fi turkey’s whiff of inadequacy, it emerges superior — comparatively speaking, of course — thanks to The Pig keeping a pet turtle, a pet madam (Terry Moore, 1949’s Mighty Joe Young) and a pet giant horny toad, which he threatens will “bite your tit.”

Lest we forget, Death Dimension also boasts star power in Kelly, a real-deal martial artist whose smile radiates actual charm. Yet having charm does not equal exercising good judgment in choosing scripts. In the end, Kelly takes down an airplane with a couple of shots from a hand pistol. Then, to celebrate, he performs a flying kick toward the camera, and Adamson, in his finest visual flourish not involving his wife Regina Carrol’s bosom, freezes the image. Absolute zero, indeed! —Rod Lott

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Ginger McAllister, we hardly knew ye. (And yet it still burns when I urinate.) A mere two years after the sexy(-ish), slutty superspy burst onto the screen in 1971’s Ginger, the series — spicy and sleazy, in equal measure — comes to a close with the third and final chapter, Girls Are for Loving.

This time, the CIA calls upon Ginger (Cheri Caffaro, Savage Sisters) to literally prostitute herself for the good of the country. Details aren’t all that important, but the mission has something to do with an international trade alliance in the making, an Asian ambassador (Yuki Shimoda, The Octagon) and a swingin’ socialite/American diplomat (Scott Ellsworth, who would appear in the Caffaro co-penned sex comedy H.O.T.S.). The latter is whom the feds ask Ginger to bed. Her response is a riot:

Ginger: “I don’t mind giving my bod to him … in the name of the flag, of course.”
Ginger’s Exasperated Boss: “But why?”
Ginger: “Well, let’s just say I like to fuck a lot.”

Ginger likes to fuck a lot, and Caffaro and writer/director Don Schain (then her hubby) take the canoodling as far as they can go, slipping the surly bonds of the MPAA’s R rating. Even when she’s not having her lady parts squeezed and stroked for the camera’s delight, Ginger often goes without clothes: for an off-key musical striptease, a topless hotel fight and some impromptu, bikini-bottom-only karate sparring on the beach. By no means is that a complete list.

As trashy as they are watchable, the secret-agent shenanigans take her to the Virgin Islands — irony! — where Ginger meets her match in ginger-haired bad girl Ronnie St. Claire (Sheila Leighton, How Sweet It Is!). That the two ladies will engage in a catfight before the closing credits is a given; that Ginger electrocutes a pair of wieners, not so much. —Rod Lott

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