At the beginning of Viva Knievel!, the world’s most famous daredevil (Evel Knievel, playing himself) breaks into an orphanage in order to deliver a boxful of toys. While he’s there, an adorable crippled moppet abandons his crutches and explains that Evel’s heroism served as the inspiration to get him to walk again. It’s a moment so shameless, it feels like director Gordon Douglas (Them!) is begging us to imagine Santa Claus and Jesus Christ combined in the body of a red-faced, sideburned hillbilly with a twisted motorcycle fetish.

And as over-the-top as this may seem, what makes Viva Knievel! so special and an absolute must see for anyone interested in classic WTF cinema is the astonishing fact that this is the most subtle and ambiguous scene in the entire movie!

With his life story already having been told in 1971’s Evel Knievel (but starring George Hamilton), Viva eschews typical biopic melodrama in favor of cheesy, ’70s-era action exploitation. That is, unless at one point in Knievel’s life, there really was a conspiracy to sabotage his bike during a jump in Mexico, so a group of drug smugglers could load the semi carrying his corpse back into the States with millions of dollars worth of cocaine. In that case, the film could be considered unusually accurate.

To its credit, Viva is surprisingly well-made and looks like a real movie, unlike similar projects, which tend to resemble glorified TV pilots. To its discredit, it manages to outdo Xanadu for featuring the most embarrassing performance of Gene Kelly’s career and also forces us to confront the terrifying image of Knievel (who is admittedly better in the role than Hamilton was) making out with Lauren Hutton, which ranks right up there with Jessica Alba kissing Danny Trejo in Machete for pure unintended horror. —Allan Mott

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In a lily-white era where female matinee idols were Barbra Streisand and Goldie Hawn, Pam Grier became a groundbreaking alternative, in part due to her landmark role of Foxy Brown. While the film is also a blaxploitation classic, make no mistake: Grier’s too confident onscreen to be exploited herself, bare breasts and all. Regardless of the race element, it’s just a damn enjoyable AIP actioner.

In the not-a-Coffy-sequel to Coffy, Grier is the no-nonsense, clean-living voice of reason in a world of danger. She pleads for her brother, Link (Antonio Fargas, Huggy Bear of TV’s Starsky & Hutch), to get straight by leaving the blow-dealing biz behind. When he gets into trouble with a loan shark, Link rats out sis’ undercover-cop beau (Terry Carter, Abby) for the payoff.

When Foxy’s boyfriend is gunned down, she skips the grieving process and goes undercover herself, as a high-class hooker for the organization responsible. That way, she can exact revenge from the inside out.

Writer/director Jack Hill fought to get Grier in the title role, and it’s easy to see why: She commands the screen. She is the movie. She can play sexy and sweet, tender and threatening, and exude credibility no matter what mode she’s in — and that includes the finale, where she bestows the gift in the pickle jar. Only the embarrassing opening-credits sequence gives Grier anything to be ashamed of. —Rod Lott

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Too bad it bombed, because Around the World in 80 Days, an adaptation of Jules Verne’s classic novel, is one of the most purely enjoyable American vehicles for Jackie Chan. On the run after stealing his village’s one-of-a-kind jade Buddha from the Bank of London, Chan’s Passepartout finds a convenient hiding place as a valet to eccentric inventor Phileas Fogg (Steve Coogan, Tropic Thunder). When Fogg accepts a career-on-the-line bet to traverse the globe in 80 days, Passepartout sees the trip as a great way to evade authorities.

No matter where they go, they’re pursued by policemen, not to mention the occasional ninja. Picking up a French painter for whom Fogg has an eye (the cute but annoying Cécile De France, Hereafter), the pair finds adventure going country to country, continent to continent, whether by air, land or sea. Said adventures include meeting an egotistical Turkish prince (Arnold Schwarzenegger) who’s on the prowl for a seventh wife, running into the Wright Brothers (an ad-libbing Owen and Luke Wilson) in the middle of the desert and rightfully returning the Buddha to his Chinese village, only to find themselves in the middle of a martial-arts battle, with Sammo Hung as the legendary fighter Wong Fei Hung.

The way the movie plays with various genres, locales and historical characters is undeniably fun, but it’s elevated to another level entirely by Chan’s set pieces. The aforementioned fight that has him squaring off alongside pal Hung is a highlight, as is when he attempts to board a hot air balloon by hanging on to a rope, encountering numerous obstacles in the process, just ripe for his brand of physical comedy.

Usually family films are seemingly made for only one half of the family: the young one. But 80 Days can be enjoyed by all ages without insulting the older half. Oh, sure, there are obvious slapstick bits to guarantee laughs from the kids, but many of them are carried off with enough skill and comic timing that it was hard to resist them myself. It is an old-fashioned epic adventure that remains true to Verne’s light style while also making for a great and appropriate showcase for the inimitable Chan. My only problem: Where are his trademark end-credit outtakes? —Rod Lott

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Do or Die is another installment in Andy Sidaris’ guilty-pleasure series of T&AK-47 action opuses. This one is chock-full of all the standard elements — former Playboy Playmates, guns, explosions and remote-control aircraft — plus the added fun of one-time Oscar nominee Pat Morita, never-in-danger-of-Academy-honors Erik Estrada and the inexplicably bosomed Stephanie Schick (aka Pandora Peaks).

As usual, the ever-bouncy Dona Spier and bouncier Roberta Vasquez are on hand (but, alas, not in my hands) as federal agents out to quash the mystical Asian overlord Kane, this time played by Morita. Estrada plays a guy named Rico and refers to his penis as “Little Rico.” (Hey, at least he’s honest.)

Thanks to Peaks, the breasts are bigger than ever. And wetter, as Schick unleashes hers under a waterfall, while Vasquez plays a round of human tequila shots. Blondes and brunettes aren’t you thing? In her third Sidaris go-round, leggy ginger Cynthia Brimhall is here to fulfill that particular fetish — and, boy, does she ever.

The Sidaris glue, whatever its magic formula, isn’t laid on quite as thick here as in his other sexy spysters like Fit to Kill. But still, it’s Sidaris, which means worthy viewing no matter what. —Rod Lott

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Hypothetically, say two of your fellow police officers turn up dead, both with their windpipes smashed. Would you theorize the following: “Maybe it’s one of them karate weirdos like in the movies!” The hypothetical is also a rhetorical, because that’s what happens in the Chuck Norris film A Force of One.

Thinking they’re up against a “karate killer,” detective Dunne (Clu Gulager, The Return of the Living Dead) brings in professional sparrer Matt Logan (Norris) to train his narcotics squad, which includes Scanners‘ Jennifer O’Neill, top-billed, yet made to look as manly as her character’s name sounds, Mandy Rust.

After the karate killer strikes again, Dunne orders, “These karate people: Check ’em out!” Even Logan begins to question it, thinking perhaps the murderer is someone he and his punching pals know closely. Without giving away the culprit’s identity, I would like to note that naturally, the final fight occurs in slow-motion and sans shirts.

Made back when Norris was considered a popular entertainer, as opposed to right-wing loon, A Force of One is a decent marriage of his considerable martial-arts skills and the constructs of the action genre. The fun supporting cast includes Super Fly himself, Ron O’Neal; Bill “Superfoot” Wallace (L.A. Streetfighters); Eric Laneuville (TV’s St. Elsewhere) as Logan’s son, so let that sink in, if you know who Laneuville is; Chuck’s brother, Aaron Norris, who co-choreographed all the kicking; Chuck’s son, Michael Norris, as “Pizza Skateboarder”; and Chu Chu Malave. I don’t really know who that is, but I sure enjoy saying his name. —Rod Lott

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