According to producer Robert Walterscheid, King Kung Fu lost all but 20% of its roughly $200,000 investment. For regional indies, them’s the breaks; in this case, it is also totally deserved. Good job, American moviegoing public!

However, I discovered one good reason to see the massive turd that is King Kung Fu: You live or have lived in Wichita, the Kansas city in which this miserable monstrosity was made, and are curious about recognizing the local landmarks. Everyone else should be spared the agony by avoiding the film as they have avoided, well, Wichita.

As if the title failed to tell all, this movie thinks itself a spoof of King Kong by way of TV’s Kung Fu,* insomuch that a gorilla has been trained in the martial arts. Just as Kong was trotted out from Skull Island to big, bad New York City, Jungle Jumper (John Ballee, who should be thankful the gorilla costume hides his face) is shipped from the Orient, and set to make a promotional stop in Wichita. There, wannabe TV reporter Bo (Billy Schwartz) and camera operator Herman (the Michael Jeter-ish Tim McGill, Three for the Road) live in an attic and plot to leverage the ape’s appearance to jump-start their nonexistent careers, starting with renaming him King Kung Fu, which they have no legal right to do.

Bo and Herman’s scheme strikes the viewer as illogical for several reasons, not the least of which is it appears Walterscheid and writer/director Lance D. Hayes struggled to wrangle more than maybe two dozen people to show up at the Sedgwick County Zoo for KKF’s big unveiling scene. Said plans require the assistance of a shapely Pizza Hut employee (Maxine Gray) named Rae Fey.*

Other than Rae nicely filling out a bikini, things do not go according to plan. Herman loses his britches due to spilt banana oil on them. KKF escapes and the authorities follow. The police captain (Stephen S. Sisley), who acts like John Wayne, is named Officer Pilgrim.* KKF uses his karate on flag-helmeted cops while he wears an old lady’s fruit hat. KKF dons cowboy hat and neckerchief during a gunfight show. KKF disrupts a baseball game and frightens grocery store patrons. KKF kidnaps Rae and scales the downtown Holiday Inn, giving Bo a chance to play hero with a helicopter — and Hayes to play with dolls for “special” effects.

Every scene of King Kung Fu is a joke, yet not a single line coaxes a laugh. I suppose a preschooler might find fleeting delight in its feeble attempts at slapstick, but why purposely expose a child to pain? Hayes and his cast of nonprofessional, never-before/never-since actors try so hard … just at the wrong thing. Rather than aim for witty or funny, they want to be wacky and zany. In doing so, King Kung Fu stands (albeit in a hovering squat) as the screen’s equivalent of a clown in oversized red shoes, dancing a jig as it honks a handheld horn.

John Landis (speaking of helicopters*) already had unleashed the similarly themed, yet legitimately creative and amusing gorilla-amok comedy Schlock on a mere $60,000 in 1973. While both movies are equally inoffensive, King Kung Fu is infinitely more inept. —Rod Lott

*GET IT?

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Mad Nazi scientist Dr. Wolfgang Wagner invites a handful of people to participate in a most interesting experiment for a chance at $1 million: Survive a night in the infamous Wagner Mansion, which will prove more problematic than they ever could guess, what with the ferocious creature he’s created and whatnot.

Among the game players are our protagonist, young Charlie Hawkins, who’s so scared he once peed his pants in a corn maze; a crude, drunken Irish hooligan and his slutty Goth girlfriend, who are introduced to us mid-copulation; and, best of all, a know-it-all horror nerd/virgin with a face full of zits and a pronounced lisp. As Sesame Street-friendly as Charlie and the gang look, this one’s not for the kids.

The story structure of The Puppet Monster Massacre allows for a maximum amount of gags in 70 minutes, including funny bits on parasite incubation, the occult arts, flatulent rabbits and digs at The Shining, Psycho and Alien. Thankfully, not all of the humor depends upon the scatological for easy laughs; however, some of the raunchy stuff is inspired just enough to work: “Did I ever tell you about the time I punched Adolf Hitler in his ding-ding?”

With what I presume is a tiny budget, writer/director Dustin Mills (Theatre of the Deranged II) makes the most of what little it has, relying on good ol’ fashioned imagination to get the job done. I love the fact that something like this exists, even if the stretches between the amusing moments elongate as it goes. —Rod Lott

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Remember when Audrey Landers was giving it a go as the next Goldie Hawn? Nope? Guess you haven’t seen Ghost Writer. (It’s no Deadly Trigger.)

She plays Angela, a writer for that hot entertainment magazine Hollywood Beat, yet she just can’t land a story to please her editor. He’s played by David Doyle (Vigilante Force), who reacts to her typewritten copy with “I wanted an interview, not a barbecue!” and other lines delivered with the kind of popped-eye faces you never want to see again.

Angela’s luck flip-flops soon after she moves into the Malibu beachfront property formerly called home by sexpot startlet Billie Blaine. Given that she died in 1962 after she supposedly “ate a bottle of barbies” (per Joey Travolta, the kind of Travolta you never want to see again), Billie is obviously supposed to be Marilyn Monroe — a point hammered home by the casting of Audrey Landers’ bustier sister, Judy, in full boop-oop-a-doop mode.

Billie didn’t commit suicide as everyone believes. She was murdered! Her ghost appears to Angela — and only to Angela, except when Billie chooses to strip nude at a club — and enlists her help in finding the man who killed her; in exchange, Billie gives Angela the scoop of a lifetime, because if there’s one thing magazine editors clamor for, it’s an unsubstantiated, unverifiable story.

Judy may not be asked to do anything beyond provide eye candy, but Audrey throws herself (sometimes literally) into the role as if she were in a classic-era screwball comedy. Kenneth J. Hall (Evil Spawn) fails her, because he wrote and directed the thing like the most predictable, most vanilla TV sitcom, making Ghost Writer another film beneath her talents. If you do watch it, look for support from Tony Franciosa, Jeff Conaway and a box of Mister Salty Pretzels. —Rod Lott

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Okay, okay — yes, I admit it: The only reason I watched Virgin Paradise is because its no-name leading lady, Zuzana Marlow (née Struss, I presume), and her yellow bikini joined forces to become an arresting visual highlight of 1985’s The Tower, a Canadian SOV SF thriller, and this comedic caper appears to be her only other prominent role in a filmography as slim as her Venus Swimwear figure.

Despite its come-hither title smack-dab in the golden age of teen sex comedies, Virgin Paradise contains no sex. This made-for-TV cheapie is called that only because of its eventual locale of the Virgin Islands. That’s where three newly minted college graduates — the only grads that year, judging from the otherwise barren Toronto campus as they exit the ceremony — head to celebrate all that pomp and circumstance. Marlow is Samantha, the rich girl obsessed with money. Her Tower co-star Charlene Richards, is Candice, the black girl obsessed with men. And Gloria Gifford (This Is Spinal Tap) is Julie, the divorced girl obsessed with alimony checks.

The Schick Hydro Silk razor strip of a story upturns the girls’ vacation plans, as they charter a boat christened Bad Timing — I’ll say! — on which smugglers have stashed emeralds worth $3 million or $6 million, depending on the scene. The jewels look like beads borrowed from a game of Pente, and Candice hides them in her container of hair gel. Sitcom setup firmly in place, the girls run afoul of pirates, one of whom resembles a squatty James Brolin. Our heroic trio also gets lost in the Caribbean, because that’s what comedy rules dictate right after you wonder aloud, “Look at all these little islands. How could we possibly get lost?”

Did writer/director Ron Standen possibly think the material was funny? One punchline in the action-packed (relatively speaking, of course) finale has Samantha utter in exasperation, “I said ‘distraction,’ not ‘total destruction!'” For the Canuxploitation faithful who eat up these video-lensed Emmeritus Productions, its threadbare funding, two-left-feet plotting and — if we’re grading on a curve — amateurish performances will not disappoint. The pleasure they’ll derive is not the kind Standen intended … except for the endless scenes of Samantha, Candice and Julie in more bathing suits than can be counted — mission accomplished there, my good man.

Presumably to get the running time to the magic 90-minute mark, Virgin Paradise comes with a wraparound sequence featuring the gorgeous Marlow as a different character. Speaking in a baby-doll voice (which is most annoying) and wearing skimpy lingerie (which is most welcome), she relays the story to her diary — and the viewer — complete with interruptions throughout. One of her lines is “I kept thinking to myself, ‘Self, if only I had a camera to record it all. What a movie it would make.’” It did not. —Rod Lott

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Blame It on Rio is the Celebrity Skin-ready tale of the woefully middle-aged Matthew (Michael Caine, The Island) and his painfully farce-ready love affair with his best friend’s teenage daughter, Jennifer (Michelle Johnson, Beaks: The Movie). His excuse? Blame it on Rio!

Rio is one of the lustiest cities on this side of the planet, a brown-skinned Bacchanalia filled with an infinite amount of bare breasts bringing to life all your damnable desires, flaunted about in the streets 365 days a year. It’s seemingly the perfect setting for Stanley Donen’s directorial swan song, if it wasn’t such a bleak, horrific view into the mindset of a dying man wishing for one last view of pert teen bosoms. The easiest way to get them? Blame it on Rio!

Matthew and his wife (Valerie Harper, TV’s Rhoda) are seemingly in a loving relationship, but, in this film, love is a selfish emotion that gets more grotesque as the movie goes on. When the spirit of a crazy night in Rio gets into him, he gets even deeper into Jennifer, giving fully into the sudden sexual aplomb of the city. He expects to have one torrid night to forget with her, as most middle-aged men would, but, of course, she obsessively falls in love with him. He totally blames it on Rio.

After their initial sexual encounter, Matthew gets tries admirably to cut things off with Jennifer, not out of the dark shame of bedding a willing teenage girl, but completely out of fear of getting caught by her equally sleazy dad (Joseph Bologna, Transylvania 6-5000). When he tries to gently let her down, she goes a tad overboard and tries to off herself. We’ve all been there, but we probably weren’t able to blame it on Rio.

Donen, who directed films such as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Singin’ in the Rain, sadly, seems to forgotten all he knew about being a filmmaker, his master’s touch now a pervert’s sticky glove, with his leering view coating the film in a gooey veneer of manmade despicableness. He made an ugly film of people doing rather ugly things, but it was the ’80s, and anything went, usually with the help of cocaine and an Animotion album. Especially if you going to blame it on Rio.

But no one really comes off worse than Caine; now considered a great actor because, well, he’s old and British, here he’s a combination of visibly embarrassed and audibly horny as Jennifer writhes and grinds on him every chance she gets. But, if the authorities asked him what he was doing with a 17-year-old-girl in his bed, he could always wink at the camera and blame it on Rio. —Louis Fowler

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