Nine times out of 10, when you pick up an obscure movie you know nothing about based solely on its poster, you’re going to get burned. I expected as much when I bought a copy of Dom DeLuise’s 1979 directorial debut, Hot Stuff, based purely on its leggy illustration of Suzanne Pleshette. The fact that it also featured a drawing of Jerry Reed didn’t bode well for its overall quality, but it turns out, I had nothing to worry about.

The film is a slight affair that mostly takes place in one location, but the script (co-written by famed genre writer Donald E. Westlake) is filled with lively, funny characters brought fully to life by the talented cast. DeLuise, Reed and Pleshette star (along with The Electric Company regular Luis Avalos) as Florida cops assigned to a burglary and theft division whose spotty conviction record has placed it on the chopping block.

With just over a month to save their unit, they decide (with the blessing of their captain, Ossie Davis) to take over a local fencing warehouse and buy stolen goods while filming the perps through a two-way mirror. The mob soon gets involved, causing some amusing mayhem, but the majority of the running time is spent on the amusing array of criminals who come in to unload their stolen goods.

Hot Stuff definitely has an easy, unsophisticated feel that keeps it from rising to a particularly high level, but despite featuring a “thank you” to Hal Needham in its end credits, it still manages to earn some genuine laughs. The cast is great and Pleshette’s performance once again reminds the audience that Hollywood really fucked up by not allowing her to become the much bigger star she should have been. —Allan Mott

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In the realm of bad musicals, most know about Can’t Stop the Music and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. But Train Ride to Hollywood is so bad, I’m told it was barely released. Before the Village People and Bee Gees made their ill-fated attempts at box-office glory, the four-man R&B group Bloodstone — perhaps best-known for the hit “Natural High,” which you heard in Jackie Brown — gave it a try.

I’m thinking they shouldn’t. Playing themselves, Bloodstone is about to go onstage for a concert when one of the members slips and conks his noggin, forcing him into an unconscious world that we must endure along with him for 80-some-odd minutes. When Martin Luther King Jr. said he had a dream, certainly he meant the opposite of this, which casts the guys as train conductors only a step or two above the demeaning level of Stepin Fetchit.

Said choo-choo is headed to Tinseltown, and the passengers are impersonations of movie legends Humphrey Bogart, W.C. Fields, Dracula and Clark Gable, who uses the “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” joke more than once. Also aboard are a sheik with seven whores, Caged Heat’s Roberta Collins as Jean Harlow, and most notably, Terminal Island’s Phyllis Davis squeezed into Scarlett O’Hara’s corset. Marlon Brando kills some of the passengers by having them smell his armpits. Oh, sorry: spoiler alert. And one of the guys boxes a gorilla.

Yes, it sure sounds wacky, but it’s a groaner without a clue, much less a successful gag. Admittedly, the songs Bloodstone wrote for the film aren’t bad — a couple of them are even as catchy as herpes — but it’s like wrapping a pizza not in a cardboard box, but a discarded diaper. Would you want to eat that? —Rod Lott

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As an actor, Sidney Poitier is an icon, a living legend, and one of the most important performers in the history of cinema, but as a director, he left a lot to be desired. The success of his biggest hit, Stir Crazy, had far more to do with the chemistry of stars Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor than anything he brought to the table, while Ghost Dad, his fourth collaboration with fellow icon, living legend, etc., Bill Cosby, is remembered only as one of the worst movies of the early ’90s (although such is Poitier’s bulletproof pop-culture status, few are aware he had anything to do with it).

Poitier’s third go-round with Cosby, A Piece of the Action (it followed 1974’s Uptown Saturday Night and 1975’s Let’s Do It Again) is about a million times better than Ghost Dad, but that doesn’t stop it from being a bizarre amalgamation of blaxploitation crime comedy and serious social-message movie. The first and best part is a comedic thriller about a thief (Cosby) and con man (Poitier) whose past crimes cause them to be at the mercy of both a retired police detective (James Earl Jones) and the local mobsters whom Poitier once ripped off to the tune of $400,000.

The second part, which bears the clear mark of Poitier collaborator Stanley Kramer (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and The Defiant Ones) deals with Poitier’s To Sir, with Love-esque attempts to teach a group of “Afro-American” teenagers how to become desirable job candidates, when he and Cosby are blackmailed by Jones to perform community service for a local charity organization. While this portion is a tad earnest and preachy, it’s far from unbearable. The problem is that for all of the time we spend with it, it never connects with the events from the first half, thereby feeling tacked-on and unnecessary. Add romantic subplots for both protagonists, and it’s amazing the film isn’t longer than its already overstuffed 135 minutes.

Despite this, A Piece of the Action is worth seeking out. The only frustration that comes from watching it is the knowledge that if someone at Warner Bros. had the balls to tell its director to cut 40 minutes from the running time, a good film might have become great one. But then again, who among us would have the balls to tell Sidney Fucking Poitier to do anything he didn’t want to do? —Allan Mott

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In director Harry Hurwitz’s Safari 3000, David Carradine basically plays David Carradine, as a former Hollywood stuntman who enters the African International Race with Playboy photographer and vaguely mustachioed Stockard Channing as his navigator. Interesting, but that’s not the kind of bush of which Playboy is interested in running pictures.

Christopher Lee is the villainous mogul who also wants the crown, and the tricks he and his henchman pal are worthy of Bullwinkle cartoons — meaning that they’re entirely stupid for a live-action film. Which is much of the problem for this witless exercise: It’s unsure whether it’s an actioner, an adventure, a comedy or even a goddamn travelogue. Because it’s so start-to-finish insipid, I’m going with comedy. One thing’s for sure: It’s not worth your time.

The four-digit number in the title refers to the amount of kilometers of the race, but I suspect it was put there to fool moviegoers into thinking it a sequel to Carradine’s hit Death Race 2000. It also implies futurism, but about the only dose of that you get is Lee driving around in a Darth Vader helmet. —Rod Lott

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You gotta admire a filmmaker with a record as perfect as Rod Amateau’s. Between 1970 and 1987, the former TV sitcom director made eight movies, all of which are awful. Beginning with Pussycat, Pussycat, I Love You (a What’s New Pussycat? “sequel” I personally wouldn’t know existed, if not for the IMDb) and ending with The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, his filmography serves as an impressive tribute to failure (I mean, I haven’t even mentioned 1978’s Son of Hitler).

So when I say that Lovelines is probably the best film he made, that probably shouldn’t be taken as an endorsement. Fact is, Lovelines sucks. Hard. But by managing not to make me never want to see another film ever again, it has to be consider Amateau’s greatest triumph. It’s another Romeo and Juliet take-off, with the Montagues and Capulets traded in for rival bands, The Firecats (all hot chicks) and The Racers (all dudes), from feuding high schools. Serving as their priest is promoter/manager/hustler/entrepreneur Michael “Police AcademyPolice Academy sound-effects guy” Winslow, who runs the vague communication service that gives the movie its nonsensical title.

Beyond Winslow, the rest of the characters comprise an amazingly forgettable lot that range from the bland to the obnoxious to the blandly obnoxious. The fact that there isn’t a human alive capable of giving a fuck about its two lovelorn protagonists (Days of Our Lives’ Mary Beth Evans and Skatetown USA’s Greg Bradford) definitely hurts the central romance, which takes up the bulk of the third act.

Fortunately, a work like Lovelines easily can be redeemed by a decent soundtrack. Unfortunately, the music the rival bands play is so joylessly rote, your ears are incapable of even registering it. When Joe Esposito contributes the least-instantly dated song to a soundtrack, you know you’re in trouble.

In summary: For Amateau completests, Lovelines will serve as a welcome respite after the misery of The Statue and Where Does It Hurt?, but for everyone else, it’ll make you want to kick William Shakespeare in the nuts. —Allan Mott

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