Purportedly a spoof of corporate training videos, Safety First: The Rise of Women! looks at the peculiar predicaments faced by attractive women who work in skyscrapers in California. That’s awfully specific. And Safety First is specifically awful.

Over and over for 50 agonizing, mishmashed minutes, ostensible writer/director Greg McDonald exhibits an imbecilic sense of humor to depict how those females should respond in various life-or-death situations, from medical emergencies to natural disasters. Most of what pass as punchlines can be paraphrased as, “ROFL, women have boobies! And they bounce, whaaaaaaat!”

Not a second of it qualifies as funny, but that doesn’t stop McDonald from thinking all of it is. Quite possibly, the scenarios are crowdsourced from a seventh-grade gym class.

For instance, trapped in an elevator? Just imagine you’re at a private beach, so you can rip open your blouse and clutch dem titties. Should an earthquakes occur, ensure your prep kit is stocked with dildos of unusual size, and be prepared for your hanging breasts to shake and shake and shake. And in case of fire, getting oxygen is of utmost importance, so doff that bra before running down the stairs — and don’t forget to breathe through your diaphragm. (Re: that last advice nugget, you get one guess what the woman places over her mouth to demonstrate.)

Although tit and dick jokes rule The Rise’s low-bar roost, not every gag involves erogenous zones. Why, in the segment on bomb threats, a woman gets the upper hand by covering her opponent’s eyes with two Forever stamps (the original Liberty Bell design, for any curious philatelists).

Woe be to the actresses, strip club performers and other ladies who deigned to appear in Safety First: The Rise of Women! They’re front and center, while McDonald gets to hide not only behind his video camera, but also a “Mac Kelly” pseudonym, as he ADD-edits his way through go-go dances, catfights, cloth dummies, disembodied limbs, lesbian couplings, goat milkings, hula hooping, iMovie explosions and male rape by a Village Person (the fireman, for any curious cosplayers). On the list of things to watch before you die, Safety First should come in last. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Making a parody film is difficult when you can’t afford to record live audio. And ever more so when your actors don’t move their mouths to approximate dialogue that could be dubbed later. Nonetheless, Everybody Loves It remains undaunted.

Oh, it’s not successful — just undaunted. Its “solution” to its self-inflicted conundrum? Wall-to-wall narration from a four-leaf clover. As if that weren’t bewildering enough, the trefoil speaks in a Viennese accent, courtesy of cartoon royalty Paul Frees, aka Boris Badenov from Rocky and Bullwinkle. Not that any patron cared, this being a nudie cutie and all. (Frees sure did, wisely going uncredited.)

With a soundtrack heavy on xylophones and foghorns, Everybody Loves It plays loose and lecherous as a paltry spoof of three TV shows and — whoa there, horsey — one whole commercial. Going under the heavily dulled knife first is hospital drama Ben Casey. Dr. Sven Crazy and fellow surgeons remove a heart-shaped candy box from a patient — not to mention clothing from the bosomy bodies of scrub nurses, leaving them in panties resembling placemats.

When the respirator fails, the physicians opt for a bicycle pump. At surgery’s end, the patient is revealed as Mad magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman (via mask less terrifying than what the mag would use in its own movie. Up the Academy). Hell, this one wishes it were one-tenth as good as Mad. It’d even settle for Cracked.

Next, Naked City undergoes a dressing down, as master criminal Louie Linguini plots a heist of redemption stamps from a fur salon. This plan requires his hourglass-shaped moll to pose as a nude mannequin to fool the half-blind security guard. Frees’ near-nonsensical play-by-play includes such gags as, “They have to be as fast as butterflies doing push-ups on a lemon meringue pie.”

Finally — woefully — the hourlong pic finishes by taking aim at Combat! The humor gets not one iota better (“Is that a parachute? Looks like Sonny Liston’s nightshirt!”), but the ladies get barer. Here and elsewhere, they include cheesecake models Althea Currier (Kiss Me Quick!), Penny Bello, Michelle Swain, Paula Angelos (Dr. Sex), Karen Nichols and Cathy Crowfoot (Mondo Keyhole), not that any represents a recommendation. —Rod Lott

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Just because two people have been intimate doesn’t mean they’ve been intimate intimate. In the waking moments after their one-night stand at a conference, Alex and Carey learn this, caught unawares by a situation requiring a much deeper connection.

With DISC running all of 14 minutes, credits and all, I’m not about to reveal details of the hole in which they find themselves. As Carey (Jim Cummings, The Last Stop in Yuma County) cryptically explains to the knocking housekeeper why they can’t cede the room quite yet, “This is R-rated stuff … so I’m sorry.”

Although Cummings isn’t DISC’s director (that’d be one Blake Winston Rice), it tonally fits his own wonderful films. One could see Cummings’ reluctant philanderer from The Beta Test stumbling into this fine mess of lanyard-bearing lovers. The other, Alex, the yin to his yang, is played by Victoria Ratermanis. She was heretofore unknown to me, as confirmed by a trip to her IMDb page (where her bio incorrectly calls her “an Oscar nominated actor”). Aside from starring, she also wrote the short with Rice from her (hopefully true) story.

Shooting in a fleabag motel with curtains the transparency of tissue makes the cringe-comedy piece feel more awkward and stressful — and, yes, funny — than the comparative professionalism of a hotel room (posh or economical) would allow. That smart decision pays immediate dividends, even if DISC’s final moments do not, in a grace note that feels unearned. That extends to a title card that attempts to pass off the all-caps title as an acronym — one that seems more convenient than functional.

But before that? Yeah, give ’er a hand. —Rod Lott

In this nudie cutie, elderly burlesque comedian Charlie Robinson more or less plays himself: pickled, wrinkled and luckily fully clothed. As a sewer worker, henpecked husband, functioning alcoholic and DJ Qualls prototype, Charlie could use some time away from it all. Opportunity knocks when his trailer-park neighbor converts a Checker cab into a time machine.

With the trip depicted footage of water circling a drain superimposed over a Matchbox car, Charlie and his Abe Lincoln hat are whipped back to the prehistoric era — 50,000 B.C. (Before Clothing), to be exact. The title lies, as men and women don Flintstones-style pelts, although the Knob Hill Nudist Colony is nearby. So is a giant (Eddie Carmel, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die) whom Charlie swiftly defeats by whistling “Dixie,” because why the fuck not.

From the usually mightier pen of Doom Patrol creator Arnold Drake, this hour of udder nonsense comes with a black-and-white courtroom scene, a snake dance (credited to one “Sexcra”), the gorgeous Gigi Darlene from Doris Wishman’s Bad Girls Go to Hell and an alternative title of Nudes on the Rocks. What it doesn’t have is a legitimate joke — lest it counts when a drunken tailor gives Charlie a pair of pants so large, his face is at zipper level. I don’t think that qualifies. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Kelly (Crystal Owens, Riders in the Storm) is not just a struggling actress, but a struggling wife. Her photographer husband, Sam (the bland David Christensen, Shandra: The Jungle Girl), doesn’t even have sex with her anymore, because he’s always tooling around in his darkroom for hours, seeing what develops.

While rehearsing for a play, Kelly gets good news from her stereotypical agent — you know the type: wears Hawaiian shirts, speaks in a brash New Yawk accent, loudly smacks pastrami — about a movie role. As Kelly tells Sam about the gig, their discussion doubles as a meta description for Turn of the Blade:

Sam: “So what kind of movie is this exactly?”
Kelly: “Your usual low-budget erotic thriller.”
Sam: “And what part do you play?”
Kelly (after a dramatic pause): “The victim.” 

The next scene isn’t as winking. If anything, it may be stalling:

Sam: “I’m sorry.”
Kelly: “What for?”
Sam: “I’m just sorry.” 

He should be! What with burying his blue-balled self in the breasts of a helicopter pilot named Wendy (Julie Horvath). In true erotic-thriller fashion, she: a) gets too attached, and b) is crazy. We know the latter is true before her behavior grows erratic, because c’mon, what normal person sits in bed with a cockatoo perched on her shoulder?

Meanwhile, Kelly starts to receive threatening phone calls.

Turns out, Turn of the Blade isn’t your usual low-budget erotic thriller after all, despite the sloppy, “sexy” sax score, which sounds like David Sanborn downed two whole Slippery Nipples before entering the studio. First, rather than choosing a pair of words at random, its title is a helicopter pun. Carrying the whirlybird theme further, the title rotates — and between fonts at that!

Second, where’s the nudity? I’ll answer that: The scenes exist — you just have to know where to look. And you’ll want to. A remarkably beautiful woman, Owens is perfect to lead this type of thing. Applying the icing to her own cake, she’s a decent actress.

On the other hand, in the villainous Other Woman role, Horvath is talking cardboard. It’s not a shock to learn this remains her sole acting credit. Her best moments aren’t even while serving as one corner of the love triangle, but in black-and-white flashbacks to her wedding day. That’s when her brand-new hub (Robert Owen) kills the mood of their limo ride en route to their Vegas honeymoon by having the driver pull over to help a stranded lady in short shorts (Daniella Rich, Diary of a Sex Addict). He not only puts the attractive stranger in the limo’s private area for the newlyweds, but offers her champagne! In her white bridal dress, Wendy stews red.

It’s hard to hate a picture that begins with the line, “You slept with him, didn’t you? You homewrecking little slut!” But let’s not kid ourselves: Turn of the Blade is a third-rate Fatal Attraction with a final-minute reveal not designed to make you bust out laughing, yet does.

One assumes director and co-writer Bryan Michael Stoller (Dragon Fury II) didn’t intend for Sam to bump another car while parking his Jeep, or for viewers to notice that Wendy’s husband’s gravestone bears two huge typos. After this initial feature about chasing tail, Stoller pivoted to Christian movies about an animal known for chasing its tail: First Dog, The Amazing Wizard of Paws and Santa Stole Our Dog! (exclamation 100% not ours). —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.