I have a theory that any movie opening with an attractive swimming nude in the ocean can’t be bad at all. You know: Jaws, this. In his opening sequence, director Pavlos Filippou (Black Aphrodite) goes where Steven Spielberg didn’t, couldn’t and wouldn’t: ass massage! After all, this Eurocrime obscurity hails from Greece, so expect sinning, shooting and sex, sex, sex.

The potent posterior belongs to Cristina (Sasa Kastoura, The Abductors), a MILFy member of the Latin American Revolutionary Movement who uses her feminine wiles to convince George Evans to put his hands to one other good use: namely, smuggling a casino’s security plans from his employer. Cristina’s group isn’t exactly flush with cash currently, and could use some serious bank to buy weapons. With said security plans in their possession, she and her cohorts plot to break into the casino vault, conveniently when a bunch of oil tycoons are in town throwin’ around dough.

Using the ol’ short-circuited computer trick (mind you, technology of the era equalled blinking light panels) and a VW bus with an IBM sticker as getaway, the revolutionaries succeed. They learn how to hide their Benjamins in cigarettes in order to travel inconspicuously, but what if they get caught? It’s then that the title finally comes into play, as Ransom Baby suddenly turns on its head from heist film to kidnapping thriller.

For an obviously rushed production — the very nature of the genre called for it — the film holds high value in the departments of music (Yannis Spanos’ sticky jazz score), direction (Filippou owns an eye for interesting angles, notably with spiraling staircases) and story, which isn’t as simple as one may assume. The ending’s well-staged shipyard shootout plays for keeps, which may infuriate some viewers. However, in Eurocrime, it’s welcomed with open arms. —Rod Lott

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Dr. George Dumurrier (Jean Sorel, Belle du Jour) puts his San Francisco clinic and publicity tricks over everything, from his credibility to his homely, heavily asthmatic wife, Susan (Marisa Mell, Danger: Diabolik). While Dr. G is off administering, ahem, gynecological treatment to nude photographer Jane (Elsa Martinelli, Hatari!), he receives news of Susan’s death. Although she hated her hubbie, Susan leaves him with a surprise $2 million insurance policy, which would fix the clinic’s financial problems, except it sure looks fishy to the authorities.

At a topless club with a built-in ceiling swing, one performer/prostitute Monica Weston (also Mell) proves a dead ringer for Susan, but with blonde hair, green eyes and healthier lungs. Mell stuns as unbelievably, lip-biting sexy in this role; during their first lovemaking session, she has to unclamp George’s hand from her breast and force his digits southward.

But just what is going on? Can George figure it out before the cops find enough evidence to put him behind bars and possibly on death row? And since this thing is titled Perversion Story — and comes from ’69, haw-haw — how much nudity can we expect? Enough, my horny readers, as the flesh of the movie’s ladies are as curvy and on display as San Francisco’s famously steep and winding roads, but this is no porno.

The aforementioned coupling between George and Jane is shot ingeniously from the mattress’ POV, with flesh pressed right up against the screen. But Perversion Story has much more on its mind than mere pumping and pulchritude — writer/director Lucio Fulci has cooked up a corker of a plot at the film’s chewy center, even more complex than the thriller genre generally demands. It proves the man could do much more than gross us out, and that it’s a shame he didn’t do it more often. —Rod Lott

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In what is not officially an Airport sequel, but let’s not kid ourselves, because it may as well be, a Boeing 707 commercial jet en route to Minneapolis encounters some turbulence — in the form of James Brolin as a whacked-out Vietnam vet, mind you. Unbeknownst to the crew until Susan Dey happens upon it, Brolin’s character scrawls a message in lipstick on the lavatory mirror that states a bomb is on the plane and demands the flight be diverted to Anchorage, pronto.

When this is not done right away, said message is passed on to sexy stew Yvette Mimieux via napkin. Then the crew’s all like, “Holy shit, a paper product? This guy must be for real.” Directed by master of disaster John Guillermin (The Towering Inferno, 1976’s King Kong), Skyjacked stars Charlton Heston as the clenched-teeth hero pilot, Capt. Hank O’Hara, who you know isn’t gonna take this crap. On the ground, Claude Akins tries to help: “Trust your soul to God, captain, because your ass belongs to me.” (I don’t think he was making a pass, but with Sheriff Lobo, you never know.)

As was de rigueur for the all-star disaster genre, this one’s rife with subplots, such as Mariette Hartley about to give birth, or Walter Pidgeon’s senator trying not to appear like an out-of-touch D.C. asshole by rapping with Rosey Grier about such alien concepts as “rock” and “jazz.”

Both as engaging and lasting as a complimentary package of dry-roasted peanuts, Skyjacked clearly comes from a different era. The clear giveaways include:
• The token black guy’s name? Why, Mr. Brown, of course.
• Heston smokes a pipe in the cockpit.
• When the plane’s passengers board, they look relaxed and prepped for fun. —Rod Lott

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A good (albeit loose) adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic story, this Tell-Tale Heart finds a foppish nerd named Edgar (Laurence Payne, Vampire Circus) obsessing over Betty (Adrienne Corri, A Clockwork Orange), the hot babe who works at the flower shop. An utter loser, he asks his friend Carl (Dermot Walsh, TV’s Richard the Lionheart) how to land such a foxy chick. He takes Carl’s advice and asks Betty out to dinner, which goes well until he attempts a full-throat French kiss afterward.

From then on, she turns her affections (and ultimately, her pelvis) toward Carl, leading the hopeless and heartbroken Edgar to kill his pal and bury him in the floorboards. Soon, he’s haunted by the sound of Carl’s beating heart, so Edgar cuts it out of the corpse. But even after that, the sound plagues him, and it’s neither a dripping faucet nor ticking clock.

Whether you’ve read the original story or not, you know how it goes from there, and that’s why the movie holds no suspense. But it’s made well, in a crisp, buttoned-up, British style, co-written by Brian Clemens, who brought equal class to so many Avengers episodes. More thrillered up than Poe intended, director Ernest Morris’ film comes with a “surprise” ending. —Rod Lott

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A mixed-bag movie franchise comes to a disappointing end (or at least one assumes) with Hannibal Rising, a prequel tale of literature and film’s most beloved cannibal. The movie follows Thomas Harris’ book so closely, once wonders if he didn’t write them simultaneously. But it just goes to show that a writer who excels in one medium isn’t necessarily going to excel in another; what worked there falls flat as a day-old Coke here.

The oddly named and miscast Gaspard Ulliel plays the young Hannibal, orphaned after Nazis kill his parents and out for the blood of the soldiers who slaughtered and ate his little sister eight years prior. Stepping into a role made famous by Anthony Hopkins is no easy feat, but Ulliel doesn’t have anything going for him but the ability to cop an evil sneer. He neither sounds nor looks like Hopkins’ take on the character. In fact, if we’re going to play dopplegänger, he most resembles Saturday Night Live alum Ana Gasteyer.

The only scenes that resonate are those in which Hannibal exacts his revenge, and we’re made to cheer him along. Yet they’re not built with any shocks; they simply go through the motions. And what to make of his third-act transformation into Action Hero, leaping atop ships to save Gong Li? At least on the page, scenes like this can’t look silly.

Director Peter Webber’s film at times looks beautiful, almost classier than a genre exercise like this should. I’m sure when Jonathan Demme lensed The Silence of the Lambs, he had no idea it would nominated for an Academy Award, much less take home the top five, but Webber and company act as though they’re intending on a sweep. In going so serious, Rising lacks any sense of diabolical fun that so endeared us to Lecter before, no matter the medium. —Rod Lott

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