Category Archives: Kitchen Sink

Teenage Confidential (1986)

teenconfidentialWTFSimilar in nature and spirit to his Sleazemania trilogy, Johnny Legend’s Teenage Confidential slaps together clips from and previews of 1950s teenpics and educational shorts. Heavy on the JD angle, the whole shebang is a fairly brisk 53 minutes, daddy-o.

Scare films kick it off, with The Birth of Juvenile Delinquency and the National Probation Association’s Boy in Court, in which churchgoing is a solution for reforming the budding car thief. The old-time religion is layered thicker in Satan Was a Teenager, arguably this program’s highlight, in which the clueless, suburban, honky parents decide to turn to God to rehabilitate the criminal fruit of their loins … but have to consult their Aunt Jemima-esque maid to find out how.

teenconfidential1Previews include obscurities (Curfew Breakers), chart-top musicals (Carnival Rock), cheap horror (The Giant Gila Monster), cheaper sci-fi (Teenagers from Outer Space), Ed Wood entries (The Violent Years) and Arch Hall Jr. vehicles (Wild Guitar). Somewhere in between, Tab Hunter addresses the camera to discuss mental illness, only to disappoint by disappearing within seconds.

Confidential-ly speaking, this compilation isn’t as much fun as even the weakest Sleazemania. It does have moments that mitigate a suggested carelessness in assembly. —Rod Lott

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Trailer War (2012)

trailerwarWTFNo war is to be fought with Trailer War. We all win.

After all, it begins with “a death wish at 120 decibels” and ends with a woman’s disembodied head being chased by a fleet of radio-controlled helicopters. Anyone who chalks up such cathode-ray shenanigans as a loss shouldn’t be watching anyway.

Curated by Lars Nilsen and Zack Carlson of the venerable Alamo Drafthouse (and Carlson of the seminal yet criminally out-of-print Destroy All Movies!!! tome), Trailer War could be nothing more than a feature-length assemblage/assault of vintage coming attractions, if “nothing more” didn’t carry a connotation of being substandard. Containing zero overlap with 2009’s Drafthouse-branded fifth volume in Synapse Films’ 42nd Street Forever trailer-compilation series, this War is waged only against the same ol’ clips you’ve seen dozens of times before. More often than not, if the films represented aren’t obscurities, their previews are. Who else is going to run the promo for Maniac Cop 2 … in French?

trailerwar1Among the goods are such bads and uglies as:
• “that big man” Joe Don Baker, sweating through the kung-fu adventure of 1974’s Golden Needles;
Argoman the Fantastic Superman, a 1967 superhero acid trip more slam-bang entertaining than any entry in the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe;
• 1976’s Shoot, a killer-hunter thriller presented per the narrator as being “in the great tradition of American violence”;
Mr. No Legs, a 1979 fight flick that looks kind of like Walking Tall if the hero couldn’t, y’know, walk tall, small or at all.
• 1973’s The Mad Adventures of “Rabbi” Jacob, apparently a Jewsploitation slice of slapstick from France;
• 1972’s giallo-esque Amuck, for which sapphic sex becomes the not-MPAA-approved selling point; and
• Ryan O’Neal and John Hurt as Partners, Paramount Pictures’ homophobic mainstream comedy from 1982. The trailer even uses the F-word, and I don’t mean “fuck.”

From Voyage of the Rock Aliens to Nudes on Tiger Reef, this party-ready Trailer War is a start-to-finish victory for aficionados of drive-in, grindhouse, outré and/or VHS fare — in other words, you, prized Flick Attack reader. I could watch such hyperbolic treasures for hours upon hours; here, we have to “settle” for two. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Misogynist (2013)

misogynistWTFNot every movie dares open with a quote from 18th-century moralist Samuel Johnson. (Then again, I don’t watch the History channel.) Michael Matteo Rossi’s Misogynist does, with this: “Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore, they choose the weakest or the most ignorant.” The next 77 minutes set out to prove the theory. And frickin’ how!

Heartbroken Harrison (Jonathan Bennett, Mean Girls) is crying over a Dear John letter when who should walk on by but smooth-talking mystery man Trevor (Jon Briddell, Midnight Movie), who dismisses the missive as “typical bullshit a woman would say.” With the flip of a business card, he advises Harrison, “All you need is conditioning.”

misogynist1Three years and one title card later, Harrison is under Trevor’s employ, rounding up soul-crushed dude-bros to whom Trev can espouse his brand of female-hating “conditioning.” (Harrison must be terrible at his job, because the audience can be counted on one hand.) A sample of Trevor’s vindictive venom: “All woman are exactly the same. Every woman … wants to get fucked. All woman want to be hurt. They love that sting. All women want to be controlled. And I’m here to teach you how to control.”

Although this two-bit Frank T. Mackey (Tom Cruise’s character in Magnolia) is the most chauvinistic of the bunch, the film is less his story than about the effects of his teachings — specifically, how years of ingesting hate speech takes a toll on Harrison as he enters into holy matrimony. (Marital advice from the boss: “Fuck her before she fucks you.”) That his fiancée, April (Danielle Lozeau, Werewolf Rising), would choose a life with Harrison given his résumé when she is devout to a virginity-intact degree is but one boulder of incredulity along Rossi’s road. Their honeymoon scene, just post-consummation, is set up as Misogynist’s emotional climax, yet feels like warmed-up leftovers from a high school playwrights’ competition. Unfortunately, most of the movie does.

Operating on a higher plane than his castmates, Briddell unequivocally commits to portraying the hateful, unpleasant, despicable Trevor (“Chow down on my cock. I didn’t unzip it to feel a breeze”). Yet the movie overflows with hateful, unpleasant, despicable characters; not even April is patchable for viewer sympathy.

In fact, until the out-of-place “where are they now?” coda, I was unable to tell whether writer/director/producer Rossi was decrying or enabling the very behavior his actors depict without filters. In more skilled hands, the intent would be clear; when it is not, the ending — indeed, the film’s purpose — simply does not deliver the message it believes it has. Misogynist isn’t so bad to stir up ill will — just indifference. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Nazithon: Decadence and Destruction (2013)

nazithonWTFFollowing close on the stiletto heels of 2013’s Blood of 1000 Virgins, GrindhouseFlix’s first original feature, the jackbooted Nazithon: Decadence and Destruction emerges as the second. It, too, is a trailer collection brimming with no-frills fun and it, too, is directed by company head Charles Band, if hitting the “REC” button for host segments can be called direction. While Virgins wallowed in sexploitation, Nazithon naturally casts its eye on that most odious of psychotronic-film movements: Nazisploitation!

While we’re on the subject of odious, Nazithon is hosted in monotone by Michelle “Bombshell” McGee, a pseudo-celebrity known for her gnarly face tattoos, but only because she’s known for breaking up Sandra Bullock’s marriage. Having previously played an SS soldier in Band’s Puppet Master X: Axis Rising, Ian Roberts stands silently behind the heavily inked McGee, who appears all too comfortable in Nazi garb as she introduces each themed grouping of vintage previews. Many of the coming attractions sport interchangeable titles: SS Experiment Love Camp, SS Camp 5: Women’s Hell, Love Camp 7. The latter, per its trailer’s narrator, is “where women were used like cattle!”

nazithon1Popular in the 1970s, such flicks prove tough sits, partly because of their subject matter, partly because they seem to incite audience pleasure in the torture of females, and partly because they’re just so damned boring. However, their hyperbolic ads show so much — including enough showering to dry one’s epidermis to Sahara levels — you’re left with no need to suffer through the actual experience. The exception may be the Ilsa saga (all four chapters of which are represented here), partly because they’re aware of their cheesy center, partly because of the eye-popping Dyanne Thorne and — with my 37-22-35-track mind, it merits repeating — partly because of the eye-popping Dyanne Thorne.

Showcasing more variety, Nazithon’s back half is better, starting with a section on neo-Nazis, which basically allows for the cross-pollination of the genre into the likes of blaxploitation (The Black Gestapo) and biker films (The Tormentors). The program’s pinnacle arrives at the home stretch, devoted to the goose-steps-meet-goose-bumps realm of supernatural Nazis, as exemplified by Ken Wiederhorn’s Shock Waves, Jean Rollin’s Zombie Lake and Jess Franco’s Oasis of the Zombies. —Rod Lott

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The Unholy Rollers (1972)

unholyrollersWTFSick of being sexually harassed by the boss, cat-food factory worker Karen Walker (Claudia Jennings, Gator Bait) impulsively quits and parlays her hot temper and hot bod into a career as a professional roller-derby skater. Despite never having played the sport before, she proves a natural. Despite proving a natural, she provokes jealousy as she zooms right past her fellow orange-jerseyed Avengers, literally and figuratively.

The Unholy Rollers is an odd-duck mix of the sports drama and producer Roger Corman’s hick-underdog comedies. Scripted by Corman regular Howard R. Cohen (Saturday the 14th), it asks us to believe that Karen could not only become a citywide star, but make “lots of money,” which she drops on new furniture, family and friends, and a car with a zebra-print hardtop. Yet we kind of believe it because director Vernon Zimmerman (Fade to Black) trusts viewers will topple head over heels for Jennings. She possesses such an all-American beauty and confidence, it’s difficult not to, even while taking note of the third-rate arena.

unholyrollers1As depicted in this flick, roller derby is pro wrestling on wheels, complete with costumed heroes and villains, all of whom clutch cans of Coors as if water had yet to be invented. The skating sequences bring a real snap to the two-bit proceedings, and it is here that first-time editor Martin Scorsese demonstrates a touch of the genius to come.

Don’t mistake The Unholy Rollers for genius. Narratively, it’s a mess, braking for joke-tellling sessions that remind one of the opening spreads of Mad magazine’s movie parodies. The story threads abruptly culminate in a strange, downbeat ending of self-destruction that, like any of Karen’s brutish teammates, comes from nowhere to knock you out. It’s an easy watch, however, and it becomes clear that the film has more on its mind than exploitative elements; it checks through those as quick as it can in order to settle into a parable about the price of fame. —Rod Lott

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