Action

Deadly Force (1983)

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Los Angeles is under the hysteria-ridden spell of a serial killer in what the press dubs “the X Murders” case, so named for the letter left behind in the foreheads of the dead. Per usual in these things, the police are baffled, when a personal connection to victim No. 16 brings back one of their former own — disgraced cop and expert alcoholic Stoney Cooper (Wings Hauser) — from his busy life in New York, playing sidewalk games of rat roulette and bouncing his soccer ball in doggie droppings.

The only person less enthused than LAPD Capt. Hoxley (Lincoln Kilpatrick, 1987’s Prison) to see Stoney in town is his estranged wife, Eddie (Joyce Ingalls, 1975’s The Man Who Wouldn’t Die), now a TV news reporter. However, one of those two will end up boning Stoney in a hammock before the movie calls it quits.

Deadly Force marks a veritable Vice Squad reunion between Hauser, producer Sandy Howard and co-writer Robert Vincent O’Neil (soon to bring us Angel). This doesn’t near the jolt of their ’82 sleaze classic. How could it? As a solo-vehicle attempt to get Wings off the ground, however, it could be worse. With hair that makes William Katt’s look comparatively subtle, Hauser works his baby face to his advantage. His screen presence makes winsome what less-amiable actors might turn into an asshole.

The only point he risks that goodwill is when his sex scene with Ingalls ventures one tongue flick to the nipple too explicit. That move is more unexpected than director Paul Aaron (A Force of One) employing a sub-Magnum P.I. score as an onomatopoeia, but less expected than a cameo by Golden Girl Estelle Getty as a cabbie who’s — get this! — grouchy. —Rod Lott

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Kitchen Sink

Stardust (2020)

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WTFMany critics have slammed the “fictional” David Bowie biopic Stardust for different reasons, ranging from the lack of any true Bowie music to the fact that lead Johnny Flynn’s accent goes strangely in and out. I understand all that, but working within the confines of the chameleon world of Bowie, it does quite an admirable job of shuffling in and out of reality, the way we believe the fictional alien would have.

It’s a year or so before Bowie will release The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. He’s still in his enchanted folkie period, coming to America for the first time to promote the failing record The Man Who Sold the World, shocking homophobic people with his gender-bending ways while personally dealing with the institutionalization of his brother.

He meets Mercury publicist Rob Oberman (an outstanding Marc Maron), who is eager to work with him, but Bowie is such a bona drag — especially to music reporters — even Oberman grows weary of him. I wonder if, because the film depicts Bowie in a usually unsavory way, that’s one of the reasons that it was so disliked; I am a huge follower of Bowie, but even I recognize that he was something of a jerk much of the time, especially to the media.

Following the duo on a cross-country tour of America — one where he can’t even perform — Bowie manages to piss off everyone, from a local newspaper writer to a supposed bigwig at Rolling Stone. Perfectly capturing the enigmatic brilliance of the games Bowie put these people through, as the film goes on, you feel this is quite fitting for what the man’s public persona was — or at least who we perceived him to be.

What I’ve mostly read though was the sheer displeasure at the absence Bowie songs, instead relying on things like Anthony Newley tunes. Being unauthorized by the family — probably because they want to make their own movie, of course — the film works, while being somewhat off-putting, because besides the actual fans of his music, how many people truly know about Bowie before Ziggy, the defining music and the supposed alien? —Louis Fowler

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Thriller

The Tunnel (2019)

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If the makers of the Norwegian disaster movies The Wave and The Quake have no plans to round out their trilogy, the makers of the Norwegian disaster movie The Tunnel have done it for them — or at least gave it a valiant try.

On a very snowy Christmas Eve, a bunch of people — and one hamster — get trapped inside a 5.6-mile tunnel on a mountain pass. Blame falls on the driver of a fuel tanker spooked by a plastic bag. His overreaction causes an accident that, one leak later, turn into a full-blown explosion that fills the tunnel with deadly smoke. With no emergency exits existing, the victims’ only hope is the nearby village fire department.

While not the chief, our Viggo Mortensen fill-in hero is Stein (Thorbjørn Harr, Stockholm), a widow with a new love (Lisa Carlehed, Department Q franchise reboot The Marco Effect) and a resentful, pink-haired teen daughter (newcomer Ylva Lyng Fuglerud). Naturally, the latter angrily runs from an argument with Dad straight on a bus to Oslo — a bus now stuck in the tunnel, giving Stein all the impetus to whip into Sylvester Stallone mode.

The Tunnel is reminiscent of Stallone’s own tunnel thriller, 1996’s Daylight, in that both become mighty tedious shortly after the disaster occurs. Here, after Villmark Asylum director Pål Øie spends about 30 minutes placing his flammable pawns on the board, the tanker goes kablooey; as the dust settles, so does the picture’s pulse. It’s well-made and the characters are likable, but when the rescue half arrives, predictability takes center stage and doesn’t allow enough variety to join. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

For Those Who Think Young (1964)

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By all appearances, melancholy title aside, For Those Who Think Young sure looks like an AIP beach movie. It’s packed with the series’ essentials: surfing, swimsuits, rock ’n’ roll, Susan Hart and that Frank Tashlin-esque gag of a super-sexy woman’s aggressive shake of her curves causing nearby objects to burst in a fashion typically blamed on poltergeists. Even male lead James Darren looks like Frankie Avalon, right down to that unmistakable helmet of hair.

Gidget graduate Darren plays Ding Pruitt III, a horny trust-funder whose successful seduction technique is basically the lyrics of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” personified. His latest object of affection (toward penetration) is Sandy Palmer (Pamela Tiffin, The Fifth Cord), an orphaned college girl who’s “after a Bachelor of Arts, not a bachelor of bikinis.” She’ll have none of his coercive, date-rapey ways — until, of course, he becomes a changed man within 90 minutes, give or take. Unless, of course, the checkbook of Ding’s corpulent grandfather, B.S. Cronin (Robert Middleton, The Harrad Experiment), has anything to say about it; he literally wants Ding to dong as many girls as possible, rather than settle for the virginal Sandy.

That’s about all of the surfboard-skinny plot, another hallmark of the Frankie and Annette pics. Meanwhile, Pamela’s two uncles (corny comedians Paul Lynde and Woody Woodbury, the latter playing himself) struggle as musicians as unhip as your grandmother after a fall. They’re about to lose their filler club gig, where the understandable star attraction is the bump-and-grind act of stripper Topaz McQueen (Tina Louise, roughly a quarter away from Gilligan’s Island’s maiden voyage); in another Tashlin, um, touch, Topaz later descends a staircase with an extra-long wiener in each hand. Speaking of Gilligan, Bob Denver is here to serve as Kelp, Ding’s white slave. Denver’s big scene is a rather disturbing musical number that finds Kelp singing from a veritable coffin of sand up to his bearded mouth and chin, on which Nancy Sinatra has painted an upside-down face.

Although technically a Beach Party rip-off, For Those Who Think Young is a reasonable facsimile, with much of the credit owed to Pop Art-friendly Leslie H. Martinson (1966’s Batman: The Movie) in the director’s chair. The lovely Tiffin is a sexy and wholesome approximation of Funicello, although Darren isn’t nearly as likable as Avalon — because his character is a total ass! Not only is Ding not above stealing a woman’s crutches to pull a ruse for cooze, but he tells Sandy his ding-a-ling is “entitled” to a test run!

More than half a century later, that dated attitude unintentionally adds another layer of entertainment — as does future Exorcist mama Ellen Burstyn in her movie debut as a teetotaler unknowingly getting hammered by spiked fruit punch. Methinks Think Young exudes charm more discernible than all its in-your-face product placement for Pepsi and Baskin-Robbins combined. As the beach-bound extras chant at the close of Denver’s traumatizing tune, “Ho, daddy! Ho, daddy!” —Rod Lott

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Thriller

All-American Murder (1991)

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After getting kicked out of college — again! — for his dorm mates burning his snake (not a frat ritual), judge’s son Artie Logan (Police Academy: Mission to Moscow’s Charlie Schlatter, the welfare Matthew Broderick) is sent to a university named Fairfield. Sporting a beret, jean jacket and cigarette, Artie gets all JD Brando on his old man: “Don’t lay this on me!”

Seemingly seconds after arriving on the Fairfield campus, however, Artie’s tune changes because he’s fucking the dean’s wife (Joanna Cassidy, Blade Runner). Even more promising (and age-appropriate) is the Prettiest Girl in School, Tally (Josie Bissett, Hitcher in the Dark), takes a liking to Artie’s lecherous stalker moves.

Young love — ain’t it grand? As long as one doesn’t burn to a crisp in a mysterious sorority-house fire? And as long as the other one isn’t wrongly pegged by the police as the prime suspect? This is where Artie should have saved his “Don’t lay this on me!” line.

Not only is hotshot detective P.J. Decker (Christopher Walken) assigned to the case, but incredulously agrees to give Artie 24 hours to prove his innocence! That’s not so easy to do, what with extra corpses running parallel to his every move — and in such gruesome, slasher-plucked exits: a drilled forehead o’er here, a grenade down the gym pants o’er there.

Until recently discovered by the viral corners of the internet, All-American Murder was known primarily for being the first (and only) not-made-for-TV feature film directed by Anson Williams, aka Potsie from the long-running sitcom Happy Days. Now it’s known for its rightful place in history: giving us one of the most memorable, calling-all-kooks performances by Walken. The Oscar winner walks into the flick like a stone-cold stud, taking charge of a megaphone to diffuse a hostage situation by taunting the gunman about boning his wife: “I love that little mole on her butt, don’t you? And how about that sensitive left nipple?”

This character intro is so great, you’ll not only long for Walken to take the story’s focus away from Schlatter, but for his own police procedural series on CBS. (At least that would give me and Mom something to discuss.) Later scenes double-down on Walken’s oddness, with a running joke (?) of Decker sharing an anecdote about “popping the cherry” of a hooker’s badge-fetishizing, 18-year-old sister.

More on the subject of jokes: Schlatter delivers his share as if he’s still stuck in George Burns’ withered turtle body from 18 Again!; Artie’s told, “I’d like to chop your balls off with a pick ax!” and he replies, “I respect your honesty” in such a way that you’re half-looking for the cigar. For some reason, many of Artie’s quips are food-based, e.g., “Thanks … for the whole salami,” “(He’s) one sick peanut!” and “Of course it’s my knife, you sausage!”

Schlatter tries to be funny, yet isn’t; Walken doesn’t try to be funny, yet is. The jury’s still out whether the tonally confused All-American Murder is the movie Williams intended to make, but because it’s progressively off-kilter, it’s never dull.

And hey, how about that sensitive left nipple? —Rod Lott

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