Action

Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979)

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Apparently, the rescuers arriving in the final frames of 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure stuck around for all of 15 minutes, because when Irwin Allen’s sequel begins the same day of the topsy-turvy event, the once-mighty ship and all its innards are up for grabs. This time around, our ostensible heroes are the aptly named Turner (Michael Caine, having learned nothing from The Swarm), captain of a mortgage-hilted tugboat; his salty right-hand man (Karl Malden, Meteor); and flibbertigibbet Celeste (Sally Field, Smokey and the Bandit), who might be a prostitute.

On New Year’s Day, Turner and crew arrive at Poseidon’s wreckage to salvage all the jewels and money. They’re not alone, either, because posing as medical rescue personnel are a terrorist (a super-suave, snot-slick Telly Savalas, Killer Force) and his goons, seeking barrels of plutonium. Everybody crawls inside, thus beginning what amounts to the Poseidon as haunted house and/or escape room, with each character taking turns climbing ladders, crossing makeshift bridges, dodging flames, leaping over holes and — in Turner’s case only — referring to Celeste as “Monkey.”

Members of the all-star cast balloon as the group goes further (and then decrease accordingly with each set piece). Among them are a mouthy bar owner (Young Frankenstein’s Peter Boyle in a pink puffy shirt), a blind man (Jack Warden, Used Cars), a farmer (Mark Harmon in a bowl cut) and, playing against type, White Line Fever’s Slim Pickens as a quantum physicist.

I’m totally kidding. Pickens plays a wino named Tex who says things like, “I smell grub! … All kinds of vittles!”

Beyond the Poseidon Adventure harbors a bad reputation, and while it’s not up to the excitement of the original, it’s not a waterlogged failure if judged on sheer spectacle. If Beyond is guilty of one thing above all else, it’s being late to the game; audiences were simply tired of the disaster movie by 1979, whereas seven years before, the first Poseidon Adventure garnered eight Oscar nominations. It’s not like Allen veered creatively from his bread-and-butter formula in this follow-up, sticking with the kablooey effects, obstacle-course sets and teeter-totter acting as the camera turns to and fro. Nevertheless, this sunk his career as director. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The Last Starfighter (1984)

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It always bothered me that The Last Starfighter was never that big a smash among the youth of 1984.

My family never went to the movies when I was a kid, so when it was originally released, I had to make do with the novelization I picked up at a Scholastic Book Fair. I read the tome cover to cover for months until it finally premiered on HBO, fully living up to — and surpassing — my juvenile imagination. (I felt the same way about SpaceCamp, but that’s a different story.)

Teenager Alex (Lance Guest) spends most of his days pushing off his girlfriend, Maggie (Catherine Mary Stewart), to play the only video game at the trailer park, Starfighter. When he finally beats the game, a DeLorean-style space car swoops down and takes him to the farthest reaches of the galaxy to fight evil aliens intent on universal domination.

This movie had everything that would give a kid stuck in a small Texas town some hope to one day escape. Of course, being so young, I didn’t leave for many years, happy enough to just watch this movie for the time being. But, every time I passed the Space Invaders machine in the local diner, that didn’t mean I didn’t give it my damnedest, quarter after quarter, just in case.

Watching the movie some 30-plus years later, that same feeling of astral escape is still present, with believable performances from both Guest and Stewart. And, upon this recent viewing, I was surprised to see Dan O’Herlihy — he of Halloween III, RoboCop and The Whoopee Boys fame — underneath all that makeup as the friendly reptilian navigator Grig.

And while I have come to realize no distant extraterrestrial races have put an arcade game in an inconspicuous spot for intergalactic enlistment as a star warrior, if I see one, I always stop to give it the once-over, because you never know. —Louis Fowler

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Reading Material

Dad Made Dirty Movies: The Erotic World of Stephen C. Apostolof

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Jordan Todorov’s 2011 documentary, Dad Made Dirty Movies, is a wonderful introduction to one of cult film’s best-kept secrets. But Todorov’s new book on the topic, Dad Made Dirty Movies: The Erotic World of Stephen C. Apostolof, is even better. Although the ideal is to consume both media, 58 minutes face a sheer disadvantage against 336 pages.

Written with Joe Blevins and published by McFarland & Company, the book serves as not just a full biography of Apostolof, but the definitive source of information on this unheralded sexploitation pioneer. Even in death, Apostolof continues to live in Ed Wood’s shadow, thanks to their partnership on a handful of films — most notably, 1965’s immortal Orgy of the Dead. Todorov’s work goes a long way in restoring the proper amount of luster to Apostolof’s contributions.

Tracing his transformation from Bulgarian by blood to vulgarian by trade, the book functions best once Apostolof starts making softcore skinflicks. However, don’t dare skip the initial few chapters, because he led quite a life before becoming an off-color/off-Hollywood director, from working for tips as a whorehouse piano player to being sentenced to a concentration camp — all before fleeing his homeland for a fresh start in America.

With Orgy of the Dead marking his directorial debut, the riotous stories from behind the camera are, naturally, like something out of Ed Wood (a biopic that raised Apostolof’s ire, by the way, upon not being invited to take part and not being recognized himself). The contrast of the two men is fascinating, with Apostolof all business and the total pro, and Wood a full-blown alcohol constantly teetering — literally and metaphorically — toward a sad, self-made demise.

Sure, the thrice-married Apostolof had his failings, too, but they were largely about his inability to financially plan for the future, especially after the market for his breasty brand of bread-and-butter dried up with the proliferation of hardcore pornography. Today, more eccentric cineastes continue to discover and celebrate the relative joys of Fugitive Girls and College Girls Confidential, but in Apostolof’s time, the life for these films was fleeting — petering out shortly after viewers’ collective refractory period.

Despite carrying over the documentary’s title, the book is not framed from the Apostolof children’s point of view, although they certainly provide memories, clear up misinformation and dispel rumors. I found myself envious of son Steve, entering puberty as he visits the set of Dad’s Lady Godiva Rides, a vehicle for the buxom blonde Marsha Jordan.

Film by film, milestone after milestone, Todorov and Blevins tell their subject’s story with reserved reverence — unclouded by rose-colored fanboy glasses — and a fair amount of good humor. Some of the funny bits sneak up on the reader: “[Drop-Out] composer Jaime Mendoza-Nava provided another part-Latin, part-Muzak score. This time, he was billed as J. Mendozoff, a pseudonym that sounds like an over-the-counter sleep aid.” Other instances are more expected, but no less effective: “There are several unproduced Wood screenplays from this era whose titles tell you all you need to know about their contents: The Teachers, The Basketballers, The Airline Hostesses. You don’t need to read them to guess that they respectively concern teachers, basketballs and airline hostesses screwing their brains out.”

With more than 100 photos throughout, Dad Made Dirty Movies closes with a novel appendix offering a peek behind the curtain: two outlines for Apostolof’s never-realized The Immoral Artist, all of four combined pages. You don’t need to read it to guess that it concerns an artist who wants to screw his brains out. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

Metta Meta Gakido Koza (1971)

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They just don’t make ’em like they used to. No, really, they just don’t make ’em like they used to — probably because they wouldn’t be allowed.

Case in point: Metta Meta Gakido Koza, alternately translated as The Rascal’s Messy Messy Road or Go as Messy as Messy Can Be. Whichever title comes affixed, the Japanese comedy is based on a popular manga by the prolific Yasuji Tanioka. It’s about Gakio Oryama, a pubescent boy taunted for his small penis and obsessed with sucking women’s breasts — against their will, if that’s what it takes. He’s a perverted Dennis the Menace who’s traded overalls for short pants.

Metta Meta is less a story than a collection of scenes in Gakio’s crazy, mixed-up, tits-a-poppin’ life. His mother (Rika Fujie, Outlaw: Black Dagger), gorgeous but sexually deprived, makes do with an inflatable doll with detachable johnson. His dad (Shinsuke Minami, Zatoichi and the One-Armed Swordsman) is henpecked to infidelity and ineffectuality. His bonneted baby sister (Attack Ichiro) has quite the mouth on her (example: “You stupid bitch.”). His grandmother (Toyoko Takechi, Dragon Princess) seems pretty cool, though, having a Charles Bronson poster on her bedroom wall.

Despondent over his tiny unit, Gakio tries — and fails — to commit suicide by drowning, by hanging and by being run over by a train. At school, Gakio asks his teacher (Bullet Train’s Keiko Aikawa), rhetorically, “Have you completely lost your fear, cow?” before instigating a classroom furniture fight.

At the neighborhood bar, Gakio drinks his dad under the table. Impressed, a barfly tells the boy he’s free to do whatever he wants to her, so right then and there, he scoops a boob out of her dress and goes to town on it, accidentally deflating it. No longer impressed, the barfly and her posse beat Gakio to a pulp. Dad joins the fun by running him over with a steamroller, prompting Gakio to scream, “You are a dumb pork head!” When Dad and the barflies try to bury him a barrel of cement, Gakio slices off the ladies’ dresses: “Being a little devil is great!”

The drinking continues at home, where Gakio orders Mom to bring him beer after beer. He even gets the smart kid across the street to imbibe, turning the classmate into a full-blown alcoholic. Back at school, after a lesson on pollination, Gakio and his fellow students pin the teacher to the ground and presumably gang-rape her. Outside the school, he sexually assaults the crossing guard, then asks her out. The boys in his class pick up street hookers and take them to the public showers.

Paying a visit to Dad’s salaryman office, Gakio lifts the skirts of every woman in sight. Before long, the boss (Toshiaki Minami, 1970’s The Assassin) has his lady employees in a topless lineup; Gakio goes home with the boss’ busty secretary (singer Tomomi Sawa) after trying to unbutton her blouse on-site. In Metta Meta‘s climax, Gakio faces and fights the yakuza. Then he goes home and tells his mother, “Mom, I really love your tits!” To prove it, he yanks one out and latches on; in response, her eyes cross to suggest she’s kinda into it — at least until he deflates it, too, and pulls it back with his teeth like a piece of taffy. On the roof, the man in the bug suit cheers.

Oh, did I forget to mention that earlier? Sorry. There’s a man in a bug suit on the roof, played by Jō Shishido (Seijun Suzuki’s Branded to Kill). As far as I can tell, he serves as the film’s ersatz rooster, announcing when it’s morning and afternoon and the like. That he is the least weird element of Metta Meta Gakido Koza should tell you something, except it tells you everything. This is, after all, a nonstop buffet of sexual assault, slapstick violence, cartoon physics, exaggerated popeyed faces, sped-up motion and — in the film’s lone sign of restraint — only one baby hurled down a bowling lane.

Director Mio Ezaki (1970’s Dangerous Games) shows no blood when characters take an ax to the head, instead saving all that red stuff to gush out Gakio’s nose when he’s sexually excited — an anime trope started by Tanioka. More often, Gakio’s erections are suggested by his front teeth growing into giant piano keys — a sight gag uncomfortably bringing to mind the buck-toothed Asian stereotype. Whether that was intended is a mystery to me, but an accurate translation of bringing the crude images (in more ways than one) of the source material to colorful life. Even with all its questionable material, the movie somehow pulls off an all-in-fun innocence I’m willing to buy, likely because it’s five decades old. A marked difference exists between “I can’t believe what I’m seeing and I’m offended!” and “I can’t believe what I’m seeing!” Because I’ve never seen anything quite like it, Metta Meta Gakido Koza belongs to the latter. —Rod Lott

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Horror

Patrick Still Lives (1980)

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From 1978, the Australian horror-thriller Patrick is recognized as a high point of Ozploitation. Its unofficial, unauthorized, unbelievable sequel, 1980’s Patrick Still Lives, is not. For one thing, it’s made by the Italians. For another, it’s a festival of sleaze — the kind of movie where one character screams to another, “Get away from me before I catch syphilis from you!”

So, yeah, you might just love it.

In the quick-as-an-orgasm prologue, a young man named Patrick (Gianni Dei, reuniting with his Giallo in Venice director, Mario Landi) tends to his stalled automobile when he’s hit in the face by a bottle thrown from a passing car. Cut to: Patrick’s in a coma and under the care of his father, Dr. Herschel (Sacha Pitoeff, Dario Argento’s Inferno), whose unibrow makes him look like the progeny of Buster Poindexter and a Monchhichi.

Dr. Herschel lives in and runs the Herschel Wellness Resort, an inexplicable combination of medical clinic and vacation hot spot, where the unblinking, nostrils-flaring Patrick lies motionless in a private wing. Five people arrive at the doc’s invitation for a leisurely weekend, including an alcoholic member of Parliament (Franco Silva, Umberto Lenzi’s Spasmo) who’s more partial to a bottle of J&B, the workingman’s friend, than to his walking hourglass of a wife (Carmen Russo, Lady Football), whose off-the-charts sex appeal decreases only slightly due to her smoker’s teeth.

As becomes apparent, Landi and screenwriter Piero Regnoli (Nightmare City) draw very little from the ’78 Patrick beyond “borrowing” its prostrate protagonist — a concept they wedge into the template of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians (but more like half a dozen, given the budget). Before Patrick uses his comatose mind powers to pick off cast members with a boiling swimming pool and rolled-up car window, he uses them to engage in silly parlor tricks like breaking stemware, shaking shrubbery and typing a memo via the hunt-and-peck method.

Had Landi stopped there, we viewers of Patrick Still Lives could say, “Well, that was fun,” and go on with our lives. However, Landi did not stop there. Notoriously, Patrick psychically seduces the doctor’s secretary (Andrea Belfiore, Luigi Cozzi’s Hercules II) into stripping nude, slamming her pubic thatch against his bedpost and masturbating on the couch. Even most notoriously is what Patrick has in store for the character played by Maria Angela Giordan; having her breast bitten off in Burial Ground (shot in the same mansion) is nothing compared to being raped — and then skewered rotisserie-style — by a floating fireplace poker. The effect couldn’t look more fake, yet it shocks nonetheless. —Rod Lott

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