Christmas Evil (1980)

Also known as Terror in Toyland, You Better Watch Out and — at least in my book — I Saw Mommy Fucking Santa Claus, the oddball slasher flick Christmas Evil begins on Christmas Eve, 1947, when young Harry spies his father dressed in full Santa regalia getting it on with his mom. This prompts Harry to go upstairs, smash a snow globe and dig into his hand with the broken glass.

Jump ahead a few decades and Harry’s all grown up, now played by Brandon Maggart (Dressed to Kill), a mild-mannered, but ready-to-crack employee at a toy factory. He spends his spare time spying on neighborhood kids with his binoculars and recording their good deeds and misdeeds into leather-bound volumes of Good Boys and Girls and Bad Boys and Girls, one for each year. When he spots the Garcia kid sneaking peeks at Penthouse, he records “impure thoughts” and “negative bodily hygiene” right there along with “pulled Sally’s hair.”

Tired of being bullied and used by his co-workers who refuse to get into the Christmas spirit, Harry paints his van like a sleigh and decks himself out as Santa, ready for a night’s spree of gifts and gore. For instance, he gives a bag of fenced goods to mentally handicapped kids, then slaughters a few snobby parishioners outside their church. He entertains at a holiday party, then murders a co-worker while he sleeps. Yes, this Santa’s all about balance.

You’ll spot Home Improvement matriarch Patricia Richardson in a small role as the mother of the porno-loving kid, but Christmas Evil all belongs to Maggart. He’s hilarious and gives it his all. If he showed this to his own daughter, singer Fiona Apple, it’s no wonder she turned out so screwy. The ending to this — the looniest killer-Santa movie of them all — is a real howler. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

The Peek Snatchers (1965)

Remember the good ol’ days of burlesque shows? Me neither, but from the looks of The Peek Snatchers, they really weren’t all that. As a matter of fact, they were nothing more than sub-Stooges sight gags, lame plots, lamer accents and a string of voluptuous ladies — sexy guts and all — dancing around to seedy nightclub jazz. In other words: Why wasn’t there a sequel?

After a newspaper headline (presumably from The Plot Exposition That Won’t Be Used Later Times) reads “Tel-Star Orbits the World, Claim Many Things Uncovered” and “Big Jewel Robbery — Two Scientists Missing,” we meet two goofballs who may be the scientists. They bumble and stumble around, say stupid one-liners and stare into a white piece of paper masquerading as a super-computer that can see anything in the world.

With all that power, do they fall into international intrigue or get involved in some sort of espionage? Nope. Instead, they stare at 1960s tits and ass. So in between gay cowboy jokes and Japanese Beatle gags, we see a chunky stripping Latina, a chunky stripping blonde, a chunky folk-singing stripping Asian and a chunky belly-dancing Arab — sexy ladies one and all.

So fellas, wait for the wife to go to work, drop the kids off at school and get ready to masturbate, old-school! —Louis Fowler

Buy it at Amazon.

Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972)

Running second in a series of seven, the Japanese women-in-prison film known as Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 was way ahead of its time — and it still is!

The titular convict Scorpion (the largely mute Meiko Kaji, Lady Snowblood) — a nickname earned due to her gouging out the eye of the warden in this film’s predecessor, Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion — is kept in an underground cell where she is habitually abused by guards. After a hard day of breaking rocks and getting raped, she manages an escape with her fellow convicts. They spend the rest of the film on the lam, and that’s about the extent of the plot.

But Jailhouse 41 turns wonderfully strange, oddly metaphorical and even supernatural, operating on its own brand of internal logic that’s indescribable.

Director Shunya Ito (who also helmed the series’ first installment and returned for its third, 1973’s even odder titled Female Prisoner #701 Scorpion: Beast Stable) does more interesting things with color and sound than you’d typically find in an exploitation film. At times, I wasn’t quite sure this qualified as an exploitation film at all, as it contains some truly beautiful images — the blood-soaked waterfall comes to mind, predating The Shining’s famous slow-motion elevator shot. But then you see things like a naked prison guard with a log through his crotch to set you straight. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe (1990)

Former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura amateurishly headlines his own terrible Terminator rip-off in Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe, written and directed by Ski School‘s Damian Lee. Ventura stars as the 11,862-year-old title character, an intergalactic cop known as a “finder.” In the prologue, he’s “finding” Secundus (Sven-Ole Thorsen, Mallrats), a Schwarzenegger sound-alike seeking a fertile female whom he can impregnate with his hand, and Sonia (Marjorie Bransfield, a former spouse of Jim Belushi, who cameos) has the unfortunate experience of housing the nearest womb.

Here’s the part I still can’t understand: Secundus plants his seed in Sonia to hide some “anti-life formula” that could result in the world’s end, knowing it will be implanted in the resulting child’s brain. So years later, Secundus comes looking for the kid so he can extract the formula. Why not save all the trouble and simply not give the formula away? Or God forbid, memorize it?

Anyway, wherever Secundus goes, Abraxas follows, ready to uphold the good of the universe. (Another thing: If the fate at the entire universe were at stake, why send only one guy?) Secundus isn’t above slaughtering innocents to find his child, who has never spoken a word and harbors the uncanny ability to make others wet their pants. Abraxas seems less interested in keeping the kid alive than he is in getting busy with Sonia. See, in all his nearly 12,000 years alive, he’s never so much as kissed a woman.

Ventura is no credible action hero. In fact, without his trademark shaved head and beard, he looks an awful lot like a hospital janitor or a proud member of the crew at your corner Jiffy Lube. His constant blank stare and wooden line readings make me wonder if he was faring well in his role as a steel-reinforced cyborg or simply not acting at all; I choose the latter. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Fuego (1969)

Argentina hottie Isabel Sarli fires up Fuego as Laura, a bored, well-to-do horndog with lotsa eye shadow and enormous breasts. All she likes to do is get it on, with pretty much anyone who’s breathing and within reach. For some reason, this prompts feeling of undying love in Carlos (writer/director/producer Armando Bo, who also romanced Sarli in real life). Soon after meeting her, he proposes marriage; she responds by rubbing snow all over her chest. Cute, but is that a yes or a no?

At first, Carlos is pretty quick to forgive Laura of her indiscretions, like when he trots around town in a fur coat and go-go boots, pulling her breasts out of her bra to show random men on the street, eventually coercing a greasy stranger to do her in the woods. What bothers Carlos most is that she also lets their ugly lesbian housekeeper have a go, kissing Laura’s naked body after a swim, toweling her off following a shower and ticking her employer’s reclining bosom with a feather.

Laura can’t explain it, other than crying, “I’m being consumed by the sexual fire inside! I need men! I need men!” The doctor, however, says her unquenchable thirst for lovin’ is a pathological condition. And as he gives her a gynecological exam, she writhes, moans and begs, “Don’t stop now!”

As if you need to be told by now, Fuego is a hoot, made all the more hollerable by its catchy Latin theme song, which blares every time Laura gets her groove on, which is at least a dozen. Although clearly past her prime, Sarli is hot in that voluptuous but odd, racked-up-the-mileage sorta way. She also plays with her boobs more than a teenage boy who magically woke up one morning with a pair.

The tragic and paranormal ending is pretty ludicrous, more at home in a Spanish soap opera than a lurid number like this. And yet, it’s all so Sarlicious, I can’t complain. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Random Genre & Cult Movie Reviews