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

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The Glove (1978)

Deadbeat dad John Saxon plays a bounty hunter in Los Angeles — and not a cool bounty hunter like Boba Fett, but a bounty hunter like … well, like John Saxon. The first loser we see him bust is a large guy with a gay lover who plays the flute while in a Jacuzzi! Later, he accosts another target — a guy named Cookie — in a slaughterhouse, leading to an extended fight using slabs of meat!

But The Glove is really all about Saxon being offered 20 grand to bring in Rosey Grier, who has a penchant for killing prison guards who wronged him, using a riot-gear glove that pounds clean through cement, steel and metal (yet leaves a wicker laundry hamper amazingly unharmed). Despite Grier’s warnings to “step off my set, hound dog,” Saxon needs the dough, vowing to go “sniffing and licking as long as it takes.” Ewww.

It’s hard to like Saxon in many movies beyond Enter the Dragon, because he relies on overplaying the slimy, ain’t-I-smooth-with-the-ladies shtick. And although the teddy-bearish Grier is quite likable, once you’ve seen him sharing an upper torso with Ray Milland, everything else is just scraps.

The directorial debut of Sidehackers actor Ross Hagen (the Saxon of his day), The Glove could use some more glove-on-redneck action, and gets fairly meandering. But it takes itself so seriously — beginning with the opening-credit ode to the glove — it’s occasionally a laugh riot. Like the ending when Saxon’s colleague gets beaten to death with mops, kitchen pans and fists of black vengeance. —Rod Lott

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Indestructible Man (1956)

First of all, the Indestructible Man of the title is not indestructible. If that were the case, the movie would go on and on forever. And since he’s played by Lon Chaney Jr., I’m not all that sure he’s a man, either. But that aside, Chaney is “The Butcher,” a two-bit robber thrown in prison and sentenced to death after his accomplices double-cross him.

While attempting to cure cancer, a local scientist uses Chaney’s fried cadaver for research purposes, and accidentally revives him with 287,000 volts! Though the process has given him life and super-strength, it has burned out his vocal chords, thus playing to Lonny’s limitations for the remainder of the film. His acting from then on mostly consists of quivering his eyeballs in menacing close-ups.

The now-bullet-invulnerable Butcher’s order of business is to seek out and kill the men who put him in jail, but Chaney is such a sweaty, disheveled, lumbering ox that he looks like he’s constantly in search of a nice, quiet hole in which to take a grizzly-bear dump. Aiding the cops in their search for Mr. Indestructible is a voluptuous stripper (Marian Carr, Kiss Me Deadly), who toils at a burlesque house introduced with a quasi-disturbing establishing shot of a sign reading “TAQUITOS – CHILI SHOP.”

This nice-girl stripper tells the lead detective, “For the past six months, I’ve only known you as Lt. Chasen. Don’t you have a first name?”

“Uh-huh,” he says, pausing for sexual effect. “Dick.”

She smiles mischievously while rubbing a finger along her lips. Yowsa!

Eventually, The Butcher is turned into a bacon-faced meatball via flame-thrower. This death, like the movie, is fun and efficient — a pulpy crime tale with an outrageous sci-fi bent. Dig the incredibly chauvinist ending! —Rod Lott

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The Choppers (1961)

It may not be as priceless as Eegah!, but The Choppers is another unintentionally hilarious Arch Hall Jr. vehicle worthy of your time and derision.

The whiny Hall stars as “Cruiser,” a teenage punk with sculpted hair and a chassis fetish. He heads a JD gang known as “The Choppers,” whose other members are Torch, Snooper and Flip; all of them talk such thick lingo they should be carrying green cards. When they’re not hanging out at the Chick-A-Dilly, they’re hunched in a poultry truck, waiting for someone to run out of gas along a short stretch of highway, and then move in to strip — or “chop,” as the kids say — the car clean as the driver leaves to fetch fuel. (Apparently, this is an everyday occurrence.)

The Choppers then sell the parts to a fat salvage-yard owner named Moose, whose assistant is a senile fool named Cowboy, who often shoots toward the camera with his finger. If you hadn’t noticed by now, this is the kind of movie where no characters have real names.

The cops are on their trail, however, so for the big stakeout, they invite a local radio reporter to cover it as a live broadcast! It leads to a chase, a game of chicken and ultimately a junkyard shootout that looks choreographed by 8-year-olds.

If you think this story doesn’t allow time for Hall to bust out one of his ridiculous, self-penned songs on the guitar, you’re wrong! Just before the big climax, lil’ Arch takes some time out to sing “Monkey in My Hatband,” the first five lines of which go, “Come, baby / Come on, baby / Come on, baby / Come on, baby / Come on, baby.”

Yep, he wrote that all by his lonesome! —Rod Lott

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Shaolin Wooden Men (1976)

Certainly not the best of Jackie Chan’s string of Lo Wei films early in his career, Shaolin Wooden Men casts him as an orphaned mute and the least popular student at the Shaolin temple, where he can barely perform the most rudimentary tasks, like lugging huge buckets of water on his back up an ungodly amount of stairs.

It isn’t until he secretly befriends the temple’s prisoner that he learns kung fu. The script doesn’t give him many chances to use it, with the notable exception being the film’s best scene, in which Jackie must face a gauntlet of 108 of the titular wooden men, which are like robots with cannonballs for fists.

If you’re surprised to discover the prisoner who schools Jackie in the way of the fist and the foot is the same guy who killed his father many years ago, you need to see more kung-fu movies. But Shaolin Wooden Men is not a recommended starting point. —Rod Lott

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