Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953)

While fooling around loading a top-secret experimental rocketship, Abbott and Costello accidentally launch into the air, veer through the Lincoln Tunnel and land in New Orleans, which — because it’s during Mardi Gras — they amusingly, but far-fetchingly (even for them) mistake for the planet Mars.

Meanwhile, they’re on the run from the cops because two escaped convicts go around committing crimes with space suits and freeze guns they lifted from the stranded ship they happen upon. Then the crooks hijack Bud and Lou to Venus, which they also mistake for the planet Mars.

Venus is populated by no men — just an ageless group of fine women, including Anita Ekberg and several Miss Universe contestants in va-va-voom suits. Lou briefly becomes the king of Venus until the jealous queen subjects him to a series of sexual lie-detector tests — easily the film’s high point.

Then, they finally go home. Thus, Abbott and Costello never go to Mars in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars. All the same, you’ll enjoy the antiquated optical effects, harmless slapstick set-ups and good-ol’-fashioned alcoholic jokes. —Rod Lott

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Werewolf Woman (1976)

Throughout most of its 99 minutes, the Italian-made Werewolf Woman is rhapsodically, wonderfully terrible in that way only a sleazy exploitation movie made by pretentious foreigners can be. While some unfortunate stretches of eyeball-glazing, poorly dubbed exposition exist, the sheer insanity of the rest of the picture more than makes up for them.

Busty French Sondra Locke look-alike Annik Borel plays Daniella, a severely disturbed rape victim whose fears of sex and men are exacerbated by her obsession with her resemblance to an ancestor who was burned at the stake for being a werewolf (which we see and which is hilarious), causing her to devolve into a lethal, wolf-like state the night her strong sexual feelings toward her sister’s husband correspond with a full moon.

Sent to a mental hospital, she escapes after killing a crazed nymphomaniac who attempts to rape her. More folks are killed along the way, including another wannabe rapist who actually shouts, “I’m gonna rape you!” while he’s attacking her. She briefly finds happiness and salvation in the arms of a gentle, loving stuntman, but reverts back to her old ways when her beauty attracts the attention of a trio of thugs, who rape her (sense a theme here?) and then kill her lover. Her trail of bodies finally ends when the detective on her case is inspired by a cohort’s dream to come to the forest she has made her home.

Part horror, part psychological thriller, part softcore porn and part revenger, the film also known as The Legend of the Wolf Woman is a whole lot of crazy in a frequently fascinating package. It’s never for one moment genuinely good, but in the end, that’s what makes it so great. —Allan Mott

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Jackass 3.5 (2011)

Between the big-screen Jackass gross-outs, Paramount releases a feature’s worth of outtakes directly to DVD. And let’s face it: Testicular trauma amid Johnny Knoxville and his merry band of pranksters plays just as well as home as the multiplex.

Shortly after 2010’s Jackass 3D, we got Jackass 3.5, and it has all the snapping turtles, barrel surfing, ghetto defibrillators, dildo rockets, ass cannons, skiing into trees, paintball assaults from an RC helicopter, skateboarding through drywall, exploding cola bottles, skating on belt sanders, enema long jumping, pecker-pecking woodpeckers, flaming gauntlets, electric limbo sticks, fart-propelled darts, horse semen, donkey urine and senior-citizen camel toe that its predecessor clearly lacked.

Why, yes, I did laugh a lot. Thanks for asking. —Rod Lott

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Delinquent Schoolgirls (1975)

What happens when you mix escapees from the State Asylum for the Criminally Insane
with the worst-behaving students at the Oxford Corrective Institute for Young Women? The super-sleazy Delinquent Schoolgirls, in which they show up their “chauvinist pig” principal by not wearing their bras to exercise class; in which one fears having her vagina torn apart by a large partner; and in which an elderly herpetology professor (Ralph Campbell, Superchick) hypnotizes a student (Jane Steele) to have his way with her — watch out for snakes, dear!

Acting not entirely unlike The Three Stooges, the crazies — leader Clooney (Michael Pataki, Easy Rider), African-American Big Dick (Bob Minor, Escape from New York) and flaming homosexual Bruce (Stephen Stucker, Airplane!) — first invade the home of nympho housewife Ellie (Julie Gant), whose husband (George “Buck” Flower, They Live) can’t satisfy her needs: “Sex, sex, sex, that’s all you ever talk about: sex,” he says, telling her to stop watching her her “soap oprys.” Big Dick shows her what she’s been missing as Bruce plays the piano and Bruce does a Daffy Duck impression. Screams Ellie mid-rape, “This is positively indecent!”

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The guys then infiltrate the school during a holiday, where the bad girls have not been allowed to go home. Wacky music plays as the comically large-breasted ladies are molested against their will in the kitchen. Big Dick does so much squeezing, I wonder if Minor contracted carpal tunnel. The next scene, the rapists and their victims are all enjoying a meal together. Later, there’s a slap fight at gunpoint. Good times.

It took three men to write something as misogynist as this, giving Big Dick a refractory period that must hover around two minutes. His appetite for laying pipe inspires most of his dialogue:
• “Hey you guys know somethin’? Well, I’m gonna tell you anyway: I want some pussy!”
• “I never made it with a chick in a trance before.”
• “Aw, man, I don’t want wheels — I want some nookie!”
• “Fantastic! Grapefruit city!”
• “Look at all that young, tender, gorgeous snatch!”

Admittedly, Delinquent Schoolgirls — aka Carnal Madness — is bursting at the seams with beautiful, buoyant babes, including pin-up legend Roberta Pedon, Sharon Kelly (Russ Meyer’s Supervixens) and Brenda Miller, so it’s tough not to appreciate it on an eye-candy level. Just note that doing so may make you feel like, to quote Bruce, a “demented crouton!” —Rod Lott

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