Death Cruise (1974)

Congratulations! Welcome to the free, three-week Caribbean cruise you’ve won for you and your guest! Don’t remember entering that contest? That’s okay, it’s not like this is some elaborate setup to murder you or anything! That’d be crazy, right?

We’ve got swimming, shuffleboard, table tennis, homicide, dancing, drinks and more! If you should happen upon a photograph of you and your fellow winners, I implore you to think nothing of the “X”s grease-pencilled over some of the faces! That’s just our way of keeping track of who wants decaf, and how delightfully odd to suggest it’s some sort of assassin’s to-do list! Ha-ha, now I have heard everything, good sport!

Don’t believe us? Just ask Tom Bosley! After all, you loved him as the dad in Happy Days, like he was your very own, so he’s bound to tell you the truth! Oh, dear, he appears to have taken a sudden nap. With the breadth of activities, who can blame him? Let’s just step over him and leave him rest. Come back to him later, okay? I’d say you could bend Kate Jackson’s ear, but she’s on her second honeymoon, and you know what they say: “If this boat’s a-rockin’, we do not wish to be disturbed, please.” I may have that wrong. No matter.

Instead, ask Polly Bergen. She’s not busy since her slimy husband’s out chasing young tail on the ol’ poop deck, if you know what I mean! What’s that? No, I’m pretty sure she’s dozed off as well. Maybe field your inquiry to our ship’s captain instead? He’s the one with lamb chops — on his face, not his supper plate, you silly! Or maybe our brand-new temporary doctor who’s here on super-short notice for no dubious reasons whatsoever! He’s the one who looks like Michael Constantine. Come to think of it, golly gosh, that is Michael Constantine! Well, whaddaya know …

Our cruise is produced by Aaron Spelling. Yes, the same gentleman who gave us The Love Boat! So you know you’re in good hands — very good hands that would never, ever tighten themselves around your lovely throat, so please just get such thoughts out of your mind and feel free to reach out to any member of our staff, from your bartender to your murderer. Beg pardon? No, I clearly said “your purser.” Perhaps you should visit the aforementioned doctor for a complimentary cotton swab?

All right, then, away we go on our Death Cruise. Excuse me? “Depth,” I said “depth,” because we’re on the ocean, see, where the waters can run as deep as a knife wound. Trust me, you’re perfectly safe or may you be struck down by the pointed arrow from a well-aimed crossbow. I mean, me, may I be struck down, not you — oh, heavens no. All ashore who’s going ashore! —Rod Lott

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C.O.D. (1981)

With sales of Beaver Bras sagging, ad man Albert Zack (Chris Lemmon, Wishmaster) is tasked with front-loading the next campaign with five famous curvaceous ladies to model the goods: a chart-topping singer, a Swiss countess, an Olympic wrestler, a sex-kitten actress and the daughter of the President of the United States. With that mission set, the meat of C.O.D. is watching Zack humiliate himself to make contact for contracts by donning a variety of disguises, because what else screams “zany”?

For example, the actress (Corinne Alphen, Amazon Women on the Moon) is shooting a Doctor Butcher M.D.-style horror film, so Zack dresses as a zombie to crash the set. For the singer (Marilyn Joi, Black Samurai), he dons his discotheque best. For the POTUS offspring, it’s cringingly offensive Fu Manchu garb. Hey, it was the ’80s.

One of pornographer Chuck Vincent’s earliest efforts to go legit, the PG-rated C.O.D. plays remarkably tame, even with its big-busted premise. Nudity is light enough to be near-nonexistent, and the most risqué gag requires literacy; as Zack — in a Santa Claus outfit — realizes he’s followed the countess (Carole Davis, Piranha II: The Spawning) to a Madison Cawthorn-style orgy, she chases him around a room lit with Christmas lights and a neon sign reading “THE FUCK IS ON.”

If you didn’t already know C.O.D.’s leading man fell from the same Lemmon tree as his legendary father, nothing here would shed that light. But let’s give the lesser Lemmon this: As the straight man opposite five shapely women, he’s easily likable, whereas had he played it any differently, he’d be alienating. Almost all the laughs come from first-timer Teresa Ganzel (The Toy), genuinely funny as the prez’s daughter. If she didn’t improvise much of her scene after ditching Secret Service, color me amazed. Either way, one wishes her co-stars — not to mention her writer/director — worked as hard. —Rod Lott

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Escape the Field (2022)

Six people wake in a cornfield. None have any idea of why or how they got there, but each finds an object next to them: matches, a compass, a gun, etc.

Is this a cruel prank? A Hangover scenario? A sociology experiment? A government conspiracy? The work of Malachai? A concussion-involved LARP? A holiday party for pawn shop employees? Or Cube as serialized in The Old Farmers’ Almanac?

Answer: It’s Escape the Field, an inconsistently diverting puzzle thriller from first-feature director Emerson Moore. The survival tale quickly establishes its central mystery, intros the characters and amps up the stakes as the unwitting players search for answers, not the least of is which is a way out. And how these objects might help them. And hey, who/what else is hiding among the acres of ears?

With Jordan Claire Robbins (TV’s The Umbrella Academy), Theo Rossi (Kill Theory) and Shane West (Awakening the Zodiac) leading the cost-efficient cast, Escape the Field appears more than capable of being an agriculture-dependent take on the Escape Room franchise. After all, Moore and co-scribes Sean Wathen and Joshua Dobkin have packed a season’s worth of Lost into an untaxing hour and a half, without all the side stories to detract from the action.

However, they also bring the divisive series’ mountain of frustration — less in how it ends and more about just what the heck we’re looking at in the final shot. After three rewinds, I still don’t know. —Rod Lott

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The Werewolf of Woodstock (1975)

After viewing a news report of the mess Woodstock festivalgoers left behind on the dairy farm, angry ol’ coot Bert (Tige Andrews, TV’s The Mod Squad) leaves his house in a huff to go looking for “those lousy hippies!” Too bad he chooses to do so on a night of historic thunderstorms.

As he climbs metal scaffolding and hurls planks while screaming, “Freaks! Freaks!” he gets a few giant electrical shocks that soon turn him into a werewolf. (This is all part of established werewolf lore, correct?) Meanwhile, a groovy band that missed out on Woodstock is headed to the farm to take pictures on the stage, in hopes of fooling a record company into a contract. Unwittingly, the two parties hop the Marrakesh Express to the same destination: disaster.

The thing about The Werewolf of Woodstock: Crazy as it is, it fails to meet the bar set by its perfectly outrageous title, even though the lycanthrope steals a dune buggy at the end. Reminiscent of the weird, live-action videotaped program that would show up on an odd Saturday morning, it’s as toothless as a meth addict, which shouldn’t be a surprise since Dick Clark produced. Although it’s directed by eventual Not Necessarily the News creator John Moffitt, this 66-minute made-for-TV movie is played straight.

The Werewolf of Woodstock features Andrews in a bad mask, Belinda Balaski (The Howling) and Andrew Stevens (The Terror Within II) among the band members and, at the local police station, Meredith MacRae (Bikini Beach), Michael Parks (Tusk), Robert Dix (Horror of the Blood Monsters) and a pot of spaghetti sauce (needs more oregano). —Rod Lott

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The Divorcee (1969)

Not for nothing does the tagline to this Stephen C. Apostolof sexploitation film shout, “SEXUALLY HANDICAPPED BY ORDER OF THE COURT.” His favorite sexploitation starlet, the magnificent Marsha Jordan, stars as the (ahem) titular The Divorcee. Yes, that’s Divorcee with double Es, appropriately.

Jordan’s Betty Brent has a problem with alcohol: One drink and she’s ready for a roll in the hay. (Wait, this is a thing?) It’s the only way her husband, Hank, can defrost her for some sheet-heatin’, and one reason he’s happy to be discovered with his hand in another woman’s cookie jar. Although mortified at his infidelity, Betty doesn’t want a divorce; even after he hangs up on her, she rubs the telephone all over her all-natural body, making me reconsider the value of a landline.

But as title has it, a decree of dissolution must occur. One bang of the gavel later, Betty’s on to banging every gavel passing her way, provided there’s a cocktail attached. Betty beds her lawyer, an insurance salesman new to her apartment building, a dentist in a sauna, his friend in the sauna and a door-to-door vitamin salesman. Heck, after a bartender — dressed like his shift at Shakey’s Pizza just ended — gives her three free zombies to down, each the size of a fishbowl, she’s down for a threesome.

And so she goes — and goes! — until hitting rock-bottom at a sex party: She wakes the next morning to find her latest notch MIA, except for a lipstick-scrawled “THANKS” (with sarcastic quotation marks, no less!) and $11 cash. Ashamed, Betty looks at herself and screams, “Whore! Whore!” Then she goes home, clutches her beloved creepy doll and screams “Whore! Whore!” more. Inching toward a mental breakdown, she calls to win back her ex-husband … and he hangs up on her. Oh, well! The end.

Per the formula established by Apostolof (College Girls Confidential), Jordan might spend more screen time undressed. Whether vertical or horizontal, his two-pointed star is clearly all-natural, yet never full-frontal. There’s certainly no actual hanky panky on parade, so Apostolof (under his A.C. Stephen nom de plume) relies on close-ups of hands gripping bedspreads in ecstasy and closer-ups with the jiggle of a fresh Jell-O mold. When things get really hot ’n’ heavy, he reveals a fondness for the go-go camera zoom.

The pendulous and wig-piled Jordan does her best throughout The Divorcee, which is simply to burn a scrumpdillyicious intensity. That she does near-flawlessly. I learned at her best, she resembles Barbara Eden. In interest of fairness, when she also scrunches her face to feign tears, at her worst she’s resembles Marjorie Taylor Greene.

The one thing I learned is my post-divorce life was nothing like this. I was robbed! —Rod Lott

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