Crown International Pictures

Shitty Movie Sundays: The Hellcats (1968), or, The Heck Kittens

“You’ve seen the guys. Now here are the psycho mad mamas who ride with them. They’re The Hellcats!”

So says the trailer to The Hellcats, the 1968 film from writer (with Tony Huston) and director Robert F. Slatzer. The trailer promises a biker gang flick along the lines of The Wild Angels, only with ladies in the lead. Well, that’s a lie, invented to trick unsuspecting would-be viewers into seeing this dog. There are women bikers in this movie, sure, but it’s an equitable relationship with the men in the biker gang. That makes it unique in this subgenre, where women are usually relegated to the role of property, but a lie, nevertheless. It’s not the first misleading trailer for a film ever made, and it won’t be the last. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: The Hellcats (1968), or, The Heck Kittens”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Blue Money (1972)

Self-described cult cinema preservation and releasing company Vinegar Syndrome, on their sales page for Blue Money, describes the film as “a powerful, Cassavetes-esque examination of LA’s burgeoning hardcore [i.e., pornography] film scene.” I don’t agree with the ‘powerful’ part, which is one reason this flick makes the Shitty Movie Sundays cut, but describing the film as Cassavetes-esque is great shorthand. The way this film was written, shot, paced, and acted, is very much akin to one of the films of John Cassavetes, in particular Opening Night, with its look behind the scenes of a theater production. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Blue Money (1972)”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Night Club (1989, USA)

Night Club 1989 movie poster Nick (Nicholas Hoppe, who also produced and had a story credit) has a dream. Well, he has two dreams. And, also a third. Firstly, Nick wants to write the Great American Novel. Dream number two is to open Los Angeles’ newest and hottest nightclub in an old factory building (played by the former Boyle-Midway plant in beautiful City of Commerce, California). Nick’s third dream is to have passionate, unrestrained, and on-demand sex from his wife, Beth (Elizabeth Kaitan).

The first dream is a noble pursuit that, perhaps, tens of thousands of Americans have tried, only to see their efforts wither on the vine. Still, Nick keeps banging away on the keyboard. His second dream, funded by an inheritance Beth received from her father, and a loan from a gangster, Eddie (Ed Trotta), is in an equal amount of trouble, because the old factory is filled top to bottom with asbestos. That third dream, on the other hand, has something going for it, as, rather than work out the problems in his marriage, Nick hallucinates a slutty version of his wife named Liza, and does the dirty with her, to the titillation of the audience.

That’s Night Club, the 1989 movie from writers Michael Keusch and Deborah Tilton, with direction from Keusch. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Night Club (1989, USA)”

Shitty Movie Sundays: French Quarter

French Quarter 1978 movie poster In a recent article about the film Passages receiving an NC-17 rating from the censors at the MPAA, Slate columnist Sam Adams writes:

The online discourse about sex scenes often focuses on whether or not they’re “necessary.” Do they advance the plot? Do they tell us something about the characters we don’t otherwise know? Or are they just there to gratify the audience’s voyeuristic urges?

I’d…argue, though, that “is it necessary?” isn’t the right question, or at least the only one. Part of what makes movies (and art more generally) important is that they serve as an implicit rebuke to a strictly utilitarian view of the world, the spiritual parsimony that says that the only necessary things are the ones we can’t live without. We don’t need movies the way we need food or water, but we need them to remind us that being alive is more than drawing breath.

Amen. One of the greatest areas of cognitive dissonance in how we watch films has always been the embrace of violent imagery, while heavily censoring sexual imagery. It’s a reversal of a person’s real-world experiences. Despite how many pearls are clutched or how many angry harangues there are from the pulpit, your children will be having sex at some point during their lives. The continual expansion of the human population on Earth points to it being far less likely that they will ever kill someone, or be killed at the hands of another person. Yes, it happens, but if one were to watch movies as their sole basis of understanding the human condition, one would think that life entailed navigating a maze of explosions and flying bullets. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: French Quarter”

Shitty Movie Sundays: The Silencer (1992)

Here at Missile Test, we like a shitty movie that has ambitions. We appreciate when an auteur has a vision that far outstrips either resources or filmmaking ability. The result can be a film that flies off the rails, one that is a total head scratcher, or one that sits somewhere in between, sloshing back and forth between watchable absurdity, and unwatchable stupidity. Such is the case with The Silencer, the 1992 film from writer Scott Kraft, and writer/director Amy Goldstein.

Lynette Walden plays Angelica, a badass early ’90s chick who would have found a ready home in Twin Peaks. She dresses all in black, smokes cigarettes non-stop, rides motorcycles, and, oh yeah, is a contract assassin. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: The Silencer (1992)”

October Horrorshow: The Creeping Terror, aka The Crawling Monster

The Creeping Terror, the 1964 monster flick from producer, director, editor, and star Vic Savage, is a regular staple on ‘worst movies ever made’ lists, and it should be. Watching this flick is a mirthful, schadenfreude-filled experience. It will make a viewer shake one’s head, mystified that a movie so obviously bad could be made. It has the feel of a spoof, as if it were making fun of the low-budget monster flicks of the 1950s. But, no, this is very much a serious film.

The Creeping Terror may have been made in 1964, but, according to the internet, so it must be true, it never received a theatrical release. It lingered on a shelf somewhere until Crown International Pictures licensed it for television in the mid-1970s. Thank goodness for the clearing house for crap that was Crown International, otherwise this could have been a lost film, subject to mere rumor and speculation. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Creeping Terror, aka The Crawling Monster”

October Horrorshow: Horror High

Poor Vernon Potts. He’s the meekest kid in high school. He’s so skinny a stiff breeze would blow him over, he wears glasses (gasp!), wears his hair to hide his face, and carries himself as if he’s cowering from the world. It doesn’t help matters that, besides being bullied by his fellow students, his teachers and staff at his school treat him so unfairly that it could be considered abuse. Finally, the only girl in school who knows Vernon exists (Rosie Holotik) is also dating the star football player (Mike McHenry) who likes to beat him up. Writer J.D. Feigelson and director Larry N. Stouffer lay it on thick for Vernon in their 1973 drive-in horror flick, Horror High. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Horror High”

Shitty Movie Sundays: The Patriot (1986)

Bad action flicks from the 1980s are beginning to blend together for me. They all seem to have the same plots, the same producers, the same locations, the same stars, even the same bad guys. No facetiousness on that last part. In a coincidence for the ages, the last five ’80s action flicks I’ve seen have all had Stack Pierce playing a bad guy. There truly is a bottomless pit of shitty movies, and this age of unlimited content can stress the attention spans of even the most dedicated enthusiast.

Anyway… Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: The Patriot (1986)”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Nine Deaths of the Ninja

What a gloriously stupid movie. If one is going to make a shitty action movie, and one knows they are going to make a shitty action movie, rather than suffering from delusions of grandeur, why not be outrageous? That must have been the conclusion that producer Ashok Amritraj and writer/director Emmett Alston came to when they decided to make Nine Deaths of the Ninja, one of the silliest action flicks Missile Test has seen in at least…a month and a half, if not longer.

Viewers learn what they’re in for during the opening scene, when we see counterterrorist operatives Spike Shinobi (Sho Kosugi), Steve Gordon (Brent Huff), and Jennifer Barnes (Emilia Crow) ply their trade in a training exercise. Spike’s tactical outfit is a true marvel — a camo jumpsuit festooned with explosive crossbow bolts and all sorts of mall ninja blades, and a utility belt ringed with shuriken and lollipops. That’s right, lollipops. At first, I thought they were some kind of small, feathered throwing darts, but nope. Lollipops. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Nine Deaths of the Ninja”

Shitty Movie Sundays: The Specialist (1975)

The Specialist, 1975 movie poster Marlene Schmidt was on top of the world after winning the Miss Universe pageant in 1961. She later married TV cowboy Ty Hardin and moved to sunny California. The marriage did not last, but sometime thereafter she got the shitty movie bug, and teamed up with her new husband, Iraqi-born auteur Howard Avedis, to produce some hilarious sleaze. We here at Missile Test salute her and Howard, both. Immigrants living the American dream. Sure, they could never break into the big time, but everyone knows the fringes of the party are the best place to be.

From 1975 comes The Specialist, a neo-noir ersatz thriller adapted from a book by Ralph B. Potts. Potts also has a screenwriting credit alongside Avedis and Schmidt.

This is Potts’s only credit on IMDb. The book the film is adapted from is called Come Now the Lawyers, and, according to Potts’s obit in the Seattle Times, is a non-fiction history of the courts of the state of Washington. Only in the world of cinema could a work of history be twisted and turned into a shitty drive-in flick, with the participation of the author. It’s like Edward Gibbon working on the screenplay for Caligula. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: The Specialist (1975)”