We have been hornswoggled. We have been bamboozled. Hoodwinked. Swindled. Tricked, and defrauded. A movie with a title such as Chain Gang Women has obligations to be met. There needs to be women. On a chain gang. And there should be, at minimum, two nude shower scenes. A film with a title like this owes its audience genuine exploitative sleaze. This flick is that, to be sure, but to an inadequate extent. Nor does that change the fact that viewers are the victims of shameless misdirection in the pursuit of drive-in dollars. I shall explain. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Chain Gang Women”
Some of Those Responsible: Crown International Pictures
Shitty Movie Sundays: Policewomen, or, Misogyny: The Movie
Sondra Currie stars as Lacy Bond, and the last name is no coincidence. As much as Policewomen, the 1974 flick from writers Lee Frost and Wes Bishop, and also directed by Frost, is an exploitation buddy cop crime women in prison gangster martial arts LA story, it’s also a James Bond ripoff. And, unlike all the Bond films, the camera keeps rolling during the naughty bits in this shitty gem.
Policewomen opens with a jailbreak. Despite the ass-kicking efforts of Lacy Bond, two inmates, Pam and Janette (Jeannie Bell and Laurie Rose) stage a spectacular escape. They get naked while they’re doing it, too, staking this flick’s gratuitous nudity claims early (this film actually has much less skin than I expected). For her above and beyond efforts, Lacy is recruited to do some plainclothes work. The squad she joins is investigating a gang led by Maude (Elizabeth Stuart, in her only appearance), an aged, foul-mouthed, dried up, wrinkly old prune of a godfather. Before we get to Maude and her gang, though, I need to write about Lacy Bond’s new colleagues. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Policewomen, or, Misogyny: The Movie”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Burnout
Scott (Mark Schneider), is a child of privilege. After he kills an old woman during an illegal street drag race, his hotshot father/lawyer gets the judge to merely suspend his license, rather than lock him away. This is not an auspicious start to the protagonist’s story in Burnout, the 1979 drag racing flick from writer/producer Martin J. Roseman and director Graham Meech-Burkestone. We’re supposed to be able to root for the hero in a film like this. There’s no hoping to see Scott’s redemption when he hasn’t had to suffer. It seems pretty tone deaf for 1979, much less today. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Burnout”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Hell on Wheels
Not all shitty movies are bloody horror, or borderline pornographic sleaze. Not all shitty movies are cut and paste westerns, Italian sci-fi ripoffs, or rubber monsters. Some are family flicks, featuring well-known country/western crooners in tales of race cars, music, and moonshine. That particular formula is followed by Hell on Wheels, the 1967 star vehicle for singer/songwriter and gentleman race car driver Marty Robbins.
Directed by Will Zens from a screenplay by Wesley Cox, Hell on Wheels follows Marty Robbins as Marty Robbins, a fictionalized version of himself. Marty has built a nice life. He’s a successful musician, and that success allows him to pursue his passion as a stock car driver.
Something similar happens to a number of people after they attain fame and riches. Auto racing is an addictive pursuit, scratching an itch in one of the more primal areas of the brain. It’s a fast and dangerous occupation, and for men like Robbins, Paul Newman, James Garner, Patrick Dempsey, Steve McQueen, and even Frankie Muniz, it has an irresistible lure as a risky pastime. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Hell on Wheels”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Point of Terror
Point of Terror is the final film in a career cut short. Actor/producer Peter Carpenter only has four credits on his IMDb page, and this is the last. There are conflicting stories in the tubes, but what they all agree on is that Carpenter is dead. It happened at any time between 1971, not too long after this film was released, and the early 1980s. Either way, Carpenter was poised to have a fantastic career in shitty movies, akin to that of Andrew Stevens, but it wasn’t to be. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Point of Terror”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Trip with the Teacher
When a b-movie from 1975 has a title like Trip with the Teacher, all sorts of filthy stuff comes to mind. That decade remains amazing because of what filmmakers could get away with.
Written, produced, and directed by Earl Barton, Trip with the Teacher tells the story of four high school girls and their teacher on a bus trip into rural southern California or northern Baja. The idea is to get these girls some life experience outside of the sunny confines of Los Angeles. The teacher and her girls are: Miss Tenny (Brenda Fogarty), Bobbie (Dina Ousley), Julie (Cathy Worthington), Tina (Jill Voight), and Pam (Susan Russell). They are joined by a bus driver named Marvin (Jack Driscoll). Barton didn’t do much to differentiate the girls from one another. He just made sure to cast actresses who were pleasing to the eye. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Trip with the Teacher”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Stanley
I love it when a film’s main character is an eccentric nutjob. I don’t mean a character remembered for an over the top performance by an actor, like a Captain Jack Sparrow or even the Joker. I’m referring to characters who have quirks so wild they defy typical Hollywood tropes. Take the main character in 1972’s Stanley, Tim Ochopee (veteran soap opera actor Chris Robinson).
Tim is a Seminole who was drafted to go off and fight in Vietnam. He harbors massive amounts of resentment, all justified, towards the government of the white man. His response to this, and PTSD, has been to pull back from society, moving to a lonely cabin in the Everglades. But, isolation was not enough for Tim. He has a fascination with snakes. He loves them and considers himself their protector. His two favorites are the titular Stanley and Hazel, a pair of rattlesnakes that he is breeding. He croons to them. He pets them lovingly. He takes Stanley with him everywhere, and gives Stanley orders like he’s a dog and not a reptile. He thinks of Stanley and Hazel as husband and wife. All meaning Tim gets from his life, he derives from his snakes. And, he will kill for them. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Stanley”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Blood Mania
There is some sleaze to Blood Mania, the 1970 neo-noir drive-in flick from purveyors of shit Crown International Pictures. Tony Crechales and Toby Sacher were responsible for the screenplay, while Robert Vincent O’Neil sat in the director’s chair.
The plot is straight out of an old issue of Crime SuspenStories. A wealthy, aging doctor, Ridgeley Waterman, played by Eric Allison, is on his deathbed. He is being cared for by one of the partners in his practice, Dr. Cooper (Peter Carpenter, who is also credited with this film’s story). Cooper is being blackmailed by some smarmy gangster played by Arell Blanton. The blackmailer has concrete evidence that Cooper performed abortions while he was in medical school. This film being from 1970, abortions were a crime, and Cooper’s life and career would be ruined if the authorities were to find out. All it will cost Cooper to make this threat go away is fifty thousand dollars, which is much more than Cooper can raise.
Perhaps he could go to his boss for help, but he doesn’t. Instead, he gives in to the advances of one of Ridgeley’s daughters, Victoria (Maria De Aragon). Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Blood Mania”
Shitty Movie Sundays: They Saved Hitler’s Brain, aka Madmen of Mandoras
They Saved Hitler’s Brain, the 1968 sci-fi dog from director David Bradley, has one of the more unique stories in shitty movie history. It was originally released in 1963 as Madmen of Mandoras. A few years later, the owners of the film wanted to sell it for television distribution, but the original running time of 74 minutes was too short. Their solution? Hire some UCLA film students to shoot a new first act, featuring none of the cast from the original, with only a tangential connection to the main plot. These new scenes are an anachronism, looking completely out of place, because they are. The two main characters in these scenes, one of which isn’t even listed in the cast, are both killed off before the movie switches to its original content. These new scenes are a disaster in every way, from plot, dialogue, to acting. Just this part of the film is enough to make this among the worst films I’ve ever seen, and there’s still a whole hour of movie to get through. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: They Saved Hitler’s Brain, aka Madmen of Mandoras”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Double Exposure
From the murky realms of Hollywood anonymity comes Double Exposure, the 1982 film by writer/director William Byron Hillman. Basically a remake of an earlier Hillman film called The Photographer, Double Exposure is a psychological thriller wherein a fashion photographer, Adrian Wilde (Michael Callan), is plagued by dreams of bloody murder. Not his murder, mind. Rather, the brutal slayings of young models in his employ.
Are these dreams buried memories of his actions? Adrian doesn’t know, and neither does his shrink (Seymour Cassel). But, as bodies continue to pile up, Adrian can no longer deny that he might be a murderer.
In between, audiences are treated to the cringy relationship Adrian has with his stunt-car driving brother, B.J. (James Stacy), and some of the worst detective work ever placed on film.
Here’s what I mean by that.
Adrian and a young, eager model go to a secluded location for an ad shoot, and Adrian then kills the model. Only, he wakes up after and the audience sees it has all been a dream. But, soon after, two detectives right out of a shampoo commercial, Fontain and Buckhold (Pamela Hensley and David Young), arrive at a real murder scene that is identical to Adrian’s dream. This happens multiple times. Okay, so Adrian is killing these women while they are on a scheduled photo shoot, one that the models’ agencies would know about. And yet, cops are baffled until late in the film. That’s some shitty filmmaking. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Double Exposure”