Exploitation Flick – Missile Test

Female Mercenaries on Zombie Island

Female Mercenaries on Zombie Island VHS box Part shot-on-video horror, part fetish movie, one will be hard-pressed to see a more nonsensical, cheap, shameless, and proud bit of sleaze outside the porn industry, unless one is watching any of the other dozens of flicks from moviemaker Gary Whitson and W.A.V.E. Productions. What is W.A.V.E.? Why, only the finest film production company in all of New Jersey. W.A.V.E. is a bit difficult to explain, so here is a trailer for a documentary about them that sums it up well.

As mentioned in that trailer, W.A.V.E. movies defy criticism. They are what they are. I agree, but only to a certain extent. When judged objectively, against every other movie I’ve ever seen, I can write with simple clarity that Female Mercenaries on Zombie Island is a bad movie. It stinks. It’s awful. It’s a true bottom feeder cinematic experience. And it was never meant to be anything else. Should anyone care enough to do so, it would make for a wonderful case study into the psychological reasons behind why some people, those here at Missile Test included, like watching bad movies. I’ve never thought about the ‘why’ too deeply. I’m too busy enjoying myself. That lack of self-analysis is critical to enjoying this movie. It’s so bad that you can’t stop to think about it or it might provoke a personal crisis. Continue reading “Female Mercenaries on Zombie Island”

Silent Night, Deadly Night

People get all twisted over small stuff. We see it often. A large chunk of modern media thrives on the outrage machine. It drives engagement, sputters out after a week or so, then the talking heads find something else with which to rile up the masses. This has been going on for a long time. Even way back in 1984, before the World Wide Web kicked the machine into overdrive, we were carving out chunks of our lives to be outrageously pissed at something that didn’t matter.

Silent Night, Deadly Night, the classic slasher flick from director Charles E. Sellier Jr., caught the attention of the outrage machine. Groups picketed theaters that were showing it, and Phil Donahue dedicated an episode of his talkshow to it. Why? Because the killer in this movie dresses as Santa Claus. That was it. That was the outrage. Santa was such a sacred cow to enough people that they were offended by the very idea of a killer Santa. The behavior of a fictional character was an attack on an institution — Christmas — that they held dear. This is familiar ground today for a certain subset of cable news viewers, but what a stupid thing to get angry about. The anger got so intense that the film was pulled from distribution after only a couple of weeks, home video releases were few, and the intact film was in danger of being lost, despite cult success and a string of sequels. Anyway… Continue reading “Silent Night, Deadly Night”

The Super Cops

What a gloriously stupid movie. The Super Cops, an adaptation of a nonfiction book titled The Super Cops: The True Story of the Cops Called Batman and Robin by L.H. Whittemore, follows officers Dave Greenberg (Ron Leibman) and Robert Hantz (David Selby) as they tear through the criminal element of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. At no point does director Gordon Parks go for realism. Greenberg and Hantz, aka Batman and Robin, throw themselves at suspects with abandon and total lack of skill. They yell, flail about, fall, punch, jump, leap, climb, roll, bash, karate chop, kick, knee, shoot their pistols, and look like total idiots doing it. Remember, these guys are supposed to be super cops, but they’re really a pair of clowns. Continue reading “The Super Cops”

Hard Ticket to Hawaii

What a gloriously stupid movie. Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Andy Sidaris’s magnum opus from 1987, is not the most watchable shitty movie of all time, but it is a contender for the ‘so bad it’s good’ championship belt. It’s a subtle distinction, I know. But, if boxing can have dozens of belts, why deny such granular categorization to misfit movies?

Written and directed by Sidaris, Hard Ticket is very self-aware. There are no pretensions of narrative weight, or, since this is an action flick, realistic violence. This is a bloody flick, to be sure, but it’s how the blood is spilt that is hooey (see, skateboard scene, frisbee scene). Continue reading “Hard Ticket to Hawaii”

Invasion of the Bee Girls

To give one an idea of the kind of film this is, and the kind of audience it attracts (this reviewer included), the ‘Alternate versions’ section of Invasion of the Bee Girls’ IMDb page contains this gem: “The recent MGM DVD is missing footage. Part of the scene where Beverly Powers…seduces her man is missing, deleting some of her nudity…The MGM version looks the best this low-budget film has ever looked, but the missing footage rankles.” That’s someone who feels robbed. Modern viewers are denied that particular set of breasts, yes, but there are plenty more in this exploitation classic. Continue reading “Invasion of the Bee Girls”

Phoenix the Warrior, aka She-Wolves of the Wasteland

This movie has to be trash, right? One doesn’t go into a 1980’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi b-movie with a scantily-clad female cast and expect Shakespeare. In the days before the World Wide Web, a movie like this was about one thing and one thing only, and that was gratuitous nudity. It’s true. Movie watchers were shallow enough that for about three decades leading up to the widespread use of the internet, showcasing nudity was a core purpose of thousands upon thousands of substandard movies. Good for them!

Phoenix the Warrior is a little skimpy with the goods, though. Although the look and feel of this movie is lifted from Mad Max, in many ways this has more in common with a women in prison flick. Director and writer Robert Hayes (Dan Rotblatt shares writing credit) even managed to squeeze in a pseudo shower scene, but that’s about it. Hayes did the absolute worst thing he could do as the director of an exploitation flick: he relied on his skill as a filmmaker to see him through. Continue reading “Phoenix the Warrior, aka She-Wolves of the Wasteland”

Bad, Black and Beautiful

Bad, Black and Beautiful movie poster Once upon a time, way back in the mid-1970s, some guy in Dallas, Texas, by the name of Bobby Davis, had some dollars in his pocket and a dream. That dream: to write, direct, and produce a blaxploitation flick. He roamed the lounges of Dallas, wading into a sea of nylon and leisure suits in search of the talent he would need to make his vision a reality. Days, nay, weeks, of production pass, and Davis overcomes all of the obstacles which stand in the way of auteurs the world over, and he gets his film in the can. Now, it’s official. Bobby Davis is a filmmaker, forever more. In celebration, and aware that all great artists leave the scene at their peak, he leaves his affairs in order, climbs the Reunion Tower overlooking picturesque Interstate 35E, and hurls himself into the void.

Most of that is bullshit, including Davis’s personal denouement (Reunion Tower wasn’t finished until 1978, three years after this movie’s release). But, sources on this dog of a movie are very thin. It’s known that there was a filmmaker named Bobby Davis, that he shot a film called Bad, Black and Beautiful in Dallas, and that he employed a cast and crew that, for the majority of them, had no experience before or after this film was made. If it wasn’t for the internet, this movie would exist only on crumbling VHS tapes and a handful of 35mm prints lurking in the backs of storage spaces. This is a movie that was well on its way to being lost, and it shows. Continue reading “Bad, Black and Beautiful”

The Concrete Jungle (1982)

Women in prison flicks are among the sleaziest exploitation movies that cinema has to offer, possibly exceeded only by Naziploitation and nunsploitation. Women in prison flicks are all about the subjugation and humiliation of women, both through loss of personal freedom and sexual violence. There are only passing moments of redemption for this subgenre, as the victimized protagonist usually gets a small amount of justice at the end, but that’s only window dressing.

This is Shitty Movie Sundays, where every shitty movie, even ones that are badly dated, get a showing. It’s a fruitless endeavor to try and impose the morals of today on the past, so Missile Test says go ahead and watch the sleaziest of the sleaze, and feel free to ignore that twinge of guilt one feels when they find they actually enjoy it. Continue reading “The Concrete Jungle (1982)”

Tenement (1985), aka Game of Survival, aka Slaughter in the South Bronx

One of the best things about watching shitty movies is that it is far more likely to find a film that goes extreme compared to a Hollywood flick, or even compared to a Film with a capital ‘F.’ A good case in point is 1985’s Tenement, released under various other titles, from outsider filmmaker Roberta Findlay.

Findlay spent most of her career directing obscure exploitation films or smut, the smut usually under a male pseudonym. Late in her career she dipped her toes into more of the mainstream, her most well-known flick being Prime Evil. Having come from a world where anything could be put onto film, those sensibilities carried through into work that fell under the scrutiny of the censors at the MPAA. Continue reading “Tenement (1985), aka Game of Survival, aka Slaughter in the South Bronx”

Caged Heat 3000, or, Nudity Is the New Black

Caged Heat 3000 VHS box Who doesn’t want a little sleaze in their life? If the dearth of this kind of movie in the 21st century is any indication, the answer is: not many people.

Existing halfway between some R-rated titillation and outright smut, Caged Heat 3000 is of a type that has little place in popular culture these days. It’s too raunchy for regular release, but not explicit enough to live on those websites we all pretend we don’t visit. Erotic direct-to-video releases are a victim of forty years of increasing social conservatism here in the States, and the internet, which can offer straight porn on demand. What an interesting dichotomy. Movies are becoming more prudish, while smut is more readily available than ever before, leaving the middle ground a barren wasteland for new content. That’s an oversimplification, but there is a lively debate online about the subject of nudity in film.

There’s no debate here at Shitty Movie Sundays. Gratuitous nudity is an important facet of the shitty movie experience, just as much as nonsensical plots, cheap sets, poor effects, bad acting, and all the other things that give the shitty movie fan their fix. We can gaze upon the lazy eroticism and shameless misogyny of a flick like Caged Heat 3000 and laugh. It also brings to mind the days before we were flooded with content, when Caged Heat 3000 might have been the best, or only, option available for a viewer looking to see a little skin. Continue reading “Caged Heat 3000, or, Nudity Is the New Black”