Revenge of 3-D: AMITYVILLE 3-D (1983)

The early ‘80s was a boon period for the 3-D format. Amusingly, it was the small independent production COMIN’ AT YA! that kicked off this 3-D renaissance. Released in June 1981, this Tony Anthony western vehicle drew in the crowds with its 3-D novelty. Hollywood naturally saw gold in them thar hills and over the next few years a slew of 3-D studio pictures hit screens. But as quick as the craze hit, it ended and the final nail in the coffin was AMITYVILLE 3-D, the last studio flick attempting to bowl audiences over.

This picks up with the Amityville property abandoned and for sale. Tabloid journalist John Baxter (Tony Roberts) and his photographer partner Melanie (Candy Clark) quickly uncover a séance scam at the famous Amityville house. But when Baxter finds out the house is on the market ("It's a steal. Nobody wants it."), he can't pass up a good deal and moves in to work on his great American novel. Surprisingly, his bitchy ex-wife (Tess Harper) doesn't approve of him moving out because she knows the stories and fears for the safety of their daughter Susan (Lori Loughlin). Baxter experiences a number of strange phenomenons but, hey, this place is a steal so he can put up with it. Of course, once his daughter is killed by the evil in the house, he suddenly gets serious and, before you can say POLTERGEIST, Baxter hauls in a paranormal investigative team (led by Robert Joy).

Directed by Richard Fleisher, this sequel is just as slick as the previous two entries but lacks, well, everything. Seriously, nothing major happens until an hour and ten minutes into the flick. Well, unless you consider a séance Susan’s friends (including a young Meg Ryan) have chilling. Some crazy stuff goes on in the last ten minutes, ending with the house exploding in a big ball of flames. Screenwriter David Ambrose definitely dropped the darker edge of the first two films and seems more inspired by the episodes of THE OMEN. He took the pseudonym William Wales on the final product, probably for fear of rioting filmgoers pissed off that he considers things like a fast out-of-control elevator, overdeveloped film or a sliding bathroom wall scary. Oh, and he has the film's major plot point happen off screen and doesn't have the brains to include a priest character (blasphemy!). Of course, what can you expect when the tagline in the US was “WARNING: In this movie YOU are the victim”?

All was probably forgiven by audiences thanks to some eye-popping 3-D gags and AMITYVILLE 3-D shows it ain’t playing around. From the opening credits to the finale, there are 3-D special effects every ten minutes or so. Some are lousy (a Frisbee flying towards the camera) and some are absolutely spectacular (a pole going through a car window; strikingly similar to Argento's FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET). The funniest bit is Roberts walking in on the dying realtor, who reaches out his hand toward the camera for an extended period of time. It is amusing because you realize if this were happening in “real life” that Roberts is just standing there doing nothing while this guy dies in front of him. No wonder he is divorced! The end has a number of gags from a door exploding to a swordfish flying at the camera. There is also a demon that comes up from a basement well and breathes fire right towards the audience.

I guess it is a credit to producer Dino De Laurentiis’ enthusiasm (or bank account) that he was able to corral some decent leads into this. Tony Roberts had just done a bunch of films with Woody Allen. Tess Harper sure had an interesting 1983, having starred in TV's CHIEFS (3 Emmy nominations), TENDER MERCIES (5 Oscar nominations), SILKWOOD (also 5 Oscar nominations) and this (1 Fantasporto nomination). LOL! I hope she is enjoying that pool this paid for. Director Fleisher certainly seemed to be slumming (the man made 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA for heaven’s sake), but he turns in a very polished looking picture. He was lucky enough to top this in terms of his worst feature by making MILLION DOLLAR MYSTERY (1987) a few years later.

Sadly, this wasn’t enough to lure in audiences who had already grown tired of the 3-D experience. AMITYVILLE 3-D actually opened in first place the weekend it came out, but you have to remember that the movie-going public and industry was a completely different monster back in 1983. A film could reach the top spot by hauling in a measly $2.3 million. It dropped each successive week and was gone from theaters in less than a month, symbolically signaling the end of the 3-D craze. This was supposed to be the final film in the AMITYVILLE series (the house freakin' blew up), but clever producers found a way to keep it going with sequels (one TV movie and 4 direct-to-video) focusing on "haunted" items from the house. Oh, Hollywood! Interestingly, if you want a real Amityville 3-D experience, the house is currently on the market. Be sure to tell them Dino sent ya.

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Revenge of 3-D: WILDCAT WOMEN (1975)

Brother man, I really don’t dig comin’ down all heavy on this flick. Like, check it, it’s got pimps an’ ho’s, heavy dudes with nice threads and cool cats with lotsa bread. It’s all about classy rides and a crazy scene that’s bustin’ off of the screen. They threaten hot chicks with mice, but that ain’t nice. I could go on forever, but I ain’t that clever… Alright, alright, put away the tomatoes.

A piano-bar singer, Lolita (Yolanda Love), finds herself in a world of pissed-off (which disturbs the yoga exercises of her next door neighbor) the likes she has never known before when her uncle is gunned down in front of his liquor store by the goofiest collection of mob thugs you’ve ever seen. As if that wasn’t enough, one of her friends is stabbed to death by her pimp. The two events can’t possibly be a coincidence! So she gets her shit together, calls up some friends and sets out to take down the mob… who are in fact merely a handful of guys headed up by a short Japanese dude, called The Buddha (Joey Ginza), whose broken Engrish and pseudo-Asian accent often slips into a Southern California surfer drawl. The plan? Start stealin’ the dope and the bread from their drops and then… do it some more! Yeah! Lolita falls for chubby, out of shape Cleon (who is smoother than hot grease on a glass floor when he sees Lolita talking to her neighbor and says “I don’t know whether to be jealous or suggest a threesome!”). Could this be a set-up? The plot thins…

Released in three different versions including a hard-core X-rated cut titled BLACK LOLITA, WILDCAT WOMEN desperately wants to be a raw(er) sister of the tough-as-nails black female action flicks popularized by the cool and curvaceous Pam Grier. Except here we have Yolanda Love, who is credited as “Miss Exotic Galaxy” which I suspect is a contest that never existed, or if it did, was a one-shot deal for porno starlets. Oddly, she’s surprisingly prudish, refusing to show any skin except in a bikini and a brief and somewhat obscured love scene that could have been damn near anyone because of Love's penchant for wigs.
To paraphrase a famous film star manager, you can punch like Pam Grier, you can kick like Pam Grier, but you can never be Pam Grier. Nobody proves that more than Yolanda Love. Don’t get me wrong, she’s one of the best things about this movie, aside from her dime-store wigs, she is definitely a fine lookin' foxy mama and she don't take no shit from no man (a cop actually tries to help her only to get screams of “beat it pig!”). Unfortunately writer-director Stephen Gibson doesn't really give her a whole lot to do out side of a single action scene in the beginning of the film in which she throws down some badass kung fu moves after telling a trio of horny, racist bikers (is that redundant?) “in case you haven't heard, rape ain't a woman's idea of a good time!” Yeah, that should convince them. In spite of being the main character, a sizable portion of the film takes place without her doing really all that much in the way of ass kicking.

Director Stephen Gibson was the man responsible for a string of risible 3-D porn titles in the mid-‘70s, including the infamous John Holmes outing HARD CANDY (1976). Here he tries to make a mainstream black action movie and seemingly as an afterthought, added some hard-core inserts, most of which do not involve characters or settings from the main film. The hard-core inserts were then cut down to very soft-core to be released with an R-rating in "mainstream" theaters (I'm willing to bet this sucker was cranked so many times at some pit in the Duce that the print disintegrated on the projector). The third version is the version found on DVD that has slightly extended soft-core scenes. The inserts vary in quality, but as much as I enjoy gratuitous nudity in trashy movies, the scenes here range from “Hmmm… what time is it?” to “Oh my fucking christ, my eyes!” In every aspect of the movie, it appears the film was made in bits and pieces over a couple of years, as was the case with his first film THE PLAYMATES (released in 1975, but actually began production in 1973). Here random scenes and anachronistic porn inserts give the impressing that an editing room exploded and Gibson had to cram all the pieces together into a vaguely contiguous feature at the last minute.

Pornography is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “the depiction of erotic behavior intended to cause sexual excitement”. There is nothing of that nature to be found here.

Inserts aside this is a bad, bad movie. And I don’t mean “bad” like I’m talkin’ about Shaft. Nuh-uh and hell no! We’re talkin’ petite-cute women who wear men’s clothing and are mistaken for guys, kinda bad; I’m talkin’ girls being “tortured” into divulging information by being threatened with a white mouse, kinda bad; I’m talkin’ mobsters so dumb that when they catch you planting a bug in their suburban tract house, they let you run right past them through the door to escape, kind bad! Bad like the dialogue, that falls to the ground like Dick Cheney's hunting buddies. For example, Lolita, travelling with two friends on bicycles for no reason whatsoever, is asked by one friend “why didn’t you plan this meeting on top of Mount Everest?” to which Lolita replies “I would have, but it’s still segregated!” Phew! I'm pretty sure that was supposed to get a laugh. Instead of making up their own catchy jive sayings, when “master of disguise” Tinker Jones (Larry Ellis) agrees to help Lolita take on the mob, she says “yeah! We’ll float like a butterfly and sting like a bee!” What?! You can’t just rip off Muhammad Ali’s world-famous line at the height of his popularity and walk away! No girl, uh-uh, I call bullshit on that! Bad like, the “Deep Vision 3-D” process that doesn’t freakin’ work, kinda bad! The polar opposite of the excitement of great 3-D effects occurs when the 3-D effects don't work because of sloppy production. No matter how much you mess with your TV or flat-panel monitor, you will not see the few cheap 3-D effects that this film (or from what I gather, any of Gibson’s efforts) have to offer, even when projected theatrically. You dig what I’m layin’ down sucka? Bad 3-D is what makes people not want to see 3-D movies at all.

One of the most boneheaded sequences has Jones adopting a cunning disguise as a homeless guy to plant a bug on one of the mobsters. He then throws off his disguise revealing his bright red and white aloha shirt and jumps in his woody to inconspicuously tail his quarry by driving 20 inches off his bumper. At one point he breaks down in the middle of an intersection, but it’s L.A. so nobody cares and everyone just drives around him. Speaking of scenes with motor vehicles, I defy anyone to find a lamer car chase in any ‘70s action movie. After Lolita snags a drop from a guy who lies wounded on the floor after she literally pushes him down, she hops in her car and races to the roof-top parking lot of a bowling alley with the mob clown-car right on her ass. There she drives in circles around the lot while the mobsters follow her until after several revolutions, she leaps from the car and a miniature version falls over the edge and explodes. Even the hilarious car "stunts" in the Terence Hill / Marvin Haggler epic VIRTUAL WEAPON (1997) weren't this lame!

While I can spend far too much time taking this movie apart for silly things like the would-be rapist bikers who travel on the quietest motorcycles ever, it’s still somewhat enjoyable. I’d rather sit through WILDCAT WOMEN any day of the week instead of Rudy Ray Moore's much-ballyhooed DOLEMITE (1975) films. Yeah, DOLEMITE is considered a camp classic, but it's always left me non-plussed and it always seems to be the film embraced by people who don't like the good stuff, such as SLAUGHTER (1972) or ACROSS 110th STREET (1972). At least WILDCAT WOMEN has a great '70s soul/jazz score, bloody shootings, amusingly inept acting, old Los Angeles locations and odd characters, some of whom appear and disappear in the film without any rhyme or reason – Tinker Jones is set up as the main male lead and is actually pretty entertaining, but half-way through the film Lolita falls in with marble-mouthed doughboy Cleon and we never see Tinker again! Hell, the climactic show-down is set in an abandoned amusement park, where it appears The Buddha is not tall enough for any of the rides, and that has to count for something. If only we could ditch the awful porn inserts and the worthless “Deep Vision 3-D” process, that by all accounts never worked in the first place, then we might actually be getting somewhere.

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The "Never Got Made" File #17: GODZILLA 3-D

When it comes to massive movie monsters that would make an impact in 3-D, Godzilla seems to be a perfect fit. However, despite putting the cinematic chomp on towns for over 55 years, the Big Lizard has never had a chance to blow his atomic breath in three dimensions. But he came awfully close in the early 1980s.

Fresh off the success of FRIDAY THE 13^TH PART III, director Steve Miner contacted Toho Studios, home of Godzilla, in 1982 and secured the rights to monster franchise. And he had big plans for the beast as the enthusiastic Miner told Cinefantastique in 1983:

“For a long time I felt the classic monster movie – one giant beast against a city – has not been properly treated with the post-STAR WARS technology. Having explored only the very surface of what 3-D could possibly offer, it became clear that there could be a perfect marriage between monsters and 3-D. I was a big Godzilla fan as a kid, and Godzilla is the most monster of all-time.”

“The approach is to make the best monster movie ever made. The movie will be very much in the spirit of the original Godzilla film, but it is a totally new film played absolutely straight. It is going to be scary, full of suspense. It is diametrically opposed to the more recent Godzilla films, and we’re getting away from the ‘man in the suit’ concept for the monster. We’ll be using stop-motion animation to bring the creature to life.”

Miner hired neophyte screenwriter Fred Dekker to pen the script. Openly admitting that he cribbed a story device from GORGO (1961), Miner had the idea of Godzilla crushing an American city while he searched for its child. Major characters in the script include:

*Peter Daxton – a US Navy Colonel who wears an eye patch thanks to a previous scuffle with a Russian rival

*Boris Kruschov – a KGB agent who is missing a hand thanks to his scuffle with Daxton; in its place is a long blade

*Dana Martin – a San Francisco Chronicle reporter who is investigating the events surrounding the mysterious attacks who teams with Daxton

*Balinger – a UC Berkley paleontologist who joins Martin and Daxton

*Kevin Daxton – Peter’s ten-year-old son who just happens to love lizards and knows how to escape being tied up a la Houdini (oh boy!)

The plot synopsis: Godzilla and its baby are awoken after an errant meteor hits a US satellite, causing a nuclear missile to be fired into the Pacific Ocean. Things go wrong right away as a Japanese fishing boat is attacked and a Russian nuclear submarine goes missing. Dana Martin sneaks onto the quarantined Japanese boat and finds a prehistoric fossil, which she takes to Balinger. Meanwhile, Daxton locates the missing Russian sub off the coast of Mexico and commandeers all relevant material from the destroyed sub including two nuclear missiles. Naturally this doesn’t sit well with Daxton’s old rival, KGB agent Kruschov. Back in San Francisco, Daxton, his son and Balinger are called to Mexico when a large, dead creature washes ashore. This is Godzilla’s baby (which took out both vessels) and they take it back to the San Francisco where they keep it in a warehouse to study. Naturally, you can guess what happens next. The Big G surfaces by the Golden Gate Bridge and takes it out before unleashing a massive beat down on The City by the Bay. Daxton and his team then try to lure Godzilla to the island prison of Alcatraz with sounds of its baby record by the sub before shooting it down with some handy Russian nukes.

From my feeble summary, it sounds like Dekker wrote a pretty enjoyable if clichéd monster flick. The more detailed synopsis in the book Japan’s Favorite Mon-ster shows it is really just an amalgamation of every great monster movie before it from KING KONG (both versions) to JAWS (1975). Hell, it even sounds like there is some ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981) and SUPERMAN (1978) thrown in there and some early 80s Cold War hysteria that would make ROCKY IV (1985) blush. Interestingly, Dekker mentions in the book that casting ideas included Powers Boothe as the heroic military man Daxton, then unknown Demi Moore as reporter Martin and Jeff Goldblum as aloof scientist Balinger (foreshadowing his work in JURASSIC PARK and INDEPENDENCE DAY). Dekker also seems to have committed the unforgivable sin of most folks doing a remake – thinking they can improve upon (and therefore needlessly complicate) the origin story. So instead of Godzilla being a dinosaur awakened and mutated by nuclear testing, the big green one is, according to the script review, “a pseudo-scientific mishmash in which Godzilla is said to be a pre-dinosaurian life form, hailing from an era when such creatures had nuclear fission occurring in their bodies (this accounts for Godzilla's atomic breath, which is his fatal weakness, enabling the heroes to kill him by firing missiles down his throat, causing a nuclear implosion).”

Script in hand, director Miner set off to pitch the project to every studio in town. He even hired renowned illustrator William Stout (pictured left, with a model of his design), fresh off CONAN THE BARBARIAN, to help re-design the creature. Stout had an interesting take on the creature, as he mentions in the Japan’s Favorite Mon-ster book:

“I wanted to get away from something you could obviously tell was a man in a suit, and deliver a creature that people could either completely believe, or if they doubted it at all, they'd go, "How in the hell did they do that?" I gave him a more dinosaur-lilke configuration in the legs, to begin with, so it didn't look like there was just a guy in there with human legs. Then I began to develop a muscualar structure that was believable. It was based on Allosaurus, which has arms that actually function, as opposed to those of a T-rex, which are basically useless.”

Stout provided models, sketches and storyboards as well for Godzilla’s big city attack that would take place all over San Francisco.

Unfortunately, no studio seemed willing enough to take the risk. Miner pitched the project around to everyone but they all balked at the $30 million dollar budget projection. He should have hit up Dino De Laurentiis, who had no problem dropping $24 million on the KING KONG remake. In the end, Miner continued to toil on the project for 2 years, even pitching it for half the budget figure in 1984 before his option ran out. Ironically, after years of gestation – which also saw director Jan DeBont’s version snuffed for being too costly – the US remake came into being in 1998 “thanks” to Roland Emmerich and a budget of $130 million. You gotta love Hollywood sometimes.

Interestingly, another GODZILLA 3-D project emerged from Japan in 2005 when director Yoshimitsu Banno – who previously helmed GODZILLA VS. HEDORAH (1971; aka GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER) – announced he would be creating a 40-minute 3-D Godzilla feature to be screened in IMAX. The proposed project was to feature Godzilla battling all over the world from Tokyo to Las Vegas to save humanity. For more details on the development, check out the 7/13/05 update in the archive at the excellent Henshin! Online site. Despite a wealth of details on the project, it also never came to fruition, although Toho is rumored to still be toying with the GODZILLA IMAX idea. Audiences, however, will probably get to see the G-man in 3-D as it has been announced that Legendary Pictures is prepping another US remake which will most like take advantage of the current 3-D craze.

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Revenge of 3-D: DYNASTY aka WARLORD (1977)

Waxing prosaic on the joys of classic Hong Kong cinema is like dating Pamela Anderson, it's been done to the point where nobody cares any more and it's been done by far better than you. Sci-Fi and horror tend to be the genres of choice for 3-D movies, but Hong Kong had their own little 3-D revival in the ‘70s with a handful (or more) martial arts films. I don't know why we American's didn't do it in the ‘80s too. We love our cheesy, wannabe white-boy chop-socky flicks. Can you imagine the total insanity if REVENGE OF THE NINJA (1983) had been released in 3-D? World powers would be crushed under the weight of our collective pop-culture ninja feeding frenzy! Hmmm... Perhaps that is why it wasn't made in 3-D. To keep the world safe!

Like a fair amount of Hong Kong period movies that are made without Western audiences in mind, the screenwriters assume you have some knowledge of the class system and government hierarchy in historical China as well as some of the general history and customs. I've done a little reading on the subject, but can't even pretend to be any sort of scholar, so I tend to find these films a little on the confusing side at least until I figure out who’s is kicking whose ass and which one is wearing the white hat (so to speak). Anyone who has had their head spun by the convoluted political machinations of THE SWORDSMAN III: THE EAST IS RED (1993) will understand where I'm coming from.

The stripped-down premise of DYNASTY is this; the Prince of the Emperor, in retaliation for trying to exclude eunuchs from Imperial court politics, has been falsely accused of treason by silver-haired schemer Eunuch Chow (Pai Ying). The corrupt Chow is on the warpath trying to find the Prince and kill him, squashing the “rebellion” once and for all. A master swordsman convinces Chow to let him take over as head general in his army in order to keep him safe, though he gets a little more than he bargains for when Chow puts the moves on him in the bedroom! In reality he is using his position, waiting for the right time to assassinate Chow. As they fend off waves of rebel attackers, they decide to attack a monastery where they think the prince may be hiding. This only serves to piss of Tan Sao Chin (Tan "Flashlegs" Tao-Liang), a tricked-out umbrella wielding badass who has just had it up to *here* with Chow’s villainy and proceeds to stalk him while shaking a bamboo cup filled with coins. From there it’s non-stop action as Tan tries to kill Chow and alternately fend off the assassins Chow sends after him.

Now if there is one thing this movie does right it is making use of the 3-D gimmick. Whether it’s simply shots of armies riding on horseback, thundering toward the camera, shots of conversations through beaded curtains, bell ringing, pot-throwing, kicking, punching or a wide variety of weapons, no opportunity is missed to thrust things in the audience’s faces with gleeful abandon. Cheap? Sure. Fun? Damn right! Chow and his generals fend off assassins firing arrows, assassins throwing bricks, assassins throwing shurikens, assassins throwing spears, assassins with swords and then there's Chow using his silver pinky claw to slice off the scalp an assassin and throw it at the audience! And that’s just in the first 15 minutes!

The film is decidedly low-budget and anyone expecting the technical precision of THE FIVE DEADLY VENOMS (1978) or the over-the-top spectacle of MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE (1975) is likely to be disappointed. However light in the wallet this movie is, it makes up for it with the sheer volume of action scenes, creative violence, and plenty of locations. Chow’s weapon of choice is a collection of Freddy Krueger-like silver claws that he has on each finger, perfect for slicing, dicing and thrusting straight through the torso of the monk of your choice! Speaking of the monks, after deciding that simple fisticuff isn’t going to cut it, one whips off his top robes and spins them into a fighting staff. At one point Tan is attacked by a group of sword-wielding wanderers by a river. After successfully fending all of them off, they quickly ditch the swords and swap them out for flying guillotines! The budget may look sparse, but without the aid of CGI, they managed to make the 3-D guillotine attacks seriously eye-popping, particularly when the monks arrive to help out Tan, providing plenty of fodder with heads flying off left and right. Not enough for you? There’s plenty more where that came from including a guy who so determined to kick Tan's ass that even after Tan slices off both of his hands, he keeps on fighting! Plus there is a spectacular two-on-one climactic duel on a mountain top with one of the most unique weapons I’ve ever seen in a martial arts film.

The film has it's share of memorable quotes as well, one of my favorites being the one where Chow's younger general is puffing himself up in front of the new guy, after being compared to the older general: “For kung fu, I’m a lot better and as for brains I have twice as many!” I wonder where he kept all of them?

Until recent years the HK film industry has had a total lack of respect for film history and many films have been lost through neglect or in some cases disasters such as fire. Most of the 3-D films are incredibly rare, if they are out there at all, but DYNASTY (aka WARLORD [1977]) can be found transferred from the ultra-rare, short-lived Japanese VHD format and it occasionally runs at festival screenings. While I can't assume that DYNASTY was the first HK martial arts film in 3-D, it was in fact the first HK martial arts film in 3-D and Sensurround, the 8-track analogue precursor to our modern multi-channel surround sound formats such as Dolby Digital and DTS. I imagine this was a pretty mind-blowing experience back in the day and helped overcome the production's budgetary shortcomings.

Although I haven’t been able to get my hands on a copy, director Mei Chung Chang released another rare-as-hell 3-D martial arts film also in 1977 with some of the same cast, titled REVENGE OF THE SHOGUN WOMEN. Apparently the plot concerns a monastery of women who've been raped by bandits and are trained to be lethal fighters, so they can take their revenge against the evil bastards. If DYNASTY is any indication, SHOGUN WOMEN should be quite the find.

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Revenge of 3-D: PRISON GIRLS (1972)

To date the only W.I.P. (Women in Prison) shot in 3-D and somehow I doubt anyone will be tackling this subject matter in this new 3-D era. The title is a bit of a misnomer as these are girls from prison but 90% of the film is prison free. The gist of the plot is six female prisoners are given a weekend furlough by Dr. Vivian Reinhardt so they can experience the real world before their release. Detective Jack (no last name given) has other plans as he intends to have each girl followed. Seems bank robber Johnny Bricker has struck again and, a year previously, he tried to hijack a bus with these very six girls in it. So bright Jack figures one is his girlfriend and will lead the cops to the fugitive.

The film opens how Orson Welles originally planned to open CITIZEN KANE: a prison shower scene that results in a gaggle of chicks getting into a cat fight. After being admonished, the girls set out on their separate ways and the audience gets a series of five vignettes telling how each girl uses her weekend of freedom to better her life outside the joint.

Segment 1: Kay visits boyfriend Mike the Pimp (FLESH GORDON’s Jason Williams) to tell him she is going straight. Things get off bad as he already has another chick there (a no-name who remarkably gets a “and Lisa Ashbury as Phyllis” line in the opening credits). Following a bit of girl bickering, robe-adorned and style challenged Mike proceeds to beat Kay, threatens to burn her with a cigarette, and forces her to perform oral sex on him. Naturally, she then declares she loves and misses him.

Segment 2: a frigid girl (whose name I’m pretty sure is never said) uses the doctor’s pleasure pad to finally overcome her puritanical upbringing that made her “a thief and drug addict” and please her sideburns stylin' husband Frank. Sex on multi-colored 70s pillows that would make a swami uncomfortable cures all, Psychology 101.

Segment 3: Joyce visits her former brother-in-law Ken at his auto body shop to apologize for killing his brother. “Eh, he didn’t do right by you,” Ken admits before offering a joint. Then a biker gang that only 70s cinema could provide shows up and force Ken to rape Joyce. “Women are all cows. You want to look at them, you look!” oddly philosophizes gang leader Hawk.

Segment 4: Toni visits her former sugar daddy Freddy, whose new hobby is body painting nude models (including busty legend Candy Samples). Toni tries to not let on that she has been in the slammer but that plan is blown to hell when her lesbo lover/cellmate Gerdi, also on furlough, shows up. Stalk much? Naturally, the compulsory cat fight winds down and Freddy gets his freak on with both groovy chicks. Segment 5: Cindy (Uschi Digard) - a “verking girl who vunce did 38 twix in vun night” - finally locates her man… bank robber Johnny Bricker! The two make out and make plans for his new cash before the cops bust the party up and accidentally shoot Cindy in the back. If she had been shot in the front, she might have lived! The film ends with the prisoners who (barely) survived their weekend condemning Dr. Reinhardt for setting Cindy up (she actually didn’t).

Are you still there? PRISON GIRLS definitely is one of a kind. No doubt influenced by the softcore 3-D box office success THE STEWARDESSES (1969), this one takes the skin flick subgenre and runs with it. There is so much flesh on display that it almost seems like a hardcore flick with the X-rated shots cut out. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the filmmakers and actors have a history in the porn industry. Unfortunately, with a few exceptions, it is 70s ugly flesh that will kill the thrill. Naturally, the amateurish acting is an asset here as well.

The film’s biggest asset (or should I say assets?) is no doubt the voluptuous Swedish import Uschi Digard. You might recognize her as the provider of breasts pushed against the shower door in the KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE (1977). She is the kind of lady who could make Russ Meyer stop on the street and go, “Gawwwwwwd damn!” (she worked with him on several films). No doubt her segment was probably the most popular as she puts the other girls to shame when it comes to the bust department and helps turn the film into 3-DDD (sexist, insensitive big breast 3-D joke © Thomas Simmons). Digard has a real, deep tan beauty that puts the rest of the cast to shame. One can only imagine her curvy figure in 3-D on a huge screen, resulting in a crowd of 3-D glasses wearing folks passionately raising their hands up in the air like they are at a Christian rock concert.

Outside of the rampant nudity and bountiful bosoms, the audience is treated to a bunch of run-of-the-mill 3-D gags where people offer things toward the camera. All kinds of things from cigarettes to blow torches to hoes (the gardening kind, ya pervs) are poked at the camera lens to create some sort of “it’s coming right at us” effect. The opening shower scene offers the same shot over and over of a shower head spraying water towards the camera. Not on the camera a la PSYCHO (1960) but towards it. I’m sure all of it looked more impressive on a 40-ft screen.

Without the benefit of seeing this in 3-D, PRISON GIRLS is pretty grim stuff. The opening credits unfold over stock footage of older black-and-white W.I.P. flicks with some of the most haggard ladies on display. And even though there is a ton of unclad skin on screen, the film itself is actually depressing as nearly every girl suffers some horrible indignity to remind us that it is “a cold, cruel world” out there. The last 3 minutes tries to put a moral slant on it all, but it is too little, too late. Here is the final anti-establishment bit where a prisoner turns the tables on the psychologist (who looks like Harry Shearer in a wig). Take that, old lady!

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Revenge of 3-D: STARCHASER: THE LEGEND OF ORIN (1985)

I’ll have to come clean here and admit this publicly, I have a soft spot for this movie. It may be a soft spot in my head, but for aside from the execrable first 10 minutes and the execrable last 10 minutes, it’s a pretty damned entertaining not-too-kiddy animated sci-fi flick. Granted it’s no HEAVY METAL (1981) or ROCK & RULE (1983), not by a long shot, but it’s a damn sight better than the dunderheaded HEAVY METAL 2000 (2000), a film that tried so hard to appeal to its perceived target demographic that it managed to insult the intelligence of horny 13 year-old boys everywhere.

The basic premise which serves as little more than a bookend for all of the action in the middle is that there is a world where all of the galaxy’s crystals are mined by slaves. Why these crystals are so valuable and important is never explained, but they are red and shiny and blow-up when hit by laser-fire. The slaves are kept in line by robots wielding laser whips and the crystals are “fed” to an angry fire “god” and much cruelty and pathos ensue. Our hero Orin (Joe Colligan) while mining for crystals finds a sword who’s blade disappears and apparently this is part of some prophecy that we find out about as the sword projects a hologram of an old man in a white robe who speaks of a quest and a world above! Prophecy, schmophecy! Let’s get to the action! All of this leads to Orin escaping from the mines, running afoul of the evil Zygon (Anthony De Longis), the planet’s lavender-skinned dictator, and hooking up with a sardonic smuggler named Dagg (Carmen Argenziano).

The “world above” is a cool, pre-1950s style alien swampland with very ‘80s style dangers. Here Han So – I mean, Dagg, helps Orin fight off a pack of “Mandroids”, cyborg zombies that steal body parts from humans to outfit on their mechanical frames. Dagg grudgingly accepts Orin’s company and takes him on a ride to a few other galactic hotspots, raiding Zygon’s ship for crystals and landing on another planet to sell them and the Government fembot he liberated while escaping.

It’s well known that animators spend an awful lot of time by themselves and nothing shows it more than the sexy fembot. When Dagg uses her as a shield to escape, he didn’t realize how annoying her persistent bitching would be when aboard his ship. Dagg clearly is familiar with this situation. Putting her over his knee, he fumbles around trying to find the “personality” controls. The ships computer informs Dagg that it’s located in her... “posterior region” (yes, he means fembot's curvaceous ass). Dagg grins, slaps a gag over her mouth and opens up her ass. After playing around in there a bit, suddenly fembot is purring like a sexy kitten… Can you see the pasty, lonely animators dreaming “if only real women worked like that”? When the ship touches down on a planet fashioned after an Arabian market (what could possibly be more alien than that?), Dagg ties fembot up and has her auctioned off as a slave. Of course she doesn’t actually get sold due to Orin’s interference, and fembot nuzzles up to Dagg in appreciation. What is Irving Klaw shooting second unit here?

During all this Orin becomes attached to Princess Le – err, I mean, Kallie (the galactic governor's daughter) who wants to tie Orin down and keep him from kicking some slaver ass. Finally she gives in and the whole team sets out to bring down Zygon's evil corporate empire, complete with epic space battles, tractor-beams and hand-capitation courtesy of an invisible "light" sword (hmmmmmm...). If it seems a little heavy on the STAR WARS pilferage, you are correct sir, though Orin's relationship with Kallie is surprisingly reminiscent of scenes with the young Anakin and Amidala from the new STAR WARS films. In all honesty, the characters, the action scenes, the climax, hell even the hallways of the Zygon's main complex are pretty blatantly lifted from the original STAR WARS films. On the other hand, there's a completely different style for many other elements that have a "Golden Age of Science Fiction" quality to them with Arabian bars, bizarre plantlife and non-bipedal monsters. 

STARCHASER pretty much died in the theater and that may have had something to do with the awful beginning and ending, or the completely misleading and absurd "A" sheet poster that made it look like some cloyingly cuddly MY LITTLE PONY IN SPACE type of kiddie flick. Or maybe it was just because the producers thought that it was a brilliant idea to make a 2-D animated film in 3-D. Basically you had flat 2-D images appearing to be overlapping at various depths so that the effect was like a pop-up book. Genius! As if that wasn't mediocre enough, the effects were computer generated and occasionally goofed, putting things that were supposed to be in the foreground in the back. Probably the most damning thing of all was that problems had plagued the production causing its release date to be pushed back, so that it ended up coming out about a two years after the public had become disillusioned and jaded by cheap 3-D flicks that were rushed into theaters. Almost immediately it seemed to find an audience on home video. Its quirky blend of modern and old school sci-fi, surprisingly good art direction, plenty of action and some now rather obvious and amusing political incorrectness, make it worth the watch if nothing else. As long as you can make it through the first 10 minutes and the last 10 minutes, you'll be golden.

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Werewolf? There Wolf: Paul Naschy's LICANTROPO (1996)

LICANTROPO opens in 1944 as a gypsy woman is saved from two nasty Nazis by her lover, who is also a Nazi. She is pregnant with triplets and, according to legend, they must be killed because they are afflicted with the Curse of the 5 Pointed Star. Naturally, things don't go down well. Cut to 1996 and surviving triplet Waldemar Daninsky (Naschy) is a famous mystery writer. Daninsky is having chest pains and bad dreams though, so he visits cardiologist Dr. Mina Westenra (Amparo Munoz) who tells him just to take it easy. That is kind of hard on the man as he is working feverishly on his new novel and is dismayed by the killings happening in town on full moons. The two latest victims are friends of his daughter Kinga (Eva Isanta), who is also receiving threatening phone calls. Two inspectors and the coroner - who just happens to be Mina's father - are on the case but, naturally, scoff at the suggestion of a werewolf. Nope, instead they have a theory of a killer using a handheld garden hoe to kill folks. Heh, heh...hoe.

Perhaps I was subconsciously trying to ease my pain by watching FULL MOON (see review below) first because LICANTROPO (1996) has a reputation among Paul Naschy fans as being one of his lesser werewolf entries. I guess it worked as I enjoyed this one for the most part. Amazing how a shot-on-video crapfest can smack your sensibilities around and make you level out. This film has a lot of positives going for it. It is incredibly well shot and makes nice use of blue lighting. Director Francisco Rodriguez Gordillo definitely scores in that department. The acting is also good by everyone. Naschy, as always, gives a committed performance. According to The Mark of Naschy website, however, Naschy has repeatedly said that Gordillo cut out all of the sex and violence from his script. Genius! I bet he is the kind of guy who makes a BLT and leaves out the bacon and lettuce. A perfect example is the first murder of a prostitute. She is just walking down the street, pulled into a dark alley and then blood slowly pours out onto the cobblestones. You ain't Hitchcock, Mr. Gordillo, so give the fans what they want. Interested in seeing the film's gore highlight? Look to your left. Sad, ain't it?

Unfortunately, Gordillo seems to completely undermine his werewolf movie by not featuring much of a werewolf in it. Genius again! Naschy appears as the titular beast only twice in the first hour and each segment lasts roughly a minute. That is a shame as the make up on Naschy, while minimal, is pretty darn cool. He has these green contacts that work really well in the blue hued set ups. A majority of the time is spent on Kinga and her relationship with a priest's son and the two detectives talking about the case and their wild hoe killer theory. The end picks up a bit as Mina is visited by the ghosts of the gypsies, resulting in a great bit where they tell her the solution to Waldemar's problems can be found "In the woods...by the maple tree...by the old well." Cut to her digging a single hole in the woods and finding a gun with silver bullets. Damn, she's good.

Of course, this brings us to the films other big problem - Naschy's screenplay. I'm not going to pretend he had a genius script that was some classic that was torn apart by the director. This thing is cookie cutter stuff and D-U-M-B. You know there is a problem when you can guess the killer from their VERY FIRST line of dialog. SPOILER (run cursor over text): when you have the priest watching a TV report about the murders early on and saying, "It looks like someone is punishing the sinful," I think it is easy to tell who our mystery hoe killer is. END SPOILER Seriously, I've seen more complex SCOOBY DOO plots. And you have to laugh at the priest dad being all concerned about his son because he reads Poe and has horror movie posters on his walls. Oh, wait, is that a DR. GIGGLES poster? Shit, I totally agree with the dad now. That kid needs help! Like psychiatric help ASAP!

So compared to Naschy's earlier turns as El Hombre Lobo, LICANTROPO is a let down. Had it had the sex and violence Naschy had originally written, I think it would have fared a lot better. Of course, Naschy's penultimate turn as Waldemar looks positively like some Oscar winning material compared to his final portrayal of the role. LICANTROPO was supposed to be the final Daninsky entry but somehow B-movie legend Fred Olen Ray convinced Naschy to step into the role one more time for TOMB OF THE WEREWOLF (2004). Now if this was Ray circa late 80s/early 90s, I would have been down with it. Unfortunately, this is new millennium F.O.R.2.0 and that is definitely a bad thing. Running a scant 82 minutes, TOMB is an embarrassment for Naschy, especially being his final turn in the role. That said, Ray definitely dollops on the nudity. If only there were some was to make a Frankenstein's monster of these last two Daninsky flicks. One that uses LICANTROPO's production values with TOMB's exploitation value. Now that would have been a great send off. Eh, I'll just stick with THE WEREWOLF VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMEN (1971; aka WEREWOLF SHADOW).

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Werewolf? There Wolf: FULL MOON (1993)

Unless you are big into the Uruguay shot-on-video horror market, chances are you've never heard of FULL MOON (1993; aka PLENILUNIO, not to be confused with a 1999 film from Spain with the same title). And guess what? You are still waking up, walking, talking, breathing, and going on with your life as normal so actively seeking out FULL MOON at this point in your life means you are some sort of masochist or dumbass (take your pick).

The town of Colonia is under siege thanks to a string of murders happening on full moons. The police are mum on the details, but the locals whisper of victims being torn apart, as if attacked by a wild animal. Covering the case for a local TV station is Roberto, a TV cameraman who seems to only hang out with kids (creepy). A couple of the kids head into the woods with a steak to try and capture the beast JAWS-style. What they run into is a creepy albino guy who lives in a shack. Roberto and a kid check out the place and get attacked by the guy before escaping. While everyone is conferring on what to do at the rinky-dink TV station, our albino shows up and unleashes the beast on them.

There isn't really much to say abou this one. Hell, the only reason I got it was to check off "See a film from Uruguay" on my cinema bucket list. I should have looked harder. I find it amazing that someone actually took the time to fansub this film. Think early Andreas Schnaas minus the budget and gore and you might get the right idea. You have to admire the enthusiasm by all involved, but it is amateurish on every level. In fact, the most interesting thing about the film is seeing a guy reading a South American edition of Fangoria. It makes sense that 90% of the actors are kids because, I suspect, that every sane adult was like, "Uh, I've got to go drink some Grappamiel" or something. Then again, maybe kids only got the sophisticated humor? The big comedy gag has some kids putting a condom in a friend's birthday pizza. "I thought it was an onion," the kid exclaims as he pulls it out of his mouth. This gag is referenced again during the final scene.

According to his own website, director Ricardo Islas started working at Channel 3 in Uruguay as a teenager and, holy moly, that is where a majority of this film is set. No doubt by the time he had reached his early 20s in 1993, he had enough clout to pressure his bosses to make this. The FX are really laughable. Most of the gore is kept off screen but the few instances remind me of the messes I would make when I was 12 (see above pic). The albino werewolf is downright hilarious and looks like a cross between a poorly drawn Tex Avery wolf and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. There is a reason Islas only shows it in split second shots. Take a look:

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