The Late Liz (1971)

Not every bad film manages to fail on multiple levels, but The Late Liz bombs as an alcoholism melodrama, a story of Christian faith, and a late-career showcase for faded Oscar winner Anne Baxter. Based on a book by Gert Behanna, who in real life credited God with saving her from booze, The Late Liz has the ugly visual style of a cheap TV movie, the stiff dramaturgy of a public service announcement, and the over-the-top messaging of a Sunday-morning sermon. Worse, Baxter is genuinely terrible here, cooing much of her dialogue coquettishly and bulging her eyes for emphasis during heavy scenes. Watching Baxter strut into the foreground or dramatically turn away from the camera suggests nothing more than a laughable soap-opera performance. That’s a shame, because she’s effective whenever she stops trying so hard, and she looks quite lovely except in scenes when she’s meant to appear bedraggled. Had Baxter opted for sincerity instead of flamboyance, she might have made this sketchy project palatable. Anyway, Baxter plays Liz Hatch, an upper-crust Californian whose drinking torpedoes two marriages and sends her rushing toward self-destruction until one of her sons, Peter (William Katt), returns from Vietnam as a devout Christian determined to share the good word with his mother. Katt plays the material so straight that he seems like a robot, and the great Jack Albertson is wasted in a supporting role as a kindly priest. Therefore Steve Forrest, of all people, gives the picture’s most vibrant turn, playing Liz’s second husband. Incidentally, those who dig camp will find much to enjoy here, thanks not only to Baxter’s overheated performance but also to the florid dialogue (“You’re not only a drunk, you’re a nymphomaniac!”). What’s more, Tonight Show regular Foster Brooks shows up in one scene to do his patented friendly-drunk routine.

The Late Liz: LAME

Slick Silver (1975)

It’s difficult to actively dislike an amiable regional production like Slick Silver, since one gets a sense of enterprising filmmakers doing their best to emulate tropes they’ve seen in “real” movies while also sharing something of their local idioms with the world. Nonetheless, a dull viewing experience is a dull viewing experience, and Slick Silver never builds much in the way of empathy or momentum. A gentleman named R. Terrell Reagan, who also wrote and executive-produced this project but never made another film, stars as Slick Silver, a fast-talking schemer roaming through Texas and thereabouts. Early in the movie, he befriends a guitar-slinging hitchhiker named Leroy (Hal Fletcher), whom Slick nicknames “Strummer Goldenstring.” Flim-flam ensues. The guys pose as public-health officials and convince a farmer to hand over several chickens by convincing her the birds are victims of a hemorrhoid outbreak. They encounter a traveling preacher, then steal his clothes and leave him tied to a tree while they try to fleece the congregation that was awaiting the preacher’s arrival. They persuade a black guy to pose as their chauffeur so they can run a number on women in a rich neighborhood. And so on. Although most of the actors in the film render generic work, Reagan does a passable con-artist routine, and some of the scams are mildly imaginative. Unfortunately, there’s zero depth of character and the story goes nowhere, so after the first 15 minutes or so, you’ve seen everything Slick Silver has to offer—that is, unless the pie-fight sequence toward the end counts as novelty.

Slick Silver: LAME

The Child (1977)

Horror-flick clichés abound in The Child, a low-budget entry into the creepy-kid genre. Out in the boonies, pretty twentysomething Alicanne (Laurel Barnett) arrives to begin her job as caretaker for Rosalie (Rosalie Cole), the 11-year-old daughter of a nasty old guy who lives in a decaying mansion. (The child’s mother died some time previous, but we’ll get to that in a minute.) Naturally, Alicanne receives warnings about the house (and about the 11-year-old) from a kindly neighbor, and, naturally, she ignores these warnings. All the usual nonsense happens. Strange behavior. Troublesome mysteries. Weird noises. And still Alicanne remains in the house, even as she learns about several recent unsolved murders. Turns out Rosalie has supernatural control over zombie-like creatures, and that she’s guiding her “friends” to murder people whom she feels were complicit in her mother’s death. Inasmuch as it has a steady stream of chase scenes taking place in quasi-atmospheric locations, The Child might have enough shock-cinema mojo to keep undemanding horror addicts entertained. Those who actually want originality, a proper story, or real thrills—not so much. The movie’s shortcomings include distracting dubbing, laughable gore FX, iffy production values, obnoxious music, underwhelming jolts, and weak acting. If only because The Child lacks outright cruelty and misogyny, it’s far from the worst type of ’70s drive-in horror, but that remark should not be misconstrued as praise.

The Child: LAME

The Orphan (1979)

Drifting along the meandering currents of low-budget horror flick The Orphan are pieces that, assembled differently, might have comprised an offbeat psychological thriller—a little cross-dressing here, a touch of pedophilia there. Alas, how these pieces relate in this context is anyone’s guess. The story is set in the 1930s—anachronistic costumes and hairstyles notwithstanding—and the gist is that after his father dies, preteen David (Mark Owens) receives an unwanted new guardian, Aunt Martha (Peggy Feury). Her disciplinarian ways don’t sit well with David, who enjoys hanging out with Akin (Afolabi Ajayi), the African houseguest who was a friend of David’s late father, and spying on the family’s attractive young maid, Mary (Eleanor Stewart). Another of David’s hobbies is wearing women’s clothes, though at one point he’s interrupted while cross-dressing, so he strips off his bustier, shoves it in a toilet, and flushes, thereby causing the toilet to overflow. If you’re thinking that none of this sounds particularly horrific, how about the dream sequence during which David imagines his tongue being ripped from his mouth? Some murders happen in The Orphan, but they’re presented so cryptically that it’s hard to tell which events are meant to be figments of David’s imagination. Nonetheless, someone must have thought that writer/producer/director John Ballard was onto something, seeing as how ace cutter Ralph Rosenblum was brought in as “editorial consultant” and Janis Ian was hired to write and perform a theme song. Ian’s song is pretty, and one assumes Rosenblum helped strengthen a few moments, but the sum effect of The Orphan is bewildering. FYI, The Orphan was occasionally marketed as Friday the 13th: The Orphan, so the producers of Friday the 13th (1980) had to pay the copyright owners of Ballard’s flick for the use of the title.

The Orphan: LAME

Keep Off My Grass! (1975)

A brief description makes counterculture comedy Keep Off My Grass! sound promising, since Micky Dolenz (of the Monkees) plays a sweet hippie kid searching for a place where he can nurture his little marijuana plant in peace. Unfortunately, that’s only one piece of a simultaneously overstuffed and underwhelming movie. Keep Off My Grass! begins with retailers on the main drag of a small city upset about hippies loitering in front of their stores. The retailers buy a small abandoned town and give it to the kids, who build their own society from scratch. Predictably, the hippies replicate the same Establishment hang-ups against which they once rebelled: capitalism, law and order, etc.  Done right, this movie could have become an essential satire of its period. Instead, Keep Off My Grass! is drab, shapeless, tonally inconsistent, and visually unimaginative. One subplot concerns a hippie guy who gets possessive about his lady. Another revolves around a young man who upsets his Jewish parents by shacking up with a hippie chick. And the Dolenz material mostly sidelines the endearing pot-plant angle for dreary vignettes of Dolenz’s character trying to lose his virginity. There’s also a needlessly dark subplot about folks living in the small town adjoining the hippie community taking extreme measures to drive the hippies away. Dolenz’s goofy charm isn’t nearly sufficient to make this stuff interesting to watch, especially since he only plays a supporting role, despite marketing materials implying he’s the star. FYI, Keep Off My Grass! features an early screen appearance by future TV star Gerald McRaney, whose casting as the rebellious Jewish kid is a bit of a stretch, and this was the only movie that comedian Shelley Berman ever directed. He did not miss his calling.

Keep Off My Grass!: LAME

W (1974)

To appreciate Hitchcock’s mastery, one need only watch a few movies that try and fail to emulate his Swiss-watch style. W is a silly mystery/thriller about Katie (Twiggy), a young woman tormented by someone who may or may not be her first husband, who may or may not actually be in jail, and who may or may not have committed a murder, because Katie may or may not have framed him as a means of escaping a troubled marriage. Not only does the plot hinge on so many red herrings that it’s tiresome to sort out which things are cinematic misdirection, but the affronts to logic are countless. Even worse, W is boring, despite a few serviceable suspense scenes and solid production values. (Bing Crosby Productions, the folks behind W, fared better with 1971’s killer-rat epic Ben and 1973’s redneck-vigilante opus Walking Tall.) Penned by a cabal of writers including Ronald Shusett, who later co-created the Alien franchise, W follows Katie and her second husband, Ben (Michael Witney), through several episodes of bedevilment—cars rigged to crash, pets brutally murdered, and so on. Eventually, the couple hires a shifty PI, Charles (Eugene Roche), only to discover he’s more of a problem than a solution. As the movie reaches its dippy climax, Katie’s twisted ex shows up in the form of William (Dirk Benedict), a bug-eyed psychopath personifying every cliché associated with bug-eyed psychopaths. It’s all quite leaden, despite sly supporting turns by Roche, Michael Conrad, and John Vernon. Oh, and if you’ve ever wondered why British model-turned-actress Twiggy never did more with the goodwill she earned by starring in Ken Russell’s The Boy Friend (1971), look no further than this flick for an explanation.

W: LAME

Wheeler (1975)

Wannabe thriller Wheeler, also known by titles including Psycho from Texas, has fans among those who relish bad cinema, and it’s not hard to see why. The plot is derivative schlock about a twisted redneck drifter who abuses women because he was traumatized during childhood by watching his prostitute mother service clients. Fair enough, except for the way the filmmakers illustrate this concept—flashbacks featuring awkward cuts between shots of Mom getting screwed and shots of an angelic little boy crying. Shameless. Adding to the film’s craptastic allure is the bizarre performance by leading man John King III, who elongates and emphasizes random words, somewhat in the style Christopher Walken later employed to more deliberate effect. Watching Wheeler, one gets the sense of an actor struggling to read cue cards that are held too far away for him to see clearly. And then there’s that damn chase scene. In the storyline, Wheeler (King) and his buddy Slick (Thomas Knight Lamey) kidnap a retired oilman, but the oilman escapes—so for a good 40 minutes of the movie, the filmmakers repeatedly cut to Slick chasing the oilman. Beyond how dull and repetitious these vignettes are, the chase scene defies logic since Slick is young and healthy while the oilman is middle-aged and doughy. The capper on this dispiriting cinematic experience is an interminable scene during which Wheeler forces a pretty waitress to strip naked and gyrate while he empties a pitcher of beer onto her. Gross.

Wheeler: LAME

Mag Wheels (1978)

Utterly generic teen-sex junk about pretty young white people cavorting and fighting in the Southern California sun, Mag Wheels revolves around a romantic triangle between van-driving jerk Steve (John McLaughlin); his possessive girlfriend, Donna (Verinka Flower); and hot new girl in town Anita (Shelly Horner). Only Anita is remotely sympathetic, since the filmmakers show snippets of her rough home life with a domineering ne’er-d0-well father. After Steve gets an eyeful of Anita wearing a bikini at the beach one day, he loses interest in Donna, so Donna conspires to ruin Steve’s life by telling the cops he’s a coke dealer. Then Donna convinces Steve that Anita was the narc, so he and several of his buddies try to gang-rape Anita for revenge until several lady truckers rescue her. (Yes, that’s really the plot.) The whole mess culminates in a Rebel With a Cause-style drag race. Whereas most teen-sex movies forefront lighthearted comedy, albeit of the crudest possible sort, Mag Wheels wobbles between jokey scenes (such as a weird subplot about Steve treating an underclassman like a fraternity pledge) and grim melodrama. None of it works. The jokes are laborious and mean-spirited, while the drama is contrived and downright cruel. Meanwhile, the acting is rotten and the filmmaking is rudimentary. Only viewers with insatiable appetites for ogling young flesh should seek out Mag Wheels, but fair warning—much more screen time is devoted to storytelling than to smut, unless fetishistic angles of trucks and vans count as money shots.

Mag Wheels: LAME

Dagmar’s Hot Pants, Inc. (1971)

Softcore sex comedy Dagmar’s Hot Pants, Inc. was produced by a consortium of American, Danish, and Swedish companies, filmed in English, and released stateside with an X-rating. Weirdly, the film later became part of the MGM library (primarily, it appears, for streaming purposes), so that means in two different decades, American movie executives thought American audiences wanted to see this thing. Such is and was the mysterious power of the porno-chic period, or else why would a disposable 1971 skin flick remain available for viewing in 2018? Oh, well. Dagmar (Diana Kjaer) is a Copenhagen prostitute about to quit the business, so the movie tracks her frenetic final day as a working girl. Between making arrangements to sell her apartment and relocate, she services several clients, doing everything from deflowering a shy young man to enduring the overzealous ministrations of a chubby orchestra conductor. Despite a few meager attempts at character development, this is strictly lightweight fare for the heavy-breathing crowd. To give a sense of what the movie offers, the wittiest scene features Dagmar calling fellow hookers for help with a busy schedule, only to get polite refusals from one girl who says “I’m just too beat” (while getting whipped), from another who says “I’m all tied up” (while she’s actually bound), from a third who says “I’m dead tired” (while screwing inside a coffin), and so on. Just as Kjaer’s confident portrayal suggests she could have handled real dramatic scenes, the almost-imaginative comic bits suggest cowriter/director Vernon P. Becker could have edged further into outright farce. Instead, they made tepid smut.

Dagmar’s Hot Pants, Inc.: LAME

This Stuff’ll Kill Ya! (1971)

Best known for his low-budget gorefests, exploitation-flick guy Herschell Gordon Lewis also made other types of bad movies, ranging from comedies to porno flicks. Like his earlier picture Moonshine Mountain (1964), This Stuff’ll Kill Ya! is a redneck saga about illegal liquor, and Gordon (who wrote, produced, and directed) takes the title somewhat literally. Although the consumption of white lightning doesn’t cause any fatalities, killers prey upon bootleggers, resulting in several gruesome onscreen deaths. As for the plot, it concerns a film-flam man who poses as a preacher and runs a moonshine operation out of a backwoods church. Presented in a dull but quasi-linear fashion, the story tracks the con man’s efforts to intimidate local liquor-store proprietors out of business, to bribe regional law-enforcement officials, and to put on a convincing show as a religious leader. Executed competently, this premise might have coalesced into a decent drive-in diversion. Executed with Gordon’s usual clumsiness and vulgarity, This Stuff’ll Kill Ya! is consistently bizarre, though not in a good way. The ersatz preacher officiates a wedding at which the male guests gang-bang the bride. A woman is stoned. Two people are crucified. Someone’s head gets blown off in a gory close-up. Sigh. Gordon fans may enjoy seeing one of the director’s frequent collaborators, Jeffrey Allen, in the showy part of the preacher (though Allen’s over-acting gets tired quickly), and cinephiles should note this movie contains both the final screen appearance of Golden Age screen star Tim Holt, who plays a G-man, and the first screen appearance of future L.A. Law costar Larry Drake.

This Stuff’ll Kill Ya!: LAME

Marco (1973)

Another failed attempt at extending their success to the big screen, musical fantasy Marco was produced by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr., beloved for their stop-motion Christmas specials of the ’60s and ’70s. Marco offers a weird riff on the lore of 12th-century explorer Marco Polo, played here lifelessly by Desi Arnaz Jr. The picture opens in the court of Mongol king Kublai Khan (Zero Mostel), and the central premise is that Marco’s father asks Khan to punish Marco for being irresponsible. Khan mischievously tasks Marco with spending a day in the king’s court, all the while begging Marco to marry one of Khan’s many daughters. Eventually Marco and his would-be betrothed venture beyond the castle to search for whale oil in a desert. Even setting aside the bizarre and episodic plot, Marco is tough to endure. Arnaz is terrible, Mostel screams most of his dialogue, and leading lady Cie Cie Win, as the butch Princess Aigarn, is charmless. (Totally wasted is the great comic actor Jack Weston, who plays Marco’s uncle and sings a dumb song about inventing spaghetti.) The production values of castle scenes are okay, but for no discernible reason, one fantasy scene is presented in the familiar Rankin-Bass style of cutesy puppets and stop-motion animation. And then there’s the issue of the songs—the awful, grating, stupid songs. Some are sickly-sweet, some are offensive with regard to gender and race, and all are interminable. Strangest of them is Aigarn’s recurring theme, “By Damn,” repurposed every time she articulates a strong emotion. Especially when she performs the song while stripping off her clothes to protest Khan’s insistence that she dress in a more feminine manner, “By Damn” does not belong in a G-rated kiddie flick. And for those who might argue that Aigarn’s characterization as a willful warrior woman is the movie’s most interesting and progressive element, watch out for the cringe-inducing way her storyline resolves. Like everything else in Marco, it’s just wrong.

Marco: LAME

Land of No Return (1978)

When listing actors who are synonymous with macho adventure, we cite such formidable fellows as Kirk Douglas, Gary Cooper, and John Wayne. We generally don’t mention Mel Tormé, the doughy crooner and occasional actor. Yet Land of No Return, a low-budget family film featuring Tormé’s last starring role in a feature, is a wilderness saga about one man battling for survival amid the frozen peaks of the Rocky Mountains in Utah. Despite being alone onscreen for most of the picture’s running time, Tormé is never more than serviceable here, and he’s such a fleshy urbanite that it stretches believability when he withstands endless suffering. Therefore, questions abound, chief among them this one: Why was Tormé hired for this project? Even William Shatner, who appears onscreen for about 10 minutes in a supporting role, would have been a more sensible choice. Anyway, Tormé plays Zak O’Brien, the animal trainer for a successful TV show featuring an eagle and a wolf. Flying in his private plane with his two superstar animals, Zak crashes and then hides out in caves and forests while slowly working his way back toward civilization. The trained eagle, whom he calls Caesar, is his only companion, so Tormé spends a whole lot of the movie talking to himself—that is, when he isn’t digging into his seemingly bottomless suitcase filled with ugly plaid sports jackets to bundle against the cold. Although Land of No Return is dull and enervated and schlocky, there’s ultimately not much purpose beating up a picture like this one—viewers who can’t resist the compulsion to seek out a cheaply made nature saga starring the man known as “The Velvet Fog” have only themselves to blame.

Land of No Return: LAME

1980 Week: Coast to Coast

Throughout Coast to Coast, trucker Charlie Callahan (Robert Blake) drives a big-big cattlecar loaded with cows and steers, so remarks about this movie being a load of bullshit are wholly appropriate. Among the least charming romantic comedies ever made, the film tracks the adventures of Madie Levrington (Dyan Cannon), a high-strung woman who stumbles into a relationship with Charlie. Every note of their interaction is false, from the way he initially berates a woman who’s plainly experiencing an emotional crisis to the way they form an opposites-attract bond. And while the picture mindlessly follows the rom-com playbook, writer Stanley Weiser forgets to create the important third prong of a romantic triangle. Instead, Charlie and Madie face a number of one-dimensional villains, notably Madie’s vile husband, Benjamin (Quinn K. Redeker). In a prologue, he commits her to a mental institution as a means of circumventing expensive divorce proceedings, though much of what happens afterwards suggests she might actually be unhinged. Madie escapes the hospital and hitches rides with folks including Charlie, whom she offers to pay for cross-country transport. Since he’s badly in debt, with a repo man hot on his tail, Charlie accepts the offer and, later, considers turning Madie over to goons in Benjamin’s employ so he can collect a cash reward. Notwithstanding dumb car chases and physical-comedy scenes, most of this picture’s first hour comprises ugly vignettes of Blake and Cannon screaming at each other. The final half-hour, during which they connect, break up, and reconcile, is only marginally less irritating. Blake’s characterization is witless (his character’s catchphrase: “Oh, shit!”), and Cannon runs the gamut from hyper to shrill to vapid. Even with lively country-rock tunes by folks including Rita Coolidge, Johnny Lee, Bonnie Raitt powering the soundtrack, Coast to Coast is a road movie driving on stripped gears.

Coast to Coast: LAME

Wild Riders (1971)

Vile trash about soulless bikers brutalizing women, Wild Riders is unwatchable except for a few bizarre scenes featuring the great character actor Alex Rocco, who plays the film’s second lead. His offbeat behavioral choices give vitality to a handful of moments, as when his character freaks out because he thinks a woman has compared his appearance to that of an unsightly sculpture—watching Rocco scream, “Do I look like this shitty frog?” is about as close to enjoyable as Wild Riders gets. The film opens with Pete (Arell Blanton) and Stick (Rocco) molesting and murdering a young girl, whose body they leave strapped to a tree. Turns out she was Pete’s lady until she dallied with a black guy, which was enough to turn Pete homicidal. The killing gets Pete and Stick ejected from their gang, so they cruise the California highways looking for their next thrill, eventually discovering a house occupied by two women. Pete seduces one of them while Rocco rapes the other—as in, these actions happen simultaneously in adjoining rooms. Eventually the home invasion degrades even further, with the bikers murdering a neighbor who stops by to hit on the women. Later still, the bikers terrorize the homeowner, a classical musician married to one of the ladies. If cowriter/director Richard Kanter envisioned some sort of edgy close-quarters thriller, he missed the mark—especially during the gory, over-the-top climax, Wild Riders is a hateful mixture of softcore and ultraviolence.

Wild Riders: LAME

Summerdog (1977)

The low-budget family flick Summerdog is so noxious that it manages to reflect poorly on independent filmmaking, comedy, children’s movies, and animal-centric cinema. Featuring a no-name cast, with future character actress/voice artist Estelle Harris the only notable participant, the movie suffers from dumb scripting, heinously bad acting, and shameless attempts at emotional manipulation. The pathos works about as well as the jokes, which are played so broadly as to make the viewer feel embarrassed for everyone involved in making Summerdog. (Picture lots of eye-rolling and head-tilts to sell every punch line, as well as ghastly music underscoring every would-be emotional climax) One summer, New York City history teacher Peter Norman (James Congdon) takes his family to a remote part of New England for a few months in nature. While there, Peter’s son, Adam (Oliver Zabriskie), rescues a stray dog from a raccoon trap, naming the dog “Hobo.” Naturally, the whole family falls for the dog, even skeptical matriarch Carol (Elizabeth Eisenman). As Peter says to her at one point, “Don’t tell me Hobo is worming his way into your little heart, too!” The family spends an eventful summer, including many clashes with a psychotic neighbor, before returning home to a cramped apartment, where their landlords insist no animals are allowed. Conveniently, Hobo helps the Normans reveal that the landlords are crooks, so . . . whatever. It’s all so predictable and saccharine and vapid that Summerdog quickly becomes intolerable. So who cares whether this was a sincere endeavor on the part of the filmmakers or, just as likely, a cynical effort to chase the success of Benji (1974)? Rotten is rotten, no matter the particulars.

Summerdog: LAME

Tender Loving Care (1973)

Although most of his sexy-nurse flicks were released through New World Pictures, Roger Corman issued Tender Loving Care through one of his other entities, Filmgroup. Like its New World counterparts, Tender Loving Care follows the private and professional adventures of three young women who room together while working at the same hospital. Yet while the New World sexy-nurse movies had glimmers of style as well as pretentions to social relevance, Tender Loving Care is written, photographed, and acted in the rudimentary fashion of a porno movie, telling a stupidly melodramatic story that climaxes with a ridiculous explosion of violence. Naturally, each of the three ladies has a showcase sex scene, and of course there’s a rape sequence. That said, does Tender Loving Care have any redeeming qualities? Depends how you define that notion. The liveliest scenes involve minor cult-fave actor George “Buck” Flower, appearing here clean-shaven instead of with his usual frontier-coot drag. He plays a demented orderly whose sexual violation of a nurse involves lots of creepy ad-libs about which nipple she wants him to pinch next. Just as frequent Corman collaborator Dick Miller added a welcome blast of energy to some of the New World nurse movies, Flower enlivens brief stretches of Tender Loving Care with compelling weirdness. The movie also has ’70s texture to burn, including a long sequence of a hot R&B band playing in a pimped-out nightclub. Speaking of ’70s texture, this review should not omit the dirt-bike rider who brings a girl back to his swingin’ bachelor pad so she can writhe on his waterbed while he sucks her toes.

Tender Loving Care: LAME

Dr. Minx (1975)

Notorious for her carnal abandon in onetime husband Russ Meyer’s movies and for cavorting naked at Cannes, Z-lister Edy Williams earned what appears to have been her first and last starring role outside adult films with this sloppy comedy/drama/thriller hybrid. Her mesmerizingly bad performance is the only reason to watch the movie, and it’s especially fun to watch her share the screen with B-movie icon William Smith. In other contexts, Smith’s acting often seems limited, but when performing alongside Williams, he seems like a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Anyway, Williams plays Dr. Carol Evans, a physician who recently conspired with her lover, Gus (Smith), to kill her rich husband for a $500,000 inheritance. When Gus begins blackmailing her, Dr. Evans seduces a young motorcycle-accident patient named Brian (Randy Boone), hoping he’ll help her kill Gus. Written and directed by bottom-feeding sexploitation guy Hikmet Avedis, Dr. Minx seems unsure which path to follow. Sometimes it’s a bargain-basement riff on Double Indemnity (1944), sometimes it’s a sex comedy, and sometimes it tries to play scenes straight—despite Williams delivering most of her dialogue in a Marilyn Monroe coo while her low-cut dresses fight a losing battle to contain her breasts. Especially weird is a subplot about Brian’s buddy, David (Harvey Jason), becoming an amateur sleuth. The subplot culminates with David imitating Peter Falk’s Columbo character in one scene, rumpled raincoat and all. Excepting those who find visions of a disrobed Williams captivating, only viewers who savor inept cinema will truly enjoy Dr. Minx.

Dr. Minx: LAME

The Psycho Lover (1970)

There’s a real movie hidden beneath sexploitation sludge in The Psycho Lover, and some psychotronic-cinema fans make the case that The Psycho Lover is respectable compared to similar fare. But is improving just slightly over garbage really all that much of an accomplishment? Between interminably long rape, murder, and/or softcore-sex scenes, The Psycho Lover tells the story of psychiatrist Dr. Kenneth Alden (Lawrence Montaigne) and his deranged patient, Marco Everson (Frank Cuva). Throughout the first half of the picture, Marco kills various women and then, under hypnosis, tells Kenneth about the crimes. Even with pressure from cops, who identify Marco as a suspect, Kenneth seems disinclined to either tell authorities what he knows or use his influence to end the crime spree. Instead, Kenneth spends lots of time cavorting with his hottie girlfriend, Stacy (Elizabeth Plumb), even though he has a depressed wife, Valerie (Jo Anne Meredith), back home. One day, when Stacy somewhat randomly describes the plot of The Manchurian Candidate (1962) to Kenneth, he gets the notion of compelling Marco to murder Valerie. The movie’s halfway over by the time happens, so you get an idea of writer-director Robert Vincent O’Neill’s lackadaisical approach to pacing. That said, The Psycho Lover is not an incompetently made picture. The photography is decent, some of the acting is passable, and a few lines of dialogue are tasty. (Examining a crime scene, a cop says the following about a murderer: “I can smell him in this room, and the hairs on my ass stand on end every time I catch his scent.”) These attributes are insufficient to make watching the picture worth the trouble.

The Psycho Lover: LAME

God’s Bloody Acre (1975)

There’s a decent idea for an exploitation flick buried in here, because the premise is that hillbillies who have lived illegally in the wilderness for an extended period of time fight back once government developers try to clear the land for creation of a park. Alas, the filmmakers avoid the obvious path of making the hillbillies sympathetic, instead portraying them as dimwitted maniacs. Worse, the filmmakers provide the hillbillies with a steady supply of victims by contriving subplots about folks wandering into the woods during the killing spree. To a one, the characters in God’s Bloody Acre are stereotypical and underdeveloped, so it’s impossible to care what happens to anyone onscreen, though of course basic human empathy kicks in once the final survivors of the ordeal seem close to becoming victims. In any event, God’s Bloody Acre represents many of the worst tropes in horror cinema, reveling in violence against women (there’s an endless scene of a young lady getting her throat cut) while reinforcing demeaning clichés about rural populations. Oh, and just for good measure, the picture throws in a little racism, because, naturally, the three black guys driving a Rolls-Royce are violent thieves who rob every white person they encounter. In the spirit of trying to say something kind, director Harry Kerwin manages a few clever scene transitions, and the vignette of a fellow getting chopped in two by a bulldozer blade is nasty. But in all the usual ways for this sort of junk, God’s Bloody Acre is boring, cheap, dumb, and unsavory.

God’s Bloody Acre: LAME

Guns of a Stranger (1973)

Beyond his success as a country singer, Marty Robbins occasionally acted, for instance starring in the short-lived Western series The Drifter (1965–1966). This movie, which contains Robbins’ last leading performance, is a quasi-continuation of that series, because Robbins stars as a former sheriff who goes by the nickname “Drifter.” Envision an anemic rehash of the plot from Shane (1953), and you know roughly what to expect here. Kind but tough Matthew (Robbins) leaves law enforcement for life on the roam, then happens upon a family in trouble. Elderly Tom Duncan (Chill Wills) isn’t up to the task of protecting his grandchildren, pretty twentysomething Virginia (Dovie Beams) and impressionable grade-schooler Danny (Steven Tackett), from generic frontier varmints. Seeing injustice sparks Matthew to action—sort of. Among the most casually paced Western movies ever made, Guns of a Stranger meanders from one inconsequential event to the next, so viewers never get a sense of impending danger. In fact, the movie frequently stops dead so Matthew can warble a tune or impart a life lesson to the worshipful Danny. Storytelling this vapid went out with Gene Autry, and matters are made worse by the excruciatingly bad supporting performances; although Robbins is competent, Wills is well past his prime and Beams is stunningly awful. Guns of a Stranger is so enervated that it verges on accidental comedy at times, as when Matthew participates in a lengthy but pointless bare-knuckle brawl or when he sings a lullaby to a group of cows.

Guns of a Stranger: LAME