The Brides Wore Blood (1972)

Proving  why the phrase “regional Florida production” is not generally associated with top-shelf ’70s horror, The Brides Wore Blood is an inept endeavor that should have been at least adequate, given that director Bob Favorite and his team assembled the requisite building blocks. The story, though borderline incoherent, overflows with human sacrifices, mediums, vampires, women enlisted to carry unholy babies, and so on. Ladies hired to appear onscreen are reasonably photogenic and uninhibited. (Nobody in the movie can act, but that’s hardly a surprise.) A large mansion gives something akin to the effect of a castle during exterior shots. Some ornate gore effects are attempted—badly, but it’s thought that counts. And though the score sounds as if it was cobbled together from library tracks, the steady flow of noodling organ figures and sustained strings delivers an eerie sonic vibe. In other words, if you’re either a shock-cinema completist or an undiscriminating horror hound, The Brides Wore Blood may provide you with eighty-ish minutes of mindless distraction. Anyone else is warned to steer clear because this is as dull as it is stupid. The gist is that a family bears a curse wherein men are born vampires, so a medium suggests a confusing scheme through which four women are kidnapped, some to be sacrificed, one to bear a child that could break the curse . . . blah, blah, blah. The high point may be when the patriarch of the cursed clan says the following with roughly the energy of a mechanic advising a client that a spark plug should be replaced: “I’m about to perform a conjuration that will allow Juan to conceive a child—unfortunately, you are needed as an altar.” One gets the impression that Favorite grabbed unrehearsed first takes of everything, then moved on without coaxing his performers to actually perform. Even the wannabe gotcha ending isn’t enough to infuse The Brides Wore Blood with vigor.

The Brides Wore Blood: LAME

Richard (1972)

          America’s 37th president was an easy target for satire, hence a slew of comedy films released in the run-up to the 1972 election—if the goal of these films was to discourage voters from re-electing Richard M. Nixon, then Another Nice Mess (1972), Hail (1972), Millhouse: A White Comedy (1971), and this film botched the job. Arguably the least interesting of a bad batch (Another Nice Mess is dumber but livelier), Richard lacks a comedic premise beyond the notion of craven political advisors investing years in getting Nixon ready for prime time. The movie begins with the newly elected president relaxing one evening in the White House residence, his voiceover indicating that he’s thinking back on the path that lead to his presidency. Cue a series of flashbacks depicting Nixon’s early years like scenes from a wholesome old-timey movie, as if to indicate that “Tricky Dick” began life with good intentions. Then Nixon falls in with a trio of advisors who suggest he needs a new face, triggering a brief sequence during which a mad scientist (John Carradine) reconstructs Nixon’s visage, only to be shocked when the result is the puffy-cheeked scowl we all know so well. (In the old-timey scenes, Nixon is played by Dan Resin; in later scenes, he’s played by an impersonator who performed under the name “Richard M. Dixon”; and in several lengthy sequences, archival footage of the real Nixon is featured.)
          Richard is wildly uneven—about one-third of the scenes are unvarnished recitations of familiar events, and the rest are farcical riffs. (Is there a musical number? Yes, there’s a musical number.) Most of the farcial stuff falls flat, as when Mickey Rooney plays a guardian angel sent by God (!) to help Nixon fulfill his destiny. The closest Richard gets to wit is the stretch during which Nixon’s advisors strap him into a version of the Clockwork Orange medical harness (the one with the metal clamps holding the patient’s eyes open), then condition him to gag whenever he evokes the “old” Nixon as a means of warming up his persona. So what’s the takeaway here? That politicians are inauthentic? That Nixon sold his soul? That political operatives will do anything to get their candidates elected? Even though it only runs about 80 minutes (the version watched for this review was 76 minutes, but multiple online sources list the length as 83), Richard is a tedious journey into the obvious and the unfunny.

Richard: LAME

Fairplay (1971)

Fairplay is an adequately produced but otherwise inept frontier comedy featuring a number of vaguely familiar actors with marginal credits in mainstream film and television. Given the popularity of farces set in the Wild West circa the late ’60s, from Cat Ballou on the big screen to F Troop on the small screen, making something like this on the cheap was not an unreasonable proposition. Alas, Texas-based indie director James A. Sullivan and his collaborators lacked comedy chops, originality, and storytelling acumen, so Fairplay is flat, meandering, and unfunny. That said, it’s also coherent and harmless, which is to say it lives a few layers above the bottom of the ’70s-cinema barrel. The big man in the tiny God-fearing town of Justin is Jova Purvis (Robert Middleton), and he’s in perpetual conflict with grandfatherly crook F.O. McGill (Paul Ford), boss of the neighboring town Fairplay—really just a run-down hotel filled with hired guns who plunder Justin for F.O.’s benefit. One day, F.O.’s naïve great-nephew Teddy (Phillip Alford) arrives in Fairplay, unaware of his relative’s criminality, then falls for Jova’s daughter Pearlie (Barbara Hancock). Yet despite occupying much of the film’s screen time, the subplot is secondary to the machinations of retailer Skinner Bindleshaft (Paul Glaser), who contrives a scheme to sell a fake Gatling gun to whichever town leader offers the highest price. Beyond the usual “comedic” gunfights (which involve characters shooting everywhere except at their opponents), Fairplay finds most of its anemic humor in contrived character flourishes, such as the lineage of hired gun Bela Running Eagle (Norris Domingue), who talks about how the Hungarian side of his personality balances the Paiute Indian side—and, yes, those gags are just as laborious as they sound. Presumably Sullivan and his collaborators envisioned an hour and a half of lighthearted entertainment. They got the lighthearted part right.

Fairplay: LAME

Checkmate (1973)

Yet another instance of pornographers sneaking into the mainstream via softcore, Checkmate—also known as Pepper and Pepper: Agent OOX—is a dunderheaded riff on James Bond, replacing the suave stud of the 007 franchise with a statuesque blonde. Wiseass operative Pepper Burns (Diana Wilson) gets called into service when villain Madame Chang (An Tsan Hu) announces her plan to seize control of a secret nuclear-armed satellite controlled by four different countries; if the countries don’t pay Chang $1 billion each, she’ll nuke their biggest cities. So far, so good. Yet once Checkmate establishes its premise, the movie tumbles into repetitive stupidity. Chang’s gimmick is using seductresses to coax representatives of the four countries into undressing so Chang can steal keys the reps carry on their persons—but seeing as how she murders the reps immediately afterward, why not just kill them right away and skip the sexcapades? Pepper does virtually nothing for the movie’s first hour, meaning she hangs around and receives reports until engaging in a dull foot chase through Central Park. Eventually Pepper’s big moment arrives—screwing the American representative (a coupling shown at interminable length) in order to sorta-kinda-but-not-really gain the upper hand on Chang. Although Checkmate is thoroughly awful, not only because of its idiotic script but because of the cheap visuals, there’s a certain playfulness on display. For example, when the Russian rep sees his seductress nude, he exclaims, “Holy mother of Stalin!” It’s not wit, but it’s something. Leading lady Wilson, previously a Playboy model under the name Reagan Wilson, has a bit of swagger, so she might have become an enjoyable B-movie regular if she’d made other films. Then again, appearing in something this tacky could stifle anyone’s enthusiasm for filmmaking.

Checkmate: LAME

Swim Team (1979)

Several tropes of late-’70s youth cinema converge in Swim Team, a poorly made comedy about Southern Californian high-school kids navigating personal challenges while pursuing aquatic glory. Among other things, Swim Team is an anemic riff on the formula from The Bad News Bears (1979), a timid sex farce showcasing a parade of sun-kissed blondes (naturally, there’s a van tricked out as a bachelor pad on wheels), and a dimwitted celebration of inveterate partyers (two of the leading actors appeared in the preceding year’s bacchanalian hit Animal House). Writer, producer, and director James Polakof squanders nearly all of these elements, generating a movie that feels much longer than its scant running time of 85 minutes. Scenes of kids defying grownup authority figures are too few in number, and the film’s PG rating ensures that leering shots of attractive people in swimsuits never tip into sleaze. In other words, Swim Team is an underdog farce without teeth, and a T&A flick without skin. To the degree the picture has a story, it’s about the Whalers, a team with a long losing streak, partially because the on-again/off-again romance of star athletes Danny (James Daughton) and Erin (Jenny Neumann) makes the team’s roster unstable. For no discernible reason, overweight rich kid Bear (Stephen Furst) is on the team, though he spends most of his time carousing, drinking, and lounging. Things turn around when motivated new coach Johnny (Richard Young) enters the picture, and then a romantic triangle emerges between Johnny, Erin, and Danny. Will the star swimmers get over their drama in time to help the Whalers win a big match? Yawn. Polakof front-loads the movie with a lot of Furst to exploit the actor’s Animal House notoriety, but Furst doesn’t have the charisma to pull off direct-to-camera bits meant to frame Swim Team with irreverent flair. Similarly, jokes about topics ranging from a horny older woman to a little boy urinating in a pool to surly rival coach “Mr. Ouch” are inert at best, insultingly stupid at worst.

Swim Team: LAME

Mister Deathman (1977)

Among the many criticisms fairly directed at Mister Deathman, a modestly budgeted thriller filmed in South Africa, one cannot fault leading man David Broadnax for timidity: the first-time actor wrote the story for his sole appearance as a 007-esque secret agent. Presumably Broadnax hoped Mister Deathman would initiate a franchise, but instead the movie barely got a release in the ’70s before landing in the cultural graveyard of bottom-shelf ‘80s home video. (A sure sign the folks responsible for marketing Mister Deathman doubted its financial prospects is the outrageous use of Pam Grier’s image on the poster, despite the fact that neither she nor anyone who resembles her appears in the flick.) Mister Deathman is confusing, dumb, pointless, and repetitive, all of which could be said about many of the 007 pictures it emulates—but at least those movies are also fun, sexy, and spectacular. Broadnax plays Geoffrey Graves, an ex-spy hired by aerospace executives who are being blackmailed for $50 million. A mysterious villain (never shown onscreen) kidnapped the scientist who designed the executives’ planned space shuttle and now threatens to sell the scientist’s secrets to competitors. Clues regarding this yawn-inducing scheme lead Graves to South Africa, where he battles various underlings including Liz (Stella Stevens, unsubtly coded as a lesbian for no particular reason). Most of the picture comprises scenes of Graves escaping from ridiculous traps with ease. In one bit, he discovers his car was sabotaged before encountering any danger; in another, he’s chained to a rocky shore at low tide and left alone so he can free himself. Mister Deathman has a few gadgets, ladies, and underground hideaways, but it can’t manage sight gags or verbal zingers. Only the climax, featuring a grounded jet versus an army of trucks, has any kind of wow factor. Given that you’ve never heard of Broadnax (he appeared in only one more movie), it should come as no surprise to learn that even though he’s athletic and self-assured, he’s quite forgettable.

Mister Deathman: LAME

The Player (1971)

Watching this lifeless low-budget drama about the misadventures of a small-time pool hustler will deepen your appreciation for the visual ingenuity of The Hustler (1961) and its sequel The Color of Money (1986) because those films make billiards seem exciting. While one could put forth a feeble argument that the tedium of The Player accurately depicts how time-consuming contests of skill can seem dull to everyone but active participants, it’s doubtful that writer-director Thomas DeMartini’s goal was to bore viewers. Then again, seeing as how The Player had a microscopic release before disappearing for more than 50 years, it’s not as if DeMartini had many viewers to bore. Anyway, thanks to the enterprising folks at YouTube channel FT Depot, a mostly intact version of The Player appeared online in 2024, allowing the curious to appraise its virtues. The film concerns Lou Marchesi (Jerry Como), a slick player mentored by real-life pool star Minnesota Fats (who portrays himself). Yet interactions with Fats are largely peripheral to the story, which follows Lou’s transfer of romantic affection from supportive Linda (Carey Wilmot) to manipulative Sylvia (Rae Phillips). As goes Lou’s love life, so goes his pool career. These characters and their relationship dynamics are deeply uninteresting, a flaw exacerbated by DeMartini’s penchant for aimless montages set to goopy love ballads—and that’s on top of his predilection for numbingly repetitive pool scenes set to interminable loops of generic rock/funk music. Beyond the flimsy plot, The Player suffers from a bloated runtime, flat visuals, and terrible acting. Nonetheless, some cinemaniacs might find the picture of minor note because it evokes the pool-hustler world in a believable (read: unglamorous) way, and there’s always a frisson associated with rediscovering a movie once thought lost.

The Player: LAME

Inside Amy (1974)

The basic premise of low-budget exploitation flick Inside Amy is solid enough that if the picture had been written and directed with a modicum of skill, it could have become a memorably sleazy thriller. Charlie (James R. Sweeney, billed as Eastman Price), a successful lawyer hurtling toward middle age, has grown bored with marriage to alluring but straight-laced Amy (Jan Mitchell), so when he learns about a local nightclub catering to swingers, he pressures Amy into visiting the club with him. This inevitably leads the couple to a wife-swapping party. At the moment of truth, Charlie can’t perform with a stranger, but Amy gets it on with several partners, even though she says afterward she still loves her husband. Driven mad by jealousy, Charlie systematically hunts and kills Amy’s playmates. In an alternate universe, some imaginative striver made this picture with Charlie and Amy as fully rendered characters, thus yielding a morality tale about the tension between sexual fantasies and marital reality. In this universe, director Ronald Victor Garcia—later to build a respectable career as a cinematographer and occasional director, mostly for television—executed Helene Arthur’s lifeless script clumsily. The kills are bland, the sex is tame, the film has virtually zero tension, the acting is mostly terrible, and the finale is thoroughly anticlimactic. Inside Amy doesn’t even rate highly in terms of kitsch, except perhaps for the scolding title song (“Amy, you better straighten out or be prepared to meet your fate”). As if Inside Amy wasn’t sufficiently lurid, the picture was later released as both Super Swinging Playmates and Swingers Massacre.

Inside Amy: LAME

Honky Tonk Nights (1978)

Apparently Honky Tonk Nights represents an attempt by a group of pornographers to make a legit flick for the drive-in circuit, which goes a long way toward explaining the abysmal acting, ghastly filmmaking, and plentiful female nudity. There’s a plot of sorts buried amid the smut and the aimless filler scenes, but coherence and purpose are not the watchwords here. Honky Tonk Nights follows several threads connected to a country-music bar, and the festivities begin when singer Dolly Pop (Serena) gets cranky after being shorted one too many times on her performance fees at the establishment, which is operated by Georgia (Georgina Spelvin). Soon Dolly’s bandmates recruit a replacement singer, absurdly buxom Belle Barnette (Carol Doda), but Belle gets heckled during her fist gig by drunks who expect her to strip onstage. Meanwhile, another young woman vaguely connected to the main plot endures romantic travails with an unfaithful boyfriend trying to make a living as a daredevil auto racer, and country star Bill Garvey (played by real-life musical luminary Ramblin’ Jack Elliott) appears just in time to provide career opportunities for busty striver Belle. All of the events just described comprise perhaps one-third of the movie’s scant 70 minutes—the remainder of the deeply boring flick showcases brawls, hang-out scenes, and, of course, needlessly prolonged sex scenes. As for the country tunes that fill nearly every moment of the soundtrack, it should come as no surprise that they’re wholly unimpressive, arguably notwithstanding Elliott’s sloppy live rendition of the enduring religious song “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”

Honky Tonk Nights: LAME

Elmer (1976)

Calling Elmer a substandard example of the intrepid-dog genre requires giving the movie too much credit. Amateurish and dull, this early credit for director Christopher Cain—later to achieve minor success with Young Guns (1988)—is the least interesting sort of regional production, a vapid recitation of Hollywood clichés without the compensation of Hollywood gloss. At the beginning of the picture, aging hound Elmer lives with young Dean (played by Dean Cain, the director’s stepson and also destined for future success). Elmer has a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, so Dean’s father arranges for the dog to live on a ranch with relatives. Alas, Elmer escapes on the way there. Meanwhile, young Jerry (Phillip Swanson) takes a ride on his uncle’s small plane, which crashes in the wilderness. Struck blind during the accident, Jerry struggles to find his way back to civilization until he encounters Elmer, who serves as a sort of guide and protector. The dramatic question, such as it is, concerns what Dean will do if and when he finds Elmer, who has bonded with Jerry. At best, this slim narrative could have sustained a half-hour episode of some children’s show, so even though it runs just 82 minutes, Elmer feels long and padded. Exacerbating the vapidity of the story are the film’s lifeless performances, moronic comic relief (think bumbling rural idiots), and treacly music. Still, all of this would have been more or less tolerable if Elmer (played, apparently, by a dog of the same name) was irresistibly adorable or trained to perform complicated tricks. No such luck. Elmer may have been a fun hang in real life, but onscreen he just sits there—as in, during many scenes, he literally just sits there. His lack of excitement is contagious.

Elmer: LAME 

Catch the Black Sunshine (1972)

The first of three schlocky movies directed by minor Hollywood actor Chris Robinson, this swampy adventure has such a problematic central element that it’s doomed from the start. Robinson, a White actor, plays an albino Black slave in 1859 Florida who finds a treasure map and flees a plantation to seek his fortune. Robinson’s casting is so offensive that it barely matters whether Catch the Black Sunshine is any good, which it is not. Nonetheless, attempting a complete survey of ’70s cinema requires giving Catch the Black Sunshine a view, so here goes. Sunshine (Robinson) searches for treasure with another runaway slave (Anthony Scott) while an overseer (Ted Cassidy) pursues them. The overseer joins forces with a group of backwoods thugs, and the runaways find companionship with a pretty widow (Phyllis Robinson) who, of course, falls in love with Sunshine. Robinson evinces little skill in multiple behind-the-camera jobs (writer, director, producer, and executive producer), so the first hour of the movie is thoroughly boring. Things perk up when the widow is introduced because she gets a smidge of characterization, and that’s also when tension between the overseer and his thugs nearly coalesces into drama. But then, inevitably, more dull scenes kill momentum—for example, Sunshine and the widow gaze at each other for several minutes while a gooey ballad plays on the soundtrack. Then the picture limps through a pointless climax. Robinson subsequently tested the world’s patience with two more features, first the atrocious Thunder Country (1974) and then The Intruder, which was made in 1975 but not released until 2017. Speaking of delays, Catch the Black Sunshine was shot in 1972 but didn’t reach theaters until 1974. At various times, the film has been retitled Black Rage and Charcoal Black—but by any name, it’s junk.

Catch the Black Sunshine: LAME

Bog (1979)

I’ve long wondered why so many zero-budget filmmakers botch their attempts at creature features, given that the formula for these pictures is so well-established. Sure, lack of production resources makes it challenging to build convincing onscreen monsters, but inventive people have found ways to convey diverting narratives while minimizing critter footage. But I suppose the answer to this conundrum is obvious—filmmakers with greater aptitude also have greater ambition, meaning the folks who make anemic monster movies often lack the drive to attempt anything else. All of which is a lugubrious path toward discussing Bog, a thoroughly uninteresting horror flick about a supernatural creature issuing from a murky lake to bedevil locals and tourists. Think Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) except set in America and bereft of everything that made Creature from the Black Lagoon exciting. Bog begins with a rural dimwit using dynamite to fish in a remote lake. Naturally, this activity rouses something deadly from down below. As the movie progresses, more people fall victim to the monster until the requisite duo of a policeman and a scientist join forces to tackle the crisis. These drab characters are played by actors late in their long careers, Gloria DeHaven and Aldo Ray, though it’s a stretch to say their participation gives Bog any patina of Hollywood gloss. While the narrative is coherent in an idiotic sort of way, everything about the movie is depressingly awful. The production values are weak, the thrills are nonexistent, and the monster suit is a joke—the costume is crowned by a giant fish head. The only novelty in Bog arises from DeHaven’s presence. Not only does she spew pseudoscientific gobbledygook about the creature’s reproductive habits, but she plays the second role of an aging backwoods mystic who may or may not have enjoyed relations with the creature. I suppose if you’re going to appear in a terrible movie, you might as well commit to the endeavor.

Bog: LAME

Blood Voyage (1976)

Mindless horror/thriller schlock that may or may not have slithered through theaters on its way to an ‘80s video release, Blood Voyage tells the dull story of a sailboat cruise during which crew members and passengers get murdered one by one. At no point do any survivors consider calling for help or turning the boat around, and for that matter nobody seems particularly concerned about what’s happening until the requisite climax during which the killer stalks the final victim. Yawn. If you must know the specifics, middle-aged shrink Dr. Craig (John Hart) sets out from LA for Hawaii accompanied by his decades-younger fiancée (Laurie Rose), his buxom daughter (Mara Modair), and a sexy patient with severe mental illness (Midori). The narrative function of these ladies is to model swimsuits, participate in nude scenes, and shriek when attacked. Three macho seamen run the ship for Dr. Craig, and the one who gets the most screen time is Andy (Jonathan Goldsmith), a Vietnam vet tormented by PTSD. Andy, by the way, is sleeping with Dr. Craig’s daughter, who wants him to kill Dad so she can inherit wealth. Listing the reasons why Blood Voyage is awful would be exhausting, but to name just one, a sailboat is an iffy setting for this sort of whodunnit—if you want to determine the killer’s identity, maybe just congregate on deck and wait for someone to reach for a knife? Although the acting in Blood Voyage is as bad as the storytelling, two players are somewhat notable—Hart briefly played the Lone Ranger on TV, and Goldsmith later portrayed “The Most Interesting Man in the World” in beer commercials.

Blood Voyage: LAME

Lapin 360 (1972)

Watching a movie as muddled as Lapin 360, one can only marvel that anyone ever thought the piece would hold together. After all, it’s not as if Lapin 360 is some no-budget experiment by counterculture outsiders—this was rendered by experienced Hollywood professionals including a director with legit TV credits and a supporting actor with an Oscar on her mantlepiece. Here’s the head-scratcher of a story. Young rocket scientist Bernard Lapin (Terry Kiser) works for a military contractor. Returning home after a business trip, he discovers that attractive stranger Delia (Peggy Walton-Walker) broke into and stayed at his place while he was away. They become romantically involved. Bernard soon learns that Delia and a group of nefarious men are plotting some sort of illegal activity. Before the nature of that scheme is revealed, viewers learn that Bernard is the key man for a nuclear-missile project at work and that recurring migraines are driving him mad. Neither of those subplots goes anywhere. As for the mysterious scheme, the gist is that Delia carried a baby for a rich benefactor, and now she’s enlisted thugs to kidnap the baby—the thugs expect to collect ransom, but Delia wants to keep the kid. What does Bernard have to do with any of this? You guessed it—nothing! Aside from providing assistance during the climax, Bernard doesn’t matter to Delia’s narrative, and Bernard’s narrative is so underdeveloped that his positioning as the main protagonist feels arbitrary. Sure, the idea of Delia using a dude to get her baby could have made for an interesting-ish noir, but as executed, Lapin 360 is confounding and frustrating—or at least it would be if it elicited strong enough reactions for viewers to feel confounded or frustrated. Kiser, later to achieve notoriety playing a corpse in Weekend at Bernie’s (1989), gives an overly earnest performance while Walton-Walker bangs against the limitations of her skill set. As for the aforementioned Oscar winner, she’s Anne Baxter of All About Eve (1950) fame, and, wow, is she terrible in her scant screen time—by comparison, Norma Desmond seemed less desperate for attention. Lastly, details are murky on whether Lapin 360 played theatrically in the ‘70s, though the film’s final resting place (as of this writing) was a VHS release with the new title Always the Innocent.

Lapin 360: LAME

The Little Ark (1972)

All the elements were in place for The Little Ark to become at least a passable bit of children’s entertainment (and in fact online commentary indicates the picture made an impression on some people who saw it back in the day). The historical setting of the story is interesting because the narrative centers a real flood that ravaged Holland in the 1950s. The fictional premise is serviceable, imagining what might have happened if two children found themselves adrift on a houseboat after flooding devastated their village. And only the most hard-hearted of viewers could begrudge the filmmakers’ intention of conveying uplifting moral lessons through a story about survival. But, wow, does The Little Ark veer off-course nearly from its first frames. The two leading actors are amateurish in the extreme, the prevalence of Biblical rhetoric is tiresome, and the actual plot is so threadbare that on regular occasions the movie drifts into tangents while top-billed actor Theodore Bikel, playing a sailor who helps protection, spews lengthy homilies. At one point, the film detours into animation when cartoons are used to depict one of these parables. Exciting high-seas adventure this is not. The picture also lacks insights regarding childhood behavior and development; the kids in this film toggle between idiotically obvious remarks and jarringly precocious ones, regularly sprinkling their language with shout-outs to religion. In one scene, for example, Jan (Philip Frame) chides Adinda (Geneviève Ambas) for crying while they survey flood damage from the shelter of a church’s bell tower. “You’re covered with snot,” he says. “Holy apostles, you women instantly get into a fuss.” 

The Little Ark: LAME

Chinese Caper (1975)

Although its storytelling is more coherent than the usual under-budgeted sludge made overseas by Americans of questionable ability, Chinese Caper is so drab and unimaginative—to say nothing of cheaply produced, heinously scored, and poorly acted—that it’s wholly disposable. Only fans of Victor Buono’s campy performance style, Meredith MacRae’s wholesome pulchritude, and the visual splendor of Taiwan can find distractions from the insipid plot. Yet even those attributes offer scant comfort because they are subordinate to the lifleless screen presence of leading actor Geoffrey Deuel, whose inconsequential career largely comprised guest shots on TV. Anyway, while drifting in Taiwan, small-time thief Larry (Deuel) gets approached by wealthy expat Everett (Buono) to participate in a heist. Initially reluctant, Larry takes the gig because he falls for Everett’s assistant, Carolyn (MacRae), and wants money for their future. The climactic heist goes so smoothly that the picture lacks any semblance of tension until the final scenes, when an excruciatingly predictable double-cross occurs. Getting there isn’t worth the trouble because Chinese Caper stretches about 30 minutes worth of story across 90 minutes of screen time, meaning viewers get bludgeoned with aimless montages, plodding dialogue, and stupidly attenuated interactions—the lengthy sequence requiring MacRae to feign emotional intensity quickly transitions from unintentionally funny to insufferably boring.

Chinese Caper: LAME

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time (1975) & Find the Lady (1976)

          Proving that ’70s Canadian producers were just as capable as anyone else of jamming multinational casts into mindless schlock, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time is an atrocious comedy with elements of crime and romance, noteworthy only for its familiar actors. Cowriters John Trent (who also directed) and David Main try for the madcap energy of Blake Edwards’s naughty farces, but their endeavor lacks everything from sexual heat to narrative propulsion to likable characters. Worse, it’s excruciating to endure both leading man Anthony Newley’s pompous speechifying and composer William McCauley’s obnoxious music, which at one point implies diarrhea with thundering brass stings. Newley plays Sweeney, a failed artist who enjoys weekly trysts with his ex-wife, Georgina (Stefanie Powers), even though she’s married to a rich jerk named Prince (Harry Ramer). Other characters include Sweeney’s artist friend Moriarty (Isaac Hayes), Georgina’s high-strung mother Julia (Yvonne De Carlo), and a politician named Burton (Lloyd Bochner). They’re all just sideshows, however, because most of the screen time features Sweeney running schemes, the most elaborate of which is a fake kidnapping. This is the kind of brainless burlesque in which a character gets humiliated by landing in the spray of a garden cherub’s penis. Viewers also get deluged with this sort of dialogue: “Was that Hortense?” “She seemed pretty relaxed to me!”

          After its theatrical run, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time resurfaced on video once John Candy, who plays a tiny role, achieved Hollywood stardom. Also rescued from oblivion was Find the Lady, a spinoff movie in which Candy and Lawrence Dane reprise minor characters from the earlier film. Dane and Candy play Broom and Kopek, idiotic cops prone to misunderstandings and pratfalls. Find the Lady is a bit slicker than its predecessor, but the comedic efforts of returning filmmakers Trent and Main are just as strained. The narrative involves Broom and Kopek struggling to resolve three separate kidnappings—one accidental, one fake, one real. Mixed into the storyline are drag queens, exotic dancers, and mobsters. One of the mobsters is played by Mickey Rooney, complete with pinstriped suit and Tommy gun, while Peter Cook drifts in and out of the picture as a snobby villain. How exhaustingly dumb is Find the Lady? Consider the scene of Kopek interacting with a known criminal and a known kidnap victim while repeatedly exclaiming “I never forget a face!” Or consider the numerous infantile physical-comedy scenes of Broom and/or Kopek causing domino-effect disasters. Add in some leering topless shots plus countless gay-panic jokes, and you get the idea.

          Only those curious to see everything Candy ever made have any compelling reason to watch these pictures, but even they’ll be left wanting; while he’s characteristically amiable and nimble, the material is so lackluster that he’s unable to conjure genuine laughs.

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: LAME
Find the Lady: LAME

Solomon King (1974)

Imagine if Rudy Ray Moore possessed the charisma of a DMV clerk and didn’t tell jokes—then you’ve got an idea of what to expect from Solomon King, a vanity project from cinematically incompetent Oakland, California, clothier Sal Watts. A doughy dude with a forgettably affable quality, Watts cast himself as a secret agent-turned-private detective who navigates international intrigue and romantic entanglements. Specifically, the insipid plot puts Solomon King (Watts) in danger when Princess Oneeba (Claudia Russo) flees from the Middle East to the Bay Area while avoiding operatives of a villain named Hassan (Richard Scarso). Years earlier, Solomon helped Oneeba’s father out of a jam and was rewarded with ownership of oil fields, so Hassan apparently stands to gain from not only Oneeba’s death but also Solomon’s. Most of Solomon King comprises the usual blaxploitation noise of fights, sex scenes, and vignettes showcasing Black life circa the early ’70s. (There are a lot of dance parties in this picture.) Although Solomon King—which Watts produced, cowrote, and codirected—has cinematography on par with most low-budget ’70s sludge, what sinks the picture is abysmal editing. The story often hiccups incomprehensibly, atrocious voicever gets used to cover scenes with unusuable production sound, fight scenes are comically inept, and sex scenes drag on forever. Still, there is some so-bad-it’s-good fun to be had here. For example, the movie’s absurd climax finds the hero and his Green Beret buddies (!) laying siege to Hassan’s Middle Eastern palace, which for some reason looks like a Nazi bunker somewhere in Europe. During the climax, Solomon dubiously complements his all-black commando outfit with a shiny pimp hat and an even shinier medallion. You do you, man! FYI, this picture earned a smattering of attention in mid-2022 when a crowdfunded restoration was completed. A debut airing on TCM Underground followed a few months later.

Solomon King: LAME

Have a Nice Weekend (1975)

Here’s the yawn-inducing plot of no-budget/no-name horror dud Have a Nice Weekend—several people visiting a remote island in the Northeast get preyed upon by a mysterious killer. Yep that’s it, notwithstanding superficial references to a Vietnam vet suffering PTSD, romantic partners sparring with each other, and other random elements. Even describing the people who appear onscreen as characters requires a flexible definition of that word, seeing as how the behavior in the movie ranges from idiotic to inexplicable. Much of the running time gets wasted on amateurish vignettes of folks walking through autumnal forests, exchanging inane chitty-chat, or both. Occasionally a murder happens, but it’s impossible to care about the victims, and the killer’s identity, when revealed, is wholly arbitrary. Yet Have a Nice Weekend contains exactly one so-bad-it’s-good sequence, during which the cast gathers around a corpse to spew vacuous dialogue. Here’s a sample. “I don’t know,” the first guy says, “this looks pretty serious.” The second guy replies: “He’s dead!” Then the first guy fires back: “I can see that he’s dead!” You get the idea. Were one to strain to find something praiseworthy, cinematographer Robert Ipcar frames a few pleasant angles of people surrounded by fall foliage, but multicolored leaves should not provide more interest than a body count. Weirdly, John Byrum has the lead writing credit on this embarrassment even though his other 1975 releases were the legit features Inserts (which he wrote and directed) and Mahogany (which he cowrote). Byrum appears to be the only Have a Nice Weekend participant to achieve much of note.

Have a Nice Weekend: LAME

Cheering Section (1977)

Only someone determined to consume every teen-sex comedy from the ’70s can muster a reason to endure Cheering Section, which is as unfunny as it is unsexy. Corey (Tom Leindeker) and Jeff (Greg D’Jah) are stars on their high school’s football team. Jeff has a steady thing with the sexually uninhibited Terry (Patricia Michelle), but Corey is stuck in a rut of meaningless hookups until he becomes infatuated with voluptuous new cheerleader Melanie (Rhonda Fox). Most of the film’s “plot” tracks Corey’s unsuccessful attempts to score with Melanie, an endeavor complicated by the fact that her father is the football team’s new coach. Name a dopey signifier found in countless similar movies of the same period, and a pathetic version of that signifier is present in Cheering Section. Bikini-clad cheerleaders washing cars to raise money? An alluring substitute teacher giving a sex-ed lecture? Pranks traded between opposing schools? A romantic dune-buggy ride? Multiple (off-camera) trysts in vans? Each of these elements gets stripped of its lizard-brain appeal thanks to maladroit execution—excepting attractive young actors, everything about Cheering Section is ugly, from the narrative to the jokes to the cinematography to the editing. Cheering Section is also relentlessly demeaning thanks to leering camera angles and Neanderthal “characterizations” such as the desperate young woman known by the moniker “Handjob.” Through most of its lifeless span, Cheering Section drives, in a lackadaisical way, toward the big moment when Melanie puts out, and, by extension, the curvy actress playing Melanie loses her clothes. That this moment never happens—the picture freeze-frames for closing credits just beforehand—affirms why virtually any other activity is a preferable way to spend 84 minutes.

Cheering Section: LAME