Showing posts with label Grindhouse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grindhouse. Show all posts

Thursday, May 5, 2022

Random Movie Reviews, Volume 17

Jim Kelly movies: 

Black Belt Jones (1974): This was to be Jim Kelly’s big role after his starmaking turn as Williams in the previous year’s Enter The Dragon. Robert Clouse again directs, but this time the film is a Blaxploitation joint with a comedy overlay. It’s still the ‘70s, though, so there’s a bit of blood at times and some random nudity. Oscar Williams handled the script (as he would for the execrable sequel, more on which below), and it seems like a clear attempt to launch Kelly as a new urban action hero. I believe Black Belt Jones did fairly well, but as it turned out this would be the only time Jim Kelly would carry a major studio film. 

As a kid I was of course familiar with Kelly, having first watched Enter The Dragon as a teen, but I didn’t discover Black Belt Jones until the summer of 1994, when I was 19 and came across the video in a Suncoast Video store (remember those?). To say this movie had an impact on me would be an understatement. Actually – it would be the theme song by Dennis Coffey (miscredited as “Dennis Coffy” in the closing credits) that had the biggest impact on me. I would watch the video just to hear the “Theme From Black Belt Jones,” and even recorded it directly onto audio tape so I could play it. I even did dumb faux-movie commercials in the campus studio and would use Coffey’s theme song on the soundtrack. As far as I’m concerned, this unjustly-overlooked track is the best song in the entire Blaxploitation soundtrack canon. Many years later I finally found a good-quality copy of it on Harmless Records’s Pulp Fusion: Revenge Of The Ghetto Grooves; “Theme From Black Belt Jones,” by the way, was never released on a Coffey LP (a 7” single – now grossly overpriced – was released on Warner Records in 1974, whereas Coffey’s albums at the time were released on Sussex), and there was never an official soundtrack release, though a bootleg came out on vinyl in 2000…recorded directly off the VHS. Luichi DeJesus, who the following year would handle the kick-ass vocoder-heavy soundtrack for Pam Grier’s Friday Foster, did the actual score for Black Belt Jones; Dennis Coffey only did the theme song and the “love theme” which plays during the ultra-bizarre “mating” sequence that occurs late in the film. 

Well, enough about the soundtrack. The movie itself also made a big impact on me. That summer of 1994 was somewhat special to me. I seem to recall spending most of it drinking and watching kung-fu movies with my college friends. Now that’s the life! We watched Black Belt Jones several times; this was also at the time that I was becoming obsessed with the early to mid 1970s. I was born in 1974, the year this film came out, and Thomas Pynchon writes in his novel V something to the effect that many people are destined to become obessed with the era in which they were born. Well, that summer was when it started for me…but then, at the time the entire ‘70s obsession was in full swing. The Beastie Boys of course were at the center of that, with their “Sabotage” video being a faux-‘70s cop show and ‘70s references throughout their albums (including a Dennis Coffey reference in their 1992 B-side “Skills To Pay The Bills”). To this day I’m still fascinated by this era, and what’s funny is that 1994 is now longer ago than the ‘70s were when I first watched the movie – at the time, Black Belt Jones had only been released 20 years before. But man, as hard as it is to believe, 1994 was 28 years ago! WTF!? Now that I think of it, there might be some kid out there now who was born in ’94 and is thus obsessed with the early ‘90s, the poor bastard... 

I watched that video untold times, but at some point lost my copy – I seem to recall someone “borrowed” it. It wasn’t until 2010 that I watched the movie again; this was when Black Belt Jones was finally released on DVD, along with two other Jim Kelly films (plus one with Rockne Tarkington, the actor who was originally set to play Williams in Enter The Dragon). Seeing the movie in remastered widescreen was almost like seeing it for the first time, but man I still remembered all the lines, all the story beats. Hey listen, I should talk about the movie and cut out the navel gazing. So look, no one’s going to say Black Belt Jones is a classic. But I love it. And watching it again the other day (still no Blu Ray release, though), it only seems to have gotten better with age. Clouse and company were very right to get rid of the grim and gritty vibe typical of Blaxploitation and go for more of a good-spirited vibe. This is a fun movie, and Kelly carries it well. He sort of plays a less cocky version of his Williams, from Enter The Dragon, but he still has a bunch of smart-ass lines. Who exactly “Black Belt Jones” is, though, is pretty much a mystery; and yes, that’s his damn name. I mean he’s referred to as “Black Belt” for cryin’ out loud. Well anyway, when Black Belt Jones isn’t having white girls jump on a trampoline by the beach or kicking it in his ultramod bachelor pad (which is also on the beach), he seems to do odd jobs for the government. Or at least some agency. When we meet him, he’s busy protecting some dignitary from would-be assassins. Later in the film, though, he acts more in his personal interests than in any government or law enforcement capacity. 

An interesting thing about Black Belt Jones is how its template is so similar to just about any Chinese kung-fu movie you could name. I mean it’s literally about the bad guys trying to take over a martial arts school; that’s pretty much the plot for around a billion kung-fu movies. And man what a school this one is – it’s “sensei” is none other than Scatman friggin’ Crothers, playing the least believable karate master in film history. The movie never does make it clear whether Scatman’s “Pop” actually taught Black Belt Jones, but we do learn that the two men have some sort of a student-pupil connection. However, playing the emotional stuff is not Jim Kelly’s forte, so this isn’t much played up on. The convoluted story has it that the Mafia is leaning on black criminal Pinky; they want a particular building in Pinky’s domain, the building with Pop’s karate school, so Pinky and crew start leaning on Pop. Robert Clouse must have taken to actor Malik Carter, who plays Pinky; Carter even gets an “introducing” credit at the start of the movie. Several scenes are given over to Carter so he can chew scenery as the outlandish Pinky, sometimes strutting and rapping about his awesomeness. While Clouse might have seen a future star in Malik Carter, it was not to be; he only acted sporadically after this, his last role being the “night guard” in Stallone’s Cobra (1986). (I discovered this myself before the Internet Movie Database existed; I saw Cobra on cable TV not long after I got the Black Belt Jones video, and just about freaked out when I recognized none other than Pinky himself as a security guard – even though he was only on screen for a few seconds and didn’t have any dialog.) 

When Pinky leans a bit too hard on Pop, things quickly escalate. But even here Black Belt Jones does not become a violent revenge thriller a la Coffy. As I say, Jim Kelly’s Black Belt Jones never really seems to give a shit; Pinky’s plot just gives him another opportunity to “be busy lookin’ good.” Actually that’s a Williams line, but it also describes Black Belt Jones. Kelly is very much on form in this picture; he so outmatches his opponents, never tiring even after hordes of them come at him, that it almost approaches the level of a Bruceploitation movie – like Bruce Le, the fake Bruce who starred in the most loathsome Bruceploitation movies of all, where he’d fight like a thousand people and never even break a sweat. At no point does Black Belt Jones seem in trouble, even in a part where Pinky’s men capture him and attempt to beat him to death, with the warning that if Black Belt fights back one of Pop’s students will be killed. I’ve always thought that the action highlight in the film is the one toward the end on the abandoned train; this is an excellently staged sequence, which still retains the goofy comedy overlay of the film (ie the twitching knocked-out thugs, as if Black Belt has given them nerve damage in addition to a sound beating). 

The film also has some of the best foley work ever. It’s totally exaggerated; every punch and kick is magnified on the soundtrack. The producers also add a weird “bone crunching” noise at times, which is so overdone it actually can raise your hackles. It gives the impression that Black Belt’s just ruptured someone’s innards. But my favorite sound effect of all in the entire film is when Sydney, Pop’s estranged daughter (played by a fierce Gloria Hendry), bitch-slaps Black Belt before their weird mating ritual on the beach. Gloria Hendry delivers lines with aplomb throughout the film, bad-ass lines that she serves up more convincingly than even Kelly does. And they’re wonderfully un-PC, too, like when she calmly tells one of Pinky’s men, “I’ll make you look like a sick faggot.” She’s got a great one before she bitch-slaps Black Belt, too; when Black Belt tells her he “takes” what he wants, Sydney responds, “My cookie would kill you.” You can check this scene out here – listen to that bitch slap! And this mating sequence deal, scored by Coffey’s “Love Theme From Black Belt Jones,” is a bizarre bit that features Black Belt and Syndey chasing each other around the beach and beating each other up as foreplay. There’s a random bit, in an altogether random scene, where they come across a fat hippie strumming his acoustic guitar along the beach, and the two sadists smash the guitar up; you can see this at the end of the clip I linked to above. Folks, the fat hippie looks so much like Wayne’s World 2-era Chris Farley that you almost wonder if the dude traveled back in time – he even has the same overdone reactions as Farley when they grab his guitar. 

The climax is underwhelming after the fight in the empty train; it’s pretty goofy, too, with a seemingly-endless tide of thugs coming out of the soap bubbles to be knocked out by Black Belt and then escorted into a sanitation truck by Sydney. And yes, soap bubbles; the final fight occurs in a car wash that’s gone haywire. Also here one will spot a cameo by Bob Wall, who played a sadistic henchman in Enter The Dragon; here he plays a geeky Mafia chauffeur. I’m cool with the underwhelming climax, though, as it retains the spirit of the overall film. It’s the dialog that’s key for me; I could quote this movie all day, from the kid’s “She was bad! She was good!” when referring to Sydney’s karate skills to Black Belt’s triumphant, “Let’s go to McDonald’s!” after foiling Pinky. And of course, Black Belt’s “Batman, motherfucker!”  Clouse and crew keep the action moving, with a lot of fun sequences, like when Black Belt employs those white trampoline girls on a heist. It’s a little bumpy at the start, though; I mean I don’t watch a movie titled Black Belt Jones and expect to see Scatman Crothers arguing with his heavyset girlfriend. (A scene which regardless features more wonderfully un-PC dialog, ie “I’ll slap the black off you!”) Once Gloria Hendry shows up it’s as if the movie takes on a new drive, and she acquits herself well in the action scenes, really selling her punches and kicks. 

I’ve gone on and on about Black Belt Jones but I feel like I really haven’t said much about it. I’ll just leave it that it’s a fun movie, and I bet it was fun as hell to see it on the bigscreen in 1974 – I can just imagine a pack of inner-city kids enthusing over it in some theater on 42nd Street. And the movie did well enough that it warranted a sequel, something I wasn’t aware of until the DVD release in 2010. And speaking of which… 

Hot Potato (1975): This movie was so goddamn stupid I scanned through it and didn’t even watch the whole thing; a half-assed movie deserves a half-assed review. Like Black Samurai, this is another one that has a copyright that differs from the release date; Hot Potato is copyright 1975, so far as the opening credits are concerned, but was apparently released in 1976. It’s also a sequel to Black Belt Jones, though you’d never know it. Jim Kelly plays “Jones,” apparently as in “Black Belt Jones,” but he’s never referred to by that name, and no other actors from the previous film are in this one. Indeed, absolutely no mention is made of that previous film. Hot Potato was written by Oscar Williams, who also wrote Black Belt Jones, but he directs this time as well. What a bad decision for the studio; Hot Potato makes Black Belt Jones look like Citizen Kane. It’s messy and chaotic, and I actually felt embarrassed for Jim Kelly. Whereas the previous film had an accent on comedy, it still featured some violent action and everything didn’t seem to be a joke to the characters. Not so here; the entire stupid movie is nothing but comedy, and unfunny comedy, to boot – like Jim Kelly and his colleagues watching a fat man and woman challenge each other to an eating contest, and the gross spectacle just keeps going on and on, complete with gut-churning overdubbed “eating” sounds. 

Kelly himself looks bored this time…he looks older than he did just a year before, and also for some reason he’s shaved off his sideburns. There are some parts I kid you not where he looks like ol’ Barry Obama – check out the final fight scene. It’s like Obama with a natural! I’m guessing at this point Jim Kelly must’ve realized his moment in the limelight had already passed him by; surely he had to realize this movie was a turkey. Maybe he did it because he figured the guy who wrote Black Belt Jones couldn’t do him wrong. Obviously he was proven wrong. Or hell, maybe Kelly just wanted a vacation in Thailand (the entire film takes place there – again, a far cry from the urban setting of the previous film). I also feel bad for the Warners marketing department, as they had to try to get people to pay to see this piece of shit. Well, I’ve spent enough time on this one…it’s lame, Jim Kelly’s barely in it (and when he is, he’s usually just standing around), and the focus is on lame comedy throughout. What’s crazy is, despite the suckitude, the film actually looks like a big-budget venture when compared to the cheap productions Kelly would find himself starring in next. Speaking of which… 

Black Samurai (1976): As with Hot Potato, this one has differing copyright and release dates – it’s copyright 1976, but seems to have been released in 1977. It certainly seems more “mid-‘70s” than “disco ‘70s.” Even though it isn’t a big studio production like his previous films, Jim Kelly is back to his old self in this one…you’d think it was actually shot before Hot Potato. Maybe he thought it would lead to a franchise – which the film should have. Well anyway, this is of course a filmed adaptation of Marc Oldens Black Samurai – specifcally, an adaptation of Black Samurai #6: The Warlock. While lots has been changed to accommodate the small budget (the entire second half of the film takes place in one location, for example, despite the globe-hopping of the source novel), the film is still faithful to the bare bones of the novel’s plot. And almost all of the characters from The Warlock are here, though in a lessened state: Synne, the hot-as-hell black beauty of the novel, has lost her silver hair; Bone, the hulking gay albino henchman, is a black guy (though it’s intimated in overdubbed dialog during the climactic fight that he’s still gay in the film); and most humorously of all, Rheinhardt, the werewolf in the novel, has been changed to…a midget. But then there were midgets throughout The Warlock, and sure, they were transvestite midgets who wielded whips and wore s&m getups, but at least director Al Adamson was still somewhat faithful to the novel with this change. 

But he made some strange changes which were not faithful to the novel. For one, Robert “Black Samurai” Sand (ie Jim Kelly) does not report to former President William Baron Clarke in the movie; instead, Sand works for D.R.A.G.O.N. (as in, “Enter The;” no doubt Adamson was trying to refer back to Kelly’s most famous movie). And whereas Robert Sand in the novels was a somewhat-terse badass who favored a samurai sword and a .45, the Sand of the movie is a James Bond wannabe, complete with a Thunderball-esque jetpack. He also drives a purple 1972 Dino Ferrari. But man, if Adamson had dispensed with this stuff, he might’ve had sufficient budget to do a more faithful adaptation of the novel. I mean for one thing, Sand uses his samurai sword in the novels, but here he mostly relies on his hands and feet; he shoots one guy with a revolver, and later in the film affixes a silencer to a .45 (for absolutely no reason, as he’s in the friggin’ jungle at the time), but he never fires it. And he only uses a samurai sword briefly in the climax – to cut the ropes off someone. My assumption is Adamson whittled down on the sword action because it would’ve cost more so far as choreography went; it’s much cheaper to have actors just pretend to be kicked in the face than to be chopped by a sword. 

But now let me tell you how I personally learned about Black Samurai, because I’m sure you all are dying to know. I grew up with an obsession for kung-fu movies, and the early ‘90s was a cool time for this because it seemed like a ton of them suddenly came out on VHS. I built up quite a collection, despite not having much money, and on one of the videos I got there was the trailer for Black Samurai. I no longer recall what kung-fu video in particular it was that featured this trailer, but it would’ve been something I bought in 1994. This trailer, which you can see here (it was also included in Alamo Drafthouse’s 2012 Blu Ray release Trailer War), made a big impression on me. At the time I was in college, and we’d often film impromptu kung-fu parodies or whatnot…I recall often mocking this goofy commercial, in particular the line “half the world’s out to kill him.” At the time I had no idea how Black Samurai itself could even be seen – all I had was the trailer on the video. Then in 2000 or so Black Samurai was released on VHS and DVD…but I quickly learned that it was edited, with the nudity and violence removed. Fuck that! It was also at this time that I learned of Marc Olden’s source material, and while I eventually got the actual books, I still never sought out Al Adamson’s film. Actually that’s a lie, as I’d read somewhere that in the ‘80s the film had been released uncut on VHS, but this video was impossible to find – at least impossibe for me to find. And now that I think of it, I’m assuming it was this ‘80s video release that was being advertised on that video I purchased in the early ‘90s. 

Well anyway, in one of those random flukes, Black Samurai was released on Blu Ray the other year as part of “The Al Adamson Collection,” and friends it’s the uncut version that was originally released in grindhouses and drive-ins in 1977. It was a strange experience to actually watch this movie so many years after discovering it via that trailer; I almost found myself getting misty-eyed, but that was probably the cheap blended whiskey I was drinking at the time. And booze (or drugs) would certainly be recommended for anyone who chooses to watch Black Samurai. But then, the movie isn’t that bad, even though people often rake it over the coals (just check out Marty McKee’s review at Crane Shot).  I mean yeah, it is lame, but it isn’t nearly as bad as Hot Potato. And hell, I’d still rather watch Black Samurai than The Eternals. Also, the movie is deserving of at least some respect, as it was the only film adaptation of a men’s adventure series in the ‘70s – the decade that saw a glut of men’s adventure paperbacks, and Black Samurai was the only one that made it to the big screen. 

I’d love to know what Marc Olden thought of the film. Many years ago his widow Diane told me via email that Olden never met Jim Kelly, “though he admired him.” I was bummed to learn that Olden never got a chance to meet the man who brought his Robert Sand to life. One thing everyone can agree on is that Jim Kelly was the perfect Robert Sand. Unfortunately Al Adamson and his screenwriters didn’t understand the source material, because Kelly, who didn’t have the greatest of range, could’ve easily handled the character as presented in Olden’s novels. Indeed, the Robert Sand of Olden’s novels doesn’t say much – but when he does says something, it’s pretty bad-ass, and then he gets to the ass-kicking. Kelly could’ve handled this. But given how he had all the best lines in Enter The Dragon, the directors of his ensuing films tried to replicate that, so the film version of Robert Sand is a blabbermouth when compared to the novel version. He also lacks the samurai training and mindset; indeed, “Black Samurai” seems to just be this Robert Sand’s codename. He’s basically just a regular movie spy, with all the customary gadgets, only one with a little more focus in karate. No mention is made of him being an actual samurai. 

It's been twelve years(!) since I read The Warlock, but so far as I recall the bones of the novel’s plot are here in the film. And speaking of which, I really enjoyed The Warlock, but am only now starting to read the series from the beginning…not sure why I took so long, but I think it’s because I was also reading Olden’s Narc series and just wanted to focus on it first. Well anyway, same as in the source novel, the plot hinges around black magician Janicot, the warlock of the original novel’s title, taking captive Toki, daughter of Sand’s samurai trainer Mr. Konuma. Adamson and team have changed the relationships a bit, but Toki is still Robert Sand’s beloved in this one – however as mentioned Jim Kelly didn’t have the greatest range, thus he never seems all that fired up about rescuing Toki. In fact, Toki’s practically an afterthought. Oh yeah, I recall Janicot ran a sideline operation in the novel where he filmed various noteables in his black magic sex orgies, using that for blackmail…none of this is in the film. Janicot has practically been neutered in the film version; Bill Roy’s portrayal of the character is more Paul Lynde than Anton LaVey. (Seriously, it would be easy to imagine this Janicot as one of Uncle Arthur’s “special male friends.”) He makes for a lame duck villain, and his “warlock” nature isn’t nearly as exploited as in the novel. 

But let’s talk about the boobs! Seriously though, this uncut version of Black Samurai has been lost for many, many years, but the topless gals are here in all their glory. Adamson strings nudity throughout the film, befitting a movie intended for grindhouse theaters; in particular we have a dazed-looking blonde who does a practically endless striptease halfway through the film, topless throughout (the camera cuts away for the big finale when she pulls off her panties, however). Marilyn Joi as Synne also gets her top torn off by Chavez, Latino thug who in the novel ran his own drug empire, but here in the novel is another of Janicot’s men. Actually he comes off as more threatening than Janicot himself. Oh but randomly enough…Adamson kept the “lion-men” in the movie! One of the more outrageous elements of an outrageous novel made it to the film; randomly enough, Sand at one point is attacked by a pair of black guys dressed up like the savages in a 1930s jungle movie. One of them he seems to relish in killing; I’m not sure if the bloody violence was cut from the previously-available versions, but here in this Blu Ray Sand makes a few bloody kills. For example he tosses a boulder on one of the lion men, and we get a closeup of the spouting blood as the lion man floats in water. 

The karate scenes are actually pretty good. Once again Kelly comes off as vastly outmatching his opponents, but there seems to have been an attempt at actually making him work for it at times. For example the fight with Bone (Charles Grant) is pretty good – livened up by some postproduction dubbing where the two trash-talk each other. Here Sand calls Bone all kinds of inappropriate-for-today gay slurs, adding to the over-the-top vibe of the film; making it even more crazy, the actors clearly aren’t saying anything to each other and all their dialog has been dubbed in after the fact…and since you hear their voices but their lips aren’t moving it gives it all a surreal, dreamlike quality. Unintentionally avant-garde, I guess. Also, Jim Kelly fights a friggin’ vulture, but it’s staged so ineptly that again you wonder why Adamson didn’t use the money for something else. And the fight with Janicot is so lame you wonder why they even included it. But Kelly really seems invested in the role, even if the production is meager compared to his previous movies – I mean we’re talking “boom mic audio.” 

Speaking of cost-cutting, Adamson saved on the soundtrack, too. Black Samurai does not feature an original score. Adamson instead uses what’s now known as “sound library” music, ie production music created by various labels for use in film, TV, radio, and etc. The “theme song,” for example, is actually “Flashback” by Alan Hawkshaw and Keith Mansfield. The song that plays throughout the endless stripdance sequence is “Soul Slap” by Madeline Bell and Alan Parker. Some years ago a blogger by the handle Fraykers Revenge created the soundtrack for Black Samurai, tracking down each song from his vast collection of sound library releases; unfortunately his blog is long gone, but perhaps the soundtrack is still available somewhere on the internet. 

I’ve been going on and on, but I’ve gotta say Black Samurai isn’t terrible. I mean Hot Potato is terrible. Black Samurai is actually watchable, and it’s at least good enough that you wish it was better – that it had more money for the setups and locations. Jim Kelly acquits himself well, proving he could carry a film…even when wearing a very un-Robert Sand tracksuit. There’s definitely a camp quality to it, which always helps. But then perhaps my positive sentiments are due to the uncut Blu Ray; I might be complaining just like every other reviewer if I was talking about the cut version that was previously available on the market. At any rate, it makes one sorry that there wasn’t a followup; the following year Kelly starred in another Adamson production, Death Dimension, and you kind of wish they’d just done Black Samurai II instead. 

Well friends, I was going to review more of Jim Kelly’s movies (he’s always been one of my favorite actors…I mean he’s the only guy in film history who could be in a movie with Bruce Lee and actually come off as cooler than Bruce Lee), but as usual I ran on so long that I’ll have to get to the others anon; Three The Hard Way, Death Dimension, Golden Needles, etc.

Monday, March 23, 2020

Random Movie Reviews, Volume 12

More Biker Movies: William Smith Edition 

Angels Die Hard (1970): William Smith gets co-lead billing alongside Tom Baker (not the Dr. Who guy), but man it takes a good while before you even realize he’s in the movie. Also the online plot synopsis on this one, about “bikers coming to the rescue of miners,” doesn’t really happen – in fact, the first hour or so of the flick is comprised of the bikers running roughshod around some small town in the Californian countryside. That being said, there’s more biker footage in this one than practically any other biker movie I’ve yet watched: copious sequences, set to music by various obscure rock groups, of bikers driving along the roadside in their tricked-out hogs and choppers. There’s a lot of cool equipment on display, and my favorite’s probably the trike with the drooping hood, which is driven by this dude that looks for all the world like a Satanic hermit.

While the biker footage is primo, the flick itself has that usual muddled low-budget vibe; dialog is captured by a single boom mic and sometimes the voices of the actors are either inaudible or so shrill that they send the levels into the red – William Smith in particular. And no character is properly introduced, no story set up. Blair (Baker) and Tim (Smith) roll their club into some hayseed town and run afoul of the portly sheriff, and one of the club’s put in jail overnight. He’s let go the next day, but crashes as he’s driving past the county line, apparently run off the road by a local – you can tell the budget was low because we don’t even see the crash, the producers clearly not wanting to actually destroy one of the choppers. Indeed it’s hard to understand initially why the guy even crashes, as it’s a clear day, there’s no other traffic on the road, and he’s just choppering along, giving the finger to the town sign on his way out…and a sudden freeze frame and we hear a poor recording of a vehicle crashing.

Speaking of freeze frames and whatnot, director Richard Compton makes up for the low budget and the unknown actors with lots of inventive angles and artsy directing touches. Some of it is in the vibe of TV director Sutton Roley (aka “the Orson Welles of television”), with stuff like the camera sitting behind latticework so that the actors are partially obscured, or the camera put up on a casket while the bikers carry it into the cemetery. These biker movies are such a strange breed, because often you can tell that the director at least wanted to try something unusual, no doubt inspired by Easy Rider, yet the script as ever is a mish-mash of jarring styles. I mean their biker brother is dead and they’re all dour and then suddenly the plot’s about them drugging up an uptight undertaker and wooping it up while a couple mamas dance nude (not that I’m complaining about that last part). But at least we get to see William Smith deliver a sermon, complete with his massive arms bared and his voice redlining the boom mic with a shouted “Brothers!” Plus he seems to have gotten his clothes from Billy Jack. 

It's curious because there’s no “plot” per se for the first hour of Angels Die Hard, which is pretty incredible when you consider that the film’s barely 90 minutes long. But at the hour point, after being hassled once again to get the hell out of town, the bikers get word of a mine collapse and decide to go to the rescue. This is due to Smith’s character, Tim, who overhears some local yokels talking about it; Tim chuckles at the plight of the miners when he hears of the collapse, then sobers up when he’s told it’s a little kid that’s been trapped in the mine. Curiously this for soft spot for children parallels the attitude of another biker character Smith would play, in The Losers (reviewed below).

But man, talk about a poorly set up and even more poorly executed plotline: the bikers race on over to the mine and we have some shaky camerawork showing the locals trying to pull on a rope that’s going down into the mine. William Smith hovers over the proceedings…then we see some random biker come up out of the mine, carrying the kid! Who the hell the biker was I don’t think is ever even stated, but it sure wasn’t Blair or Tim. This, the event which is stated as the entire plot of the movie on some websites, comprises about five minutes of the film’s runtime. After this we get another go-nowhere subplot where a local beauty seems to fall for Blair, but her boyfriend gets jealous and tries to intervene. Burly Tim beats him up but feels bad about it…then the kid runs to the cops and the locals come in with firebrands and shotguns. The finale is hilariously inept in its staging, with major characters gunned down in an almost nonchalant manner; the ending too leaves it vague who survives and who doesn’t – and I watched the climax twice and I’m still not sure who causes the villainous sheriff to crash.

Eagle-eyed viewers will catch the occasional glimpse of Dixie Peabody (Dag in Bury Me An Angel) as a biker babe – briefly seen riding a chopper when the club heads for the funeral – and Dan “Grizzly Adams” Haggerty as another biker, but neither get any dialog and are mostly just in the background. Hell if you wanted to, you could pretend that Bury Me An Angel is a sequel to this one, as Dixie Peabody’s character isn’t even named, so if you were bored or drunk or high or whatever, you could pretend she’s also playing Dag in this one, and maybe Dag’s ill-fated brother is one of the bikers we never get to see (it’s not like any characters are actually introduced, after all)…and hell, Dan Haggerty also appears as a background biker character without any dialog in Bury Me An Angel, so that just ices the cake.

C.C. And Company (1970): Former football star Joe Namath (whose sideburns radicalized Grandma Simpson) briefly tried his hand at acting, and I believe this was his first starring role. Co-starring Anne-Margaret and William Smith, the movie seems to have enjoyed a bigger budget than most other biker flicks, but hasn’t been served well by history; the copy I saw was sourced from VHS, and there doesn’t seem to be a better version out there. Quentin Tarantino featured the trailer for this movie in his recent Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood, so maybe this will result in someone doing a proper restored release. Definitely more of a mainstream picture than most other biker movies – there isn’t even any violence or nudity! – C.C. And Company clearly strives to capture the counterculture spirit of the day, with various “sticking it to the man” sequences in its 90-minute runtime. We even meet titular C.C. Rider (Namath) in the process of sticking it, helping himself to a self-made sandwich in a grocery store (including a Twinkie for dessert!) but only paying for a pack of gum on his way out. Later in the film he’ll steal a dirt bike from a used bike lot, giving the hapless owner five bucks as “down payment.”

But otherwise C.C. is a good guy, or at least we’re to understand he is, given that he doesn’t rape beautiful, busty Ann-Margaret when he and his two biker buddies come across her stranded limo in the desert. Instead C.C. comes to her defense, decking his two pals, one of whom’s ever-sleazy Sid Haig (in a Mongol helmet, aka “the Yul Brenner look”). Anne-Margaret’s character is named Ann, and she bats her eyes prettily at C.C. for saving her, even joking that they’d better hurry with the sex before the Triple-A repairmen arrive. C.C. just smiles and drives off, and finds he’s gotten himself in trouble with club president Moon (Smith), who really lords it up, sitting in a “throne” and kicking around the club mamas. Smith as ever gives his performance a tongue in cheek vibe, including a funny bit where he complains that C.C. doesn’t really jibe with the club, which by the way is called The Heads. C.C. continues to run into Ann over the next few days, and I think Tarantino nicked some of the dialog here – there’s a part where she says how it’s interesting they keep running into each other, and I think the hippie girl with hairy armpits says much the same thing to Brad Pitt’s character in Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood.

Eventually we learn that C.C. just joined the Heads a month ago; Moon’s mama hits on him one night, basically demanding he screw her because she’s “twenty-nine days overdue” for some C.C. lovin.’ C.C. tells her no, but changes his mind when she mocks him for being afraid of Moon. But again there’s no nudity afoot, even during the infrequent “bath” sequences where the bikers and their mamas hop in the river to clean off. His sights though are clearly set on Ann, and when he discovers she’s a fashion photographer (or designer…or something), doing a shoot for a motorcross race, he even gets a dirt bike so he can take part in the race and impress her. Pretty certain it’s not Namath himself in the race scene – which features an awesome climax of C.C. literally pulling his bike across the finish line – but he does clearly drive the dirt bike and a zebra-painted chopper in other sequences. And looks pretty cool at it, too. I’m due for a mid-life crisis so these movies really have me thinking about a vintage custom chopper.

But curiously C.C. And Company is more of a romantic comedy than a biker movie; the plot, such as it is, centers around the unfathomable concept that gorgeous, jet-setting Anne falls in love with grungy, jobless C.C. There’s even a part where she asks him how he “gets along” without work, and here we get a vague backstory for C.C. – he was a mechanic who fixed up the club’s bikes, and when they wouldn’t pay him he fought them…then decided to join them. One wonders why, as he clearly doesn’t get along with the nigh-socialist makeup of The Heads; when C.C. comes in third at that motocross race, Moon demands that he give the entire proceeds to the club. C.C. refuses, leading to a brawl between the two, after which C.C. manages to again score with Moon’s mama…and steal back his money from her purse.

This leads into the finale, which has Moon and the Heads holding Anne hostage until C.C. can raise a thousand bucks. Instead C.C. manages to challenge Moon to a race, which is also ridiculous, something the script at least acknowledges with Moon’s flustered reply to C.C.’s challenge (“I mean, what is this??”). The ensuing race seems to go on forever, and climaxes with Moon suffering a spectacular crash; it’s unstated whether he survives, and the last we see of him his mama is cradling his limp ragdoll of a form. After this it’s on to a Happily Ever After for C.C. and Ann! Overall C.C. And Company is somewhat fun at least in its bright ‘60s colors and fashions, and has some good dialog in spots (when Moon’s girl makes a passing query on C.C.’s skills in bed, he laconically replies, “I manage to hang in there”). I don’t think it’s worth watching more than once, though.

Chrome And Hot Leather (1971): This might be one of my favorite biker movies yet, but for an exploitation flick it’s surprisingly tame on the, uh, exploitation angle; the violence is minimal and, even more shockingly, there’s no nudity! Otherwise it is a well-made grindhouse bikersploitation piece which comes off like the film version of a men’s adventure magazine yarn: badass Green Berets take on a biker gang. In fact if I’m not mistaken that is a storyline that shows up in at least one of the men’s mag stories excerpted in Barbarians On Bikes. The concept is actually well handled, though lacking in the blood and thunder you’d expect from such a setup, with even the final conflagration featuring smoke grenades and tear gas instead of full auto hellfire. There’s even an annoying tendency toward quick cuts during the plentiful fistfights, with director Lee Frost cutting the frame seconds before fists connect with faces. My assumption is this was intended to make the fake punches look “real,” giving the action a sort of pop, but unfortunately it just looks like something off Benny Hill.

The flick opens with what will be the only death in the movie: two pretty young women are driving around the California countryside when they encounter a pack of bikers: The Wizards, who are led by brawny T.J. (William Smith, who chews scenery like it was a protein bar – the dude’s seriously ripped in this one, by the way, and also receives top billing). One of the bikers, Casey (Michael Haynes, who looks so much like Ben Stiller in a bad wig and fake moustache I laughed out loud a few times), comes on to the women and demands they pull over. When they try to escape, inadvertently knocking Casey off his bike, he hops back on and hits ‘em with his chain, causing the car to careen down a canyon and roll a couple times. The Wizards take off and both girls have been killed in the crash.

Unfortunately for the bikers, the blonde in the car was the fiance of Green Beret drill sergeant Mitch (lanky Tony Young, the epitome of the Marlboro Man look). Without dithering over the point – again, I love how lean these vintage action movies are – Mitch rounds up three other Green Beret sergeants to dish out some payback: Gabe (Larry Bishop), Al (Peter Brown, but I spent the entire film thinking it was Monte “The Seven Million Dollar Man” Markham), and Jim (Marvin Gaye – the Marvin Gay, not just some random actor with the same name). Soon enough they decide to go undercover and do what the cops can’t: find the biker scum who killed Mitch’s girl. This entails buying bikes (red Kawasaki dirt bikes, but as it develops they have a reason for wanting dirt bikes and not choppers), learning how to ride them (a humorous sequence), and getting some biker duds with sergeant stripe patches and visored sunglasses.

Meanwhile the Wizards run around the countryside and fight each other; there’s a balance of power between TJ and Casey. As mentioned Smith receives top billing so there are a lot of otherwise-unnecessary subplots or scenes with him, clearly there so as to give him more screentime. Because really TJ makes for a poor villain; Casey’s the only killer in the gang, and indeed TJ tried to stop him from chasing after the girls in the opening sequence. There is an intentional sense of humor here which makes up for this, most notable in the rapport between TJ and spaced-out gang member Sweet Willy (Bob Pickett), including a very funny bit where TJ tries to lean on Mitch (undercover as an outlaw biker who just wandered into the Wizards’s bar). When an oblivious Sweet Willy continues to play pinball, Smith calls over to him, “Can’t you see we’re trying to menace someone?”

It’s little touches like this that make Chrome And Hot Leather so much fun. Also Mitch and his comrades are given enough personality to be memorable and fun to watch working together as a team. Marvin Gaye does very well in his role – his character’s the one who makes the random demand for red dirt bikes, perhaps as a payoff for an earlier line that he never even had a bicycle as a kid – but there’s a total miss when his first line is, “What’s happenin?” It should’ve been “What’s going on?” which would’ve made for such a lame in-joke that it would have instantly become legendary. Hell, he could’ve even hummed a few lines of the song afterwards. That being said, Gaye does provide a song to the movie, but otherwise the score is composed of the fuzzed guitar rock you’d expect.

Mitch gains the graces of the Wizards, long enough to hop in the sack with sexy Susan (Kathy Baumann), who just happens to be Casey’s mama. As mentioned there’s no nudity; when Susan disrobes for Mitch her body is completely hidden save for her shoulders and head. Even when they’re rolling around in bed she’s careful to keep herself covered by the sheets. This leads me to believe that Baumann either had a no-nudity contract or the producers were shooting for a more mainstream market than other biker films of the day. That’s not to say Susan isn’t slapped around and roughed up, though; they skipped on the nudity and the violence but the producers at least still delivered on that bikersploitation staple. Casey storms in on the two post-boink, knocks out Mitch, and slaps Susan around good and proper. This leads to another of those otherwise-random scenes with William Smith, where TJ asks Susan if she wants to stay in the gang after he’s kicked out Casey. A scene which ultimately has no impact on the plot…other, that is, than to give Smith more screentime.

The finale unfortunately drops the biker angle. Mitch and team head back to base and, in another comedic scene, order up a bevy of training weaponry, from smoke grenades to a mini-rockets. They put their Green Beret training to use and segregate the Wizards in a remote canyon and rain smoke grenades and tear gas missiles on them, then run roughshod on them on their dirt bikes while wearing gas masks. This leads to yet more fistfights, which is also how Mitch handles Casey, the murderer of his fiance – unsatisfyingly, there’s no fatal comeuppance for Casey. Instead it’s off to jail with TJ and the rest of the gang – including even Susan! But otherwise Chrome And Hot Leather moves at a steady clip, featuring fun characters and a self-mocking tone, and it’s a shame there was never a sequel. The whole “Sergeants” dirt bike gang was ripe for more exploitation.

The Losers (1970): Like Chrome And Hot Leather, the plot of this biker flick seems to have been ripped from the pages of a contemporary men’s mag: bikers in ‘Nam! This one’s even more in the men’s mag realm than the other flick, with plentiful violence and nudity; the opening sequence alone features spectacular blood quibs at work as we see the Viet Cong massacring various people. Likely this rugged pulp feel is courtesy veteran adventure writer Alan Caillou, who handled the script. However this one’s really more of a war movie than a biker movie, and the budget was also a factor because the fireworks are saved for the climax. This means that characterization takes more of a precendence than in other biker flicks…but at the expense of the fun, pulpy sort of stuff we expect from a true biker movie. Hell, there aren’t even any Harleys – let alone any choppers – in the film. The bikers ride dirt bikes! (Another similarity to Chome And Hot Leather). As one of them puts it: “That’s a girl’s bike!”

William Smith stars again as a biker boss: Link, who heads up the Devil’s Advocates M.C. We don’t get much background on Link, but there seems to be some particular reason why he’s so driven to rescue a CIA agent who is being held by the Red Chinese in Cambodia. Also we’ll learn he has a bit of a sensitive side; there’s an odd but touching bit where he picks up a poor little hunchbacked kid in a Vietnam village and gives him a quick ride on his bike. That being said, we clearly see Link blow another kid away in the climactic action sequence…so, uh, he’s an anti-hero at least. In fact Smith doesn’t get much opportunity to do anything emotive until late in the movie, with most of the runtime being given over to his fellow club members: There’s Duke (Adam Roarke), who seems to have taken this CIA job so he can hook back up with his Vietnamese girlfriend and bring her home as his wife; Limpy (Paul Koslo), who is of course named for his limp and also finds love here in Vietnam; Speed (Gene Cornelius), who wears a swastika bandana and doesn’t really do much but make racist comments; and finally Dirty Denny (Houston Savage), who comes off the most “true biker” of the lot, here in ‘Nam to check up on the whorehouse he opened and to in general raise some hell.

The movie opens in ‘Nam (aka the Philipines – and yes Vic Diaz shows up!), and there’s no flashback or anything to their previous life in the US, where we could actually see the Devil’s Advocates in biker action. Instead they show up and are given their orders, then it’s off to some godforsaken village where they can plan out the assault of the fortress in which the CIA asset is being held in Cambodia. The asset is named Chet Davis (director Jack Starrett himself), and our heroes know going in that they’ll be greatly outnumbered by VC and Chinese soldiers. But the place is only accessible via dirt bikes, so they go about the business of arming and armoring their motorcycles; Limpy gets an armored trike which looks cool but not nearly as sci-fi as depicted on the film poster. However way too much runtime is given over to various subplots; love is truly in the air for these grungy bikers, with both Duke and Limpy falling in love with local gals. Limpy’s subplot in particular is goofy because the girl in question is just some random hooker he picks up in Dirty Denny’s old bordello…and she has a kid! Sure we get some toplessness here, and I’ll never complain about that, but it’s hard to buy these badass bikers getting so lovey-dovey. Even harder to buy that Limpy’s new girl is actually the old girlfriend of their army contact, Capt. Jackson (Bernie Hamilton)…and that Jackson’s the father of the hooker’s kid!! This goofy-ass subplot reveal isn’t even much exploited.

I found a good bit of The Losers to be hard going. There’s an interminable bit where Dirty Denny goes nuts in his old bordello and raises hell; apparently this wasn’t far from the actor’s normal life, with “Houston Savage” often getting in trouble in the Philipines. He was mysteriously murdered about a year after this film was released – eerily enough, in much the same way his character in the film meets his fate. And yes, that Dirty Dozen riff in the film poster is pretty much a tip-off, as it’s clear going in there will be some biker casualties. Starrett really unleashes hell in the finale, with the armed bikes running roughshod over the Cambodian village. But there’s a definite “war is hell” vibe that gets in the way of the fun, with as mentioned shots of innocent kids getting gunned down in the melee. Indeed the film ends with a maudlin montage of various bloody deaths from the film while sad music plays, the producers clearly trying to decry man’s inhummanity to man…but meanwhile check out this cool machine gun on my motorcycle! As John Lennon declared years after starring in How I Won The War, it’s impossible to make an anti-war film. Sort of like how Hollywood elites are so anti-gun…yet fetishize guns in their damn movies.

Even worse is the finale, which I found incredibly frustrating. For one the assault on the village peters out too quickly. We have some explosions and racing around and some casualties for our heroes, and then Link gets into the tent in which Chet Davis is being held. And proceeds to start arguing with him. With egregious stuff like Link complaining about how bikers back home just want to “feel free,” and Chet Davis bluntly stating that he “represents America.” And meanwhile a minor-scale war’s still going on out there in the village! Davis proves to be a very ungrateful rescuee, trying to run away from Link and get him killed. Hell, during a later firefight he even tell Link he hopes he’s killed. Apparently in the backstory Davis got Link and his men arrested for being bikers or somesuch; I sort of lost the thread on this because I was so irritated by it all. The finale is also goofy with the US army showing up and sort of shooting at the VC and whatnot while Link, Davis, and the surviving bikers make their slow way to the border, with Davis again going out of his way to get the bikers killed. Anyway I’ve meant to watch this one for years, even got the DVD over a decade ago, but have only now watched it – and I really only liked some of it. And finally I think I’m bound by law to also point out that Quentin Tarantino featured a brief clip of this movie in Pulp Fiction; it’s the movie the annoying French girl was watching in the Bruce Willis segment of the film.

Monday, March 2, 2020

Random Movie Reviews, Volume 11

Biker movies: 

Bury Me An Angel (1971): More of a drive-in exploitation flick than a true biker movie, Bury Me An Angel is notable for featuring one of the more memorable trailers of the grindhouse era, sporting some of the most outrageously alliterative hyperbole of all time (“A howling hellcat, humping a hot steel hog on a roaring rampage of revenge,” etc). Unfortunately the movie does not live up to the trailer, the plot, or even the friggin’ title! This one’s also notable for being written and directed by a woman (Barbara Peeters, who’s probably spent her whole life saying, “No, it’s spelled with two Es”), something that would likely be made into more of a big deal today than it would’ve been then. Peeters injects a bit more pathos into the film than typical – foreshadowing, as it turns out, for the sick reveal at the climax – but truth be told she’s hampered by a nonexistent budget and the movie’s as scatterbrained as an Angel on meth.

Speaking of Angels…there isn’t one to be found here, much less buried. The movie opens with about three minutes of various bikers sitting around and drinking, smoking pot, and snorting coke. No one’s introduced, and we just sort of meet what will become our protagonist: Dag, an Amazonian blonde with some of the biggest hair you’ll ever see in a movie (an incredibly wooden Dixie Peabody, delivering some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen in a lead role). Her brother Dennis (Dennis Peabody, presumably Dixie’s real-life brother) opens the front door and some mangy dude with shaggy hair and moustache tries to barge in with a shotgun. Dennis shuts the door on him and the shotgun goes off and there’s this awesome half-second clip of a mannequin getting shot in the head and red syrup flying everywhere; we’ll see this clip again and again throughout the flick as Dag flashes back on these events, as well as a close-up glimpse of Dennis’s bloody face.

The killer freaks out and runs away…and then the movie settles into a plodding rhythm until Dag can exact her revenge nearly 90 minutes later. Dag finds some info on who the killer was and where he might’ve headed and then sets out on her awesome purple chopper to kill him. She brings along two male buddies, both of them annoying as hell. The movie is so cheap, folks, like shoestring budget: all the interiors are drab white-walled affairs with maybe a pair of curtains. The film only seems cool when we get to see Dag and pals on their choppers, riding along to the original soundtrack by obscure rockers East-West Pipeline. Perhaps this is why Peabody even got cast in the role; maybe she was the only six-foot stacked blonde Peeters could find who knew how to ride a chopper, and it must be said that Peabody looks pretty damn good riding her chopper, even doing a little stunt work.

But sadly so much of Bury Me An Angel is tedious. There’s a total lack of understanding of how to tell a revenge thriller; it opens with Dag hellbent on revenge, but then she’s on the road and taunting redneck cops or meeting random “witches” who live in the desert. We also get that old standby of cheap movies everywhere: the interminable bar fight that’s played for laughs. Peeters doesn’t skirt on the exploitation, despite being a woman and delivering a “strong female character:” Dag goes skinny-dipping at one point and Peabody bares all. This sequence also illustrates the subtext of Dag’s true relationship with Dennis…the way she keeps freaking out over his memory, even unable to have sex with some dude she randomly picks up (ten minutes before the end of the film!), makes the viewer wonder what the hell was really going on between her and Dennis.

There’s no big action finale, no biker gang war. As mentioned there isn’t even an “Angel” for Dag to kill. We learn that Dennis actually stole that purple chopper, and the moustached killer was trying to get it back. When Dag finally corners him in the last few minutes of the film, the killer cowers and pleads for his life, swearing that he didn’t mean to kill Dennis. At this point we see that Peeters’s motive all along was to show us how sick Dag is, something we’d already gotten foreshadowing of thanks to the aforementioned witch appearance. But given this the delivery of “justice” is unsatisfying, and Dag’s final scream that she must “bury” her victim seems only to exist so Peeters could justify the title. All told, I’d suggest just watching the trailer for Bury Me An Angel instead of the movie itself. Oh, and Dan “Grizzly Adams” Haggerty briefly appears as a biker, which if I’m not mistaken he actually was in real life before getting into the whole “TV actor” game.

Naked Angels (1969): First of all, this one features the most fuzzed-out soundtrack ever, courtesy future Mothers of Invention guitarist Jeff Simmons (it even scored an LP release on Frank Zappa’s Straight Records). Like some others on this list, the movie received a better production than I expected…I mean so many of these ‘60s/’70s biker movies were cheap exploitation, but Naked Angels clearly has at least a few artistic inclinations behind its low budget. Also, this one’s got more bike footage than most of the others reviewed here; there are lots of sequences of vintage choppers tearing along desert roads while fuzzy guitar rock blasts on the soundtrack. Even better, a couple such sequences feature topless biker mamas.

The plot follows a revenge angle which is unfortunately muddled. Mother (brawny Michael Greene, who legitimately looks like he could beat the tar out of just about anyone) returns to his club, The Angels, and drafts them into a run. I didn’t quite get the gist of the backstory, but apparently Mother’s been in jail the last couple months due to the actions of a rival biker gang. He wants his club to get on their bikes asap and head for the desert headquarters of the rival gang and dish out some bloody payback. The only other bikers of prominence here are Fingers (Richard Rust), Mother’s second in command who gradually becomes a Doubting Thomas, and Marlene, Mother’s mama (Jennifer Gan, who looks like a biker Stevie Nicks and wears hot lace-up jeans).

Along the way they stop in Vegas, and we’re treated to some cool shots of the contemporary sleazy glitz and glamor. There is a definite Easy Rider influence here, as there is with most other flicks on this list, with “artsy” angles and even still photography interspersed with the action. However an unfortunate tendency toward random runtime-filling hampers the movie. I mean Mother picks up some gal with no explanation, we’re treated to some good T and A, and then dudes in suits bust in and chase Mother out of the hotel room. Who they are is never explained. As for Mother’s random picking up of this chick, right in front of Marlene, it’s to demonstrate how he is increasingly becoming a psychotic prick in his quest for revenge.

Mother makes for one of the most unlikable lead characters I’ve ever seen; he pushes his club to the limits, making them chopper through the desert without stopping for water breaks. Even when a couple of his bikers crash out he wants to keep moving at all costs. He pushes things too far when he “turns out” Marlene because she questions his authority – “turning out” meaning that she’s now become the gang mama and prime for an initiatory raping. Fingers stops this and kicks Mother out of the club…and the movie becomes bizarrely flabby with interminable, poorly-edited scenes of the various bikers driving across the desert and meeting random people. And even worse the big brawl at the end is anticlimactic; we never get a good understanding of the rival gang, nor even what exactly they did to Mother. Hell, one of the gang even has to tell Mother who their president is, so Mother knows who to beat to death. Stranger yet the movie climaxes with a Mother-Fingers brawl, even though Mother’s just saved his former gang.

At any rate Naked Angels moves fairly quickly and features enough vintage biker action to keep you happy. And as mentioned there’s occasional nudity, which should please all my fellow sleazebags, though for some damn reason a late scene, where a blond Angel mama gets full-on nekkid (“Property of the Angels” written on her behind), is obscured by heavy shadow. There’s also a random psychedelic sequence in the latter half where Mother, apparently suffering from extreme dehydration, imagines himself in a Wild West saloon. Anyway I enjoyed Naked Angels, but I’d advise not making it your first bikersploitation movie; the editing is sometimes sloppy, the characters and plot are not fully developed, and the finale is underwhelming. But other than that it’s a pretty cool.

The Peace Killers (1971): My gateway drug into the biker exploitation universe, The Peace Killers melds Easy Rider artsiness with grindhouse sleaze, and does well on both counts. I really enjoyed this one and it was a lot better than I expected it would be. What I love about these vintage exploitation films is they don’t waste your time with backstory and setup – we learn from the get-go who is good and who is bad. This one’s a revenge thriller with the bikers being the bad guys (and another gang serving as the anti-heroes), thus the bikes themselves aren’t as central to the plot.

Kristy (a very attractive Jess Walton), a former biker mama, is trying to live the dropped-out life on a commune run by Alex (Paul Prokop, looking a little like Trapper John M.D. meets the Beach Boys’s Mike Love). One day Kristy and her brother Jeff (Michael Ontkean) run into a few members of Kristy’s former gang. Word of warning for modern sensitive types: women are treated incredibly poorly in these vintage biker movies, there to be fondled, exploited, raped, etc. Kristy’s backstory has it that, as the mama of nutjob biker president Rebel (a truly menacing Clint Richie), she witnessed a brutal gang-rape carried out by Rebel’s gang on some poor girl (we of course get some full-on exploitation material in a flashback sequence). After this Kristy escaped the biker life, and Rebel has vowed that if he ever finds “the dirty whore” he’ll rape her to death, too.

There’s a definite sense of danger that Rebel and crew will catch Kristy, but humorously no one else’s safety is a consideration; she hides in the commune farm at one point while the bikers run roughshod over everyone, even attempting to rape one of the women (there’s plentiful toplessness in this one, but it’s always as a result of a woman’s shirt being torn off by a biker attempting rape). When Rebel’s men catch Kristy there’s some crazy stuntwork, with her bundled up and strung between two choppers as they tear along the road. This leads to some cool unexpected plot detours, though; Kristy manages to crawl from where Rebel’s stashed her outside a bar and onto a road, hoping to stop whatever traffic happens to come by…and finds herself surrounded by another biker gang. What’s worse, one that has a score to settle with her from her days as Rebel’s mama.

This rival gang has gotten its Diversity and Inclusion checklist decades before anyone else; it’s a multi-racial mix of men and women, led by a fierce black lady called Black Widow (Lavelle Roby, sporting a perfectly spherical afro). Hell, there’s even a sexy Asian babe in the mx, but the camera never really captures her face and her dialog is clearly dubbed. Even more “D&I before D&I,” she appears to be in a lesbian relationship with Black Widow. This movie would perplex all the Safe Spacers of today; the diversity and female empowerment is through the roof…but the women are constantly being fondled, stripped, and raped. Oh and also in this new biker gang is Albert Popwell, who of course is most remembered for his appearances in the first three Dirty Harry flicks; his character gets the most focus outside of Black Widow, and he wields a nasty pitchfork in the final battle to memorable effect.

The cool thing about The Peace Killers is that it strives to be more than just a simple revenge film; one could argue Bury Me An Angel tried the same, but that one constantly fell on its face with jarring tonal changes, going from revenge thriller to slapstick comedy and back again. The Peace Killers delivers a slew of strong characters – strong in context of the genre, that is – and has them react in ways that cause for change and growth. For example commune leader Alex preaches against violence and turns his other cheek to Rebel and his men as they tear up the commune, to the point of course where Alex starts to look like a foolish coward. But baby when push comes to shove…maybe you should put your money on the rail-thin pacifist hippie guru instead of the brawny speedfreak biker.

The climax is great and everything Naked Angels should’ve been; in a prefigure of John Milius’s Conan The Barbarian the communers (is that a word?) sharpen stakes and set up a series of deadly booby traps to snare the bikers. A busty brunette communer really kicks some biker ass, but Black Widow and her gang don’t come off so well, Black Widow in particular. But as stated Albert Popwell gets to pitchfork someone, but this too has an extra element, as the victim, who himself has murdered innocents, starts pleading for mercy. I mean I liked this one a lot, but wish the finale had paid off a little more…we only learn what happened to Jeff, for example, due to some off-hand dialog, and I would’ve preferred to see more of a comeuppance for Rebel.

Werewoles On Wheels (1971): I was familiar with this title from various grindhouse trailer compilations, and also several years ago Andy Votel released the fuzzed-out soundtrack on his Finders Keepers label. I was under the impression this would be a campy biker-horror cash-in, but as with The Peace Killers I was surprised at how good Werewolves On Wheels really was. It’s more along the lines of Easy Rider with an overlay of the Satanic renaissance that was going on at the time in the counterculture; I mean if Kenneth Anger ever made a werewolf biker film it would’ve surely been like this. Somehow this low-budget bikersploitation picture captures the burned-out, occult-heavy vibe of the early ‘70s, and it does so incredibly well.

The focus is more on mounting suspense and terror, and while we do get to actually see a werewolf on a chopper, it doesn’t happen until the very end of the film. But man the bikers in this film seem legit, even if one of ‘em was a former child actor on Father Knows Best! (Billy Gray as “Pill,” who doesn’t get any lines until the third act.) Our heroes are the Devil’s Advocates, an outlaw biker gang who when we meet them are tearing through the desert roads of California and raising hell. These aren’t the peaceniks of Easy Rider; the movie opens with a pair of yokels running a couple bikers off the road, and the gang goes for some beatdown revenge.

There’s a subtle bonkers vibe to the film, too, I mean there just happens to be a friggin’ Satanic temple in the countryside (hey, it was California in the early ‘70s), and the bikers carouse on the temple grounds and raise hell. Then a bunch of robed monks come out and serve them bread and wine. The bikers partake gluttonously and then pass out. Here the flick goes full-on Satanic Psych, with a surreal sequence of the monks doing a ritual (complete with a sacrificed black cat!) while the soundtrack goes into an unhinged bolero that sounds like the last part of The Doors’ “The End.” Then the main biker mama (ultra-sexy Donna Anders, here credited as DJ Anderson, herself a former TV actor) wakes up in a trance and, as the “Bride of Satan,” doffs all her clothes and does a Satanic go-go before the assembled monks. Cool stuff and very well staged – and Anders is hot stuff for sure. You know I like my sexy Satanic chicks.

After getting his woman back, Devil’s Advocates president Adam (Steve Oliver) leads the bikers back off into the desert. Here the bad trip sets it – and I forgot to mention, but one of the bikers is a spaced-out cat named Tarot (who gives ridiculously literal readings of his tarot cards), who keeps warning the others that they’ve gotten into some heavy shit. At this point the werewolves show up, mostly kept to the shadows, appearing with the full moon each night and killing a few of the bikers. There’s some brief and well-done gore here, too, including a half-second shot of a female biker’s eye slashed out of her skull.

The werewolves don’t make a big appearance until the final minutes, and they’re along the linese of how Lon Chaney, Jr. looked back in the day, if maybe a little hairier. What I also enjoy about these old exploitation flicks is there’s no belaboring the point; the bikers realize that two of the gang are werewolves and give chase, determined to destroy them. It’s all just handled matter of factly and almost casually. There’s a fair bit of motorcycle stunt work here, with werewolf bikers on fire and doing mad leaps off cliffs and such. The finale delivers the mandatory downbeat ‘70s ending, but the shock reveal at the end is a bit muddled because we’re supposed to be surprised to see certain characters hanging out with the monks, but given that they no longer have beards or wear sunglasses and the like it’s hard to tell at first who they are.

Director Michael Levesque does a phenomenal job of keeping the film moving while delivering on both the exploitation and the Easy Rider-esque artsy angles. Some reviewers have complained the film is flabby in the midsection, but I thought it moved at a snappy pace, mostly because I just dug the vibe. It’s a mystery why this one isn’t better known; I’d guess it suffered from poor VHS or DVD releases in the past and no one felt like sitting through a film they could barely see – so much of it occurs in the dark that I could imagine a subpar print would render most of the action and actors invisible at some points. Anyway I really enjoyed this one and will certainly be watching it again in the future.

Thursday, July 26, 2018

Coffy


Coffy, by Paul Fairman
No month stated, 1973  Lancer Books

This paperback tie-in to the famous Pam Grier movie Coffy is notable for one thing – it takes an already sleazy story and makes it MORE SLEAZY. All I know about Paul Fairman is that he was a prolific writer who died in the late '70s, but he really hits the ball out of the park with this novelization, which is really all a grindhouse fan could ask for.

What Fairman does throughout is take already lurid material and just builds on it; there are no fade to black moments here, and if someone's merely shot in the movie you can be sure that in the book it will be elaborated with exploding brains and gore.  But most particularly what Fairman has done is just sleaze the story right the hell up.  My friends, Coffy the novel is damn sleazy.  How sleazy, you may ask? Just take a gander at the first-page preview, folks – I mean this the very first page of the book!! 


The book follows the same path as the film, so I’ll skip my usual overlong rundown. (I can hear your cries of relief even from here.) Fairman follows director/writer Jack Miller’s script most faithfully, only changing the most minor of details, but sleazing it up good and proper whenever the chance presents itself. Whereas the film would fade to black before the real kinky stuff, Fairman just keeps on going – hell, even in something as harmless as a catfight, ie when Coffy is fighting King George’s stable of whores, we’re informed that Coffy’s toe jabs up into a certain part of the female anatomy.

Fairman informs us that Coffy’s full name is Flower-Child Coffin, something I don’t think was made clear in the film. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen it so I might be wrong on that. And also that she’s comprised of so many various ethnicities that she comes off like a dark-skinned vision of bona fide lust; indeed, Coffy is “the kind of broad who could bring a man’s cock up with one look… Even decent guys got lustful where Coffy was concerned.” She’s got an Afro and she flaunts her stuff, but Coffy honestly comes off as a bit innocent in the novel – other that is than when she blows off a dude’s head within the first few pages of the book, forcing another guy to OD.

Coffy’s kid sister is now in a funnyfarm outside LA, her brains scrambled from the heroin she got hooked on. So Coffy lures the guilty pusher away with promises of sex, blows his head off with a shotgun, and then forces his companion to take a fatal overdose…and then she heads for work at the hospital! Coffy’s a nurse, same as in the film, though even here it’s not much elaborated on. What is elaborated upon is, as mentioned, the sleazy sex, so posthaste we’ve got Coffy bumpin’ and grindin’ with her politician boyfriend of sorts, Brunswick. But while Fairman might not leave the kinky details unexplored, he does drop the ball on important stuff – like the fact that Brunswick is black, something he doesn’t bother to inform us for quite a while.

On the side Coffy’s also giving the juicy goods to Carter, a black cop who refuses to give in to corruption, mostly after visiting Coffy’s sister in the asylum and vowing never to become part of the dirty machine that could produce such a wasted life. For this Carter’s beaten up by dudes with bats until he’s a vegetable, leading to one of those unforgettable lines: “Maybe he’ll be able to go to the bathroom on his own – someday.” Coffy’s with Carter when the two guys in masks attack him, and here Fairman elaborates in his own special way once again, with Omar, the more lecherous of the two hitmen, raping Coffy in graphic detail. This does at least get Coffy’s vengeance instincts all fired up; she vows to take apart the men who were behind Carter’s attack.

This puts her up against Carter’s corrupt partner McHenry (who of course is a white guy) and a local Mafia kingpin named Vitroni. But to get to the latter Coffy must first get through heroin dealer/pimp King George. In one of the book’s (and of course the movie’s) more memorable moments, Coffy goes undercover as it were as a high-class hooker from Jamaica named Mystique. Fairman as one might expect elaborates the sleazy world of King George’s harem, even including dialog between various whores about their johns.

To get the job though “Mystique” must first be “interviewed” by King George, leading to the sequence featured on the first-page preview; in the book itself it’s actually more graphic, and again a good indication of how Fairman indulged in his sleaziest impulses while writing the novel. But then the entire harem stuff is great, with Coffy instantly running afoul of the other hookers, leading to the memorable bit where she sews razor blades into her Afro and King George’s main woman grabs Coffy’s head in the catfight, slicing her hands up in the process. Even more so in the novel the reader can’t help but feel bad for King George, though; his fate – tied to a car and hauled along by Vitroni’s thugs – is much more grisly and gory here, with copious detail of his mutilated corpse.

Coffy herself doesn’t come off as hard-bitten as Pam Grier potrayed her. While the Coffy of the novel starts off strong, she’s prone to self-doubt and fearful at times, like when she’s captured in her failed attempt at killing mob boss Vitroni. Here we see Coffy pleading that she just “wants to go home” when Omar tosses her into a pool outhouse for safekeeping. But Fairman does his best to make the character more believable: when the novel storms for its awesome conclusion, Coffy realizes she’s able to change her personality like she changes her clothing – veering from a frightened woman to an emotionless killing machine in response to whatever situation she’s faced with.

There’s a line near the very end of the movie, which also appears in the book, where Coffy says over the past few days she’s been living in a nightmare, and that she’s still in the nightmare, and I recall reading something once where Quentin Tarantino raved about this line, how it was great writing – in fact he might’ve even been arguing that the line could be taken literally, that the events of the film really were a dream. Whether intentional or not, Fairman does capture the surreal texture of a dream in the finale, which faithfully follows the onscreen events – Coffy is taken off to her death, but through a series of events both accidental and planned, she’s able to not only escape but to turn the tables on her would-be killers. It’s a great sequence, complete with cars crashing on the freeway and a shotgun-armed Coffy taunting her former captors.

Fairman goes for more of a downer ending than the film – not that he changes anything. It follows the same course, Coffy extracting bloody vengeance at Vitroni’s house with that shotgun, then heading for a final confrontation with her old boyfriend at his beach cottage. But after dispensing justice Coffy tosses the gun aside and walks out along the beach, knowing that the cops are on the way and not caring – she just walks on and on, hoping to walk forever. What a bummer! The reader can be cheered up by the fact that Coffy did return, sort of; the following year’s Foxy Brown, again written and directed by Jack Hill and starring Grier, was conceived and written as a sequel to Coffy, only for the studio to request at the eleventh hour that it become its own thing, as sequels weren’t doing well at the time or something.

Overall though, I was grandly entertained by Paul Fairman’s Coffy novelization, which was a breeze of a sleazy read, coming in well below 200 pages of big print. Lancer clearly wanted to cater to the porn readers of the day, as the back of the book’s filled with ads for Lancer’s sex-focused books. One imagines then that Fairman was given the marching orders to filth up the story, and he succeeds admirably – I was actually more entertained by the novel than by the film, and that’s really saying something.

Monday, May 8, 2017

Framed


Framed, by Art Powers and Mike Misenheimer
May, 1974  Pinnacle Books

In addition to their men’s adventure series, Pinnacle also published a lot of standalone crime-thriller paperback originals, usually labelled, like this one, as “adventure” on the spine. Unfortunately a lot of these titles are obscure and/or scarce these days, which is a pity in the case of Framed, as it’s a helluva ‘70s crime novel – and brutal, too, with grisly carnage like eyeballs popping out, point-blank blasts to the face by Magnum revolvers, maulings by killer guard dogs, and torture via spark plugs. Hell, it’s even got a fairly explicit sex scene, so what more could you ask for. 

I’d never heard of the book – and when researching it was surprised to find there was even a film adaptation, released the following year and starring Joe Don Baker, more of which below. But as for the novel itself, I was able to find out that authors Art Powers and Mike Misenheimer were ex-convicts, of the Ohio State Peninteniary, and had actually published a nonfiction book about their experiences there a few years before. It appears that Framed was their sole novel, released in only this paperback edition and promptly forgotten (other than the film, that is). It’s a shame, as these two prove themselves to be very talented authors.

Framed is written in first-person, narrated by an ex-con named Ron Lewis (mistakenly referred to as “Tom Lewis” on the back cover). Seven years ago Ron was sent to Ohio State Pen for murdering a sheriff’s deputy in Steubenville, Ohio, but it was a frame; Ron killed the man in self-defense, as the deputy had been sent to murder Ron for something Ron saw but shouldn’t have. Ron came out the victor of the fight, but the people behind it all were able to send him to prison on trumped-up charges. Now Ron has served his time and has returned to Steubenville to bust those fuckers up.

Like the best crime fiction, Framed is lean and mean and doesn’t waste time with inessentials. Like for example Ron himself. We’re given no real background on him, what he does for a living, where he’s from, etc. All we learn is that he served for two years in Korea, after which he tried college but dropped out after a semester. He then ended up in Steubenville, shortly after which he ran into the trouble which sent him to prison for seven years. And now he has returned, apparently in the present (ie 1974).

Despite their solid writing skills, not to mention their gift with a melancholy vibe, the authors appear to lack math skills. As mentioned Ron served in the Korean War, which ended in 1953. When checking in with the sheriff’s office upon his return to Steubenville after getting out of prison, Ron gives his age as 31. This would imply the novel is set in the mid 1960s at the latest. And yet the book is clearly set in the early ‘70s, with references to Twiggy, Jimi Hendrix, the 1968 Ohio Pen reforms, and even the Beatles song “Something,” which alone places the novel after 1969. But who knows, maybe like Don Pendleton Ron lied about his age so he could serve in Korea. Or maybe he lied to the sheriff’s office.

What happened seven years ago is capably dispensed in bits and pieces without stalling forward momentum. Framed occurs in almost a postmodern format, with Ron making his return, figuring out who was behind the frame, and plotting his revenge; this takes precedence over the backstory of what happened that night seven years ago. For that matter Ron’s time in prison is also only sporadically referred to, with only one (kind of jarring) part where he goes into an extended flashback about his time there. That being said, it made total sense when I learned the authors themselves were ex-cons, as former prisoner Ron marvels over things that would be ignored by the average person, like the simple act of putting a key into a locked door and letting himself in. It’s little touches like this that elevates Framed beyond your basic (but bloody) revenge tale.

The novel opens with Ron getting off the bus that has returned him to Steubenville. He’s met at the depot by Susan, aka “Susan Cool,” a hotstuff nightclub singer Ron was involved with seven years ago. She takes him back to her place where she “balls [him] out of compassion,” though the authors leave this one fade to black; a later sex scene between the two is more in-depth, with Ron’s statements that his “tumescence was complete,” and Susan “grasping [his] extended manhood.” But after the “balling” Susan tells Ron he should leave town; the people behind his frame are still around and don’t want him here.

A funny (but I don’t think it was intended as such) element in Framed is Ron’s (and thus the authors’s as well?) sentiments toward women in general and Susan in particular. Simply put, she’s there to have sex with him and make his meals. While the former is implicit the latter is, uh, plicit (I stole that from somewhere but can’t remember where). Ron often tells us that Susan’s main chore is to make his meals, and there are many scenes where he sends her off to the kitchen to whip up food while the men talk. Anytime she gives him backtalk Ron simply ignores her, and he usually evades her questions. Indeed Ron treats Susan with such casual misogyny that Bill Cartwright of Operation Hang Ten could take a few pointers from him – high (or low?) praise indeed.

What happened was that seven years ago Ron decided to go out driving late one night. Passing by a field, he was shot at by some unseen assailant. Returning home, Ron was jumped in his garage by a burly sheriff’s deputy, one with a reputation for sadism and brutality. Ron, realizing he was about to be taken away to be killed, not arrested, engaged the dude in mortal combat. This fight, friends, is to Gannon levels of brutality. These two beat each other to burger, with Ron biting out a “chunk” of the deputy’s neck and finally ripping out his eyeball, which he shows to the dying deputy before throwing it in his face! (“He was strangling on his own blood and his own eyeball.”)

Ron is sent away for murdering an officer of the law, and his story of innocence is ignored. Now he uses Susan to figure out what’s happened since he was gone. For one, the sheriff at the time, a beefy dude named Morello, has become mayor. The new sheriff was a deputy back then but doesn’t seem to know anything about what happened. There’s also a new deputy who was cousins with the man Ron killed and who periodically threatens our narrator, usually getting his ass kicked – Ron himself, by the way, is a musclebound hulk. There’s also a black cop on the Steubenville force named Sam, who gradually assists Ron; Sam is aware of the corruption in town and knows Ron was framed.

Also assisting Ron is Vince, his old cellmate, a professional thief/Mafia hitman who ironically enough has been sent to Steubenville on a hit assignment, only to realize his target was none other than his old cellmate. Instead Vince gives Ron a warning and also loans him a .38. He suggests Ron call up another old prisoner pal, Sal Viccarone, a Mafia don who still wields power despite being behind bars. A simple call to a number Sal provided gets the underworld heat off Ron, but there’s still the question of who put the hit out on him in the first place.

More assassins follow, including a pair of hitmen who show up outside Susan’s home one night; Sam takes them out, now fully helping Ron. Our hero doesn’t just sit around; in the field that night years ago he spotted a yellow sports car, and tracking down leads finds that it was owned by the hippie son of current Ohio senator Polanski. The punk now lives with a bunch of hippies in Cleveland, serving as their lawyer; the authors bring to life the squalor of a hippie pad as Ron questions young Polanksi and learns that his dad had sold the yellow car long before the night of the shooting.

Ron’s now certain Senator Polanksi was behind the frame; he gets further confirmation when three killers get the jump on him outside of Susan’s place; Susan meanwhile has revealed that she was raped seven years ago, threatened to keep her mouth shut about Ron’s innocence…and conveniently one of the guys waiting for Ron now is the dude who raped her. We get another bit of Gannon-esque ultraviolence as Ron wrecks the car they’re in into a train and then beats the guy in the tail car to burger, even ripping apart his nostrils with his bare hands – and of course it’s the guy who raped Susan. Ron then proceeds to shoot off his ear and torture him for info with a skinned spark plug. The scene climaxes with a .357 Magnum blast to the sonofabitch’s face. As I say, the novel is wonderfully hardcore.

But Polanski senior also turns out to be innocent, or at least mostly so. Cornering the senator, Ron gets the full story. That night seven years ago Senator Polanski had just killed the man who was selling drugs to his son in that field. When Ron happened to drive by, the senator flipped and thought it was an accomplice. After firing at Ron’s car, Polanski blabbed to Sheriff Morello, who promised to square things away. Ron was framed, and in exchange for keeping Polanski’s name clean, Morello was able to exert his influence over the senator in various underhanded pursuits, not to mention gaining his help in becoming mayor of Steubenville.

This takes us into the climax, where Ron and Vince break out the revolvers and infiltrate Morello’s heavily-guarded home, a sequence which has Ron punching a killer guard dog to death. While this finale doesn’t have the explosive action I was hoping for, it does at least have a satisfactory end, with various reversals and reveals, as well as a quick firefight. Also it features the above-mentioned dog mauling, which sees the unfortunate victim’s face chomped and ripped to bloody ribbons.

Framed even features that other mainstay of ‘70s crime fiction: the downer ending. Not in the “everyone dies” fashion, but more so in an ironic sort of defeatism. The last chapter jumps into third-person and tells us of a man killing off a few cops who are guarding someone in protective custody, someone who is serving as a witness against the mob. The assassin then drowns the witness himself in the ocean. While he is never named, it is implied that the assassin is Ron, who post-vengeance has taken a job with old prison pal Sal Viccarone, who at novel’s end offered him a job in the Syndicate. The irony being that Ron has spent the novel fighting hitmen who blindly followed orders, killing without care, and now he himself has become one of them.

All told, Framed is damn great. There’s a level of introspection that is skillfully worked into the narrative, never slowing it down, just enough to give it an extra dramatic boost. It also has an assortment of memorable characters, and the brutal violence goes beyond some of the men’s adventure novels of the era. About the only misstep is the cover, which is cool enough, but I figure is recycled from something else, as it has nothing to do with the novel. That sunglasses-wearing dude in the snazzy suit sure isn’t Ron Lewis, and the array of profiles behind him doesn’t bear much relation to the characters in the book – I mean, the guy in the hat at the center appears to be Chinese or something, and there isn’t a single Asian in Framed.

As for the film, Framed came out in 1975, but it’s copyright ‘74; Powers’s and Misenheimer’s novel is credited, but they did not write the script. The movie is much inferior to the novel. Joe Don Baker stars as Ron, and admittedly I didn’t picture Baker as the protagonist when reading the novel, but then I can’t think of a single novel in which I ever have. (I still think he made for the best onscreen Felix Leiter though – I mean, at least Baker’s from Texas!). Ron is more fleshed out in the movie, though I feel this detracts from his cipher-like nature in the novel. “I’m a gambler,” he helpfully exposits in the first few moments of the film, and he’s more of a bumbling redneck than the stone cold badass of the book.

The movie drops the template of the novel and follows a linear format, with Ron’s framing and prison service playing out in real time. The manner of Ron’s frame is also changed; in addition to the “wrong place, wrong time” setup of the book, here he’s intentionally framed due to his gambling winnings, which are taken by the corrupt sheriff. The action is also changed from Ohio to Tennessee, making the film part of the slew of “redneck revenge” exploitation yarns that were popular at the time.

The producers maintain the violent setpieces of the novel as closely as they can while still making it a mainstream picture; Ron’s brawl with the deputy is bloody, but no eyeballs pop out, and while Ron still shoots off the rapists’s ear he doesn’t blow off his face as in the novel. The action is the most memorable part of the film, in particular the film’s recreation of the scene in which Ron wrecks his car into a train – a stuntman is almost incenerated as he rolls away from the exploding car. All in a day’s work!

Finally, the flick skips the downer, ironic ending and gives us a veritable Happily Ever After, as Ron, his vengeance sated and his money returned, makes off with Susan – who herself has been changed in the film; gone is “Susan Cool,” replaced by a shrill harpy who grates the nerves. All told, the film adaptation of Framed is passable hicksploitation, but doesn’t come close to matching the brutal impact of the novel.