'SCREWBALLS' FOR CHEERLEADER VOYEURS

Notice the ROCK N ROLL HIGH SCHOOL clips in this Corman-made trailer

'SCREWBALLS' FOR CHEERLEADER VOYEURS

Miami Herald, The (FL)
May 23, 1983
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic


Screwballs, the latest attempt to capture the essence (or at least the box-office take) of Porky's, does not aim so high as My Tutor. At stake is not virginity but mere voyeurism: The boys of Taft and Adams High School (that's "T.A." on the cheerleaders' sweaters) have vowed to seduce the school's last virgin, Miss Purity Busch, but they will settle happily for just a look at her breasts. The story of this endeavor consumes 80 minutes of film.

And it's a more entertaining story than My Tutor, because it is occasionally funny. It's occasionally dumb, too, and thoroughly tasteless -- particularly when the school nerd, bowling naked, becomes entangled with his ball. Don't ask.

The formula here is joke-a-second, which means that some hit even while most are missing. This does not recommend Screwballs for grownups, though the scene in which Principal Stuckoff refers to his students as "vermin, heathens and scum" is enjoyable on virtually any level.

Too much of the material here plays off lactation and masturbation to keep any but the most repressed adult interested, though there is no denying the vitality of the production. It is, if nothing else, enthusiastic.

And because it is less bound by formula -- less stupid, if that can be comprehended -- than Porky's, Screwballs is funnier. That is not saying much, but Screwballs was not conceived as a film for scholarly inquiry. If you like naked women posing as high-school cheerleaders, your moment has arrived.

Movie Review

Screwballs (R) **

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CAST

Linda Shayne, Peter Keleghan, Lynda Speciale, Alan Daveau, Kent Deuters, Jason Warren, Jim Coburn, Raven de la Croix

CREDITS

Director: Rafal Zielinski

Producer: Maurice Smith

Screenwriters: Linda Shayne, Jim Wynorski

Cinematographer: Miklos Lente

Music: Tim McCauley

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A Millenium release

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Running time: 80 minutes

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Vulgar language, nudity, sexual situations

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At Trianon, Normandy, Marina, Kendale, Movies at the Falls, Regency, Tropicaire Drive-In, Movies of Pompano, Sheridan, Movies of Plantation

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HOW BOBBY BECAME 'A' STUDENT

HOW BOBBY BECAME 'A' STUDENT

Miami Herald, The (FL)
May 23, 1983
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

The sexual double-standard endures, and in the movies has produced a peculiar subgenre of softcore-fantasy films whose most interesting aspect is that they are made at all. Beginning with Private Lessons in 1981, the business of attractive women deflowering teenage boys has drawn audiences to tedious movies at a surprising rate. My Tutor is the latest.
Plot details of these films vary within a narrow range, and My Tutor is conventional: A high-school student in Southern California has flunked French, which imperils his acceptance to Yale ("I had to pull a lot of strings to get him in," says Dad), which means in turn that the "best French tutor in the city" has been engaged for irregular-verb duty over the summer. Student is Bobby, 17. Teacher is Terry, 29. Ooo-lala.

Bobby approaches the whole project with considerable trepidation, as he and a pal had planned to use the summer, by a varity of schemes, to escape from virginity. These plans, which depend heavily on commercial transactions, keep going awry.

Happily, Terry turns out to be the kind of French teacher who takes midnight swims in the raw. She also takes aerobic dancing, and footage of her in leotards, bumping and grinding down at the spa, are used as filler whenever the action flags. This is more frequently than one might imagine at first; films such as My Tutor are straight-line affairs, frustration, frustration, frustration, despair, jackpot, and it's tough to get a full 90 minutes without the padding.

Anyway, Bobby has a wonderful summer, and so does Terry. The softcore consummation scene is a gauzy triumph, and by the end of the film Bobby is fully prepared to attend the college of his choice.

Though My Tutor contains many scenes meant to provide comic relief, there is only one that works: Hired to deflower Bobby in the early going, the local drive-in slattern is caught flagrante delicto in a well-used backseat by her fiancee, the leader of a motorcycle gang. "He hates it when I do this," she says to Bobby, and one wants to love this movie.

Otherwise, alas, My Tutor is witless. It seems to take forever for Bobby to learn to conjugate, and he's pretty slow at French, too. As for the double standard, note that simple role reversal -- older man deflowering teenage girl -- produces not a softcore sex comedy, but a crime drama. And that's a different genre altogether.

Movie Review

My Tutor (R) *

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CAST

Caren Kaye, Matt Lattanzi, Kevin McCarthy, Clark Brandon, Bruce Bauer

CREDITS

Director: George Bowers

Producer: Marilyn J. Tenser

Screenwriter: Joe Roberts

Cinematographer: Mac Ahlberg

Music: Webster Lewis

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A Crown International Pictures release

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Vulgar language, nudity, implicit sex

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At Palm Springs, Miracle, Byron/Carlyle, 163rd Street, Ambassador, Cutler Ridge, Dadeland, Kendale, Gateway, Pompano, Southland (Fort Lauderdale), Plaza, Broward Mall, Coral Springs Movie Center, Lakeshore Drive-In, Thunderbird Drive-In.

CHAUFFEUR' SURE TO DRIVE YOU NUTS

'CHAUFFEUR' SURE TO DRIVE YOU NUTS

Miami Herald, The (FL)

March 20, 1986

Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic


A genuinely weird sense of humor is at work in My Chauffeur, a comedy about a Madonna wanna-be who finds work with a Beverly Hills limousine service staffed by crusty old misogynists.

"You're deluded," says the limo boss to Casey, a flighty young woman. "Oooh. I've never had a 'lude in my life," says Casey.

That kind of thing.

My Chauffeur has moments of pure daffiness, unhinged stuff. But it is also the most ineptly made comedy in years, so badly made that it is ultimately unwatchable.

The film is such a catalog of blunders that it might well
serve as a film-school training tool. Continuity, that concept by which one shot within a scene seems logically to follow another, even though they may have been filmed at different times, is simply abandoned here. In one scene, an old driver is seen struggling hopelessly to light his pipe, which has broken apart and is in two pieces; when the camera cuts away and pulls back for a wide shot of the other drivers, there's the old man in the back, puffing contentedly and holding a cup of coffee that seems magically to have sprung into his hand. In another, a performance by a rock band, the singer's agent refers to the "stadium," when the performance is clearly taking place in a small room.

The script is similarly jumbled: In the opening scenes,
Casey arrives, desperate for the job despite the fact that the other drivers don't want her around. A scene later and she is no longer interested, and has to be persuaded to stay on. A scene later, she desperately wants the job again. The entire film is disconnected in this way; the direction is wretched.

But it is no worse than the performance by Deborah Foreman as Casey, who is by turns and for no apparent reason slatternly and sweetly innocent. Foreman grins throughout her performance, no matter what is happening, whether she is happy, menaced, confused, angry. Like the rest of the cast, which includes the strange magicians Penn and Teller as well as E.G. Marshall and Howard Hesseman, she appears to have performing skills, and even has her moments. But like the film, she is more often simply bad.

My Chauffeur (R) *

CAST: Deborah Foreman, Sam Jones, Sean McClory, Howard Hesseman, E.G. Marshall, Penn Jillette, Teller.

CREDITS: Director: David Beaird. Producer: Marilyn J. Tenser. Screenwriter: David Beaird. Cinematographer: Harry Mathias.

A Crown International Pictures release. Running time: 97 minutes. Vulgar language, nudity, sexual situations.

Herald movie critics rate movies from zero to four stars.

**** Excellent *** 1/2 Very Good

*** Good ** 1/2 Worth Seeing ** Fair

* Poor Zero: Worthless

BRONSON AT WORST IN 'ROMPER ROOM' ROMP

BRONSON AT WORST IN 'ROMPER ROOM' ROMP
Miami Herald, The (FL)
April 22, 1986
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

Charles Bronson is back, grimier than ever, in Murphy's Law, the latest in his series of low-budget action dramas. Happily, he is not a vigilante this time. Unhappily, he needs a posse anyway -- to round up his director and screenwriter and make them accountable. Where do they get these ideas, anyway?
This one begins with Bronson as a tough homicide detective who has acquired a number of enemies, any one of whom is capable of framing him for the murder of his faithless ex-wife.

One does, and we know who (though not why). What we don't know is why Bronson spends half the film handcuffed to a young car thief (Kathleen Wilhoite) whose dialogue consists almost entirely of uinspired epithets ("C'mon, weenie roast...have a hernia, motor mouth," she says in one of the few printable examples).

"What is this, Romper Room?" Bronson replies, and of course that is exactly what it is.

Once they have stolen the helicopter from the precinct house and flown off to crash-land on a drug factory, we know it's not going to be grown-up stuff, despite the quota (easily exceeded) of gratuitous bloodletting.

But it's a soiled Romper Room indeed, and further evidence, if any were needed, that Bronson ranks among the least discriminating stars in American film. He'll play anything, in anything, no matter how wretched.

Bronson makes Clint Eastwood look sensitive by comparison. He also makes him look like a giant of the cinema.

As Bronson edges into his twilight, it would be nice to know him for something more.

CAST: Charles Bronson, Carrie Snodgress, Kathleen Wilhoite, Robert F. Lyons, Richard Romanus.

CREDITS: Director: J. Lee Thompson. Producer: Pancho Kohner. Screenwriter: Gail Morgan Hickman. Cinematographer: Alex Phillips. Music: Marc Donahue, Valentine McCallum.

A Cannon Group release. Running time: 97 minutes. Considerable vulgar language, nudity, considerable violence and gore.

MOVIEGOERS ARE VICTIMS HERE

MOVIEGOERS ARE VICTIMS HERE
Miami Herald, The (FL)
September 10, 1984
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic


The Executioner, Part II is an ultra-low-budget action picture from 1982. It is of interest only for its shoddiness, which is surpassing; this is the first film in recent memory to fail in every aspect of the filmmaking craft.

The performances are wonderfully bad; most of the actors, of whom Chris Mitchum is top-billed, have a hard time just reading their lines. And Aldo Ray, who gets star billing, is in the film for a few 15-second scenes, each obviously shot one afternoon and inserted later; Ray is never seen in a shot with anyone else, though he is always exchanging dialogue with characters offscreen. Attempts to disguise this, using a body double and over-the-shoulder shots, are particulary clumsy.

Much of Executioner II is out of focus. The editing is so inept that in a number of scenes, sound effects or lines of dialogue are repeated; in other scenes, they're missing. The dubbing is so bad that it is impossible to tell what language the film was originally made in; it might have been English.

The plot has to do with a vigilante on the streets of Los Angeles, where, the voice of a "radio commentator" explains, the killer "shoots his victims, cuts them with glass or puts live grenades in their clothes." There are a number of subplots, each inexplicable, and one of the characters has recurring Vietnam flashbacks.

Even the ya-hoo crowd comes away disappointed, however, for among the film's missing pieces are most of its of violence and sex. There's one brief flash of nudity that is obviously accidental; it comes as a surprise to the actress, who giggles.

THE EXECUTIONER, PART II (R) NO STARS

CAST

Chris Mitchum, Aldo Ray, Antoine John Mottet, Dan Bradley, Renee Harmon, Jim Draftfield.

CREDITS

Director: James Bryant. Producer: Renee Harmon.

A 21st Century Distribution release. Running time: 95 minutes. Vulgar language, brief nudity, sexual situations, violence.

KINSKI, EXPLODING HEADS SAVE THIS 'CREATURE' FEATURE

KINSKI, EXPLODING HEADS SAVE THIS 'CREATURE' FEATURE

Miami Herald, The (FL) - May 28, 1985

Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

Creature is a clone of Alien (1979), even down to the advertising art work, which shows the creature bearing a marked resemblance to the alien -- something of a cross between an alligator and an anteater with an overdose of implacable evil thrown in. This makes Creature something of a genre straggler, the market for horror -in-space having peaked a couple years ago, and the film would be unremarkable except for the presence among the cast of Klaus Kinski, who is undeniably the weirdest star in contemporary motion pictures.

Kinski could probably name his project, but with very few exceptions -- Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo the most recent and notable -- he seems to prefer potboilers; as he said several years ago, "I like bad cinema."

Creature is indeed pretty bad, though it does have some competent effects work, including one of the better exploding- head sequences since Brian De Palma perfected the art in The Fury.

As it happens, however, Kinski's screen time is not large. He plays the lone survivor of a German deep-space research mission menaced by the creature, and as is so often the case in his "special-guest" appearances, his character acts according to motives that are at best obscure. His first move upon making contact with a rival American research team is the attempted rape of their security chief, a towering dominatrix named Bryce. Only after she whaps him around her neon-and-chrome boudoir does Klaus settle down and warn the rest of the folks what they're up against: a 200,000-year-old carnivore that controls its victims by putting little brain-eating crabs on their heads and letting them burrow for the cerebrum.

The only time Creature is at all fun is when the Kinski character reverts to form, lunging at Bryce while they're on patrol, cackling happily when she cuffs him across his life- support system. It's a shame when the braineater finally gets to him, and his head swells up.

By that time the movie is irredeemably formulaic, departing
from the plot of the far superior Alien only in minor detail. As usual, Kinski is ill-used by his pot-boiling bosses, who always miss the point: He makes a far better villain than the most fearsome of anteaters; he's even implacable.

Creature (R) **

CAST

Stan Ivar, Wendy Schaal, Marie Laupin, Lyman Ward, Robert Jaffe, Annette McCarthy, Diane Salinger, Klaus Kinski.

CREDITS

Director: William Malone. Producers: William Dunn, William Malone. Screenwriters: William Malone, Alan Reed. Cinematographer: Harry Mathias. Music: Thomas Chase, Steve Rucker.

A CFR Corporation release. Running time: 92 minutes. Vulgar language, nudity, sexual situations, violence and gore.

Herald movie critics rate movies from zero to four stars.

**** Excellent *** 1/2 Very Good

*** Good ** 1/2 Worth Seeing ** Fair

* Poor Zero: Worthless

'FRIGHT' RECALLS HORROR OF THE GOOD OLD NIGHTS

'FRIGHT' RECALLS HORROR OF THE GOOD OLD NIGHTS

Miami Herald, The (FL) - August 2, 1985

Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

Fright Night is not what you think. It is not just another wheeze from the slasher cartel, nor does it star Linda Blair. It's not Citizen Kane, either, but what the heck: This is summer.

Fright Night is about the vampire who moves in next door, and according to director Tom Holland, it's an attempt to "update" the whole idea of Dracula. But what it does best is quite the opposite: Fright Night resurrects the blissful naivete and dizzy plot implausibilities of the great wave of horror films of the 1950s and '60s, the Bronze Age of cinema.

It's daffy and sweet and sometimes unintentionally funny. It's even scary in its closing moments, when the genre- sanctified confrontation -- a boy with a wooden stake against the suave undead -- is re-enacted wholly without irony, as if Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Hammer Films, not to mention Bela Lugosi and Abbott and Costello, had never drawn blood.

Holland is a screenwriter (Class of 1984, Psycho II, Cloak and Dagger) making his directing debut, and his idea of something new is to have teen-agers discover odd doings next door, and turn to a washed-up horror -film star (played by Roddy McDowall with epochal fidgetiness) for help. The teens are
sexually repressed, but this is not really new; the vampire legends ooze Freud.

Holland was smart enough to keep the good old stuff in, too, from shape shifting to tricks of the undead trade (a vampire may not enter your house to bite you unless he has been invited in by the "rightful owner"). The cast plays them out with all the corn and plot holes (where is everyone else in the neighborhood, much less the cops, when the screams start in the old manse?) of the vintage Dracula spin-offs.

What's fun about Fright Night is that comforting sense of deja vu, by which one feels oneself stepping back, back, back in time, to an era when horror films were unabashedly dumb.

Fright Night is as silly as a film about hungry ghouls can be, and with the exception of an eccentric-teen turn by Stephen Geoffreys, a spiky-haired supporting player who looks as if he just wandered in from The Breakfast Club, there isn't really a "modern" moment in it. The movie is bloody and gruesome and quite harmless, just the way they made them "in the good old days."

Fright Night (R) ** 1/2

CAST: Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Amada Bearse, Roddy McDowall, Stephen Geoffreys, Jonathan Stark.

CREDITS: Director: Tom Holland. Producer: Herb Jaffe. Screenwriter: Tom Holland. Cinematographer: Jan Kiesser. Music: Brad Fiedel. A Columbia Pictures release.

Running time: 104 minutes. Vulgar language, nudity, sexual situations, violence and gore.

Herald movie reviewers rate movies from zero to four stars.

**** Excellent; *** 1/2 Very Good

*** Good; ** 1/2 Worth Seeing; ** Fair

* Poor; 0 Worthless

'THE DEAD' RETURN

'THE DEAD' RETURN

Miami Herald, The (FL) - November 5, 1985

Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

From Night of the Living Dead through Dawn of the Dead and now, to the concluding eruption of George Romero's gore trilogy, Day of the Dead, Romero has kept audiences off-balance. His zombie jamborees are so gruesome, and Romero keeps up on the latest in splatter-effects techniques so devotedly, that one is tempted to dismiss them as the very worst of a bad lot. After all, dismemberment is a limited form, and explicit gore hard to redeem.

But one may not dismiss Romero or his trilogy, because there has always been a filmmaking intelligence behind the work. This is as true of Day of the Dead as it was of Night and Dawn. And though Romero seems unlikely ever to reach the black-comic heights of Dawn, in which waves of zombies descended on a suburban shopping mall in answer to some sort of deep-seated genetic call, Day of the Dead has its moments of narrative depth.

By Day, the zombies who were first seen in scattered packs in the Pennsylvania countryside in Night have all but taken over the world. The principal survivors are holed up somewhere in southern Florida, where a detachment of troops uneasily coexists with a small group of scientists working on a living- dead cure. As usual, Romero has a metaphor handy: One of the scientists, whom the soldiers refer to with murderous disdain as "Dr. Frankenstein," has been vivisecting some of the zombies and attempting to train others as ghastly pets.

It's not subtle, this business, but compared to the desultory attempts at subtexts found in most contemporary horror films, it amounts to High Theme. It also provides comic relief -- what else to do but laugh when Frankenstein's great achievement turns out to be feeding his zombie without losing any fingers? -- as well as establishing the films' first sympathetic walking dead, a spaniel-eyed giant played marvelously by Howard Sherman.

As is traditional, such fooling where man is not meant to fool must bring judgment down on Frankenstein as well as on the loutish soldiers who threaten his work. Eventually, since this is Romero and these are his Dead, Day becomes a bloodbath of epic proportions. Tom Savini, a special makeup-effects craftsman, manages to move the state of the art another revolting step "forward," and Day of the Dead offers what are easily the screen's most graphic decapitations and disembowelings. Those with the stomach for it will find in this film revelations concerning special effects: They are astonishing.

But strong stomachs are called for. Romero does not cut away. He is not shy, and though Day of the Dead is the best performed and best written of the three films, and is clearly the work of a serious filmmaker, it is not for the unwary. Romero makes you pay for that theme. He must be approached by novices in the way that timid eaters approach a Japanese restaurant -- very, very carefully.

Day of the Dead (U) ** 1/2

CAST: Lori Cardille, Joseph Pilato, Richard Liberty, Terry Alexander, Howard Sherman, G. Howard Klar.

CREDITS: Director: George Romero. Producer: Richard P. Rubinstein. Screenwriter: George Romero. Cinematographer: Michael Gornick. Music: John Harrison.

A United Film Distribution release. Running time: 102 minutes. Vulgar language, much violence and gore.

**** Excellent *** 1/2 Very Good

*** Good ** 1/2 Worth Seeing ** Fair

* Poor Zero: Worthless

AS BAD CINEMA GOES, THIS IS A MASTERPIECE

AS BAD CINEMA GOES, THIS IS A MASTERPIECE
Miami Herald, The (FL)
September 10, 1986
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic
Estimated printed pages: 2

The movie business having become a thing of the vast, mediocre middle ground -- few highs, few lows -- you can wait years for a movie as bad as Cut and Run. As rare as a masterpiece is the film that is awful in every respect: script, direction, performance, sound, cinematography, the works. Cut and Run probably had lousy gaffers, too.
Mark and Fran (Leonard Mann and the hapless Lisa Blount) are a two-person cable-TV news crew out to rip the lid off the
drug-peddling racket. Fran is ambitious; she's after a Pulitzer.

On stakeout, they nearly get the scoop on a Colombian woman using the now-legendary hollowed-out baby method of cocaine smuggling. Alas, by the time they break into the gang's Miami headquarters, everyone inside has been murdered, and they're forced to settle for a standup amid the corpses. (It won't be their last disappointment, either; wait till they find out that Pulitzers are for print reporters, not broadcasters.)

Anyway. Mark and Fran hitch a ride to the Colombian jungle, where they hope to find more cocaine smugglers, a survivor of the Jim Jones Guyana massacre who's leading some sort of crazed gang, and the missing son of their producer back home. Pretty much everyone is dead at the jungle outpost, too, so they do another standup with the bodies. Fran breaks down. Who can blame her? The corpses all have blow-pipe wounds, and there are crocodiles in the river.

Eventually it turns out that there are at least three separate sets of villains in Cut and Run, not counting the
filmmakers. At no point is the action more than vaguely comprehensible, and there are whole stretches that make no sense at all. The film is notable only as further evidence of the remarkable career slide of Lisa Blount, who had her moment in An Officer and a Gentleman, and for the curious presence of Karen Black, looking florid and unnerved in an expanded cameo. Without exception, the cast is atrocious.

Cut and Run (R) no stars

CAST: Lisa Blount, Leonard Mann, Willie Aames, Richard Lynch, Richard Bright, Michael Berryman, Karen Black.

CREDITS: Director: Ruggero Deodato. Producer: Alessandro Fracassi. Screenwriters: Cesare Frugoni, Dardano Sacchetti. Cinematographer: Alberto Spagnoli.

A New World Pictures release. Running time: 87 minutes.
Vulgar language, nudity, implicit sex, violence.

**** Excellent; *** 1/2 Very Good

*** Good; ** 1/2 Worth Seeing; ** Fair

* Poor; 0 Worthless

'MAUSOLEUM': A HORROR HOWLER

'MAUSOLEUM': A HORROR HOWLER
Miami Herald, The (FL)
May 25, 1983
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

My favorite part of the new film, Mausoleum, is when Marjoe Gortner, playing a worried husband who has just been told that his wife is possessed by the devil, goes home, finds her more peevish than usual and asks, "Susie, what's gotten into you this evening, anyway?" But others may have their favorites, too.
Perhaps the scene in which Susie (played by Bobbie Bresee) is accosted by the gardener in her kitchen. Gardener: "We're alone at last." Susie: "What did you say?" Gardener: "Ah, the coffee. It smells good."

Or this romantic badinage involving Marjoe and Bobbie. He: "What's for dinner?" She: "Poached salmon. And me."

Mausoleum is that kind of movie, just bad enough from start to finish to be thoroughly entertaining to the connoisseur of potboilers. It's about Susie, who is a descendant of the infamous Nomed family (Nomed -- spell it backwards and it's Demon.), whose first-born girl children have long had problems with demonic possession. In the early going, a concerned
caretaker tries to prevent the young Susie from mucking about in the old mausoleum, but her eyes turn green and he stumbles out into the sunlight, where his head explodes.

Similar things happen to men who cross paths with the grown-up Susie, who fills the hours when Marjoe is at work by luring a variety of menials into the mansion, where they are exploded or worse. By mid-picture, the family has no domestics left, and there's gore all over the kitchen phone, but Marjoe never does figure it out. He gets his when Susie's breasts grow teeth (this is what really happens, yes).

Mausoleum was so casually made that toward the end, when Bresee flubbed a line and then giggled about it, the filmmakers said the hell with it and kept on rolling. It has dialogue to match its shabby effects, and it is wonderfully funny. Study the names of the cast and crew below; they may work again.

Review

Mausoleum (R) no stars

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CAST

Marjoe Gortner, Bobbie Bresee, Norman Burton, La Wanda Page, Maurice Sherbanee, Laura Hippe

CREDITS

Director: Michael Dugan

Producer: Robert Madero

Screenwriter: Robert Madero

Cinematographer: Robert Barich

Music: Jamie Mendoza-Nava

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An MPM release

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Vulgar language, nudity, sexual situations, violence and gore

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At Omni, Trianon, Marina, Ambassador, Miller Square, Movies at the Falls, 27th Avenue, Movie City, Movies of Pompano, Sheridan, Coral Springs, Movies of Plantation, Lakeshore Drive-In, Thunderbird Drive-In.

'XTRO,' 'XTRO,' READ ALL ABOUT THE GORE

Xtro photo from http://www.britmovie.co.uk

'XTRO,' 'XTRO,' READ ALL ABOUT THE GORE
Miami Herald, The (FL)
September 13, 1983
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic
Estimated printed pages: 2

Xtro has the year's best promotional tag line -- "Some extra-terrestrials aren't friendly" -- but as is often the case, the rest of the movie isn't so hot. Apparently the promotional effort exhausted the production team before the fact, or something.??Though Xtro offers some of the more unpleasant images in the screen history of father-son relationships, during the moments when the film is neither cheap-looking nor revolting, it does affect a rather eerie tone. Those moments are few, however.
Little Tony lost his dad three years before the action begins. He literally lost him -- one moment they were playing in their back yard somewhere in Great Britain, and the next Dad was gone in a flash of otherworldly light. When Dad returns, he is not the same.

Boy, is he not the same. At first he is apparently little more than inter-galactic larva, requiring the services of a monster rapist to find him a place to be born. This is accomplished, an unsuspecting woman carries to term in less than 30 seconds, and amidst much shrieking and rending of flesh, Dad is emitted, fully grown. He cuts his own umbilical, stops to melt a pay phone and heads for home, where he sucks little Tony's shoulder until the boy is no longer what he seems, either.

Little Tony develops the ability to make his toys come alive, takes hideous revenge on the neighbor lady when she kills his snake, and puts the au pair girl in a compromising position. Soon there are larvae and E.T. eggs all over the place. It's gross.

With a little more thought and an extra dollar or two, the
filmmakers might have come up with a scandalously funny spoof of E.T. They chose a festival of splatter effects instead, aiming Xtro squarely at that segment of the audience for whom The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and John Carpenter's The Thing were good stuff but too subtle.

Movie Review

Xtro (R) *

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CAST

Bernice Stegers, Philip Sayer, Danny Brainin, Simon Nash, Maryam D'Abo, David Cardy

CREDITS

Director: Harry Bromley Davenport

Producer: Mark Forstater

Screenwriters: Robert Smith, Iain Cassie

Cinematographer: John Metcalfe

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A New Line Cinema release

....

Running time: 82 minutes

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Vulgar language, nudity, implicit sex, considerable violence and gore

....

At DADE: Trianon, Apollo, Palm Avenue, Marina, Northside, Movies of Kendall, Regency; BROWARD: Coral Ridge, Movies of Pompano, Diplomat Mall, Coral Springs Movie Center, Movies of Plantation, Lakeshore Drive-In, Thunderbird Drive-In; PALM BEACH: Village Green, Movies at Town Center, Movies of Lake Worth, Beach Drive-In, Delray Drive-In.

DEATHSTALKER' PLAYS IT FOR LAUGHS

DEATHSTALKER' PLAYS IT FOR LAUGHS
Miami Herald, The (FL)
September 6, 1983
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic
Estimated printed pages: 3

The once-ballyhooed "sword-and-sorcerer" boom in films flopped faster than any movie trend in memory except, perhaps, Smell-O-Rama -- from the mediocrity of Conan the Barbarian it has been a short slide into the Valley of the Truly Wretched. So it is a pleasant surprise to be able to report the release of a hunk-against-the-barbarians film that, while not quite recommendable, nearly transcends its tatty genre.
The film is Deathstalker, and its hero is the muscled swordsman by that name who is pressed into reluctant service to recover the Magic Chalice of Power and the Magic Amulet of Power, thus reuniting them with the Magic Sword of Power, such unions being the conventional harbingers for the loosings of Good upon a Troubled World.

And there's trouble in this one, which appears vaguely post- Camelot; as the hero remarks early on, to a disenfranchised king who wants his help on a quest, "I steal and kill to stay alive, not for the luxury of glory."

The Deathstalker -- he is called Deathstalker by some, and Stalker by others, though no one uses his first name -- is reluctant to help largely because he has heard the story of how the Evil Sorcerer, Munkar, turned the last army to march against him into sheep. Deathstalker is offered an entire kingdom for his help, but observes, with the kind of concise analysis usually lacking in heroes of his ilk, that the kingdom "isn't worth much to a sheep."

Yes, Deathstalker has a humorous cast to it. In fact, there are times when the film reels rather drunkenly, abandoning its skimpy value as fable for the easy laugh. The result is a silly film that never takes itself seriously, which in turn makes it watchable. (The scene in which a hulking brute with the head of a pig tires of pummelling an enemy with his fists, and instead rips the arm off a passing warrior and uses it as a club is played for -- yes -- whimsy, and it works.)

This is also the first of the s-and-s films to give sex nearly equal time with disembowelment, a story concept we can only cheer. (Some of the sex is of the rape-and-pillage style, but the times, as we have noted, were troubled.)

There is no point in a detailed discussion of plot, quests being pretty much the same everywhere. Deathstalker hits the road in search of Munkar, meets an Amazon gal who fights with her shirt off, makes sausage of the pig-man and generally saves the day.

Among the women he is obliged to rescue is a princess played by Barbi Benton, who apparently clings to the idea of an acting career like a castaway to flotsam. Sadly, Benton has not yet learned even how to feign alarm; she smiles winningly throughout her rape.

Richard Hill, on the other hand, though trapped in the beefcake role (he's the Stalker), plays it wry and never lets
himself look stupid.

Help always arrives, in the guise of comic relief. In one scene the Deathstalker visits the scene of a medieval women's mudwrestling bout that is interrupted by some posturings by Munkar, who announces that the upcoming gladiatorial games will determine "whether Good, or Evil, will rule." At this point, a large man squirts up from the mud, fist raised, and shouts, "Evil." It's hard to hate a film with a scene such as that.

Movie Review

Deathstalker (R) **

....

CAST

Richard Hill, Barbi Benton, Richard Brooker, Lana Clarkson

CREDITS

Director: John Watson

Producer: James Sbardellati

Screenwriter: Howard R. Cohen

Cinematographer: Leonardo Rodriguez Solis

Music: Oscar Ocampo

....

A New World Pictures release

....

Nudity, implicit sex, violence and gore

....

At (DADE) Hialeah Cinema, Cutler Ridge, Westchester; (BROWARD) Coral Ridge, Southland, Diplomat Mall, Pembroke Pines, Browa rd Mall, Thunderbird Drive-In, Coral Springs Movie Center; (PALM BEACH) Cinema 70, Jupiter, PGA, Movies at Town Center

'CHAINED HEAT' LIKELY TO LEAVE FILMGOER COLD

'CHAINED HEAT' LIKELY TO LEAVE FILMGOER COLD
Miami Herald, The (FL)
May 30, 1983
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic
Estimated printed pages: 2

Chained Heat is your basic visit to the snakepit, with a few twists. One is the presence of Linda Blair, as the innocent (she's in for vehicular homicide, "an accident," which makes her cell-hardened fellow inmates snicker with anticipation). Another is that rarely in the history of either movies or the?penal system have prison officials and guards been seen to be quite this despicable.
In Chained Heat, one of the problems the gals have is with Ernie, the warden (played by John Vernon, once wonderful as Dean Wormer in National Lampoon's Animal House). Ernie has an office, but he also keeps a big-house sin pad, where he has hidden video cameras and a jacuzzi. He likes to have the inmates in for the night, get 'em in the bath and tape the whole deal. He saves the tapes and tells everybody about them. He's not very smart.

But he has problems of his own, because someone is muscling in on his illegal-drug racket; someone else is selling cocaine to the prisoners. The rival pusher is Ernie's gal Friday, Capt. Taylor (Stella Stevens), but Ernie doesn't know this, and he's pumping his informants for the truth. All the guards take sides, including one of the men, who is a rapist, and for whom the female guards act as pimps, and...

And so it goes. Chained Heat is pretty slimy all around, but it does have three moments of marvelous dialogue:

* In the midst of a wave of knifings, garrottings and bashings, most directed at squealers among the inmate population, Blair's character has just squealed. Confessing this to another inmate, she weeps softly and says, "Val, please don't hate me."

* Rioting prisoners are trapped inside the prison when a police helicopter arrives, and a voice comes over the bullhorn: "We've got the place surrounded."

* Ernie, while taping an inmate in the jacuzzi: "Don't call me Warden, call me Fellini."

Movie Review

Chained Heat (R) *

....

CAST

Linda Blair, John Vernon, Sybil Danning, Tamara Dobson, Stella Stevens, Sharon Hughes, Henry Silva, Edy Williams

CREDITS

Director: Paul Nicolas

Producer: Billy Fine

Screenwriters: Vincent Mongol, Paul Nicolas

Cinematographer: Mac Ahlberg

Music: Joseph Conlan

....

A Jensen Farley Pictures release

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Vulgar language, nudity, sexual situations, violence, adult themes

....

At Omni, 167th Street, Ambassador, Cutler Ridge, Kendale Lakes, Suniland, Coral Ridge, Ultra-Vision, Cinema Four, Sheridan, Coral Springs Movie Center, Movies of Plantation, Apollo

'HAMBURGER' HALF-COOKED

HAMBURGER' HALF-COOKED
Miami Herald, The (FL)
March 20, 1986
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic
Estimated printed pages: 1

In Hamburger, a man who keeps getting expelled from college for sexual dalliances -- "Sluts cost you your future," his mother yells -- is driven to enroll in the one school that will have him, a fast-food management-training center called Busterburger University.
Well, you can just imagine: He gets the ketchup and the mustard and the special sauce all mixed up, and he falls for the daughter of the company founder, who happens to be the girlfriend of the Busterburger U. drill sergeant (played by Dick Butkus, who seems far too intelligent for his surroundings).

Hamburger, like Police Academy and a dozen others before it, is essentially a basic-training sitcom with some softcore on the side. And like the films it imitates, Hamburger is an example of a perfectly good comic premise -- there's weirdness in modern food technology, bet your syntho-chicken nuggets there is -- botched by a script aimed at just that segment of the audience that is theoretically banned from attending R-rated films.

HAMBURGER (R) *

CAST: Leigh McCloskey, Dick Butkus, Randi Brooks, Jack Blessing, Sandy Hackett, Charles Tyner.

CREDITS: Director: Mike Marvin. Producers: Edward S. Feldman, Charles R. Meeker. Screenwriter: Donald Ross. Cinematographer: Karen Grossman. Music: Peter Bernstein.

An FM Entertainment release. Vulgar language, nudity, sexual situations.

WARRIORS' LOSES BATTLE OF BRONX

WARRIORS' LOSES BATTLE OF BRONX
Miami Herald, The (FL)
September 5, 1983
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic
Estimated printed pages: 2

New York under siege by rampant thugs is a premise that continues to engage filmmakers, and has at least since Walter Hill's fantasy-of-violence, The Warriors, in 1979. Provocative as the urban jungle may be, the idea nonetheless has appealed to filmmakers of successively smaller skill, and the movies -- Escape From New York, The Exterminator -- have grown worse as the mini-genre expands.
The latest in line is 1990: The Bronx Warriors, a poorly dubbed Italian production and an obvious synthesis of what has gone before. Youth gangs in a variety of colorful costumes do battle in the South Bronx, vicious killer-cops use flame and buckshot to rout them, blood flows.

It is 1990, of course, and the opening titles fill us in on the decay of civilization: "The Bronx was officially designated a high-risk district." (Always a bit behind the times, these guys -- that "designation" seems to have been acknowledged in the 1970s, and in fact the South Bronx is now in the process of being recovered.)

Anyway, Ann -- who wears a Chemise Lacoste sweater and is later billed as "the wealthiest and most affluent girl in the world" runs away from Manhattan and holes up with Trash, Ice and the rest of the Riders -- they may be thugs, but they're apparently more sensitive than the button-down men back at the Manhattan Corp., of which Ann is the heiress ("controls 60 per cent of the world's arms production.").

Ann's presence triggers slaughter -- rival gangs bubble with sexual tension, and the Hammer (the late Vic Morrow) and the Hot Dog (Christopher Connelly) are working for the Corp., trying to rescue her at all cost. Ann notes the bodies of two shotgunned Riders, and feels remorse: "They'd still be alive if I hadn't come here." Trash adjusts his leather vest and counsels, "Stop blaming yourself."

It's all pretty much like that until the final bloodbath. Morrow, Connelly and Fred Williamson walk sourly through their roles, aware that these are not resume-builders. In the background, the sounds of a film editor trying feverishly to make some sense out of the thing may faintly be heard. The subgenre has nowhere to go but up.

Movie Review

1990: The Bronx Warriors (R) *

....

CAST

Vic Morrow, Christopher Connelly, Fred Williamson, Mark Gregory, Stefania Girolami

CREDITS

Director: Enzo G. Castellari

Producer: Fabrizio De Angelis

Screenwriters: Dardano Sacchetti, Elisa Livia Briganti, Enzo G. Castellari

Cinematographer: Sergio Salvati

Music: Walter Rizzati

....

A United Film Distribution Co. release

....

Running time: 85 minutes

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Vulgar language, violence and gore

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At DADE: America, Movies at the Falls; BROWARD: Movies of Pompano, Movies at Plantation, Cinema 4, Coral Springs Mall; PALM BEACH: Jupiter, Mall Cinema, Movies at Town Center.



Picture stolen from www.enzogcastellari.com. Visit today

' FORBIDDEN WORLD' : ' ALIEN ' IN DISGUISE

'FORBIDDEN WORLD' 'ALIEN' IN DISGUISE'
Miami Herald, The (FL)
June 1, 1982
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic
Estimated printed pages: 2

Forbidden World, one of those genre knock-offs from the Roger Corman organization, looks a lot like Alien. That's bad -- after all, a lot of us have already seen Alien -- and it's good -- for a low-budget feature to look anything like at $10- million movie is at least a moral victory for the filmmakers, and for the unwary patron.

The sad part about Forbidden World is that the part that's missing is one of the cheapest, at least in contemporary moviemaking. For another $10,000 or so Corman could have had a real-life, not-so-derivative script. And then, given that he seems to have borrowed an expensive set somewhere (on Corman's budgets, the Forbidden space station is either borrowed, or testament to a genius production designer), this might have been one of the summer's sleepers.

As it is, Forbidden World concerns a strange and ruthless parasitic life form that takes over an experimental station in deep space. It's ugly, this thing, and it grows and mutates through progressively more ugly forms, each of which seems dedicated only to making a sloppy meal of the nearest human. That's pretty much Alien. And though Forbidden World adds a few gratuitious sex scenes (so perfunctory that they could play at the Pussycat matinees), the movie is a copy, plain and simple.

As this is a Corman movie (directed by someone named Allan Holzman, but a Corman film nonetheless), there are some over- the-edge moments, and a few tributes to horror films past. Corman steps outside the mainstream when he needs to shock, so the alien in Forbidden World leaves a trail of scooped-out brain cavities and still-breathing gore wherever he goes. In one nice twist on the old horror staple of man 'communicating' with a
misunderstood alien, comely geneticist June Chadwick (that's her stage name, yes.) taps a computer-screen greeting to the alien, who by this time is not only sentient but the size of a Mercedes with teeth. 'Can we coexist?' she asks, to which the new life form gives a 'Stand by' before impaling her with a tentacle. Boy, does she scream.

The effects are well-made and gruesome; the set is 'used-car tech,' a la Alien -- a space station that looks real and lived- in. Even the music is OK. But good gore only works in movies when the story is good, and this story is stolen, almost scene for scene.

Movie Review Forbidden World (R) ** (LEADER:)1..... CAST: Jesse Vint, Dawn Dunlap, June Chadwick, Linden Chiles, Fox Harris, Raymond Oliver CREDITS: Director: Allan Holzman Producer: Roger Corman Screenwriter: Tim Curnen Cinematographer: Tim Shurstedt Music: Susan Justin (LEADER:)1..... A New World release (LEADER:)1..... Nudity, implicit sex, violence and gore (LEADER:)1..... At the Trianon, Miami Gardens, Ambassador, Tropicaire Drive-In, Movie City, Mall, Movies at Plantation, Hiway Drive-In, Lakeshore Drive-In. (LEADER:)1..... **** Excellent*** 1/2 Very Good*** Good ** 1/2 Average** Fair* PoorZero: Worthless

'ESCAPE 2000' MAKES 1984 SEEM PLAYFUL

ESCAPE 2000' MAKES 1984 SEEM PLAYFUL
Miami Herald, The (FL)
October 12, 1983
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

On its very eve, 1984 continues to fascinate filmmakers with visions of the city as jungle and government as hyper-fascist. Sadly, the filmmakers thus fascinated have not included many of our more prominent artists, and the resultant films have been uniformly bad. Escape 2000 is the latest -- note that the fateful year keeps getting pushed up, the real 1984 not seeming likely to fit the bill at all -- and possibly the worst.

It is 2000 (or maybe 1995 -- movie and press-kit information are at variance on the issue). Nonconformists, known officially as Deviates, are packed off to Re-Ed camps for a long stretch of behavior modification. The Deviates are the good guys, of course -- one woman's offense seems to have been the fact that she ran a shop that sold cheap crystal -- and the government folks are very, very bad.

How bad? The head of the camp plays chess with foot-high pieces, and stages an inmate-hunt to amuse visiting dignitaries. One of the VIPs is a fat rapist; another is a homicidal equestrienne. Day-to-day harassment of the inmates is conducted by a huge bald man and his associate, who limps and carries a bullwhip that he is only occasionally able to snap. A loudspeaker sets the tone: "All Deviates assemble immediately in Center Compound." On their arrival, male and female prisoners are ordered to take showers together, and one woman is forced to clean fish.

Escape 2000 is about how the new arrivals manage to stage a revolt and spill a prodigious amount of blood; limbs are severed on several occasions, and at one point a vicious mutant bites off a man's small toe.

These proceedings are badly staged, badly performed, badly filmed and badly dubbed. Those with long memories and sharp eyes will detect the presence of Olivia Hussey, once luminous in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968), now appearing pinched, weathered and largely without talent as one of the
Deviates. The film is otherwise of no interest.

Movie Review

Escape 2000 (R) No stars

....

....

CAST

Steve Railsback, Olivia Hussey, Noel Ferrier, Carmen Duncan, Lynda Stoner, Michael Craig

CREDITS

Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith

Producers: Anthony I. Giannane, William Fayman

Screenwriters: Jon George, Neill Hicks

Cinematographer: John McClean

Music: Brian May

....

A New World Pictures release

....

Running time: 80 minutes

....

Vulgar language, nudity, brief implicit sex, violence and gore.

....

In DADE: Apollo, Omni, Trianon, Roxy, Marina, Movies at the Falls, America, Tropicaire Drive-In; BROWARD: Movies at Pompano, Sheridan, Coral Springs Movie Center, Lakes, Movies at Plantation, Lakeshore Drive-In, Thunderbird Drive-In; PALM BEACH: Boca Mall, Cross-County, Delray Drive-In

REVENGE ISN'T SO SWEET

'CLASS OF 1984': REVENGE ISN'T SO SWEET
Miami Herald, The (FL)
November 16, 1982
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

Here's a scene from the dark near-future as drawn by a new film called Class of 1984. When teacher comes to visit the home of Petey, a teenage trouble student, mother sends him packing and turns to console her son: "Don't worry, honey, he won't bother you again. Now go back in and watch TV."
Yes, it's ghastly, and what's become of parents these days, anyway? While they're tuning the TV and voting Republican, the kids down at the high school are pushing drugs, misspelling their graffiti and commiting ritual sacrifice in the biology lab.

And who's in the middle? Teachers. Teachers like Mr. Norris the music instructor at Abraham Lincoln High (irony.). He gets these words of advice from Abe Lincoln's principal the day he arrives: "You're not in Nebraska anymore, Mr. Norris...teaching is something you do in spite of everything else." And this: "Surveillance is the name of the game around here, Mr. Norris."

And so it is. Mr. Norris loses his good students (the ones with the well-trimmed hair) to Petey's gang; they drop like flies, to drugs and the knife and terror in general. Mr. Norris loses his friend, the biology teacher, who immolates himself after Petey slaughters his rabbits. And Mr. Norris even loses his wife, who is raped by the delinquents and then, for no apparent reason (these kids.) dragged off to the school to be concealed in one of the home rooms. Surveillance may indeed be the name of the game here, but they're not very good at it.

If the movies have taught us nothing else over the years since Death Wish, they have taught us what will happen in situations such as these. The victim will rise up and strike back. Even a teacher, a kind man such as Mr. Norris, will have had enough and will resort to any means -- power tools, if necessary -- to get revenge on his tormentors.

Mr. Norris (played by Perry King) is no different. He does get his revenge, which -- despite some mid-film twaddle about the leniency of the juvenile justice system and the lethargy of parents and administration -- is what Class of 1984 is all about. Mr. Norris even gets to use a power tool (a wood-shop circular saw, handymen) on one of Petey's gang.

The director, Mark Lester, is able to generate a crude energy throughout the film, particularly in the early establishing scenes in which we get to feel afraid along the Abe Lincoln corridors. But his film is so clearly about getting even rather than about troubled youth or any other societal problem that it seems, like Death Wish II and a hundred others, a waste of that energy.

Class of 1984 does offer two notable elements, however. One is the scene in which Roddy McDowall, before succumbing to a killer dose of teacher burnout, holds his students at gunpoint for a final class -- an idea that despite its troublesome legal implications has a certain appeal.

The other is the reaction of young people in the audience, who might be expected to identify with the students on screen. They cheer loudly not when Petey cuts class, but when Mr. Norris grinds up the gang down in the shop. As the movies are busily and profitably proving, the righteous spilling of blood cuts across many lines.

Movie Review

Class of 1984 (R) *

...

CAST

Perry King, Roddy McDowall, Merrie Lynn Ross, Timothy Vam Patten, Stefan Arngrim, Michael Fox

CREDITS

Director: Mark Lester

Producer: Arthur Kent

Screenwriters: Mark Lester, John Saxton, Tom Holland

Cinematographer: Albert Dunk

Music: Lalo Schifrin

...

A United Film Distribution release

...

Vulgar language, nudity, implicit sex, violence, gore

...

At Omni, Trianon, Apollo, Roxy, Marina, Movies at the Falls, 27th Avenue Drive-In, Movies of Pompano, Southland (Fort Lauderdale), Sheridan, Holiday Springs, Lakes, Movies of Plantation, Lakeshore Drive-In, Thunderbird Drive-In.



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'SORORITY ROW': COEDS NEVER LEARN

'SORORITY ROW': COEDS NEVER LEARN
Miami Herald, The (FL)
February 23, 1983
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

Every June 19, the creepy old housemother of Pi Theta closes the sorority house down, kicks out the students and disappears into the attic for a festival of strange behavior. You'd think the sisters would know when to leave ill enough alone, but slasher-movie kids, they never learn.
So it is, in The House on Sorority Row, that someone sets in to coed bashing. The killer is the type of psychopath who speeds for the basement boiler room, to lie in ambush. The coeds are the type of people who find, on their last day in school and on earth, a pretext to visit the boiler room.

As is usual for this durable genre, victim and villain are well matched. Though House on Sorority Row does not have a single screeching-cat red herring, and though power tools are not employed, it does have a classic of low camp, a scene in which a girl who has just been nearly brained by a falling corpse repairs immediately and alone to her bedroom, where she changes into a baby-doll nightie and stands with her back to an open window.

It also has a scene in which the heroine, the only virtuous gal in Theta house, confronts a classmate who has staggered in with a bludgeon wound to the head. "Jeannie," says the heroine, "did somebody do this to you?"

Those SAT scores are going down, all right, and the film- school folks aren't helping the curve.

Movie Review

The House on Sorority Row (R)

....

CAST

Kathryn McNeil, Eileen Davidson, Janis Zido, Robin Meloy, Harley Kozak, Lois Kelso Hunt

CREDITS

Director: Mark Rosman

Producers: Mark Rosman, John G. Clark

Screenwriter: Mark Rosman

Cinematographer: Timothy Suhrstedt

Music: Richard H. Band

....

An Artists Releasing Corporation release

....

Running time: 90 minutes

....

Vulgar language, nudity, implicit sex, violence and gore

....

At Tower, Roxy, Northside, 163rd Street, Astor, Campbell Square, Miller Square, Gateway, Florida, Mercede, Lakeshore Drive-In, Thunderbird Drive-In.<

'FRIDAY THE 13TH III': 3-D GORE COMING AT YOU by Bill Cosford

'FRIDAY THE 13TH III': 3-D GORE COMING AT YOU
Miami Herald, The (FL)
August 16, 1982
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

Friday the 13th Part III--In 3-D --perhaps the most eloquent statement of theme and content for a motion picture since I Spit on Your Grave. No excuses this time, folks: Don't write us, shocked and outraged, about how you went to the movies expecting some innocent fun and found...and found...this. The title is a demographic smart bomb, and if you're in the 7-17 target audience, Friday will find you. Otherwise, you ought to know better.
Beyond that, what to say? Through the miracle of refined 3-D -- not the cheesy stuff that scrambled vision across the nation during Comin' at Ya and Parasite, but a sumptuous pseudo-depth not seen here since Andy Warhol's Frankenstein several years ago -- you can now have the bloodbath in your lap.

And, to borrow from the sporting vernacular, in your face. In your face: popping popcorn, a bobbing yo-yo. A laundry-line pole, a baseball bat. A pitchfork, a knitting needle, a red-hot poker. Plus, two eyeballs, one dangling from an outstretched hand, another projected from a squeezed-in face. Someone offers a joint to your face as well, which, though not much of a 3-D effect, is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.

The only truly entertaining moment in Friday III comes in the first half-hour, after a woman in curlers is impaled on a knitting needle.

This early gore accomplished, the film jumps to a daylight scene, the Next Morning, and shows us a van-load of perky teens heading out for the notorious Crystal Lake, where so many other teens have died. There is little subtlety here, and no attempt to establish a credible circumstance for the slaughter to come -- the kids just pack up and head for the charnel house, throats vulnerable and soft bellies begging for the blade.

Implicit in the artlessness of this scene is the filmmakers' sense of the formulaic nature of their work, which requires no higher art than bartering with the butcher for spare parts; when the teen van moves out, like a fisheries truck loaded with trout for the spring re-stocking, it's a nod to the genre and a wink for the grown-ups in the crowd. The rest is in your face.

Movie Review

Friday the 13th Part III -- In 3-D (R) *


CAST

Dana Kimmell, Paul Kratka, Tracie Savage, Jeffrey Rogers, Catherine Parks, Larry Zerner, David Katims, Rachel Howard, Richard Brooker

CREDITS

Director: Steve Miner

Producer: Frank Mancuso Jr.

Screenwriters: Martin Kitrosser, Carol Watson

Cinematographer: Gerald Feil

3-D Supervisor: Martin Jay Sadoff

Music: Henry Manfredini

...

A Paramount Pictures release

...

Vulgar language, brief nudity, brief implicit sex, considerable violence and gore

...

At the 167th Street, Coral Ridge, Atlas, Lakes, Coral Springs Movie Center, Hi-Way Drive-In, Thunderbird Drive-In

...

**** Excellent*** 1/2 Very Good*** Good

** 1/2 Average** Fair* PoorZero: Worthless

’YOR’: CAVEMAN HUNTERS ACT SILLY

’YOR’: CAVEMAN HUNTERS ACT SILLY

Miami Herald, The (FL) - August 20, 1983

Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

In Yor, The Hunter From the Future, a bunch of spindly looking cavemen, dark-haired and dark-bearded and cloaked in scraggly dark furs, are doing battle with an even more swarthy band when Yor strides in to set things right. Yor is from another tribe, he’s blonde and clean-shaven, wears an itsy-bitsy loincloth and carries a big ax, and he’s a foot taller than everyone else. The frizzy-haired heroine named Ka-Laa takes this all in and approaches boldly: "Yor, you’re different from the other men I’ve seen." Ah, the Dawn of Enlightenment.

Yor, as it turns out, is not from prehistoric times at all, but as the title suggests, from the future. For that matter, so is everyone else, which may explain that while they are grunting, seizing, looting and pillaging, the cave characters are also exchanging such bons mots as "It’s like fire burning inside me, a question without an answer" and "Hurry, the gods must be appeased with fresh blood." and "My life has taken on new meaning."

They’re not always so sage, however. In one scene, Yor is warned by the only other blonde in the cave, the shapely Roa, that the Diseased Ones are about to put him to the knife. "They are convinced that sacrificing every stranger they capture is the only way to placate the gods," she says. Yor, none too quick in dealing with abstractions, replies: "What’s your name?"

Yor is meant to be another of the great-and-timeless quest pictures, of course, with the mighty Yor out to save his "civilization, " but its absurd dialogue lends it that extra dimension, and a recent preview audience chortled happily for the whole 90 minutes. Yes, it’s one of those films stupid enough to laugh at, which goes a good way toward excusing the bronze-age performances (Reb Brown plays the title hunk, Corinne Clery the smirking Ka-Laa) and chem-set special effects. The director was Anthony M. Dawson, billed as "a key figure in the Italian horror -film renaissance," which may explain why that renaissance has yet to reach these shores.

Movie Review

Yor, the Hunter From the Future (PG) *

....

CAST

Reb Brown, Corinne Clery, John Steiner, Alan Collins, Ayshe Gul

CREDITS

Director: Anthony M. Dawson

Producer: Michele Marsala

Screenwriters: Robert Bailey, Anthony M. Dawson

Based on the novel by Juan Zanotto and Ray Collins

Cinematographer: Marcello Masciocchi

Music: John Scott

....

A Columbia Pictures release

....

Brief vulgar language, considerable violence

....

At (DADE) Omni, Hialeah Cinema, Riviera, Marina, Cutler Ridge, Kendall Mall, Westchester; (BROWARD) Movie City, Movies of Pompano, Cinema, Diplomat Mall, Sheridan, Broward Mall, Coral Springs, Lakeshore Drive-In, Thunderbird Drive-In; (PALM BEACH) Cinema 70, Jupiter, PGA, Boca Mall, Delray Drive-In.

NORRIS PUMPS LIFE INTO ’WOLF’

NORRIS PUMPS LIFE INTO ’WOLF’

Miami Herald, The (FL) - May 5, 1983
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

"In terms of unassisted felony arrests," the captain says to Texas Ranger J.J. McQuade, "I’ll admit, your record is unrivaled." Savvy moviegoers know what to expect in this situation, for the dynamics of labor-management relations among motion-picture lawmen are never quite so simple. The movies demand an adversary relationship not merely between crooks and cops, but between cops and their bosses. Besides, the name of the movie is Lone Wolf McQuade, and no bureaucracy worth its memos likes a loner.

Why do they call him Lone Wolf? Maybe it’s because he keeps a real wolf at his door. Maybe it’s because his methods, in the tradition of Dirty Harry Callahan and the others, are unorthodox. In any case, the captain puts Lone Wolf on notice early: "You’re gonna start cooperatin’ with the state and federal agencies, understand?"

My, how quick-and-dirty action films have changed. A couple of sentences such as that would have been enough to send the action-film audience to the exits a few years ago, but today they serve as essential bits of exposition. After all, if the boss isn’t trying to stifle the top cop, where’s the conflict?

In the case of Lone Wolf McQuade, in which chop-sock veteran Chuck Norris plays the title role, it’s those very "state and federal agencies" that provide the action, mostly by screwing up the case against an illegal-arms syndicate so badly that Lone Wolf is at one point buried alive inside his turbo-charged Bronco. Yes, he drives out of the grave -- and there’s more.

Norris has never made a good film, but he has never made an unsuccessful one, either, so it’s hard to blame him for recycling the bits that work. Thus Lone Wolf McQuade might have been a conventional cops-and-robbers picture, and might have made more sense than it does, had Norris not felt the responsibility to address fans of the martial arts. So it is that David Carradine, once of TV’s "Kung Fu," is cast as Lone Wolf’s nemesis. The parts of the picture not given over to the bungling feds are devoted to setting up the climactic confrontation between Norris and Carradine, who at one point have at each other in a half-track and a bulldozer but are quickly stripped of all weapons but hands, feet and grunts.

So it’s all pretty silly. But it does move along, and the range of weapons is formidable. Steve Carver, who did Norris’ An Eye for an Eye, knows how to handle action, though Lone Wolf might have been more convincing had he let any of the bad guys shoot straight.

As for Norris, he may be a loner, but he is also good and earnest, the type of man who is willing to say, "My kind of trouble doesn’t take vacations." Strong? At one point, Lone Wolf and his ex-wife watch as a chauffeured limousine pulls up at the house, and a midget in a wheelchair debarks. "I’ll take care of this," Lone Wolf says, and we know everything is going to be all right.

COMMERCIAL TIE-IN NOTE: The Reese’s Pieces windfall from E.T. is now legend, but rarely do we see a product endorsement as bald as that offered in Lone Wolf McQuade. After a couple of shots in which characters are seen chugging Pearl beer, this scene develops between Norris’ character and a fairgrounds bartender:

Lone Wolf: "You got any Pearl beer?"

Bartender: "No Pearl beer. Heineken, Michelob, Dos Equis."

Lone Wolf: "Forget it."

MovieReview

Lone Wolf McQuade (PG) **

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CAST

Chuck Norris, David Carradine, Barbara Carrera, Leon Isaac Kennedy, L.Q. Jones, Robert Beltran, Sharon Farrell

CREDITS

Director: Steve Carver

Producer: Steve Carver, Yoram Ben-Ami

Screenwriter: B.J. Nelson

Music: Francesco de Masi

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An Orion Pictures release

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Vulgar language in two languages (English and Spanish), violence

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At Omni, Palm Springs, Miracle, 163rd Street, Ambassador, Campbell Square, Dadeland, Miller Square, Movies at Pompano, Plaza, Lakes, Mercede, Lakeshore Drive-In, Thunderbird Drive-In.