'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