THE NAKED CAGE (1986)--Directed by Paul Nicholas.  Stars Shari Shattuck, Christina Whitaker, Angel Tompkins, John Terlesky.  This tame women-in-prison movie from Cannon lacks the sharp cast and dripping sleaze factor of Nicholas' previous WIP, the classic CHAINED HEAT.  New fish Michelle (Shattuck) begins a three-year stretch after she's framed for a bank robbery actually committed by her coke-head ex-husband (Terlesky) and recent escapee Rita (Whitaker).  As usual, Michelle attempts to gain her freedom while simultaneously dodging the amorous advances of corrupt warden Diane (Tompkins), fighting back against a male rapist guard, getting into various brawls, and befriending a sweet junkie.  Shattuck lacks the feisty star quality of CHAINED's Linda Blair, and, even though all three lead actresses pop their tops (Tompkins was in her 40s at the time), NAKED just isn't outrageous enough to recommend.  Also with Nick Benedict, Larry Gelman, Carole Ita White and Stacey Shaffer.  Music by Christopher Stone.  "Paul Nicholas" is actually Lutz Schaarwaechter.

THE NAKED FACE (1985)--Directed by Bryan Forbes. Stars Roger Moore, Rod Steiger, Elliott Gould. This decent Cannon potboiler adapts Sidney Sheldon's first novel. Former 007 Moore acquits himself nicely in a change-of-pace role as a Chicago psychiatrist and widower accused of the brutal slayings of his secretary and one of his patients. Steiger, the chief detective assigned to the case, still holds a grudge against Moore for testifying on behalf of his partner's killer, saving him from Death Row. Steiger's abrasive manner is countered by good cop Gould, who seems willing to accept Moore's proclamations of innocence. Forbes' screenplay offers up a few interesting twists and turns, although it isn't too difficult to predict where the story is headed. There's also an unnecessary shock ending. The terrific cast really helps the thriller move. Also with Art Carney as a grizzled PI, Anne Archer, David Hedison, Ron Parady and John Kapelos. Music by Michael J. Lewis.

THE NAKED GUN: FROM THE FILES OF POLICE SQUAD (1988)--Directed by David Zucker. Stars Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, Ricardo Montalban, O.J. Simpson, George Kennedy. Hilarious spoof of TV cop shows in the AIRPLANE! vein. Not surprisingly, AIRPLANE!'s creators (David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams) wrote, produced and directed this movie too. The plot has something to do with detective Nielsen's investigation of Montalban's plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth at a California Angels baseball game. The plot doesn't matter; what does matter are the number of puns, sight gags, one-liners and other jokes that are scattered into the mix. There are more hits than misses in the screenplay, and the cast (Nielsen especially) carved out second careers for themselves as comedy performers. Also with Reggie Jackson, Dr. Joyce Brothers and Lawrence Tierney! Based on the TV series POLICE SQUAD, which also starred Nielsen as dim detective Frank Drebin. Music by Ira Newborn.

THE NAKED GUN 2 1/2 (1990)--Directed by David Zucker. Stars Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, Robert Goulet, George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson. Another funny spoof of television police shows starring Nielsen as Detective Frank Drebin of Police Squad. This outing finds Drebin on the trail of oily villain Goulet, who has kidnapped a brilliant scientist. Watch for the many gags and one-liners, including a truly obscure TWILIGHT ZONE reference. Also with Lloyd Bochner, Mel Torme, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Peter Mark Richman. Music by Ira Newborn.

THE NAKED GUN 33 1/3: THE FINAL INSULT (1994)--Directed by Peter Segal. Stars Leslie Nielsen. Detective Frank Drebin is back once again after two previous NAKED GUN vehicles and the brilliant POLICE SQUAD TV series, which had a six-episode run on ABC in 1982. Not quite as funny as the first two movies, but there are so many jokes that it's easy to dismiss the bad ones and savor the good ones. The emergence of Leslie Nielsen as a screen comedian is very bizarre. Try and take him seriously in any of his old TV guest shots. Regulars Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy and O.J. Simpson return. Featuring Fred Ward and PLAYBOY Playmate of the Year Anna Nicole Smith in some mind-bending dresses. With cameos by Elliot Gould, Mariel Hemingway, "Weird" Al Yankovic, Vanna White and Raquel Welch. Oh yeah, the plot involves Drebin going undercover in prison to capture a mad bomber (Ward) who plans to blow up the Academy Awards.

THE NAKED JUNGLE (1954)--Directed by Byron Haskin. Stars Eleanor Parker, Charlton Heston, Abraham Sofaer, William Conrad. Arrogant Heston, ensconced on his South American coffee plantation the last 15 years, sends away to New Orleans for a wife. She arrives in the form of a beautiful but stubborn redhead played by Parker (who had already received two of her three Academy Award nominations by the time this melodrama was made). Heston, a proud, swaggering sort who always has to be first, wants to get rid of her when he finds out she isn't a virgin, but her travel plans are disrupted by a posse of marauding soldier ants--the Marabunta--that is ripping its way through the jungle, annihilating everything--and everybody--in its path.

This George Pal-produced melodrama doesn't really deliver the goods until the last 20 minutes or so, which deal with the Marabunta threat and some impressive special effects sequences. Way too much time is spent building up the relationship between Heston and Parker, which may have been OK in a different movie, but in a George Pal thriller about killer ants--well, we wanna see the killer ants. Today, the dialogue and mail-order relationship between the male-chauvinist Heston and here-to-please-my-man Parker seems hopelessly outdated and unintentionally funny. Shot in Technicolor on what was probably a low budget, THE NAKED JUNGLE would also have benefited by shooting on location rather than the backlot. Conrad (TV's "Cannon") lends good support as the local head of law enforcement, and this movie may be your only chance to see the portly star in shorts. Screenplay by Ranald McDougall and Philip Yordan (reportedly a front for blacklisted writer Ben Maddow) was based upon a story by Carl Stephenson in ESQUIRE called "Leiningen vs. the Ants".

THE NAKED PREY (1966)--Directed by Cornel Wilde. Stars Cornel Wilde, Ken Gampu, Gert Van Den Berg. Very little dialogue in this violent adventure film shot on location in Africa. Wilde is captured by African natives, who strip him of his clothes and weapons, give him a head start, and try to hunt him down MOST DANGEROUS GAME-style. Wilde does an excellent job keeping the pace from flagging, and achieves realism by using authentic African actors and music on the soundtrack. Some of the violence is pretty brutal for a '60s release. Nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar. One of the best adventure films ever made.

THE NAKED SPUR (1953)--Directed by Anthony Mann. Stars James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan, Ralph Meeker, Millard Mitchell. One of the best Westerns ever made. Stewart and Mann made a number of films together, usually casting Stewart as a morally ambiguous anti-hero torn between violence and doing the right thing. Stewart seems to be regarded in history as the nice guy of the movies, but some of his best work was in Mann's Westerns and Hitchcock's VERTIGO, where his Scottie was certainly on the path to schizophrenia.

Here he's Howard Kemp, a bitter Civil War vet-turned-bounty hunter tracking a killer (Ryan) from his hometown. Along the path, he meets up with a crotchety prospector (Mitchell) and a Union soldier (Meeker), and, convincing them he's a lawman, convinces them to help out. Upon capturing Ryan, who's traveling with a young woman (Leigh), Meeker and Mitchell, realizing Stewart's a bounty hunter, decide to take a share of the reward money, and accompany Stewart and his prey back to Kansas. Ryan is very good as the deceitful, smooth-talking outlaw who sets out to turn his captors against each other in order to secure his freedom, while Stewart always seems on the edge--he lost his wife and his ranch during the war, and seems consumed by hatred and bitterness. The Oscar-nominated script was penned by Sam Rolfe (THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.) and Harold Jack Bloom, while William Mellor's splendid cinematography (THE NAKED SPUR was filmed entirely on location in the Rocky Mountains) is certainly worthy of Oscar recognition. This was Mitchell's final film; he died of lung cancer at the age of 50.

THE NAKED ZOO (1971)—Directed by William Grefe.  Stars Rita Hayworth, Stephen Oliver, Fleurette Carter, Fay Spain.  When is someone going to publish a career-length interview with Oliver?  The beefy leading man was in films directed by Russ Meyer and William Grefe, he was a regular on two television series, starred in the wonderfully titled WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS, and stole all of his scenes as vain bodybuilder Dugan Hicks in two Crown International drive-in flicks.  In this pointless, plotless exercise filmed in Florida, Oliver makes out with many different women, including 54-year-old siren Rita Hayworth in practically her final acting performance.

Oliver is a misogynist writer/gigolo named Terry who does precious little writing, but a lot of getting high, charming women of all ages, and screaming at his agent (played in a cameo by cheesy sitcom actor Joe E. Ross of CAR 54, WHERE ARE YOU?).  He picks up a sexy black chick with the line “We can miscegenate,” and she moves into his pad.  She doesn’t even mind when he makes it with other women, such as an Asian girl he seduces at a party and an embarrassingly unhip middle-aged woman, played by former starlet Spain (DRAGSTRIP GIRL) in a performance that I can’t decide is more humiliating for the character or for the actress.  Heyworth is one of Terry’s clients who tries to blame him for her elderly husband’s fatal accident.

Canned Heat performs in scenes inserted later by replacement director Barry Mahon that have nothing to do with the rest of the film and look oddly out of place, such as a topless girl lounging in bed with a vibrator that looks like a sander.  THE NAKED ZOO is a meandering, unpleasant film with an obnoxiously charismatic leading man and the novelty of GILDA star Heyworth in sleazy love scenes.  Also with Ford Rainey, William Kerwin, Willie Pastrano and Steve Alaimo, who burns the soundtrack with awful ballad singing. 

NAM ANGELS (1989)--Directed by Cirio H. Santiago.  Stars Brad Johnson, Vernon Wells, Rick Dean.  Roger Corman must have enjoyed the 1970 drive-in hit THE LOSERS, because he produced an unauthorized remake in 1989.  NAM ANGELS re-serves the primary gimmick—bikers on a rescue mission in Vietnam—but with less flair and more violence.  Lieutenant Calhoun (Brad Johnson in his first movie) recruits four Hell’s Angels to accompany him into the jungle to rescue two of his men who were captured by a renegade Aussie (Vernon Wells) and his army of primitive natives.  To lure the degenerate Angels’ help, Calhoun promises them a treasure of gold dust worth $10 million that’s hidden in a cave.

Director Cirio H. Santiago lacks the style and precision that Jack Starrett brought to THE LOSERS, but he attempts to make up for it in sheer volume.  Hardly any running time is left for story or characterization after Santiago finishes blowing up or shooting down a virtually limitless cast of Filipino extras.  Although his budget couldn’t have been much more than what Starrett had 20 years earlier, Santiago puts it all on the screen in the form of machine gun blanks and explosives.  NAM ANGELS isn’t a pretty film, but it does its job as mindless late-night filler.  I have fond memories of sitting up late during my college years, watching it on cable and laughing at it with my friends.  Thanks to the miracle of DVD, now you can do the same. 

A NAME FOR EVIL (1973)--Directed by Bernard Girard. Stars Robert Culp, Samantha Eggar. Probably your only opportunity to see Bobby Culp go "full monty" on us. It ain't pretty, and it don't make a whole lotta sense either. In this Canadian psychological horror film, Culp is John Burke, a big-shot big-city architect who tosses his TV off the balcony, chucks the rat race and moves to the country with his wife (Eggar) to renovate his great-grandfather's mansion. I think the estate is still haunted by the ghost of The Major (Culp in brief shots), who sleeps with Eggar and convinces Burke to kill her. Culp also has sex with a young woman he meets dancing naked at a barnyard orgy.

Girard's screenplay and direction is way too pretentious for its own good; it's unclear what is happening or why much of the time, but some of Culp's visions (he has them long before getting to the country house) are groovy, and the choreographed orgy dance sequence is fascinatingly bizarre. My video copy ran about 73 minutes, so it's possible it was a cut version. Some character development comes during off-screen expository dialogue early in the movie in which Robert Culp is definitely not voicing John Burke, which leads to audience confusion. Dominic Frontiere's bombastic music might have been great in a different movie, but he scores some scenes in which nothing is happening like a World War II battle scene. Billy Joe Royal pops up during the orgy to sing something written by Ed Cobb ("Dirty Water")! Filmed in Canada in 1970, but not released by Cinerama until '73. In the meantime, PLAYBOY published stills of the nude scenes. Also with Mike Lane.

THE NAME OF THE ROSE (1986)--Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. Stars Sean Connery, Christian Slater, F. Murray Abraham. Original but slightly dull murder mystery set in an Italian monastery during the 14th century. Connery plays a liberal-thinking monk who, with the aid of his teenage protg (Slater), solves a series of murders. An interesting mystery with a good performance by Connery, slow pacing, gloomy atmosphere and some Fellini-esque supporting actors. Also with Valentina Vargas (who has a nude scene with Slater), William Hickey, Michael Lonsdale, Ron Perlman and Elya Baskin. Four screenwriters adapted a best-selling novel by Umberto Eco.

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (2004)--Directed by Jared Hess.  Stars Jon Heder, Aaron Ruell, Jon Gries, Efren Ramirez, Tina Majorino, Haylie Duff.  Be prepared for one of the most original movie characters you've seen in awhile.  As played by Oregon newcomer Heder, Napoleon Dynamite is an affecting mixture of Carrot Top and Mark Fidrych...but more eccentric.  Gangly, socially inept and awkward beneath his Big Bird 'fro, Napoleon is a high school student so ostracized and nerdy that he makes Robert Carradine in REVENGE OF THE NERDS look like James Bond.  And despite his tendency to exaggerate and act rudely, he's remarkably likable, performed by Heder in such a way that we feel Napoleon's pain at the same time that we're laughing at it.

It's no wonder Napoleon is so maladjusted, living as he is with his peculiar grandmother (who keeps a pet llama in the side yard) and his even nerdier (if you can believe it) older brother Kip (Ruell), a jobless 32-year-old who spends all day hitting on women in Internet chatrooms.  Napoleon is picked on by bullies, ignored by girls, and hassled by life.  His only friends are Pedro (Ramirez), the new kid in school and seemingly the only Mexican student in lily-white Preston, Idaho, and shy Deb (Majorino), who takes photos as an after-school job.  After Napoleon and Kip's grandmother breaks her coccyx in a dune buggy accident, their uncle Rico (Gries), an out-of-it door-to-door salesman still stuck in his (not so) glory days of 1982, when he almost got into the Big Football Game, comes to stay with them.

A semblance of a plot in the original screenplay by the 24-year-old director and his wife Jerusha starts to rear up about midway through, as Napoleon tries to help Pedro win the election for class president against the impossibly pretty and popular Summer Wheatley (played by Duff, sister of A CINDERELLA STORY star Hilary).  But NAPOLEON DYNAMITE isn't about what it's about.  It's completely character-driven and comes alive in the mannerisms and the dreams of the main characters, all of whom are on the fast track to Nowhere.  Hess shot in his hometown of Preston, which appears to be a cultural oasis, stocked with rural stereotypes and an unwelcome affinity for conformity.  The humor is off-center, just like Napoleon, and is comparable to the whimsy perceptible in Wes Anderson's comedies like RUSHMORE.  And although NAPOLEON DYNAMITE is a very funny film, underneath it lies a layer of sadness.  In Napoleon's character, for sure, but even more so in his Uncle Rico, a youth-obsessed motormouth whose ambition is greater than his competence.  Gries, the son of the late film director Tom Gries (WILL PENNY), who was known for his affinity for character-based drama, scores big with the standout performance of his four-decade career, as does Ruell in a tricky role whose story arc could have become ridiculous (by this outlandish movie's standards, that is) if not for the actor's ability to make it feel real.

But it's likely that Heder's Napoleon Dynamite is the character you'll remember long after the explosions and CGI monsters playing next door at the multiplex have faded into obscurity.  Rude, impatient and clumsy with a predilection for tall tales, Napoleon is fascinating to watch, and when he leaps to his friend's rescue at the climax in a virtuoso physical performance, don't be surprised if your heart leaps into your throat.  Hess clearly likes Napoleon, and giving him (and everyone else) the happy endings they deserve means you'll like them too.  Shot in the summer of 2003 on a $400,000 budget, NAPOLEON DYNAMITE made a stir in the Sundance Film Festival, where Fox Searchlight acquired it and gave it a respectable release a year later.  It's actually a slight remake of a black-and-white short Hess made a year earlier, in which Heder played a similar character named Seth.

NARC (2002)--Directed by Joe Carnahan.  Stars Jason Patric, Ray Liotta.  A disappointment.  Joe Carnahan's crime drama was heralded as a throwback to gritty cop movies of the '70s like THE FRENCH CONNECTION, but all it is is a plot that could have been recycled from a TV cop show and fluffed up with gimmicky camera and editing tricks.  A puffy Liotta is very good as a rules-busting Detroit detective investigating the murder of his partner; a bearded Patric less so as an outcast reluctantly teamed with Liotta to solve the case.  I had been looking forward to seeing NARC, but it never really connected with me.  Shot in Detroit on a very low budget, Carnahan does a good job of making NARC look more expensive than it was, but the story is nothing that we haven't seen before on MANNIX.  Also with Chi McBride, Krista Bridges and Busta Rhymes.  Music by Cliff Martinez.

NARROW MARGIN (1990)--Directed by Peter Hyams. Stars Gene Hackman, Anne Archer, James B. Sikking. Entertaining, fast-moving thriller about an FBI agent (Hackman) who accompanies an important government witness (Archer) on a cross-country train trip. Needless to say, their lives are threatened by mob assassins every step of the way. There isn't much here that's fresh or inventive, but Hyams keeps thing moving, the performances are breezy, and that sure does look like Hackman and Archer hanging on the outside of that moving train! Remake of a 1952 B-thriller starring Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor.

NASHVILLE BEAT (1990)—Directed by Bernard L. Kowalski.  Stars Kent McCord, Martin Milner, John Terlesky, Cameron Dye.  The closest thing to an ADAM-12 reunion as you’re gonna get, NASHVILLE BEAT was the first made-for-TV movie produced for the now-defunct Nashville Network.  ADAM-12 stars McCord (who also wrote the story and served as executive producer) and Milner play Los Angeles Gang Unit cop Delany and Nashville desk jockey detective O’Neal, respectively, former partners on the L.A. force.  Delany goes to Nashville to track down a dangerous drug dealer named Rodica who plans to expand his operation there.  When one of O’Neal’s men is shot and killed by Rodica, O’Neal hits the streets with Delany, just like the old days, to track him.  Hannah Louise Shearer, a former EMERGENCY writer, generates MATLOCK-level excitement with her teleplay, but it’s fun seeing McCord and Milner together again.  I don’t know why they didn’t make an ADAM-12 movie, unless McCord couldn’t get the rights.  Garth Brooks performs in a country bar.

NASHVILLE GIRL (1976)--Directed by Gus Trikonis.  Stars Monica Gayle, Glenn Corbett.  I can imagine Southern drive-in audiences lapping up this New World release.  Softcore actress Monica Gayle stars as jailbait Jamie, a product of a strict Baptist upbringing who runs away from her hillbilly home and hitches with a pair of truckers to Nashville to become a country-western star.  The sloppy screenplay sure squeezes a lot of plot into less than 90 minutes.  After her brothers beat up her rapist, 16-year-old Jamie reaches the big city, only to be pawed and groped by literally every man she meets.  She meets a friend while showering at the YWCA, loses her, meets another while serving a prison sentence for prostitution, is pawed by a lesbian guard, gets paroled, bounces around from one record producer to another, loses her virginity to one sleazebag, and finally signs a personal contract with a country superstar played by Glenn Corbett (ROUTE 66) with a penchant for young girls.

Like many exploitation movies from the 1970's, rape and statutory rape are treated casually, and without the sleaze or nudity, NASHVILLE GIRL would probably fit well as a made-for-TV movie.  Gayle appeared as the sinister Dagger Deb Patch in Jack Hill's SWITCHBLADE SISTERS the year before, and it's a testimony to her range as an actress that she pulls off the naïve country girl character of Jamie pretty well.  Corbett, who usually played good guys on TV, probably relished the opportunity to do something edgier, and it's likely he enjoyed the close proximity to so many nude actresses.  Singer Johnny Rodriguez and songwriters Rory Bourke, Gene Dobbins and John Wills give Trikonis' expose a stamp of approval, even though it's a roaring indictment of the music industry.  The songs are pretty good, and I wonder if a NASHVILLE GIRL soundtrack album ever existed.  Drive-in fave Marcie Barkin (THE CAR) co-stars (in the nude), along with Maytag man Jesse White, ALIAS SMITH AND JONES' Roger Davis and Leo Gordon.  Marvel Comics writer Gary Friedrich penned a pornographic novelization of Peer J. Oppenheimer's script.  Trikonis did MOONSHINE COUNTY EXPRESS next.  Also released as COUNTRY MUSIC DAUGHTER, probably to capitalize on the success of COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER, and NEW GIRL IN TOWN, a title used in the northern U.S. so the Yankees wouldn't know the movie was about country music.

NATIONAL LAMPOON GOES TO THE MOVIES--See NATIONAL LAMPOON'S MOVIE MADNESS.

NATIONAL LAMPOON PRESENTS BARELY LEGAL--See BARELY LEGAL.

NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE (1978)--Directed by John Landis. Stars Tim Matheson, Tom Hulce, John Belushi, Peter Reigert, Karen Allen, Donald Sutherland, Stephen Furst, Bruce McGill, and John Vernon as Dean Wormer. Highly influential "slob" comedy set in 1962 about the misfit members of the Delta House fraternity. John Landis's anarchic direction and the Lampoon tone blazed a trail for comedies to follow. This was Belushi's first major film role. Great oldies soundtrack. Co-written by Harold Ramis. Ivan Reitman was one of the producers.

NATIONAL LAMPOON'S EUROPEAN VACATION (1985)--Directed by Amy Heckerling. Stars Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Dana Hill, Jason Lively, Eric Idle, John Astin. The Griswold family visits England, France and Italy, thanks to their rousing success on a TV game show (and a tasteless performance by Astin as the libidinous host). Comedy is most dull, except for a few instances of Chase slapstick and some truly funny bits by Idle as an accident-prone Brit. NATIONAL LAMPOON'S CHRISTMAS VACATION was next for the Griswolds.

NATIONAL LAMPOON'S LOADED WEAPON I (1993)--Directed by Gene Quintano. Stars Emilio Estevez, Samuel L. Jackson, Kathy Ireland, William Shatner, Denis Leary. Awful parody of Richard Donner's LETHAL WEAPON trilogy, which are basically parodies themselves. Estevez and Jackson, two actors with almost no comic timing, are the Gibson/Glover counterparts; Ireland, a model with no acting talent, is the sexpot/love interest; Shatner, who is a parody of himself anyway, is the villain. Influenced by the NAKED GUN films, but without the right performers or jokes. I never miss a William Shatner movie though. Larry Wilcox and Erik Estrada have cameos reprising their CHIPS TV roles. Look for bits by James Doohan, Jon Lovitz, F. Murray Abraham (in a SILENCE OF THE LAMBS spoof), Charlie Sheen, Phil Hartman, J.T. Walsh, Corey Feldman, Charles Napier, Whoopi Goldberg, Tim Curry, Denise Richards and even Bruce Willis.

NATIONAL LAMPOON'S MOVIE MADNESS (1981)--Directed by Bob Giraldi & Henry Jaglom.  Stars Peter Riegert, Ann Dusenberry, Robby Benson, Richard Widmark, Christopher Lloyd, Candy Clark.  What the hell is screen great Widmark doing in this sad, sad excuse for a comedy?  No list of the worst films ever made would be complete without this follow-up to NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE, which reportedly sat on the shelf for quite awhile before finally getting a brief release by United Artists.  It's made up of three segments which are, I guess, supposed to be parodies of movies, but they sure picked some strange genres to mock, and what's really frightening is that one, a disaster movie spoof, was so terrible that it was removed from prints before release.  The fact that the same people who produced NATIONAL LAMPOON'S MOVIE MADNESS were able to deem an entire sketch to be unworthy of inclusion makes me shudder to think what it must have been like.