It's Gonna Turn Out Baaaaaaaaad!
Mood:  spacey
Now Playing: LONE WOLF MCQUADE
Whew! What an epic night of crappy movies. Cheeseburger and Shark Hunter wanted their own special Crappy Movie Night, so I loaded up on excellent Crappy Movies that everyone else had already seen at least once, but they hadn't. We had a pretty good crowd tonight, fueled by tasty He'Brew beer, Miller High Life, Coca-Cola, sausage, cheese, chocolate chip cookies and Ritz crackers.

The opener was SWITCHBLADE SISTERS, an amazing 1975 exploitation film that manages to hit just about every genre possible: girl gangs, women in prison, blaxploitation, political satire, camp, womens' lib. It's a favorite of Quentin Tarantino's, who arranged a theatrical re-release of it in the '90s, and was directed by Jack Hill. Unlike many who toiled in exploitation movies, Hill is a quiet, thoughtful, intelligent, erudite man who found himself unable to escape typecasting and decided to make the best exploitation movies he could. THE BIG DOLL HOUSE and THE BIG BIRD CAGE are women-in-prison movies made in the Philippines for Roger Corman's New World Pictures, but are marked with an uncommon amount of wit and managed to work in the prerequisite amounts of nudity and violence without becoming sleazy. COFFY and FOXY BROWN were released by American International Pictures (Corman's biggest rival), and starred Pam Grier as sexy, sassy, smart black heroines. Other Hill films include PIT STOP and SPIDER BABY, and all are worth watching. SWITCHBLADE SISTERS is basically a fantasy, a JD version of OTHELLO, but with catfights, automatic weapons and truly memorable dialogue.

THE STABILIZER was next, a rare Indonesian action film featuring outrageous wall-to-wall violence, filled to the gills with shootouts, kung fu battles, exploding cars, squibs and several dangerous stunts (looking even more so because I doubt safety was much of a factor to the stuntmen involved) and crazy Ed-Woodian dialogue spoken by some of the world's blandest dubbing actors. Not that anyone could make lines like "You talented bastard", "I psyched you out" and "Anybody I kill personally I always consider to be my friend" sound like normal human conversation, but they're made even funnier by the obvious dubbing. It's one of my favorite films.

TERMINAL ISLAND is most notable for a pre-MAGNUM Tom Selleck's performance as a mercy-killing, drug-addicted physician sentenced to Terminal Island, an island prison off the coast of Southern California stocked with male and female inmates who fight a civil war over the women, who are the sexiest murderesses I've ever seen. One of a small number of drive-in flicks to be directed by a woman, Stephanie Rothman, TERMINAL ISLAND is well-paced and -performed by a good cast of former (Don Marshall--LAND OF THE GIANTS, Marta Kristen--LOST IN SPACE, Randy Boone--CIMARRON STRIP) and future (Selleck and Roger E. Mosley--MAGNUM, P.I., Phyllis Davis--VEGA$) TV stars.

At midnight, Cheeseburger and Shark Hunter split, but the rest of us stayed up for LONE WOLF MCQUADE, my favorite Chuck Norris film and, next to CODE OF SILENCE, his best film. This homage to Italian westerns pits Texas Ranger McQuade (Norris) against a vicious gunrunner played by David Carradine. It features three very good scenes between the two stars, and culminates in an excellent martial-arts battle between them. Francisco DeMasi, a veteran of many Italian action movies, scored it, and you'll recognize many cast members like L.Q. Jones, Barbara Carrera, R.G. Armstrong, Leon Isaac Kennedy, Dana Kimmell, William Sanderson, Robert Beltran and Sharon Farrell.

Panno and I were talking about a young lady of our acquaintance this afternoon, and he asked me if I would give up Chuck Norris movies forever in exchange for dating her. It was a tough call, but I finally decided that I would, but only because it's unlikely that Chuck will ever make another really good film. Then he asked me if I would give up Shatner...that's going a little too far, man!