Dr. Minx (1975)

Notorious for her carnal abandon in onetime husband Russ Meyer’s movies and for cavorting naked at Cannes, Z-lister Edy Williams earned what appears to have been her first and last starring role outside adult films with this sloppy comedy/drama/thriller hybrid. Her mesmerizingly bad performance is the only reason to watch the movie, and it’s especially fun to watch her share the screen with B-movie icon William Smith. In other contexts, Smith’s acting often seems limited, but when performing alongside Williams, he seems like a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Anyway, Williams plays Dr. Carol Evans, a physician who recently conspired with her lover, Gus (Smith), to kill her rich husband for a $500,000 inheritance. When Gus begins blackmailing her, Dr. Evans seduces a young motorcycle-accident patient named Brian (Randy Boone), hoping he’ll help her kill Gus. Written and directed by bottom-feeding sexploitation guy Hikmet Avedis, Dr. Minx seems unsure which path to follow. Sometimes it’s a bargain-basement riff on Double Indemnity (1944), sometimes it’s a sex comedy, and sometimes it tries to play scenes straight—despite Williams delivering most of her dialogue in a Marilyn Monroe coo while her low-cut dresses fight a losing battle to contain her breasts. Especially weird is a subplot about Brian’s buddy, David (Harvey Jason), becoming an amateur sleuth. The subplot culminates with David imitating Peter Falk’s Columbo character in one scene, rumpled raincoat and all. Excepting those who find visions of a disrobed Williams captivating, only viewers who savor inept cinema will truly enjoy Dr. Minx.

Dr. Minx: LAME

The Swinging Barmaids (1975)

          When collaborating with producer Roger Corman, writer Charles B. Griffith often infused B-movies with an offbeat brand of social satire. When operating beyond Corman’s influence, however, Griffith frequently succumbed to lesser impulses. And so it goes with The Swinging Barmaids, a befuddling exploitation flick revolving around sexy women who sling drinks at a joint called the Swing-a-Ling. The movie is perplexing because it has aspects of respectable filmmaking, inasmuch as nudity is kept to a minimum and lip service is paid to workplace issues. The barmaids fret about grabby customers and sore feet, and one barmaid notes that she’s been able to put her boyfriend through medical school by letting drunks objectify her. Yet The Swinging Barmaids—a misnomer of a title, since none of the women sleeps around—isn’t about the plight of put-upon women. It’s about a nutter who gets off by killing them and photographing their corpses.

          The Swinging Barmaids gets darker and darker as it goes along, which is saying a lot seeing as how the picture opens with an uncomfortably lengthy real-time sequence of a dude stalking and slaughtering a busty blonde. (This first victim is played by sex-movie queen Dyanne Thorne.) Once the plot gets moving, B-movie stalwart William Smith joins the mix as the lead police detective on the case, though he doesn’t do much of anything until the grim climax. Receiving most of the focus is curvy waitress Jenny (Laura Hippe), the one with the boyfriend in medical school. Griffith’s script gives Jenny a fair amount of dimension, at least compared to the non-people one normally encounters in this sort of picture, but Griffith’s efforts are not sufficient to create any sort of emotional involvement.

          In lieu of proper drama, the picture becomes a ticking-clock scenario while the killer works his way through other victims on his way to Jenny. Even scenes of the killer covertly interacting with the barmaids once he talks his way into a job as a bouncer at the Swing-a-Ling feel like filler between murders. Regarding those murders, they’re rendered in a fairly restrained fashion, excepting the nasty opening kill. So even though it would be a huge stretch to describe The Swinging Barmaids as worthwhile cinema, the picture isn’t as relentlessly hateful as the usual women-in-peril grindhouse offering.

The Swinging Barmaids: FUNKY

Runaway, Runaway (1972)

          Given how attitudes toward the LGBTQI experience have changed for the better in the decades since this movie was made, it seems appropriate to offer two different reviews of Runaway, Runaway, sometimes known by the more succinct title The Runaway. From a 2017 perspective, the picture is problematic because it conveys a “straight is great” perspective. But from a 1972 perspective, the movie seems fairly sensitive. What’s more, I confess affinity for any film in which singular B-movie actor William Smith plays something other than a cretin. He’s only about the third-most-important character here, but he approaches a tricky role gently, adding a welcome nuance of evolved masculinity. To be clear, none of these remarks should suggest that Runaway, Runaway is something other than what it is, a low-budget melodrama with sensationalistic elements. The point is merely that it’s a better and more humane picture than it needed to be, despite trashy advertising materials suggesting something just shy of porn.

          After Ricki (Gilda  Texter) leaves her home in some ghastly Southwestern trash heap of a town, she hitches rides and gets abused and molested until meeting Frank (Smith), an East Coast private investigator traveling to California for work. He empathizes with her desire to find herself, and he never makes a pass at her because Ricki says she’s got a guy waiting for her in Los Angeles. Upon reaching L.A., Ricki searches for her boyfriend and falls in with various hippies until accepting an offer of lodging from Lorri (Rita Murray), a sophisticated prostitute. They embark on a hot-and-cold relationship that culminates with Ricki acquiescing to Lorri’s aggressive come-ons out of curiosity. How the story evolves from there further complicates the movie’s statements about gender identity.

          Writer-director Bickford Otis Webber, who never made another movie—instead embarking on a career as a Hollywood music editor—doesn’t evince any special cinematic skill here. Nonetheless, he approaches elements that might have been sleazy with taste, for instance shooting a scene of Lorri and Ricki frolicking nude on a beach from a distance with a long lens. And while the story’x conclusion hits the aforementioned “straight is great” note in a disturbingly definitive way, Bickford otherwise avoids judgmental rhetoric. So even though this is far too minor a film to merit a place in cinematic history, Runaway, Runaway is refreshingly open-minded in many of its particulars—from a 1972 perspective.

Runaway, Runaway: FUNKY

Gentle Savage (1973)

          Basically a riff on Billy Jack (1971) without the hippy-dippy speechifying and pretentions to political significance, Gentle Savage stars B-movie muscleman William Smith as “Camper” John Allen, an impoverished Native American who stumbles into a hassle with racist white people. Cheaply made and tonally inconsistent, the picture is little more than a brisk drive-in distraction, and the angsty leading role of pushes Smith’s limited acting abilities past their limits. What’s more, cowriter/director Sean MacGregor demonstrates only borderline competence, so the characterizations are stereotypical, the escalation of violence is predictable, and the oh-the-humanity pathos permeating the piece is trite. Yet taken for what it is, Gentle Savage (sometimes marketed as Camper John, hence the above poster) more or less gets the mindless job done. Naturally, those predisposed toward grooving on Smith’s singular screen persona, all growling primitivism and sinewy intensity, will get more out of the experience than others—even though his big crying scene is dodgy, Smith is interesting to watch whenever he expresses simplistic moods of anger, lust, and rebellion.

          John’s trouble begins one night at a dive bar, where hot-to-trot white girl Betsy Schaeffer (C.J. Hincks) propositions him. Initially refusing her advances, since he’s got a wife and kid at home, John unwisely accepts her offer of cash in exchange for a ride home on his motorcycle. Upon reaching her place, Betsy yanks John into bed, but then Betsy’s racist father, Kent (Kevin Hagen), arrives in time to swear vengeance against the escaping John. Later, Kent rapes his daughter and blames the crime on John, setting up a fugitive situation that enflames simmering racial tensions. Most of what follows is straightforward, excepting perhaps the “comedy” bits during which two white cops are stranded in the desert wearing nothing but underwear. Still, Gentle Savage hits the required notes of civil unrest, horrific violence, and martyrdom. Those seeking a race-relations drama with depth and relevance will be disappointed, but those seeking a straight shot of action-infused melodrama might find the picture adequate.

Gentle Savage: FUNKY

Blackjack (1978)

Utterly forgettable but basically competent in its storytelling and technical execution, Blackjack tells the humdrum story of an ex-con staging an elaborate heist in Las Vegas with the help of several fellow criminals. Despite the presence of B-movie icon William Smith in a supporting role, always a shot in the arm for any project, Blackjack was doomed to fail the moment hopelessly bland actor Damu King was cast in the leading role. He’s sufficiently formidable to put across the visual concept of a badass crook out for a payoff and/or payback—one gets the vague sense of a revenge angle—but he’s not interesting to watch. Neither are his exploits, because movies about ripping off casinos in Vegas are nearly as old as Vegas itself. The story begins with Roy (King) exiting prison after having acquired and/or sharpened his blackjack skills behind bars—because, of course, most penologists encourage inmates to participate in high-stakes gambling during their incarceration. Roy organizes old allies for an ambitious scheme to rip off casinos that are operated by the mob, and word of the impending crime reaches Andy Mayfield (Smith), the top security guy at one of the mob’s casinos. He has some sort of history with Roy, though parsing the details isn’t worth the trouble. Andy joins forces with a fellow enforcer, Charles (played by Tony Burton, familiar to fans of the Rocky franchise as Apollo Creed’s corner man), and they strive to prevent Roy from pulling off the heist. Events churn toward the inevitable showdown between Andy and Roy. Whatever. It’s all so familiar and pointless and unimaginative as to be painfully boring, even with a soundtrack powered by slick R&B/funk music.

Blackjack: LAME

Grave of the Vampire (1972)

Enervated horror flick Grave of the Vampire has a solid premise and at least one memorably perverse scene, but the combination of lifeless dramaturgy and stiff acting renders the piece impotent. Here’s the premise. When two lovers sneak into a cemetery one evening, they happen upon the crypt of Caleb Croft (Michael Pataki), a rapist and murderer who rises from the dead because he’s actually an ancient vampire. (Never mind that he was electrocuted and buried, and never mind that his resurrection defies even the sketchy logic of monster movies.) Caleb rapes the woman, who subsequently gives birth to a child that she raises by nursing him with blood instead of milk. When the child reaches adulthood as James Eastman (William Smith), he tracks down Croft, who has assumed a new identity as a college professor specializing in vampirism. (Again, never mind.) James uses detective work and eventually a séance to confirm that Croft is the creature who violated his mother, then seeks vengeance. Excepting the clumsy mechanics of the storyline, the underlying notion is fun—a vampire begets a son, who then wants payback. As for that perverse scene, it involves James’ mother discovering his taste for plasma. She accidentally cuts her finger and drips blood onto her baby’s face. He laps up the stuff, so she slices open her breast and he suckles the wound. If only the rest of the picture had that much nerve. Pataki, usually cast in humorous or thuggish roles, is atrocious, employing a community-theater version of sophisticated diction and moving like he’s got a wooden board tied to his back. Smith, badly miscast, spends most of the picture sitting in chairs while seething, so his powerful physicality is mostly wasted. All in all, Grave of the Vampire plays like a bad episode of Dark Shadows.

Grave of the Vampire: LAME

Angels Die Hard (1970)

The most amusing moment in this dreary biker flick feels like an accident. During one of the picture’s shapeless fight scenes, someone cracks two-by-four over a biker’s head, and part of the board gets impaled on the spike of the biker’s SS helmet. Conversely, the least amusing moment in the picture seems like it was envisioned as the apex of rebellious hilarity. The motorcycle gang at the center of the story kidnaps a spindly mortician, dragging him along throughout various adventures, so writer-director Richard Compton periodically cuts to the mortician calmly sipping an adult beverage while his biker acquaintances gang-rape a waitress nearby. Yuck. Shot on a meager budget and constructed with a borderline-incompetent approach to continuity, narrative logic, and screen direction, Angels Die Hard vomits its story out in chunks. Events happen that seem vaguely related, so the onus for connecting the dots falls onto the audience. Essentially, the bikers roll into a town, get into a hassle with locals, briefly redeem themselves by helping to rescue a kid who fell into a mine shaft, and then rumble with the locals. Various people get kidnapped and murdered and raped along the way. It’s never clear which character is supposed to be the protagonist, though Tom Baker and B-movie fave William Smith, both of whom play bikers, share top billing. While Baker’s character romances a local girl, Smith often stands around with nothing to do or say, a victim of the filmmakers’ ineptitude. It’s tempting to say that Angels Die Hard is for biker-movie fanatics only, but even those viewers may tire of the endless fisheye-lens shots and fuzz-rock scoring, seeing as how the movie these elements decorate is so aimless and dull.

Angels Die Hard: LAME

1980 Week: Any Which Way You Can

The box-office success of Every Which Way But Loose (1978) all but ensured that audiences hadn’t seen the last of Clint Eastwood playing Philo, a trucker with an orangutan for a pet and a side career as a bare-knuckle fighter. Whereas Every Which Way But Loose is an awful movie that can be explained away by assuming that Eastwood wanted a break from playing tight-lipped avengers, Any Which Way You Can is inexcusable crap. Rehashing the narrative elements of the previous film and sprawling across an absurd 118-minute running time, Any Which Way You Can is punishingly stupid. The die is cast during the opening-credits scene, a dull montage of a pickup truck driving while Eastwood and Ray Charles croon a ghastly country song titled “Beer’s to You” on the soundtrack. Then comes the insipid storyline. After being dumped by country singer Lynn (Sondra Locke) in the previous film, Philo retires from fighting, but gangsters offer him $25,000 to tussle with Jack (William Smith), a brawler with a reputation for beating his opponents to death. Meanwhile, Philo has misadventures with his drinking buddy Orville (Geoffrey Lewis) and Orville’s foul-mouthed mother (Ruth Gordon). Everything unfolds predictably. Friends ask Philo not to fight, and then criminals blackmail him into participating. At regular intervals, the movie stops dead for musical performances (by Locke, Glen Campbell, and others), as well as scenes of Clyde defecating in police cars and sharing a hotel room with a frisky lady orangutan. At one point, Clyde cavorts to the accompaniment of a song called “Orangutan Hall of Fame.” By the time Any Which Way You Can reaches its nadir—cross-dressing bikers, a 20-minute fistfight, homophobic dialogue—the idiocy has become intolerable. Although Eastwood wasn’t done scratching his comedy itch (please give the 1989 clunker Pink Cadillac a wide berth), at least Any Which Way You Can ended the actor’s orangutan era.

Any Which Way You Can: LAME

Darker Than Amber (1970)

          The first of numerous manly-man adventure flicks directed by Robert Clouse, Darker Than Amber is a grim piece of business filled with macho stoicism, nasty fistfights, and sexy babes. It’s escapism with a melancholy stripe, too brutal and tragic to pass for the average Saturday-matinee fluff, even though it’s not actually deep or probing. Beefy Australian Rod Taylor drives the piece with his appealing performance as quasi-investigator Travis McGee, a creation of prolific mystery novelist John D. MacDonald. McGee lives on a houseboat and shares adventures with his portly buddy, Meyer (Theodore Bikel). Although McGee claims to work only for a 50% finder’s fee whenever he recovers something a client has lost, he’s really a man of idiosyncratic but steadfast principles. Accordingly, the minor enjoyment of Darker Than Amber is watching how romantic entanglements with beautiful women draw McGee out of his shell and transform him into a violent crusader. Also noteworthy, of course, is the procession of 007-style spectacle and thrills, from mysterious dames hanging around gambling parlors to nefarious killers testing McGee’s mettle in personal combat. No viewer is likely to encounter anything in Darker Than Amber that he or she hasn’t seen before, but it’s a tasty slice of pulp fiction nonetheless.

          Things kick off when hulking thug Terry (William Smith) tosses unconscious beauty Vangie (Suzy Kendall) off a pier with a heavy weight tied to her legs. Unbeknownst to Terry, McGee sees the fall from a nearby boat and misinterprets it as an attempted suicide, so he rescues Vangie. This draws him into not only a love affair with the beautiful blonde, but also a dangerous mystery. Things get episodic very quickly, so there’s not much in the way of forward momentum, but most of the vignettes are interesting. For instance, a long passage of McGee getting dragged into a remote swamp by a would-be killer has an Elmore Leonard-esque sardonic edge. Kendall’s seductive quality bounces nicely off Bikel’s courtliness and Taylor’s swagger, while Smith, with his massive biceps and absurd bleach-blonde hair, channels villainy with characteristic focus and intensity. Better still, Clouse keeps things edgy and moody even when the story lags, finally shifting the movie into high gear with the brutal showdown between McGee and Terry that concludes the film.

Darker Than Amber: FUNKY

The Rockford Files (1974)

          The beloved ’70s detective series The Rockford Files got off to a, well, rocky start, when the show’s first installment, titled “Backlash of the Hunter,” was broadcast as a telefilm several months before weekly episodes began airing. As developed and written by series producers Stephen J. Cannell (later to become the king of the escapist action show) and Roy Huggins (who previously created the series The Fugitive and Maverick), the Rockford Files pilot contains most of the elements that gave the series its laid-back charm. Ex-con Jim Rockford lives in a trailer on the beach in Malibu, soliciting clients through an ad in the phone book. Something of an upbeat cynic, Jim expects the worst from people but hopes for the best. Perfectly capable of holding his own in fights, Jim nonetheless relies on avoidance, deceit, and trickery, since he’d rather do things the easy way. His network includes a crass LAPD detective; a squirrelly career criminal whom Jim met in the slammer; and Jim’s own dad, Joseph “Rocky” Rockford, a beach bum who handles odd jobs while Jim’s in the field. Most important of all, the pilot has James Garner in the leading role. Formerly the star of Higgins’ series Maverick, Garner is perfectly cast as a seen-it-all smartass who endures humiliating setbacks as often as he scores unlikely victories.
          Alas, the pilot movie tells a convoluted, inconsequential, and uninteresting story that’s delivered by way of one-dimensional characters and laborious plotting. The pilot also lacks the avuncular presence of series costar Noah Beery Jr., who played Rocky in the weekly episodes. (The pilot’s Rocky is Robert Donley, a capable actor who cannot match Beery’s avuncular flair.) As for the actual storyline, it’s a whodunit about a hobo killed at an LA beach, and Jim’s client is the hobo’s daughter, Sara (Lindsay Wagner, who later toplined The Bionic Woman). Clues eventually connect the murder to an old crime in Las Vegas, but the actual case is secondary to what the pilot reveals about Jim’s methodology. He cheats during fights. He lies to authorities and informants and suspects. He cuts deals on his day rate because clients are few and far between. “Backlash of the Hunter” is frustratingly uneven, though Garner’s charm and the skill of the supporting cast—which also includes Michael Lerner, Stuart Margolin, Bill Mumy, Joe Santos, Nita Talbot, and the indestructible B-movie icon William Smith—compensate for the iffy narrative. Once The Rockford Files found its groove, the series ran for six seasons, leaving the air in 1980, and then resurfaced between 1994 and 1999 for eight TV movies, all featuring Garner.

The Rockford Files: FUNKY

Scorchy (1976)

          Confusing, dull, and ugly, the crime thriller Scorchy stars sexy actress/singer Connie Stevens as an FBI agent who works undercover as an international smuggler. The general thrust of the story is that the heroine's life becomes complicated once she learns that a wealthy acquaintance has become a smuggler, meaning that to catch a criminal she must betray a friend. Not exactly the freshest story. In fact, the only things separating Scorchy from the average TV movie of the same era are gory kills and topless shots. That said, lurid action movies have their low pleasures, so it's not as if a film of this type needs to accomplish much. Yet meeting even minimal expectations is more than the folks behind Scorchy can manage. The storyline is needlessly convoluted, as evidenced by the presence of at least three major villains; character development and recognizable human emotion are as absent from the script as basic logic; and the stop-and-start pacing makes Scorchy feel disorganized, episodic, and repetitive.

          For example, the movie stops dead halfway through its running time for an epic chase scene that involves characters pursing each other on foot, in a commuter train, on dune buggies, and finally on motorcycles, suggesting the filmmakers wrongly assumed that a big jolt of action would generate a few moments of interest. Alas, because the action is staged as clumsily as everything else in Scorchy, the chase scene does not have the desired effect. The movie’s banter is just as bad. After Stevens' character tells her supervisor that he should relax by saying, "You need a good blowjob," he cheerfully replies, "You're a fruitcake, you bitch." Stevens, who found her biggest success as a Las Vegas entertainer, is attractive but vapid, and the caliber of the supporting cast is reflected by the inclusion of future small-screen player Greg Evigan (BJ and the Bear), who made his big-screen debut with Scorchy. Only B-movie veteran William Smith, playing one of the many villains, delivers the kind of teeth-gnashing intensity one expects from this sort of slop. Adding insult to injury, some available prints of Scorchy feature a godawful synthesizer score that was added to the movie for its VHS release in the 1980s.

Scorchy: LAME

Hollywood Man (1976)

          The basic narrative gimmick underlying Hollywood Man is terrific—a desperate filmmaker turns to the Mob for financing, only to have mobsters deliberately undermine his production because they want him to default so they own his entire life instead of just one movie. In fact, a similar concept appeared, probably by sheer coincidence, in Elmore Leonard’s 1990 novel Get Shorty, which became the delightful 1995 comedy film of the same name. Anyway, Hollywood Man loses its way very quickly because the filmmakers get sidetracked with a boring subplot about friction between the enforcers hired by the mob to bedevil the indebted director. Moreover, characterization is not a strong suit in Hollywood Man, so even with charismatic B-movie titan William Smith playing the main role, it’s hard to get engrossed in what should be the story’s primary emotional journey. That said, the movie has some mildly entertaining high points, it moves along fairly well, and costar Don Stroud has a blast playing an arrogant stuntman.

          The picture starts in Hollywood, naturally, where actor/director Rafe Stoker (Smith) has invested $125,000 of his own money into a new biker movie, even though the genre—which made him a star—has mostly gone out of fashion. (There’s an element of autobiography here, since Smith, who cowrote and produced Hollywood Man, came up through biker movies.) The mogul who financed most of Rafe’s previous flicks refuses to give the director end money, instead referring Rafe to a mobster with deep pockets. Fully aware of the attendant dangers but desperate to complete his opus, Rafe offers his profit participation in other movies as collateral, thus motivating his benefactor to sabotage principal photography.

          Unfortunately, the makers of Hollywood Man, including veteran B-movie director Jack Starrett, lose focus once they introduce Harvey (Ray Giardin), an unhinged thug leading a team of brutal killers. In fact, the picture’s most dynamic scene—an epic slow-motion scene of Harvey slaughtering people on a beach with a machine gun—has very little impact on the main story. More relevant are fun behind-the-scenes bits, such as the vignette of Rafe debating with a stuntman over whether a shot of a bike jump is useable since the stuntman’s fake moustache came off partway through the gag. Hollywood Man isn’t a total loss, but it represents yet another missed opportunity to channel Smith’s animalistic intensity into a storyline as muscular as the actor himself.

Hollywood Man: FUNKY

The Losers (1970)

Also known as Nam’s Angels, this bizarre biker flick imagines what might happen if an American motorcycle gang was hired by the U.S. government to conduct a covert operation in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Apparently inspired by a real-life suggestion presented to President Lyndon Johnson by the Hell’s Angels, the movie features a paper-thin story, tedious storytelling, and underwhelming action scenes. Director Jack Starrett and his collaborators also fail to justify the movie’s outlandish premise, since the bikers in the picture don’t do anything that couldn’t have been done more effectively by trained soldiers. In fact, the members of the “Devil’s Advocates” (the name of the onscreen gang) approach their mission incompetently. Tasked with rescuing some VIP who’s trapped behind enemy lines, the Devil’s Advocates spend inordinate amounts of time brawling, drinking, fixing their bikes, and screwing prostitutes. It’s difficult to generate enthusiasm for a men-on-a-mission movie that lacks urgency, and, indeed, The Losers is so leisurely that the whole picture stops dead for several minutes while Starrett’s camera ogles a topless dancer. Yawn. Biker-cinema icon William Smith brings his usual macho swagger to the party, though his animalistic appeal isn’t nearly enough to make The Losers interesting—even when he periodically spews a nugget of tasty dialogue (“You hired scooter trash for this job, that’s what you got”). Instead of using Smith or fellow B-movie vet Adam Roarke properly, Starrett burns film chronicling the unfunny antics of Houston Savage, who plays the violent slob of a biker named “Dirty Denny.” Apparently, the spectacle of Dirty Denny beating up his friends, indulging himself with whores, and staggering as people crack beer bottles over his head was envisioned as entertainment. It’s not.

The Losers: LAME

Black Samson (1974)

          Excitement is in short supply throughout Black Samson, a blaxploitation action/drama that fails to impress in the areas of characterization, originality, and suspense. That said, the sleaze factor is relatively low, and the basic theme is positive: An African-American community rallies around a noble small-business owner while he battles white criminals seeking to exploit the community. Black Samson is unlikely to make a strong impression on anyone, but at least it’s not dehumanizing.

          Physically formidable Rockne Tarkington stars as Samson, the Afrocentric owner of an inner-city nightclub. Perpetually wearing colorful dashikis and carrying an ornate tribal staff (which doubles as a club during fight scenes), Samson even keeps a pet lion on the bar of his nightclub. When Samson ejects a white customer for getting too friendly with one of the venue’s topless dancers, Samson ignites a grudge match with gangster Johnny Nappa (William Smith). Johnny wants to use violence in order to take over criminal enterprises in black neighborhoods, but Johnny’s dad, Mafia boss Joseph Nappa (Titos Vandis), is a gentleman criminal who detests unnecessary bloodshed. Other prominent characters include Samson’s girlfriend, Leslie (Carol Speed), who encourages Samson to give up his business rather than tussle with the Mob, and Johnny’s girlfriend, Tina (Connie Strickland),who spies on Samson while working as a dancer in his club.

          Everything in Black Samson is familiar and mundane, with the story unfolding at a too-leisurely pace. Worse, the great New Orleans composer Alan Toussaint misses the mark with his low-ebb jazz/R&B score, because while Toussaint generates a few tasty grooves, he can’t quite conjure the driving funk that gives the best blaxploitation flicks their irresistible tempo. Still, leading man Tarkington is believable whenever he’s roughing up bad guys, and leading lady Speed has a few terrific moments, especially when entreating her man to avoid danger. Concurrently, B-movie institution Smith has fun playing one of his signature sadistic villains, although he’s hamstrung by an anemic characterization that lacks even one full dimension. The only novel element of the picture emerges during the final scene, when Samson’s neighbors attack gangsters by flinging household junk off rooftops. To cowriter-producer Daniel B. Cady’s credit, it’s hard to think of another movie in which a refrigerator is used as a murder weapon.

Black Samson: FUNKY

The Ultimate Warrior (1975)

          Something of a precursor to the Mad Max franchise, this interesting but problematic sci-fi/action picture follows a principled mercenary in postapocalyptic New York City. Written and directed by Robert Clouse of Enter the Dragon fame, the story suffers from underdeveloped characters, so it unfurls as a series of incipient notions stretched out to feature length and padded with chases and fights. Had a little more brainpower been devoted to the script, the movie could have evolved into something special; as is, the picture loses momentum somewhere around the two-thirds mark and never fully recovers.

          In The Ultimate Warrior’s grim futuristic vision of New York, small factions of people band together for survival. One group, which resides inside a heavily fortified apartment building, is a pacifistic enclave led by the Baron (Max von Sydow). The Baron’s son, Cal (Richard Kelton), has genetically engineered seeds for growing vegetables—which were nearly wiped off the planet during a nuclear war—so the Baron has fantasies of relocating his group to a safer environment where they can restart civilization. Also operating in New York is a roving band of killers and thieves led by the brutal Carrot (William Smith); Carrot’s crew looms outside the gates of the Baron’s facility as a constant existential threat. Enter Carson (Yul Brynner), a muscular fighter who offers his services to the highest bidder. The Baron woos Carson with an offer of extra rations and female companionship, so Carson engages in a series of battles with Carrot’s people before leading a desperate escape mission.

          In principle, this basic storyline should work just fine—good versus evil, with a morally ambiguous avenger caught in the middle. Unfortunately, the narrative is riddled with plot holes. Carson seems to be the only mercenary working the circuit. Security at the Baron’s place is ridiculously weak. Carson proves ineffective at preventing tragedy, basically undercutting the entire premise of the movie. Carrot’s thugs behave nonsensically, threatening the very people whose agricultural experiments could ensure their survival. Worse, a number of subplots about friction within the Baron’s crew show promise, only to be discarded in favor of a trite mano-a-mano showdown between Carrot and Carson. The Ultimate Warrior isn’t awful, by any stretch, thanks to tasty production design and a zippy score by Gil Melle, to say nothing of Von Sydow’s gentle performance. However, the picture isn’t nearly what it could be, Brynner’s impassiveness gets tiresome after a while, and B-movie stalwart Smith is underused.

The Ultimate Warrior: FUNKY

Seven (1979)

          One of those peculiar characters who makes the world of exploitation movies interesting, Andy Sidaris began his film career respectably, helming episodes of ’70s action shows including Kojak and winning awards for directing sports broadcasts. Yet Sidaris had bigger things in mind—specifically Bullets, Bombs, and Babes, the brand name for a series of low-budget flicks that he produced in the ’80s and ’90s. The seeds for the series were planted in Sidaris’ first two features, the Roger Corman-produced Stacey (1973) and this escapist adventure. In fact, Seven introduced Sidaris’ signature move of casting models from Penthouse and/or Playboy. From this point forward, Sidaris’ oeuvre comprises little more than nudity and violence. Seven stars the singular William Smith, a bodybuilder-turned-actor with a certain kind of animalistic charisma, as a covert operative who assembles a team of hotties and tough guys for a suicide mission. Explosions, murder, and sex ensue. Although the specifics of the story don’t really matter, the picture revolves around a crime syndicate that’s angling to take over Hawaii. A shady government figure hires mercenary Drew (Smith) to murder the heads of the syndicate. “We need an organizer,” the G-man says, “some stud who can put together a real mean unit.”

          Yes, folks, we’re deep in the realm of male fantasy here, which is why operatives Alexa (Barbara Leigh) and Jennie (Susan Kiger), as well as various sexy women on the periphery of the story, often deliver dialogue while slipping in or out of their tops.

          Eventually, Drew and his hired killers decamp to Hawaii and make elaborate plans for coordinated assassinations. The schemes in Seven are laughably far-fetched, except perhaps for the simple bit during which Cowboy (Guich Koock) pours gasoline on bad guys and then lights them on fire. By any reasonable standard, Seven is quite stupid, but some of the onscreen nonsense is amusing. Consider the bit when a traditional Hawaiian dancer kills an audience member by throwing a flaming spear, or the running device of a hit man who rides up to victims on a skateboard and uses weapons including a crossbow. Plus, there’s a sprinkling of dim-bulb humor, some of which is intentional. And, of course, there are many good reasons why the women with whom Sidaris decorates the movie earned their notoriety through the act of disrobing. One could live a happy life without ever seeing an Andy Sidaris movie, but at least Seven provides 100 minutes of scenery, sleaziness, and (William) Smith. Perhaps not the stuff that B-movie dreams are made of, but close.

Seven: FUNKY

Hammer (1972)

          After making a tentative transition from his pro football career to acting, via small parts in M*A*S*H and Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (both 1970), Fred Williamson played his first starring role in this clichéd boxing/crime saga, which had the good fortune of being released during the first wave of blaxploitation flicks. Williamson seized on the genre’s popularity and used the middling success of this picture as the launching pad for a prolific career in B-movies, eventually morphing into a writer-producer-director as well as an actor. And if Williamson’s screen persona was almost always more interesting than his actual movies, there’s a reason he earned the nickname “The Hammer” as a gridiron hero before he repurposed the moniker for his first star vehicle. Williamson cuts a hell of a figure—cool and handsome and muscular—while his cheerful narcissism reads on camera as a special kind of charisma. One gets the sense no one loves Fred Williamson quite as much as Fred Williamson, and superhuman confidence is an effective tool for playing cocksure protagonists.

          In this picture, Williamson plays B.J. Hammer, a faded boxer who gets another chance at pugilistic glory when gangsters agree to promote his comeback. Unfortunately, the gangsters expect Hammer to throw an important fight, which he refuses to do, thus endangering both Hammer and his sexy girlfriend (Vonetta McGee). Meanwhile, a hard-driving police detective (Bernie Hamilton) leans on Hammer to help gather incriminating evidence on the gangsters. There’s not a single original thought in Hammer, which is so meager from a narrative perspective that much of the movie feels dull and pointless; even the chases and fight scenes are enervated. Per the norm for blaxploitation pictures, a revered soul musician provides the soundtrack, but Solomon Burke’s grooves for Hammer lack the vitality of, say, Curtis Mayfield’s wicked tunes for Super Fly (1972). Still, Hammer is watchable thanks to decent production values, a forceful star, and vivid supporting performances. Hamilton has a great put-upon quality as the cop, McGee lends elegance and poise to her underwritten role, and industrial-strength B-movie stalwart William Smith injects his small part as a henchman with gleeful malice.

Hammer: FUNKY

Policewomen (1974)

While some viewers may enjoy watching leading lady Sondra Currie kick ass and strut around in revealing outfits, those without an affinity for the actress will find little to enjoy in Policewomen, a grade-Z thriller about cops who go undercover in a smuggling ring. The action is dull and fake, the one-liners are painfully stupid, and the acting is terrible, with Currie’s lifeless performance setting the pace for her equally inept costars. Plus, because people who seek out movies like Policewomen usually settle for trashy elements in lieu of worthwhile ones, it deserves mentioning that at least one widely available print of Policewomen is bereft of nudity and even swearing (the audio drops out whenever someone curses). Yet it’s hard to imagine that the inclusion of rough stuff could make much difference. Anyway, the story begins with Lacy (Currie) trying to prevent a jailbreak at a women’s prison. Despite her karate jobs and right crosses, several badass mamas escape and join the criminal gang of Maude (Elizabeth Stuart), an aging crone portrayed in the “dragon lady” style of the era. (You know a movie’s in trouble when you wish Shelley Winters would show up to add some vigor.) Having impressed supervisors with her valor during the jailbreak, Lacy meets with top cops including Tony (Frank Mitchell), who put her through a series of tests to confirm she’s got the right stuff. (Sample dialogue from Mitchell:  “Now, you’re a very pretty girl, and you obviously have a way with escaping female prisoners, but . . .”) The highlight of the movie, speaking only in very relative terms, is Lacy’s sparring session with a karate instructor played by the always-enjoyable B-movie madman William Smith. Lacy flips Smith’s character on his ass several times, and Smith plays the scene for high comedy. So, even though the scene is stupid and unfunny, at least the scene wants to be something, which is more than can be said for the rest of the movie.

Policewomen: SQUARE