Cocaine + Calvins = Conan / 4 Post-TARZAN Barbarian Wonders (1982-88)

I was walking to work the other morning, the horrors of FINDING NEVERLAND playing over and over in my head, wondering how on earth we collectively managed to ignore all the signs--when a seemingly unconnected epiphany took hold: When crushing guilt is instilled in childhood--via Catholic school, fundamentalist or overbearing mothers, etc-- cocaine's effect as inhibitor of empathic responses means instant liberation from a lifetime of that guilt, enabling its user (if they are Catholic or otherwise oppressed by guilt) to feel ten feet tall, like a crushing weight has been lifted for the first time. Protestants, public school-educated, atheists without maternally-instilled guilt (like me) can't imagine what it's like to have such a burden lifted from our psyches because we never had it in the first place. We feel only the loss of our human warmth, not the sudden release from a crushing weight of Catholic guilt. Perhaps that's why cocaine is depicted as such a mystical symbol in the works of guilt-ridden Catholic directors like Hitchcock, Scorsese, Abel Ferrara, and Brian De Palma. Those of us whose ancestors hail from colder climates, who have no constant nagging guilt merely stand there, irritably, waiting for our turn at the mirror and trying not to sneeze. Cocaine makes us merely sociopathic. Dark dirty desires we'd never entertain during our normal sober state (indeed would be horrified by) are released. For us, it's the Mr. Hyde elixir, it's the pineal From Beyond vibrator. When we wake up the following evening we feel terrible remorse, and can't breathe through our nose for two days. Catholics just finally feel normal. 

This is just a working theory, but since cocaine plays such a huge part in the films of the
70s it behooves us to look into it while discussing the era's intense licentious interest in icons of sexual purity and the permissiveness, until slavering over young 15-16 year-old girls--the ultimate pseudo-incest taboo-- was somehow socially acceptable. 

As Randy Newman sang:

"They say that money

can't buy love in this world.

But it will get you a half pound of cocaine

and a 16 year-old girl. 

In a big black limousine 

on a hot November night.

That might not be love,

but it's all right" 

-- "It's Money that I Love" - from Born Again (1979)

In the height of the drug's popularity (late-70s) there was disco and there was a 15 year-old Brooke Shields inferring she wore no underwear underneath her Calvins, creating quite a lot of tabloid and water cooler arguments  as to where naughty fun ended and licentious statutory leering began. Shields already had a lightning rod signification having appeared two years earlier in a film by Louis Malle, Pretty Baby, about a New Orleans child prostitute. The jeans ads rocketed her into a weird place in the zeitgeist, one that--nowadays--would be unthinkable. The more the press condemned her exploitation and licentious positioning the more the jeans were sold.

But on the other hand, sex wasn't supposed to be as rapey/vile as it seems today in shows like Euphoria and other HBO dramas. It was considered fun, and no harm done, and everyone entitled to a lover. You know, like in Europe? Were we finally grown up, or just living a fantasy that would have long-lasting consequences, you know, like a hangover?

One sniff makes you wilder.... 

To set the scene: 1978 was a special year: Saturday Night Fever (1977) was no longer in theaters but the album was still #1. We elementary school kids listened to it and danced obsessively. The film itself was depressing and sordid compared to the relatively cleaned-up Travolta figure next year -Grease. Looking back, was it magical fairy dust that changed Olivia Newton John overnight from a goody two-shoes to a freeze-licking biker chick overnight? "You better shape up!" she sings, blowing Travolta's mind (left).

Looking back at it, man it had to be that she tried coke the night before her radical change. In an effort to win her man she said yes to her first line of coke and was blown out of her goody two-shoes. By the second line she was borrowing Roz's trashiest black leather, and by dawn she was chain smoking. This is the power of drugs, and especially the insidious power of coke to remove one's sense of empathy, guilt, shame, and responsibility - all the things that keep a girl virgin pure. Just like Laura Palmer or some victim of Monarch mind-control: give any girl cocaine, it seemed, and she was forever out of reach of her parents and teachers --yours for defiling, as long as you had a stash back in your bedroom drawer.

At the time all this was going on, I was just a kid myself, two years younger than Brooke Shields. She was, in a sense, too young for my tastes (I was way into Charlie's Angels), and a little too generic and skinny for my tastes. I remember having zero interest in seeing either The Blue Lagoon (1980) or the following year's Endless Love (1981).

But as someone unable to buy a ticket to an R-rated movie (which they both were), it was fascinating that, actually, neither could she.

Shields reclines by the BLUE LAGOON

Looking back to the silent era and their never-ending exotic locations with castaway waifs taking soft focus showers in waterfalls; never knowing of men or of sin, so how could they be ashamed of these strange feelings, etc., it's clear just how thoroughly socially-instilled repressive sexual guilt has lessened over the years as far as needing to escape to a desert island to avoid one's mother and priest. 

The 'return to Eden' surge at the end of the powder-coated 70s led to a plethora of "corruptible innocence" films at the box office. Not just Malle's Baby, but Polanski's Tess (1979), The Blue Lagoon (1980), Foxes (1980), Little Darlings (1980), Manhattan (1979) -- They all feature innocent, wide-eyed, underage sexualized nymphs that fit the mood of the moment perfectly. If they caught any flak, it was the groups who flung it that were judged, as prudes.

Throughout the 70s, America was still in a pre-AIDS hedonistic mindset whilke nudity was still something you could only get on the big screen at an R-rated picture (or-X, gasp - for there were no video players except in the homes of super rich a-holes). Maybe we saw sex as 'good' maybe because we hadn't seen that much of it. We were all curious and felt protected in that way children are who don't yet know how ugly the world is. How could there be anything bad about sex, especially with adorable Dr. Ruth dispensing prime time sex advice?

We were too innocent to know how dangerous it was to let coked-up producers capitalize on our prurience by promoting innocence itself as sexy.

As recent events and movements indicate, we're still learning.



In this light, it's clear 1982's Conan wasn't born in a vacuum, but because people were confident about the success of the insanely-hyped Bo Derek film Tarzan the Ape Man (1981 -above) a kind of adult's only-Lagoon meets the violence and macho of classic pulp, a short jump from Burroughs to Howard - indeed, the paperbacks looked almost alike.

In the late-70s, crazes ran in quick succession. Thanks to the surprising box office of Blake Edward's "10" (1979), Bo Derek was the goddess at the top of a big pyramid (everyone was giving everyone else a number all of a sudden - were you a seven or an eight?). Girls got those tacky micro-dreads--or tried--then combed out the damaged hair, the resulting frizz leading to the perm. John Derek, Bo's husband/ photographer, was the 80s American equivalent of the 60s Roger Vadim (see Pimps: The Devil's Auteurs). decided she needed his guidance.  He would direct her next film: Tarzan would be a kind of Blue Lagoon 2 for a slightly older pair of naturalist lovers to entwine within.

That was the hype. But a critical laughingstock was born instead. Hoots and hollers and not in a fun The Room kind of way, but a boring way... Bo began a descent as meteoric as her rise.

Still, Tarzan was massively profitable, so much so that the engines of Italian 'draft rider' pulp started up full force. Dino De Laurentiis' Conan (1982) was another 'adult' adaptation of classic pulp (Robert E. Howard instead of Burroughs -above) with a fetishized male body (Arnold) instead of female, and this time it worked! People liked it, boys like me especially. And the best element was the genuinely touching romance with Sandahl Bergman as Valeria, a character we loved from the comics and were worried would not be represented well, and Arnold - whose accent endeared him to us immediately. We adored these lovers' openhearted moxy. Valeria (left) was a strong, capable character suddenly vulnerable through a first love. Bergman did most of her own stunts, and wielded a real scimitar -- she was no kibbitzer. She was worlds away from the innocent naifs of Tarzan, Blue Lagoon. This was a movie where corruption of innocence was met not with musical numbers and leers but with sharp steel. This was barbarians sneaking downstairs to crash the party and send the reptilian cokehead directors running for the door. Like April in Taxi Driver, we helped Brooke Shields home to her worried Max Von Sydow father to sober up, and the doors of the orgy room were sealed shut.

Conan was a hit. And so the draft riders pulled in behind that, and the sword and sorcery age of the early-80s was born. The hedonistic debauching of innocents was out - the disemboweling of hedonists by the innocents was in. 

Imitators sailed in from New World, and of course, Italy, where they mixed and matched with the other big hits of the moment (see my list of awesome ROAD WARRIOR rips from last month) and hey -- many are on Prime. Four of them are worth mentioning, for they give the right kind of viewer a peaceful, easy feeling of nostalgia and archetypal alignment. They are all perfect for napping to... on a lazy... Saturday... after... nnnz. And hey, onr og yhrm stars Miles O'Keefe, Derek's Tarzan himself! Everything comes full circle. 

1. ATOR, THE FIGHTING EAGLE

(1982) Dir. Joe D'Amato 

**1/2 / Amazon Image - B+

Maybe it's the languid sexually uninhibited postures, the dreamy pace, the tastefully provocative fur loincloths and armor; maybe it's the muted cinematographic palette of purples and yellows; maybe it's the rumbling timpani and Wagnerian brass of Carlo Maria Cordio's score; the long flowing wigs and cute fur boots and wrist bands on the young leads, their flawless faces conveying just the right level of youthful blankness, maybe it's the lack of narrative urgency coupled to hitting all the expected marks, but goddamned it there's something about this terrible movie I love. It's a case of less is more: the lack of blood and gore makes the clumsy fights adorable; the lack of nudity and sex helps make everything paradoxically sexier, more alive with a kind of polymorphous haziness. And then there's the clankety fight scenes and minimalist set design. Look at the above, for example: is that supposed to be a cave wall or a frumpy dark purple tarp behind our plate-chested hero? Look at his splayed posture! Look at who he is, the Derek's Tarzan himself, Miles O'Keefe! Could we be any chiller?

Wake up, Miles! You're playing Ator, a young warrior type raised by farmers after escaping a 'first born male son' purge by an evil warlord (a not uncommon procedure in these films). Not to pick on poor Miles, whose fault it surely isn't that the Dereks' Tarzan was such an epic--albeit profitable--fail. Here, thanks to D'Amato's sleepy mise-en-scene and a good (famiar-voiced) dubbing job that manages to inject just the right note of deadpan knowningness to every cliche'd line (i.e. "first I must complete... what I was born to do."), his dazedness aura insures his inability to play his role any other way than deadpan straight (there's not a bone of self-awareness in his lithe, muscular body). Rumor has it that D'Amato was routinely frustrated with his star's continued listlessness --but then again, looking around at the rest of the film, O'Keefe probably had a lot to listless about! Still, his combination bride/sister Sunya (Ritza Brown) has been abducted by a band of roving spider-worshipping brigands led by "the Hight Priest of the Spider" (Dakar), who holds onto power by making his army of about 15 stand around for hours while he plays with a real tarantula. Plenty of time for Ator to quickly train with a guy in a terribly hacked-up dusty Mongol warrior wig who instructs him in the art of war for about two minutes. He is ready! 

Inevitably, Ator--and his little bear cub pet-- soon hooks up with an enterprising young Amazon named Roon (Sabrina Siani- above, a regular during this brief phase of Italian Conan knock-offs) after she wins him in combat over breeding rights. She's not in the same league as Sandahl Bergman, fighting skill-wise but a perfect match for O'Keefe as far as strung out wavelengths. She shoulders an equal share of battling derring-do once they team up, and I'm a fan of her lack of moral compass. You can decry as clumsy and amateurish their brawls with blind sword makers, indignant robbery victims, and spider worshippers, but why bother? They're not using stunt doubles, and they're probably tired, and D'Amato can work sly in-camera miracles just through blocking (I especially like Ator's battle with his a pesky mirror shield shadow). I don't find any of that a problem, since it reminds me of my own Conan-inspired super-8mm opuses made around this same time. We used all the same tricks. And befitting something perhaps suitable for the whole 13 year-old boy's slumber party,  D'Amato spares us gore and torture, sleazy sex close-ups, and all the other things associated with trying for an R-rating, and just delivers the rest in that pleasingly totemistic ritual manner that makes me so enamored of Luigi Cozzi and Ed Wood. There's no trauma, no emotional investment, no wasting time with long caravans and mustered armies of extras (the Temple of the Spider holds onto power for thousands of years with an army of about ten guys in long black Kiss wigs) suspense, no loud noises. the weird golden-pale color palette is a great mix of D'Amato's own gift with cinematography and a good restoration (it doesn't try to do too much) are very becoming to the actor's naked limbs and the purple cave walls, Siani and Brown are very pretty, the hero is unobjectionable (like that good-looking guy you're still friends with because he's not somehow not a vain prick) and there's a giant spider that puts the fur Volkswagen in Bill Rebane's Giant Spider Invasion to shame. I haven't even mentioned D'Amato regular and fan favorite Laura Gemser (below).

But all that doesn't totally begin to explain the appeal, the unique sexual pull of Ator. A great example of it I think can be found in the two scenes of O'Keefe's resting a goblet on or near his genitals (above, and top), splaying his legs out, when sitting, as if trying to get some air flow to his balls or presuming a fluffer is going to be down there momentarily, rummaging amidst the luxuriant pelts of his furry loincloth. In your average 80s sex comedy this pose might be done by some smug jock with a Red Ball cup, and it would be rapey-vile instead of sexy-cool. The difference is between wanting it vs. not even being aware of it, i.e. muscle memory. In other words, our Ator/O'Keefe seems like a very laid guy. Maybe that's why he's so listless? 

Like many truly sexy films, though, Ator is seldom overtly sexual; it's more akin to the kind of thing I used to fantasize about as a seven year-old, all power and submission and polymorphous perversity. Ator is always the desired, not the desirer; the Amazons choose one of their sisterhood to mate with Ator since he looks healthy, and so he's locked up in a hut and the victor comes in to claim him like a prize stud (but without any soft focus or jazz) and then Gemer's enchantress seduces him while Roon spies from a hole in the roof and sends his pet bear through a crack in the rocks to run a Toto-style cockblock. Again and again, sex never happens but almost happens --with Ator fought over as an object being used for sex and seed -- too languid and reposed to resist, preferring to just rest his flagon near his pelted crotch as if a grail light for wandering maidens. Like all good D'Amato movies, a close analysis reveals just how truly fucked up this all is. Ator plans to marry his own sister (even before knowing he was adopted) -- their early scenes together pulse with a yearning primal energy, never falling over the side into the abyss of puerility or camp. Michele Soavi was an uncredited co-writer and I'm guessing he maybe helped keep a kind of surrealist lid on things. Surely his absence is felt in the later sequels. 

In short, my friends, if you miss the smell of 1980s Grateful Dead tour, the mix of patchouli, hashish and sizzling meat all mixed together opening your third eye like a burning ember in the center of your forehead, helping you 'see' as the maroon bewitched core of life itself, the sizzling of a tailgate grill cracking open kundalini serpent eggs, then run, walk, and scamper to Ator. It's all there in Sabrina Siani's gleaming light-blonde princess wig, in the purple hues of the purple crepe paper cave walls, in Cordio's grounding timpani and Holst/cop show woodwinds, the cinematography, the nicely small cast and inoffensive / bloodless violence, the cute black fur boots of his scrumptious sister-wife, and in every strand of oversized clothesline web.

--

SORCERESS

(1982) Dir. Jack Hill

*** / Amazon Image - A

Usurping, wild-eyed sorcerer Traigon (Roberto Ballesteros) needs to sacrifice his firstborn child but his hot young wife (Silvia Manríquez) has twin girls and won't tell him which one came first. A wild-haired good wizard, Krona (Martin La Salle) strides forth to zap Traigon into a 20 year-long period of oblivion, alas, too late to save the mom from Traigon's sword. As is the custom, Krona leaves the babies with farmers so they don't attract despotic attention. He drops back in twenty years later, alas, too late again to save the farmers from Traigon's soldiers. The twins have gestated into blessfully unmodified Playboy playmates Lynette and Leigh Harris. A hearty, if unusually short, red-bearded Viking named Baldar (Bruno Rey), his curly-haired romantic-lead rascal buddy Erlick (Roberto Nelson), and a ridiculous horny satyr, vow to help the twins get revenge against the now-revived Traigon, who still needs that first born sacrifice or his god be angry! Traigon's right hand woman, Delissa (Ana de Sade) promises the second-born twin to her pet monkey monster, and the monkey uses druggy fruits to disorient the gang and abduct the right one. Signal the hair-raising escapes, magical spells, fights, gods fighting in the sky while zapping the battlers below with lightning, remote orgasms (the girls are linked psychically), and undead warriors culled from their crypts.

To call back to my long-winded out-on-a-limb opening introduction, there are copious drug references here: the idea that a drug instantly reduces the heroes to laughing idiots, allowing their shady dealers (the apes) to carry the girls away with no resistance, must have come from parties I've been to. And the later drugging and hypnotizing of the first born of the twins and Erlick so they'll get it on during a big pre-sacrificial sex magick ceremony to appease one's reptilian overlord? That's so Illuminati-Monarch7!  (1)

It was director Jack Hill's final film (alas), made for Corman's New World down in Mexico as part of a multi-picture deal. Its production values are a little higher and the extras and supporting cast a little sexier than we're used to in a New World film of the time (no day-for-night, good lighting, effects, etc.), and Amazon's streaming source is pretty solid, presented HD and with deep, blazing reds and blacks. My only issue is that, perhaps to enhance the night scenes and presumably, and bring out that red, the color correction effort gives a lot of the actors an orange-sunburnt tint. I didn't get this issue on the Scorpion Blu-ray (see my review here), where the blacks are jet deep. But hey, it beats having to get up.

Sorceress's release year (1982) was a high point for A-list sci-fi and horror/adventure, and amidst that year's B-list, Hill could have rocked out for at least a few more classics or even moved up to the big leagues. Today enough Hill fans are in high enough places that he could get a film crowd-funded in five minutes if he wanted. Hell, Tarantino alone could hook him up! Do it, Jack! Do it!

Hey, Jack, I get it, age and experience brings wisdom as well as the loss of exuberance. And Spielberg was coming along to leave decadent deadpan larks like this -- too dirty and weird for the young kids and too cheap for the adults-- lurching along with only the 16-20 year-old males at the video rental store for company.  But here it is 30 years later and those boys now get nostalgic pangs for a simpler age and we're grateful that films like this hold up so well. So thanks, Jack, for putting in the extra effort. Your weird genius endures. Would there'd been a dozen more just like this, that you'd been a Crio Santiago, a Wynorski, or a prolific guy like Matt Climber, the director of...

3. HUNDRA

(1983) Dir. Matt Climber

** / Amazon Image - C

By now you know the story- a peaceful Amazon village is overrun by slavering invaders; they kill the men, enslave the women, the male children - if any - are taken to gladiator school, etc. But sometimes one brave woman escapes, gathers a force, or fighting skillz or whatever, to wreak havoc on the invaders in the name of her fallen sisters. No one's ever stayed awake through the opening to get the exact details of the variations to the plot in Hundra, but there's a bouncing Ennio Morricone score, vivid Spanish desert locations and a reasonable amount of action. As the unstoppable, untamable Hundra, Laurene Landon does all her own stunts, which is pretty cool but she seldom loses her doofus smile, which is not cool. Probably cast due to her resemblance to Bo Derek and Linda Evans, she's also fairly athletic, tall, and has no problem literally picking up guys and spinning them around. She jumps on and off of horses, onto and across roofs, knocks guards over right and left like a merry Errol Flynn in fur bikini, and seems to be having a kind of sloppy boozy time doing it Hanging back on her lines and reactions like she's waiting for a cue card, smiling confidently before leaning into a guy or throwing him over her shoulder like she's Tarzan and he's Maureen O'Sullivan,  all with a buzzed smile on her face. 

How are we supposed to read the tone with this weird actress? The Ennio Morricone isn't going to help --he's no Mickey Mouser and not about to add comic effects or ominous undercarriages, quite the opposite. He practically invented the Italian style of operatic antithesis, so leans back on the stick himself, pumping the lady up like a cheering papa with Wagnerian orchestral urgency. Since she's proving her mettle right in front of us, it's hard not to forgive her goofball trespasses, and even her dated frizzy ironed hair (were they trying for those Bo Derek braids and then gave up and just hot combed most of them out?) See below.



Alas, as an adventure of feminist empowerment, the ramshackle tale tries to do too much and in the process gets old fast (it's taken me three years to finish watching). It may help to consider that the writer/director Matt Climber was once married to Jayne Mansfield, and shepherded the original GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling) TV show, shortly after making this film, making him the obvious inspiration for the character played by Marc Maron in the Netflix series of the same name (see also Climber's masterpiece, The Witch Who Came from the Sea). When you realize Laurene Landon played one of the lady wrestlers managed by Peter Falk in All the Marbles (1981) it gets clearer. Whether or not Climber has some weird women wrestling 'thing' or not, his love of strong women makes him an ally, of some sort of other. 

Pros: That big chase scene I mentioned really benefits from Landon doing her own stunts as we see her leaping around like Errol Flynn or Buster Keaton might do (or we see in films like The Stuntman), albeit a bit sloppier. A standout scene goes on an on in and around this small gated village, with Hundra running from parapet to rooftop to second floor balcony and back again, her horse and dog keeping up with her progress in perfect time from ground level (the dog leading the horse!), all three together in an elaborate and quite impressive centerpiece action scene. It ends with her falling through the roof and onto the bed of a brooding doctor (Ramir Oliveros). Without even pausing to shake off the wild ride she just had, she jealously eyeballs the girl who's leaving without missing a beat, not even being out-of-breath, grabbing and eating an apple from his table, pinning him to the wall with hurled daggers, and proclaiming she intends to mate with him! She's like a one-woman version of Liz and Dick in Taming of the Shrew, rolled together and sheathed in odd furry raiments!



Cons: Alas, the inevitable temple orgy sequence that follows the lengthy single-take / clearly  great chase sequence, is sordid as hell. Full of hot girls pawed by fat ugly-hairy-middle-aged drunks, and seeming to go nowhere, it just drags on and one and seems present mainly to show how vile temples were before the Christ our lord did pass amidst them. We're subjected to gross men loudly announcing their superiority to women, who are all there solely to serve them, etc. and making women bow down to a bull they worship (how and why and what is expected to happen between the women and the bull is vague). The snotty king (Cihangir Gaffari) meanwhile, reigns via one interminable snit fit,  letting girls know who's da boss while his little toadie does the close-up bullying. It's all paving the way to Hundra teaching the court virgins to kick their men's asses and --in a big slow motion climax set to dynamic Morricone howling Wagnerian ecstasy--killing every last oppressor with her mighty sword. It's cathartic but at the same time very odd that she'd wait so long, and submit to make-up regimens and learn how to walk in heels, rather than just wiping them all out and odd that Climber keeps it all in extreme slow-mo so we have time to notice the punch pulling in some detail.

Maria Casal - right

Caution: Even if you like Hundra, I'd advise you to steer clear of Climber's western follow-up with Landon (also on Prime), Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold, wherein she's a half-breed after Aztec treasure with her bumbling Mexican sidekick. It looks even worse than this, both figuratively and literally, and Hundra looks bad enough, "Clearly" sourced from a letterboxed (not anamorphic) video source, it has a very blurred streaky look, with digital edge enhancement added as an attempt to make it more palatable. The color contrast issue is not helped by the over reliance on daylight outdoor scenes, all tan/brown sandy deserts which help make the blonde haired, pale skinned, earthen-clothed actors all but disappear. The occasional purple tunic, as in above right, is so jarring by contrast it seems like it was superimposed.

4. DEATHSTALKER 2 

(1987) Dir. Jim Wynorski

**1/2 / Amazon Image - C-

Even if, like me, you have problems with Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) you still love John Lazar as the insane and charismatic record mogul. And even if, like me, you have problems with the oeuvre of Jim Wynorski, you can still love Deathstalker 2, because Lazar is the evil villain, Jerek, and though he's not looking quite as dashing as he was 17 years earlier and spends most of his few scenes 'practicing' swordsmanship, killing off his warriors with a drowsy hooded-eyed flatline level of bemusement. John Terlesky stars as the titular 'stalker and luckily he's self-aware grin is free of the snarky puerility that undoes so many of his ilk. Toni Naples is Jerek's evil henchwoman. Bewitching-eyed Maria Socas is the Amazon queen. They're all fine but the movie really belongs to Monique Gabrielle as the pauper/princess, her tanned and toned limbs, buckskin minidress, cool straight blonde hair and bangs go a long way towards absolving her flat line delivery and over-the-top eye rolls. Lucky for us, what she and Terlesky lack in acting chops is made up for by their youthful chemistry. (She's more overtly sexual and less cute as the slutty evil doppelganger whipped up by Jerek). Though she and Terlesky may plow through their His Girl Friday-esque dialogue like a lawnmower through a victory garden, we can't hold it against them. They are lovely and young and--unlike so many others-- not smug and glazed-eyed narcissistic about it. They're fun, self-depreacting, seem to be having a good time and holding things just this side of camp, able to keep the ramshackle comedy without shucking totally loose from a sense of quality, attentionb to detail, narrative and something being actually at stake. 

The plot is a variation of the familiar "princess disguised as beggar/seer recruits wandering warrior to help her reclaim her stolen throne by an deposing evil sorcerer usurper" story. And though parts are certainly innuendo-laden, even during Deahstalker's trial by combat with a gigantic lady wrestler (Dee "Queen Kong" Booher -- from GLOW - second GLOW reference!)--it's a film that never courts misogyny or grotesque undulance.

Riding through the Ed Wood-esque graveyard

Another thing I like about this film is how much of it occurs at (actual) night, leading to a fun kind of cool breeze atmosphere not present in films usually bound by using natural light on hot desert sets which can give things a washed-out patina even before they age and fade (i.e. in latter films in this genre from New World, like Warrior and the Princess). It was filmed in Argentina as part of a multi-picture deal, so the craftsmen down there must have known how to light their backlot so it glows beguilingly in the moonlight (as in the green-tinged cardboard cemetery at left). With castle mattes courtesy The Terror (New World's eternal wellspring), it's the ideal film to watch as the sun is coming up when you're still debating opening another jug or slinking up to bed before your significant other wakes up for work. :)

Also recommended:
* YOR: HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE (1983) - Now on Blu-ray or for $$ download
Great ancient aliens / dinosaurs / ape creature movie with Reb Brown as Yor and a bevy of comely Italian actresses vying for his... love.

*SHE (1984) Starring Sandahl Bergman
 it was once on Netflix! Now... in the void. By cracky, it must be released! If you're the one holding it hostage hear my demand: Release SHE! (not to be confused with the 1935 film or Hammer's Ursula Andress remake)

* HEARS AND ARMOR (1983) - avail. on VHS, but needs a good Blu-ray upgrade - Tanya Roberts as the Muslim princess! A beautiful Italian girls lying in beds of flowers wearing full armor - never was all that is cool and lovely so succinctly in a single image wrapped.

DEATHSTALKER 1(1983 - get the anamorphic shout DVD with Deathstalker 2, and two forgettable other films)

Sigh - this concludes my lengthy and obsessive journey into Amazon Prime's mid-80s post-Conan bloom. See them all! I'm moving my focus to the Criterion channel. I need art, damnit!
NOTES:
1. See (for starters)L The Illuminati, Hypnosis, Paranoia, Schizophrenia, Kubrick, and Tom Cruise

Jills of Jack Hill Part 2: BIG DOLL HOUSE, COFFY, SWINGING CHEERLEADERS, SORCERESS, BIG BIRD CAGE, FOXY BROWN

At last, the color portion of my promised Hill oeuvre, celebrating the mountain of Hills now available on Blu-ray, framing the golden question of whether Hill "gets" women or just loves them - whatever the difference is, and if a single filmography can answer it. Thanks to great work of the mighty Arrow video, and Scorpion releasing; most everything Hill did is on Blu-ray or at least DVD (see part one of this series, the Hill black and white era). Next to the great JC, he's the premiere Hawksian of the drive-in era. Cherish him.

The following have always been in print and written about quite a bit, largely due (I think) to Quentin Tarantino and Pam Grier, so just a quick pass through of their (both literal and figurative) pros and cons.

PART II: THE GRIER YEARS

THE BIG DOLL HOUSE

(1971) Dir. Jack Hill

*** / Amazon Image - A_

Made during New World's stint filming everything down in the Philippines with a brigade of rising talent, this quintessential Women in Prison movie has aged far better than most, with Jack Hill's love of strong beautiful women in full effect. The leggy cellmates (Hill is a master of keeping them all in-frame, splayed on their bunks) include: Pam Grier as the dyke alpha; Brooke Mills as her strong-out junkie squeeze; Judy Brown as the newbie; Pat Woodell as the guerrilla/activist; and Roberta Collins as the tough blonde who's only looking out for herself (and advises the newbie to do the same). 

This was Grier's first film--she'd been Corman's secretary when Hill 'discovered' her--and you can see why she was an instant smash. She would go on with Hill to make history with two iconic films as we shall see soon. But here her iconic force and breakthrough sexual heft (always with innocent sweetness she can't squash in herself no matter how hard she tries) is kept in chains, more or less. She's just part of an ensemble who spend their days racing cockroaches, fighting in the mud, showering, and getting it on while the sadistic head guard (Kathryn Loder, left) conducts nightly torture sessions for the pleasure of the mysterious Colonel Mendoza (the kind of character who watches from behind screens --only his cigarette holder and riding crop discernible in silhouette). 

What's great is that for the most part these girls are damned tough, they suffer but they don't plead and moan. They're tough, like Cagney might be if given the same treatment, rather than moaning in surrender and pain to appease the kinky raincoats. Naturally Mills doesn't quite live up to that tough girl standard when it comes to the real torture of heroin withdrawal (turns out the head guard is supplying but holding out now that her snitch isn't snitching enough). But freedom in one way or another will soon be theirs, guns blazing! 

Grier's dynamite song "99 Years" tops a great knowing soundtrack, and highlights include Collins raping a delivery guy at knifepoint after she notices him spying on her in the shower (Hill lingers on her lusty gaze and she really sells it). Kathryn Loder is genuinely chilling as the sadistic guards, with just enough Nurse Ratchet surface warmth and justification of her behavior to chill the blood all the more after she gets the disobedient inmates all strapped down. Sadly, Hill mainstay Sid Haig delivers one of his worst ever southern accents as a skeevy fruit vendor. I'm not a fan of this genre in general, but there's no denying this is one solid piece of quintessentially New World drive-in exploitation. Sexy and sordid without ever being depressing or cheap, it's easily the best WIP movie as far as I'm concerned, thanks especially to the new HD restoration/remaster. The photography is dusky and vivid without any of the waxy tropical sweat that seemed to cover every surface in past versions, i.e. when the air is so humid it can't evaporate any more liquid, so every surface seems slimy --the main reason I always used to avoid movies shot in the Philippines. Not sure where it went, but I'm sure glad it's less pronounced, as if the HD remaster came with a big blowing AC.

THE BIG BIRD CAGE

(1972) **1/2

The Doll House was such a hit that Hill and Grier had to go back to the Philippines and crank out another; this time there's more comedy, more rebels, and a bigger budget (a whole summer camp-style compound is blown up, searing even the celluloid). Now the showers and catfights are outdoors on muddy sloping hills, which is slightly less depressing, and there's even more of a revolutionary angle as Grier's boyfriend is rebel leader Sid Haig, and the plan is to get his lonely rebel troops some girlfriends by liberating the women's work camp. That's all fine, but the real selling point is the the amazingly slender-hipped huge-haired mega-babe Anitra Ford as a free-spirited nymphomaniac named Tory, whose bedding of important political figures has landed her 'on ice.' She becomes Grier's sparring/bonding partner and helps blast their way to freedom.  I dug this the first time I saw it with my socialist rebel Argentine espousa (when I was working as a film critic covering the New World canon for the Muse); I didn't like it the second, alone and disheveled.

Pros: Grier and Ford are both dynamite with their bad attitudes and skimpy prison attire (Ford may have the best mid-riff in the history of the genre - though she's not in the above pic) and this go-round Hill is much more about escape, sisterhood, and machine gunning your way to freedom, than he is about seeing women tortured (though there's plenty of that too - alas). Grier and Ford are a great team, and--even though he's rocking a misplaced accent--Haig's the man.

Cons: It's a personal thing, but I find the sweaty Filipino foliage claustrophobic in its visible sweaty humidity. The gay mincing guards (the film's most dated element) are much too flouncy, and there's a wearying amount of suffering and abuse prior to the revolt. Me, I like ten pounds of vengeance to an ounce of provocation, not vice versa. As with the next two films, Hill seems to get meaner the second time he covers the same ground (venting subconscious anger at Corman for trying to pigeonhole him?)

COFFY

(1973) - ***1/2

Grier rocketed to stardom as the queen of blaxploitation films with this big cult hit-- capably stepping out from her ensemble work in New World's Philippine prisons and into starring roles at the now blaxploitation-focused AIP. She's a hardworking nurse out to avenge her smack-addicted 11-year-old sister by waging a one-woman war on Los Angeles' drug/prostitution racket after her kid sister is made into a junky ("her life is over!"), and cop friend Carter (William Elliott) is beaten up for not being crooked. She blows (the head off) a pusher, forces another to give himself a hot shot; threatens to carve up a prostitute's face unless she gives up her pimp's secret stash, and goes undercover as a high-class Jamaican prostitute to move herself into the stable of the marvelous King George (Robert Doqui), a super mack-daddy pimp with big-time heroin connections and his own funk leitmotif by legendary Roy Ayers (the whisper of "King George..." over and over as he struts around helps make this high-end pimp quite endeqaring). Pam's Jamaican accent is limited, but her white bathing suit is divine, her body bedazzling, her cape delicious (she also has a cool cape with her nurse's uniform. Capes!) Her hair huge and (it turns out) spiked with razor blades. 

She's soon getting in over her head, escaping narrowly, pinning her own theft of the stash on King George and flowing back up the chain of smack empire command like an IV of death. Sid Haig delivers a truly chilling extended laugh while dragging King George behind his car (courtesy Chevrolet!). Diane Arbus's husband, Allan, shows up as a sleazy sheik (MASH fans are bound to be pleasantly unnerved by the sight of visiting shrink Sidney demanding Coffy crawl to him on the bed). Booker Bradshaw is Coffy's tall, dark, and handsome politician boyfriend, whose slick-ass roadster is so low he has to step down to get into it. Through it all, Grier keeps her character tough and glamorous and always holding onto her sensitive center, even when wielding a sawed-off shotgun. Hill stretches the movie to accommodate her three dimensions, her towering strength always coming with back-end working girl weariness, the kind that needs no man's aid, just maybe a cup of coffee or a Sunday drive. (It's clear Tarantino was trying to capture that mellow openness, the weary but kittenish honesty, during her early scenes with Robert Forster). 

It's temporarily good to be the 'King'

Cons: The Olive Blu-ray is barebones and in its widescreen HD reveals something not as immediately apparent on VHS, just how cheap the sets on this movie are, something the full screen VHS I used to have successfully obscured. Here we can see the far edges of the cheap plywood phony walls in mid-warp/decay from the swampy heat of the soundstage lights; every surface has that sad "under construction" look. The bars and apartments have an airless, sweaty claustrophobia. As for the actors --their wigs appear crooked and misshapen, their make-up runny; it's like a giant basement of Arbusian freaks (or was I just really strung out on cough medicine last time I watched it?); even the outdoor scenes have an existentially oppressed vibe. And just because he's a pimp doesn't really mean King George (above) deserves to be betrayed and dragged around behind a car like Angelo in Wild Bunch, or the fellow stable whores deserve to be all cut up or otherwise abused just so Coffy can use them as stepping stones to her ultimate vengeance. She's just slumming but this is how they make their damned living!

Pros: In the end, though, none of that shit matters, because that score by Roy Ayers is so damned funky, so tight, so on point, and sounds so full and badass in the Blu-ray digital that if you watch this with the stereo connected, you'll be blown well clear of any lingering urban blight. And despite the bad wig factor, the actors are first-rate. Grier, especially, is in a class by herself. And, more tellingly, the tawdry atmosphere works to make all the heroin addiction--that longing for release--perfectly understandable. Hill can't convey the way an armful of opiates can make a heaven of ghetto hell, but he sure has a handle on the look and feel of withdrawal. The whole COFFY mise-en-scene seems as if its an aesthetic reflection of what the Hold Steady's Craig Finn calls the 'crucifixion cruise', i.e. the endless slog through the pain and despair that is withdrawal, pain and despair that makes you so desperate for release, you'll sell your soul to the first buyer.

(PS 1/19- Seeing this again on the Amazon Prime HD streaming print, I'd scratch all that urban blight stuff- everything looks gorgeous and glamorous, even the dingy green light of the hospital where she works highlights Pam's luminous skin, and Booker's pad and topless bar hangout scintillate with moody fireplaces.)

courtesy Art of the Title

FOXY BROWN

(1974) - **

Paid homage to by directors from Spike Lee to Quentin Tarantino, this is the title Pam Grier is known for/by even though it's COFFY they're thinking of. Originally set to be a sequel, this incarnation of Grier is a tougher, more cartoon-like version of her same vigilante character. A  'take back the street' grassroots anti-pusher coalition jostles in her loyalty with her scuzzy small time junky brother (Antonio "Huggy Bear" Fargas). Drugs and gang violence have so destroyed her neighborhood that when her undercover cop boyfriend (Terry Cotter) is gunned down in the middle of the afternoon, no one comes forward as a witness. Her brother might know who did it, though and so--uniting with that local "neighborhood action" group--Foxy goes undercover herself as ---what else?-- a high-end prostitute. 

I dig the opening sequence at a late-night coffee stand with Fargas nervously hanging out while two Italian legbreakers wait for a pair of cops to finish their coffee and go so they can beat him up. His call to wake up sister Foxy, and her last minute cavalry rescue are all pretty good, but then we start cutting over to the the bruised thugs and their leader, a dour white girl (a doughy Kathryn Loder) and it all starts to twist downhill to an wildly uneven mix of broad camp, shrill sadistic (ugly and prolonged) brutality and glum inner-city realism.

Lacking a lot of the sadistic flair she brought to The Big Doll House, Loder spends way too much time dressing down her underlings, threatening the girls who 'work' for her, and nuzzling her right-hand boy toy, Stevie (TV actor Peter Brown). I think she and Stevie even end up sharing a slow, menacing maniacal laugh at one point. As for Foxy, she travels as far as the poppy fields of the Philippines (where else?) in her quest to bring down the operation. We keep expecting her to be smart and manipulative. but she winds up captured, raped, given forced heroin injections (which is always--it seems--how the bad guys get the girls submissive, uninhibited and completely dependent) and her eventual payback is never enough to right the catalogue of wrongs. For example, Foxy's sexual belittling of an old white judge is pretty hilarious, but even that goes sour when the call girl she encourages to participate (Sally-Ann Stroud) winds up tortured and murdered after Foxy leaves. (How emblematic of America's involvement in third world power struggles)!

Pros: The crazily colored opening credits feature Grier boogying down in all sorts of super-sexy outfits to that iconic Willie Hutch theme song. As with Roy Ayers score on COFFY, that Hutch soundtrack worth the price of admission all by itself, play it loud, neighbors be damned. Unless they complain, of course. Then put on your most expensive headphones. 

Cons: Way too much screen time is spent watching Loder sadistically abuse her girls and dote on her  gigolo and not nearly enough watching Grier kick the shit out of people. Even more so than COFFY there's way too much urban blight, sexual abuse, and general social degradation. Foxy seems to think turning tricks, getting shot up, raped, harassed, shot at, and leaving the people who help her to be tortured or killed, is small price to pay for --what? Does she get anything for her troubles? SPOILER ALERT: She doesn't even kill the evil Loder at the end, as if to pay back Loder's endless ugly egotistical sadism--which by then has grown as soul-crushingly wearisome as that of Alan Ormsby in CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGs or Michael Gambon's Peter Grant-ish thug in THE COOK, THE THIEF, THE WIFE AND HER LOVER--with merely death wouldn't be enough to avenge how soiled we feel. Still, it would be a damn sight more satisfying than what happens.

PART 3: The Centaur and the SORCERESS

Hill would break out from Corman's wing a bit for his next film, to form Centaur Releasing with John Prizer, for which he'd bang out two quick punchy films in the female ensemble vein: one would rake in a small fortune; the next would lose it. After a lengthy hiatus he went back to Corman for one more film, would fight a bit with him one time too many and then that would be it. Career over. To all our regret. Well, how else do you graduate from the Corman school unless it's to fight with him about some creative issue and off you trundle, into either the abyss or the big time? Sadly, Hill's disinclination to work in direct-to-video or TV led to him doing just zero more films after that. 

He's still around though! Never say never...

THE SWINGING CHEERLEADERS 

(1974) - ***

Following New World's tried-true three girls at work-and-play ensemble "nurses" formula, this brings Hill's cunning mix of sexy feminism, cathartic violence, deadpan wit, and covert liberal politics to bear in a sexy comedy-drama form. Radical journalism major Kate (Jo Johnston) goes undercover to expose outdated mores and institutionalized sexism within the college's football cheerleading team, but instead she finds she these girls are cool, while her wild-eyed radical underground newspaper editor boyfriend Ross (Ric Carrott) is a rapey dick. Besides, the handsome quarterback Buck is played by Ron Hajek, his teeth white and straight enough he's worth stealing from the bitchy, manipulative cheerleader squad captain Mary Ann (Colleen Camp). Sulky Ross, meanwhile, takes out his anger by publishing Kate's expose (after she tried to scrap it) and then, later, inviting his sicko friends over to "break in" the virgin cheerleader (the doe-eyed Rainbeaux Smith). Mary Ann's dad, the dean of the school, is meanwhile embroiled in a plot to "fix" the big game, along with the coach, and a black professor (Jason Sommers) who is having an affair with the black cheerleader (Rosanne Keaton, one of Playboy's first black centerfolds).

Pros: Hill keeps the action flowing in surprising ways. I'll confess I have a low skeeve threshold when rapey idiots start snickering and egging each other on like so many dickweeds needing their graves spit on (like in the odious misogyny benchmark PORKY'S). So I like that here the jocks are sensitive and serious and the radical underground journalist is the swine. (Hill reports that a Texas audience one burst out of the seats applauding when the jock beats up Ross- so did I!)

Cons: I liked it the first time I saw it, and kind of fell for Johnston in those shorts. Now, a decade or so later, she just terrifies me--those eyes seem wild and unhinged, the mouth grinding as if from a line of badly-cut coke snorted fifteen years ago but still lodged behind her eyeballs. (Am I just talking about myself? I guess that's what they call 'maturity.')

I know it goes without mentioning in a more enlightened era, but what sticks out now isn't that there's a black main character --there were more than a few at the time (as in 1970s' BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS and all the New World nurse movies) but that it's a reminder of the miscegenation taboo that no black woman and white man (or vice versa) can ever be attracted to each other in these movies, so if you're black woman at a predominately white school, there will be one or two black men showing up, and you'll be bound to have an affair with one or both. As a kid in the 70s I wondered if that was just some instinctual thing - like black people don't find whites attractive, genetically, and vice-versa. Now of course I know the truth (racist southern distributors would never show the film otherwise) but in today's enlightened time, it actually seems conspicuous.

Pros: The black professor has a ferocious tough-as-shit black wife (Mae Mercer), who drops in on our terrified cheerleader in the film's most surprising powerful scene. Even if you've never been verbally threatened by your lovers' spouse--either by knife-point or just over the phone--you will get a queasy pit of your stomach thrill from her intensity . I've been on all sides of that equation and let me tell you, Hill gets it right and Mercer is a powerhouse. Never losing our sympathy even as we're terrified to the point of shitting our finest cheerleader slacks, she makes an impression so deep the picture still shakes after she's gone. As for the 'sweet one,' Rainbeaux Smith glows with a mix of doll innocence and angel sublime grace (hard to believe she was pregnant at the time --as we learn in the Arrow Blu-ray's generous extras). I like too how Hill doesn't even bother with the big climactic game at the end, nor even deign to mask the terrible emulsion damage and faded color on his stock footage of the game (do we ever even see a football?)

Cons: The main thing I can't stand about it all though, is the Scott Joplin rag underscoring the big climactic brawl at the warehouse. That kind of corny silent film (i.e. royalty-free) ragtime jazz nonsense hangs anachronistically around all through New World nurse and AIP's beach party catalogues, even in The Trip! I'm sorry Hill had to lug it with him to the Centaur's kingdom.

Blu-ray: The Arrow restoration is surprisingly only so-so as far as some colors being restored (lots of glowing greens) but it still seems very bleached out. I'm sure they did the best they could, but expectations are so high after the beauty of Spider Baby and Pit-Stop. 

SWITCHBLADE SISTERS

(1975) Dir. Jack Hill
****

SPIDER BABY's my favorite Hill but this is the second, a complex but highly re-watchable tale of feminism, street violence, and short-shorts. Doll-faced, sweet voiced, crazy-eyed Robbie Lee stars as Lace, leader of the gang, the 'Dagger Debs.' New girl in town Maggie (Joanne Nail) is the newcomer, and not averse to using her belt as a chain and/or grabbing a switchblade to defend herself at the burger place. Lace's one-eyed Iago, Patch (Monica Gale), sees the writing on the wall re: her beta status. Lace just thinks Patch is jealous of Maggie's cool gutsy charm, but ole Patch is right. Not only that, there are the sparks between Lace's boyfriend, the Daggers' leader, Dom (Ashner Brauner, doing a great Ralph Meeker impression), and Maggie. Even his breaking into her room to rape her can't change that, nor Lace getting pregnant and getting all gooey about raising the baby, to which he snorts and tosses her cash for an abortion.

Pros: a big roller rink massacre; an attack coordinated with a feminist black militant coalition, with machine guns and a badass armored Cadillac; the heavenly blonde Daryl Hannah jawline of Janice Karman as Bunny; the badass 70s funk score; some great hair and dialogue; and a lightning pace. See it when you're super furious at the world or just strung out with the shakes because your dealer never showed, and bask in the cathartic anger, the fabulous legs of Joanne Nail, and the way Robbie Lee's eyes widen and dilate, then contract into a glowing glaze when she talks. Savor too Nail's final rant to the fat cop, her face streaked with blood, eyes wide and maniacal, a shocking Cagney-by-way-of Lorre raving moment (maybe my favorite ending in all schlock cinema).

Joanne Nail would be back all right... in the fascinating 70s all-purpose drive-in capstone, THE VISITOR! (1979) Not much else, alas. Oh how I wish that Switchblade Sisters had a bunch sequels, like it would have in Japan. (Fuller review here).

SORCERESS

(1982) Dir. Jack Hill

***

Wild-eyed sorcerer Traigon (Roberto "the Mexican Martin Holden Wiener" Ballesteros - who really knows how to swirl his blazing red cape) needs to sacrifice his firstborn child to his crazy Reptile goddess to keep his magic strong, but his hot young wife (Silvia Manríquez) has twin girls and won't tell him which one came first (if he gets the order wrong, he's screwed). A wild-haired noble wizard strides forth to zap Traigon into a 20 year-long period of oblivion, but too late to save the mom from Traigon's swordy pique. Naturally, the wizard brings the orphaned twin girls to a farmer off in the wild to raise in secret (disguised as boys), imbues them with latent magical abilities and drops back in, Merlin-style, twenty years later, to tell them about it. By then the girls have grown into beautiful Playboy playmate twins, Lynette and Leigh Harris, who don't even know how hot they are or that they're girls and that they live in a world where there is no word for 'twins' so they have to be called "the two who are one" all the time. Traigon comes back too and resumes the hunt for the first born. His guards assault and murder the farmer family while the twins are out nude swimming. A vow of vengeance is sworn! The hearty viking, Baldar (Bruno 'the Mexican shorter John Goodman' Rey), and a horny satyr (who baas like a sheep) sign on for the ride. During a remarkably large scale market town square scene (viva la Mexico) they meet up with Erlick (Roberto Nelson), and launch a market-wide donnybrook. The twins do a pretty good job as a kind of tag team bo staff whirligig and the size and detail of the village is impressive. Ensuing are 'surprises in store' for the two who are one', not just birds-bees discoveries, but hair-raising escapes, magical spells, fights, god-wars, apes with druggy fruits (if you'll forgive the expression), remote orgasms (the girls are linked psychically), and undead warriors culled from their crypts. Erlick has his own problems too, including a near-impalement the original style of the word (slowly sliding down a greased pole towards a sharpened stick aimed up your arse and bound to pop out the top of your head --if you're lucky).

Long unavailable in any format, SORCERESS is now with me forever! I love it! It has just enough of Hill's dry Hawksian wit to stand apart from other sword and sorcery "epics" of the 'shot in Mexico or Argentina' New World post-CONAN era. With its score lifted bravely from BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, and a cast of strong women (though for me the most exciting and charismatic is
Manríquez as their mother--who dies the prologue), hilarious monsters, very little torture and injury, and humor always well inside the boundary that separates dry deadpan wit (ala Big Trouble in Little China) from self-aware camp, and superb lighting of the night and underground scenes )it looks especially great on this Blu-ray - all burnished golds and charismatic highlights), it's a blast. And, of course, under 90 minutes long.

Pros: One of the lead guards has a crazy helmet that seems lifted from the 1936 FLASH GORDON. There's also a genuinely spooky crypt scene where the vertical dead in rows of alcoves slowly shamble to life out of the darkness. Baldar's a great wingman. The twins are real (in all senses); the little ape monster masks have facial movements; the satyr leads a charge of real sheep at the climax; and the effects are all of the charming 'painted on the celluloid' variety (CGI was still ten years away). The tactile earthy effort of it all--its solid mythic arc and florid array of weridness--floats it past its limits. Didn't all the best Hills? 

Cons: It's sad to learn this was Hill's last movie, mainly because he got in an "enough is enough" spat with Corman over the editing (i.e. length). Why couldn't Hill have just let Corman cut the movie up? Corman's judgement has always been--to my mind--pretty solid. Why did Hill have to raise a ruckus which caused a falling out? Hill's needing to look elsewhere to make his movies led to... no more movies? To all out detriment and loss.

But then again, home video was changing the landscape and who knows if he'd been as good on direct-to-video? I ain't as good a writer as I used to be either). Age and experience brings wisdom at the expense of exuberance. And Spielberg was coming along to make decadent deadpan larks like this -- too dirty and weird for the young kids and too cheap for the adults-- left to lurch along solely with the 16-20 year-old males at the video rental store looking for a post-Conan fix.

 Still, there were many more films in this style for New World to come, and a good number of them are pretty decent, as far as bad movies g, full of the wondrously paradoxical Corman mix of feminist empowerment and bared breasts, dry wit, and deadpan in-jokes we crave when relaxing in a late Saturday afternoon or five AM Sunday morning stupor. Sorceress's release year (1982) was a high point for A-list sci-fi and horror/adventure, and amidst that year's B-list, Hill could have rocked out for at least a few more classics. Damn you, Traigon! 

At any rate, long unseen in any format, SORCERESS is-- finally, thanks to Scorpion's gorgeous Blu-ray (replete with detailed extras)--made eternal. We are blessed twicefold, for the reds (of Traigon's cape especially) glow gorgeous and the black lunge deep - and when those corpses emerge from the thick cobwebs of the crypt into the torchlight,.

CONCLUSION

So in short, to answer my question from part 1, does Jack Hill 'get' women, the answer is clear: fuck you for asking!

Sorry, all that violence has me snappy and so does the state of the nation, and the liberals' bad habit of the back part of a movement lynching its own vanguard in its zeal. Hill's women are from the second wave of feminism, when it was called 'women's lib' and involved a certain amount of sexy strutting and sensual freedom that would now be considered a male-imposed fantasy. But from where I stand as a SWM, 'now' is a mighty buzzkill place. The third wave's dour sense of sulky humorless privilege still hasn't found a cinematic representation other than preachy documentaries and the kind of amateurish avant-garde downers seen mainly at museum and university lectures. The difference between Hill's strong babes and their un-charismatic 'representational' figures is like hanging out in an air-conditioned bar full of drunken undergrads vs. a sweltering administrative office full of self-righteous grad students who consider deodorant and air conditioning to be toxic.  Maybe they are right, man, but that don't make it fun to be around them. And maybe that's why no one is, unless they need to be, i.e. for a grade or a tenure recommendation.

Oh shit I'm becoming the very critic I was just critiquing, I've been beaten into a coma by my own copy of Sexual Personae. Actually, I never did read anything bad about the Hill oeuvre. Unless I wrote it about Foxy Brown. Still, I haven't watched Foxy since that bad experience in '99. Why would I? I'll just watch Switchblade Sisters for the dozenth time, or Corman and Angie's Big-Bad Mama, or The Lady in Red, by Lewis Teague and John Sayles, all celebrations of badass women who 'tag ya back' in ways unthinkable in today's noxious clime. We can either glumly point out they were made by men or we can act like the women in them and take out the trash, figuratively, and throw it all over the floor and tell the men to clean it up literally! Up (with) the Hill!

Let the games of spider begin, and let Robbie Lee, Jill Banner, Beveryly Washburn, Adele Rein, Joanne Nail, Lynette and Leigh Harris, Mae Mercer, and ---oh yeah, PAM GRIER...and all the rest, run into the blazing light of eternal replay.

---

RETURN TO PART I: Black-and-White: BLOODBATH, PIT-STOP,  SPIDER BABY, MONDO KEYHOLE

PS, Beware a movie with Linda Blair directed by the semi-odious Jim Wynorski--also called Sorceress, from 1987-- it sounds awful, though I do love that he just reused a title on which he already had credit (the 'original' story of Sorcreress). Had he forgotten? Does he just love that word? Jim, if you're listening, you're a dog, sir. A dog! PS - Loved Deathstalker 2!