Every 70s Movie: dick miller

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Thursday, October 19, 2017

Starhops (1978)

Never mind the title or the Star Wars-ish opening text crawl—the only celestial things in this grubby sex comedy are the stars emblazoned on swimsuits worn by the main characters while serving customers at a drive-in restaurant. After owner Jerry (Dick Miller) quits the business, two of his waitresses, Angel (Jillian Kesner) and Cupcake (Sterling Frazier), take over. They spruce up the place, hire French cook Danielle (Dorothy Buhrman), and switch to barely-there costumes. Meanwhile, an evil businessman who wants to build a gas station at the drive-in’s location sends his son, Norman (Paul Ryan), to sabotage the restaurant from within. This leads to the scene during which he plants frogs and rats throughout the kitchen during a health inspection. Whatever. All the hallmarks of low-rent sexploitation are present in Starhops, from bad acting to leering camera angles to tacky sex puns. Perhaps because both the writer and director are female, the movie (which was released in both R- and PG-rated versions), stops short of the softcore humping one usually finds in pictures of this ilk. Nonetheless, it’s hard to praise Starhops for restraint given the lowbrow nature of the humor. In one scene, Norman gets hot and bothered while misinterpreting an overheard conversation between Danielle and a plumber who’s trying to wedge something into a pipe. Hearing Danielle exclaim “It will not fit—it is too big!” prompts Norman strip off his clothes, rush to Danielle, and suggest a threesome. Excepting the too-brief sequence featuring Miller at his manic best, Starhops offers all the shortcomings of the sex-comedy genre and none of the thrills.

Starhops: LAME

Thursday, May 18, 2017

The Student Teachers (1973)

Roger Corman’s New World Pictures made so many iterations and variations of its sexy-nurses franchise that it’s challenging to keep straight which events occur in which movie, especially with motifs such as Dick Miller playing a sleazy coach appearing in more than one film. Nonetheless, I feel confident classifying The Student Teachers as the most befuddling installment. Amid the familiar tropes of feminist rhetoric, lingering sex scenes, and raunchy comedy, the movie churns through a grody subplot about a serial rapist, then concludes with a bizarre heist sequence featuring one of the leading ladies dressed as a nun—while she drives the unlikely getaway vehicle of a school bus. An early credit for director Jonathan Kaplan, who eventually graduated from drive-in schlock to mainstream pictures, The Student Teachers begins with the usual formula. Three hot women who work at the same place have experiences related to sex, and the experiences eventually interrelate. Tracy (Brooke Mills) moonlights as a nude model and gets involved with a peeping tom. Rachel (Susan Damante) takes a bold approach to teaching sex ed, sanctioning her students to make their own stag film. And Jody (Brenda Sutton) has the oddest adventure, pretending to become a drug dealer in order to help authorities capture a supplier. Naturally, each of these storylines includes an epic-length topless scene—or, in the case of Tracy’s subplot, several epic-length topless scenes. Yet it’s hard to reconcile the disparate elements. The Tracy vignettes are innocuously erotic, scenes of Rachel clashing with Miller’s character are semi-comedic, and the rape sequences—during which the assailant wears a plastic clown mask—are horrific. So by the time the campy finale arrives, the movie has become hopelessly muddled in terms of theme and tone. The unfortunate viewer who soldiers through this flick is left only with a bitter aftertaste and the sure knowledge that 90 minutes have been wasted.

The Student Teachers: LAME

Saturday, April 29, 2017

Summer School Teachers (1974)

Summer School Teachers is yet another ensemble piece from New World about three young women whose sex lives are intertwined because they work at the same place. Specifically, twentysomething Midwesterners Conklin (Candice Rialson), Denise (Rhonda Leigh Hopkins), and Sally (Pat Anderson) accept temporary jobs teaching in the summer program at a high school in California. Each character has a separate subplot, and each subplot has a different tonality, so while the overall vibe of the picture is gentle drama, some scenes veer into comedy while others venture into thriller terrain. Featuring an unusually strong distaff presence behind the camera (producer Julie Corman, writer-director Barbara Peters), the picture integrates feminist ideals into many scenes, though that doesn’t stop Summer School Teachers from delivering a showcase topless scene for each of its leading ladies. Thanks to a coherent script and some passable acting, this is somewhat more respectable than the usual drive-in sleaze, but it’s still intended primarily to titillate. De facto leading lady Rialson is as charming and feisty here as she is in the outrageous sex comedy Chatterbox! (1977), and B-movie icon Dick Miller lends his cantankerous presence as her character’s sexist nemesis. Their scenes are the best parts of the picture.
Conklin teaches physical education, so she clashes with the school’s football coach (Miler) upon accepting the challenge to form a girls’ football squad. Concurrently, she breaks one of her own rules by dating a fellow teacher. Meanwhile, Denise teaches chemistry, imprudently becoming involved with a juvenile-delinquent student, and Sally courts controversy by allowing erotic work in her photography class. Outside school hours, she dates a number of men including a former rock star now working as a grocery-store clerk. The Conklin story is fairly enjoyable and also the most effective delivery system for the picture’s equal-rights sloganeering. However, the Denise storyline is blandly melodramatic, and the Sally storyline is silly. In the movie’s goofiest scene, two old biddies listen through a wall while the rock star prepares a meal for Sally with such bizarre techniques as throwing a head of lettuce through the strings of a harp to shred the leaves. The biddies get aroused by misinterpreting what they overhear (“The only thing better than my meat is my sauce,” etc.). Although the scene doesn’t work, at least it represents an attempt at ribald wit.

Summer School Teachers: FUNKY

Saturday, January 30, 2016

Fly Me (1973)

Although it was not produced by Roger Corman, the disjointed and distasteful drama/thriller Fly Me is similar to many exploitation flicks that Corman’s New World Pictures released in the early ’70s. Set in the Far East, the movie follows the format established by New World’s “sexy nurses” films—three attractive young women who share the same profession experience parallel adventures loaded with sex, danger, and more sex. Specifically, three stewardesses travel from L.A. to Hong Kong (even though the movie was shot in the Philippines). Wholesome blonde Toby (Pat Anderson) tries to date a man she met during her flight, even though her pushy mother (Naomi Stevens) tagged along to keep Toby virtuous. Boy-crazy Sherry (Lyllah Torene) sleeps with the wrong guy, ending up the captive of white slavers. And formidable Andrea (Lenore Kasdorf) balances romantic intrigue with martial-arts brawls until she, too, encounters the white slavers—while working alongside law-enforcement officials. Directed by prolific Filipino-cinema hack Cirio Santiago, Fly Me offers campy escapism in one scene, heavy drama during the next, and a steady stream of leering nude scenes. In fact, the movie opens with Toby stripping in the back of a taxicab while she changes into her flight-attendant uniform, even as the driver (played by B-movie stalwart Dick Miller) nearly crashes the car while ogling his nubile passenger. Later, Andrea gets into a martial-arts fight during which her blouse is conveniently ripped, revealing a see-through bra. And we haven’t even gotten to the bondage scenes. Fly Me is crass, dumb, and tedious all the way from takeoff to landing.

Fly Me: LAME

Friday, June 26, 2015

Candy Stripe Nurses (1974)

New World Pictures’ tacky series of sexy-nurse flicks finally sputtered out with the release of Candy Stripe Nurses, a dull and formless compendium of empty characters, flat storylines, and perfunctory sex scenes. Once again, the movie follows the interconnected adventures of three attractive young women who work as nurses—actually nonprofessional support staffers known as candy-stripers—while navigating romantic entanglements in their private lives. Written and directed by Alan Holleb, the movie lacks anything resembling a consistent purpose, style, or tone. Whereas some of the previous sexy-nurse movies had counterculture elements and/or wiseass humor, Candy Stripe Nurses is merely amateurish and episodic and uneven, without any memorable high points to reward viewers’ attention. Adding to the general sleaziness of the endeavor, all three of the movie’s leading characters are high-school students. Promiscuous blonde Sandy (Candice Rialson) sleeps with a string of men, eventually working her way into the bedchamber of a rock star suffering from sexual dysfunction. Artistic blonde Dianne (Robin Mattson) studies dance and dates a doctor while preparing for medical school herself, but she takes a wild turn by having an affair with a basketball player who’s being doped by an unscrupulous physician eager to fix games. Latina troublemaker Marias (Maria Rojo) decides that a young man accused of robbing a gas station is being framed, then plays detective in order to clear his name. Each storyline includes at least one extended sex scene, since the New World people were a lot more interested in showing the actress’ breasts than in showing their dramatic range, and poor Rialson—a charming girl-next-door type who also appeared in the bizarre talking-vagina comedy Chatterbox! (1977)—seems to spend nearly all her screen time dressing and undressing. Nothing particularly interesting happens in Candy Stripe Nurses, although colorful B-movie stalwart Dick Miller shows up for a tiny role as a basketball-game heckler who shouts, “Your mother blows goats!” So there’s that.

Candy Stripe Nurses: LAME

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Cannonball! (1976)

Despite an inconsistent tone that wobbles between action, comedy, drama, and social satire, the car-race flick Cannonball! is periodically entertaining. As cowritten and directed by Paul Bartel—whose previous film, Death Race 2000 (1975), provided a more extreme take on similar material—the picture tries to capture the chaotic fun of the real-life Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, an illegal trek from New York to L.A. that attracted speed-limit-averse rebels for several years in the ‘70s. (In Cannonball!, the race is reversed, starting in Santa Monica and ending in Manhattan.) Bearing all the hallmarks of a Roger Corman enterprise (the picture was distributed by Corman’s company, New World), Cannonball! has a strong sadistic streak, seeing as how the plot is riddled with beatings, explosions, murders, and, of course, myriad car crashes. Yet while Death Race 2000 employed a body count to make a sardonic point, Cannonball! offers destruction for destruction’s sake. Shallow characterizations exacerbate the tonal variations, so the whole thing ends up feeling pointless. That said, Bartel and his collaborators achieve the desired frenetic pace, some of the vignettes are amusingly strange, and the movie boasts a colorful cast of B-movie stalwarts.

David Carradine, who also starred in Death Race 2000, stars as Coy “Cannonball” Buckman, a onetime top racer who landed in prison following a car wreck that left a passenger dead. Eager for redemption—and the race’s $100,000 prize—Coy enters the competition alongside such peculiar characters as Perman Waters (Gerrit Graham), a country singer who tries to conduct live broadcasts while riding in a car driven by maniacal redneck Cade Redman (Bill McKinney); Sandy Harris (Mary Woronov), leader of a trio of sexpots who use their wiles to get out of speeding tickets; Terry McMillan (Carl Gottlieb), a suburban dad who has his car flown cross-country in a brazen attempt to steal the first-place prize; and Wolf Messer (James Keach), a German racing champ determined to smite his American counterparts. Some racers play fair, while others employ sabotage, trickery, and violence.

Carradine is appealing, even if his martial-arts scenes seem a bit out of place, while Bartel (who also acts in the picture), Graham, McKinney, and Dick Miller give funny supporting turns. Thanks to its abundance of characters and events, Cannonball! is never boring, per se, but it’s also never especially engaging. Additionally, much of the picture’s novelty value—at least for contemporary viewers—relates to cinematic trivia. Cannonball! was the first of four pictures inspired by the real-life Cannonball race, since it was followed by The Gumball Rally (also released in 1976), The Cannonball Run (1981), and Cannonball Run II (1984). Providing more fodder for movie nerds, Bartel cast several noteworthy figures in cameo roles, including Sylvester Stallone (another holdover from Death Race 2000), Corman, and directors Allan Arkush, Joe Dante, and Martin Scorsese.

Cannonball!: FUNKY

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Hollywood Boulevard (1976)

The idea of a Roger Corman production spoofing the cheapness and tawdriness of Roger Corman productions is tantalizing, but Hollywood Boulevard is better in the abstract than in reality. Disjointed, sleazy, and underdeveloped, it features many amusing moments but doesn’t hang together well. Reading about the film’s creation, one quickly learns why. Apparently, producer Jon Davison, a Corman protégé, pledged to make the cheapest movie in the history of Corman’s ’70s company, New World Pictures, so Corman gave Davison $60,000 and access to the New World library of footage from previous Corman productions. Enlisting the aid of screenwriter Danny Opatoshu (credited by a pseudonym) and first-time directors Allan Arkush and Joe Dante, Davis contrived a campy story about a would-be starlet (Candice Rialson) who arrives in Hollywood fresh from Indiana, then falls in with a shameless agent (Dick Miller) and a low-budget film crew led by a reckless director (Paul Bartel) whose stunt players tend to die on the job. The movie is part behind-the-scenes comedy, part murder mystery, and part slapstick nonsense, with lots of skin—Hollywood Boulevard has so many topless scenes that even the horniest viewer might get bored of looking at breasts.

Arkush later went on to create inspired lunacy with Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979), and Dante’s subsequent career includes such irreverent favorites as Gremlins (1984), so it’s easy to see what sorts of comedic ideas were brewing in the young filmmakers’ brains when they made Hollywood Boulevard. However, the amateurish cast, the reliance on recycled footage, and the rushed shooting schedule precluded anything truly inspired from reaching the screen. That said, cinema buffs will obviously find more to like here than general audiences, from the wink-wink depictions of life on a low-budget set to the goofy film-nerd in-jokes (a criminal character is named “Rico” as a shout-out to the 1931 gangster classic Little Caesar, and so on). Plus, the whole enterprise is so knowingly and playfully trashy that it’s hard to dislike Hollywood Boulevard, even though it’s just as hard to feel genuine passion for the flick. Although, it must be said, the running joke about Miller’s character formerly representing everything from an elephant to a meatball sandwich is slightly fabulous.

Hollywood Boulevard: FUNKY

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Piranha (1978)

Of the myriad killer-fish flicks that followed Jaws (1975), the tongue-in-cheek Roger Corman production Piranha is probably the most beloved. While not a great movie by any measure—or even, quite frankly, a particularly good movie—Piranha is endearingly self-aware, satirizing its own silliness even as it delivers enough gore and nudity to please B-movie enthusiasts. Directed by the exuberant Joe Dante with a tip of the stylistic hat to Jack Arnold, the pulp specialist who made the original Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), the cheaply produced Piranha tells the slight story of a summer resort getting attacked by a school of genetically engineered fish. The piranhas were created in a government facility, then accidentally released by a bounty hunter (Heather Menzies) and a mountain man (Bradford Dillman) while searching the government facility for signs of missing teenagers. (The teenagers, naturally, were the piranha’s first victims.)

Most of the picture comprises a Huckleberry Finn-inspired rafting trip during which the heroes, along with a loopy scientist (Kevin McCarthy), slowly discover the piranhas’ lethal potential. After being captured by and escaping from nefarious government types (who, of course, want to cover up the crisis), the heroes try to prevent the killer fish from eating all the young swimmers at the resort, which lies dead ahead on the river.

Boasting a whimsical screenplay by future indie-cinema star John Sayles, Piranha actually suffers for having too many jokes, because the wiseass tone and the chintzy special effects make it impossible to get frightened. Luckily, Corman stalwart Dick Miller steals the show with his thoroughly enjoyable performance as the resort’s cantankerous owner, because it’s fabulous to watch him keep a straight face while saying things like, “Don’t bother me about the goddamned piranhas!” Dante refined his jokey approach to horror with later hits including Gremlins (1984), and the killer fish he released into the world proved durable. No less a figure than James Cameron was hired (and fired) as the director of the awful sequel Piranha II: The Spawning (1981), and the original movie was remade with even more gore and nudity as Piranha 3D (2010).

Piranha: FUNKY