297. Sextette

297. Sextette (1978)
Director: Ken Hughes
Writers: Herbert Baker from a play by Mae West
From: Cult Cinema

International superstar Marlo Manners has just married her sixth husband, Sir Michael, but her previous relationships, some pursued as a spy for the US, keep interfering with their wedding night.

Mae West starring in the adaptation of her play of the same name from… seventeen years earlier. Oh no.

The plot is Marlo Manners (West) has just married her sixth husband, Sir Michael Barrington. Sir Michael is unaware that he is number six (thus forming the titular sextet) and that all of Marlo’s previous husbands and conquests will be in the hotel where the couple is planning to have their honeymoon.

Marlo is in the midst of recording her memoirs when her agent/handler Dom DeLuise comes in. He’s scheduling both her screen test for her next movie as well as the diplomatic work she needs to do because she’s also an undercover agent for the State Department. A peace summit is being held in the hotel and her first husband is the Russian ambassador. He won’t agree to terms unless he has one final meeting with Marlo.

You can probably guess the set-ups and outcomes from here: new husband has to be kept distracted and unaware of prior husbands’ presences, he’s going to encounter them through hilarious misunderstandings, and the tape with Marlo’s memoir will keep slipping out of the hands of those trying to destroy it to suppress the national security secrets it contains. Running gags include Sir Michael giving interviews where, due to his ignorance of American idioms, describes himself as gay, bi, and a frequenter of “’ores.”

In the end, Sir Michael obtains the tape, has it snuck into the peace summit where it is played. Coincidentally, the tape is at the point where Marlo lays out the secrets of every attendee of the summit and they all laugh, finally coming to terms with each other. Turns out Sir Michael is part of the British Secret Service. He’s left, assuming Marlo is involved with one of her other husbands, but she manages to sneak aboard his yacht and they sail off together. THE END.

I feel like all the criticism I have of this movie is going to sound sexist or ageist. However, the problem with the movie is that it’s too old: in content, in humor, and in star. As I noted above, this is based on a stageplay from 1961 but released in 1978—the same year as Animal House and Up in Smoke. The sense of humor and shape of comedy had changed. West’s constant “double” entendres are predictable, not perverse. On top of all that, West can’t deliver the lines with energy or verve.

Granted, she was 85 when the movie came out so there’s a reason she doesn’t have much energy or move around much on screen. She was in a place where she, literally, couldn’t do this stuff anymore, but the problem for the film is that no one else can play that part. The role doesn’t call for a saucy Mae West type, it calls for Mae West.

The movie has a great cast, (check out the IMDB page to see everyone involved) and they do a good job, especially DeLuise, it’s just that this movie’s moment had passed before it was even produced. And that’s unfortunate. This was, however, the first Mae West film I’d ever seen and it was fun to finally understand all the references to her work that are embedded in our pop culture as well as to understand who this “controversial” figure was. I just scanned her Wikipedia page and goddamm, she was badass. This movie, though, just feels kind of pathetic. However, the cast seem genuinely delighted to be in it, sincerely excited to be working alongside the Mae West, so there’s something nice about that. I don’t recommend this movie, but I know I’m going to be looking up her other films. I imagine they’re amazing.

296. The Lazarus Syndrome

296. The Lazarus Syndrome (1978)
Director: Jerry Thorpe
Writer: William Blinn
From: Drive-In (only 5 remain!)
Watch: archive.org

A cardiologist finds his life changed due to his interactions with a patient.

A made-for-TV movie from the writer of Brian’s Song, adapter of Roots, and co-writer of Purple Rain. Purple Rain! Surely this will be good!

It’s whatever.

Louis Gossett Jr. plays Dr. St. Clair, a cardiologist whose marriage is on the rocks. He’s contacted by Joe Hamill, an adulterous reporter who’s just suffered a cardiac event. St. Clair becomes Hamill’s doctor and the two go back and forth antagonizing each other.

Hamill convinces his hospital roommate to consult with Dr. St. Clair about the upcoming triple-bypass that the roommate’s doctor, the hospital’s head doctor, Mendel, has recommended. When Mendel hears the request, he confronts St. Clair and gives him the patient’s records. All the records, though, support Mendel’s recommendation.

Oh, meanwhile St. Clair’s marriage has fixed itself and Hamill has asked his wife for a divorce so he can be with his mistress. You’d think these would be bigger plot points since the doctor and patient’s relationships are established early on as mirrors of each other, but they’re sorted with little-to-no-fuss if they’re not sorted off-screen.

The surgery date approaches, but something keeps bothering St. Clair about the video and x-rays he looked at. He overhears the patient tell Hamill that he’d been in a car accident as a child and had some ribs removed. St. Clair realizes the materials he looked at had all the ribs present. He confronts Mendel about the records being tampered with and the patient not needing the surgery. Mendel pushes back essentially with “so what,” arguing that the business end of running the hospital can’t be ignored. Without the money generated through surgeries and donations based on the successes of the hospital, they can’t do any good for any patients. The surgery, though, is called off.

Later, St. Clair finds Hamill running laps around a track. St. Clair says Mendel has resigned and St. Clair has been offered his job. St. Clair is willing to be head doctor, but he doesn’t want anything to do with the business end saying the multiple hats Mendel had to wear was part of the problem. He’s recommended Hamill for the administrative position, which Hamill accepts. They run together and start laughing. THE END

I wish the movie was better. It’s not actively bad, just kind of flat throughout. As I noted in the summary, the doctor is trying to save his marriage while the reporter is in the midst of trying to end his own. Gossett Jr. explicitly says this during the movie so you think it’s going to be the heart of the story, that this will be a drama about these two characters helping each other learn how to address their respective relationship challenges. And then it’s just not.

Instead it’s about the consequences of the hospital becoming increasingly depersonalized and focused on money. Only all that story happens in the background. To be fair, how would you go about dramatizing systemic bureaucratic creep? To complicate matters even further, Mendel isn’t really a villain. Sure, he seems monstrous when, in response to being accused of submitting his patient to a risky and unnecessary surgery, he says, “medicine is a business,” but the rest of his monologue is about the challenges of keeping the hospital afloat so that St. Clair and the other doctors can do the work of saving lives. In other words, he’s not wrong. In fact, he’s another victim of this system.

Granted, this movie is from 1978 so its insistence on medicine being a calling instead of a business is depressingly quaint. Forty years later the perspective is that there’s good money in saving lives because people will pay a lot to not die. So soak em for every dime you can. Also hilarious is the conceit at the end that Hamill, a reporter, will be making less money as a hospital administrator. Oh how things have changed.

In that respect, I guess the movie is a recommend since it seems to be ruminating on the beginning of the issues that we’re now living with. In other words, there’s an archaeological/sociological value to the piece. Dramatically though, it falls flat. There’s no energy and it’s never clear what the plot is supposed to be so, as a viewing experience, I’d have to suggest giving it a pass. It’s not bad, but it’s not anything really.

However, it is, somehow, in the public domain. Unfortunately my copy has Mill Creek graffiti all over it, but you can find a copy on archive.org here.

295. The Brave Lion

295. The Brave Lion aka Revolt of the Dragon aka Meng shi (1974)
Director: Fei-Chien Wu
Writer: Jing-Kang Chou
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: archive.org

Two Japanese prisoners facing execution are sent to oversee a lumberyard in occupied China. Their brutal administration, including torture, leads to a rebellion among the workers.

The small capsule description really sums it up. Monstrous bosses are exploiting workers at a labor yard until a charismatic fighter rises from among their ranks to unite them against their common foe. Not only are the bosses overworking, abusing, and torturing the workers, they’re planning to move them all to another lumber yard once the first job is done. Once that job is done, their instructions are to kill all the workers.

Basically it’s My Life as an Amazon Employee in martial arts form.

Our hero is present with little-to-no background. He’s apparently new, interested in neither the debauchery his co-workers get up to when given a night off, nor efforts to push back against the bosses’ worst abuses. Until he learns they’re Japanese, not Chinese. Then he leads his co-workers in a violent rebellion against the managers.

Torture, slave-labor conditions, imminent death: Let's let the "invisible hand of the market" do its work. They're a different race: Kill them and any that conspire with them.

While the workers are fighting against loyalists at the lumberyard, the hero faces off against the two managers. Eventually, one manager accidentally runs over the other with a diesel engine and then he himself gets killed by the hero. All the other workers rally around him and celebrate when they learn that the owner of the lumberyard has set it on fire to prevent the Japanese from returning and seizing it. THE END

It’s pretty easy to see this as an allegory for unionization, especially since so many of the debates about organizing the workers mirror standard union talks. However, that’s also what makes the movie kind of odd. I mean, it starts with workers being tortured so it’s hard to see anything the managers do afterwards as an escalation. Plus I kept wondering why the movie didn’t start with the rebellion and just have the rest play out as a sort of martial arts Les Misérables (and how great would that be?). To make things stranger, the hero only turns against the bosses and takes the mantle of leadership once he learns the bosses are Japanese. So no class consciousness or unity, only racial/ethnic unity. Weirdly, all the workers are united against the bosses from the start. It’s the leader who has to be convinced to revolt.

It’s even strange to think that the managers’ plight is aligned with the workers’ but they actively work to further the bosses’/government’s plans to exploit and execute all of them. The managers are Japanese prisoners facing execution. This job is their means to freedom. However, unifying with the workers seems like a clearer path to escaping the Japanese army and their sentence. Instead, the managers turn against the workers and torture them to further the wishes of the Japanese army.

Another curious element is that the owner of the lumberyard is generally played as being ignorant of or powerless against the actions taken by the managers. He’s ultimately accused of being a collaborator but finds redemption by burning the lumberyard down, removing it from the hands of the Japanese. The movie’s right when it calls him a collaborator/war profiteer, so it’s strange to see him get redeemed.

Ultimately the movie’s fine. It’s not offensive, has okay fight sequences with the final one achieving some real impressive moments, and isn’t terribly dubbed. However, it’s not great either and never rises to the level of being hilariously bad. Most of the time you’re waiting for the hero to have his radical spirit summoned. And I know all this reads like I’m looking at the movie through a purely ideological lens, that I’m judging it by my own standards as a former union organizer about how correct the hero and movie’s ideology is, but the movie’s about workers being exploited by their bosses and then rising up against them. I’m not imposing a reading, that’s the plot. The problem is that the movie takes way too long to get to that plot.

In the end, the movie’s neither great nor terrible, just a step or two above thumb-twiddlingly adequate. While that’s not enough to make me recommend it, that does put it head-and-shoulders above a lot of other movies on the Misery Mill so I won’t tell you to avoid it either. Plus the movie appears to be in the public domain, which is always a plus. I’ve added a copy to archive.org here.

294. The Skydivers

294. The Skydivers (1963)
Director: Coleman Francis
Writer: Coleman Francis
From: Cult Cinema

The drama of a couple running a skydiving company facing business and romantic challenges.

I watched the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of this and they sum up the movie pretty nicely with, “Seems like they forgot to have things happen.” To highlight how little happens in the movie, the running time of the original version is 72 minutes and they cut it down further for the MST3k version without losing anything.

The story, such as it is, is about Harry and Beth, a married couple running a skydiving service. They own a small airfield, fly jumpers up, and occasionally jump with them. They’ve just fired Frankie for drinking on the job and Harry has been having an affair with Frankie’s girlfriend, Suzy. Beth tells Harry to call it off and he gets into a fight with Frankie over Suzy. Harry decides to end the affair.

Meanwhile, Harry has gotten a letter from his Korean War buddy, Joe. Joe’s leaving the service and looking for a job so Harry and Beth decide to hire him. About fifteen-twenty minutes later in the movie, Joe arrives and starts working for them. There’s some chemistry between him and Beth. Well, not really, but the characters say something almost happens between them so there ya go. Then they decide to just be friends because Beth loves Harry.

Someone dies while jumping and the FAA shuts the airfield down until they finish their investigation. Then they finish the investigation and the airfield opens back up.

Suzy sees Harry in town, but he rebuffs her so she conspires with Frankie to kill him. They plan to put acid in his parachute. After a bit of film passes, they do exactly that. There’s a big jump, Harry dies, and the cops chase Frankie and Suzy, shooting and killing them both. The final sequence is Joe offering to stick around and help Beth run the airfield, but she says it was something she had with Harry and doesn’t want to continue it. He leaves and she gives the place one last look. THE END

Coleman Francis presents a whole lotta dull gray nothing. As I said, I watched the Mystery Science Theater 3000 which is interesting for the story Frank Conniff (TV’s Frank) had for how the various Coleman Francis movies ended up on MST3k. I’m half-remembering this from the MST3k Episode Guide, but I think he said he’d always been advocating for them to be on the show because he found them hilariously dull and inept, but the rest of the team couldn’t stand them because absolutely nothing happens. A lot. Unfortunately they came up short one season and Coleman Francis was given the limelight.

There’s literally nothing to say about this movie. There isn’t even really a plot. Sure, you have characters that vaguely want something, but there’s no effort made to achieve those goals, events don’t conspire against the characters, and, in the end, their actions don’t matter. Harry, arguably the main character even though he’s absent for large swathes of the movie, dies. The putative hero, Joe, doesn’t capture or stop the murderers. The murderous plot itself isn’t conceived or acted upon until late in the movie anyway so it’s literally about nothing for most of its running time. This is the type of movie you can only watch with the help of Mike and the bots. I recommend the episode; I don’t recommend the movie.

293. The Virgin Queen of St. Francis High

293. The Virgin Queen of St. Francis High (1987)
Director: Francesco Lucente
Writer: Francesco Lucente
From: Cult Cinema

Mike makes a $2000 bet that he can get Diane, the most famed virgin at his school to go to a private bungalow with him.

I always appreciate it when a movie describes itself better than I ever could: “My best friend’s being charmed by a slimy idiot and there’s nothing I can do to stop her.” THE END

While I have an affection for movies featuring “teens” with receding hairlines, this one really got on my nerves. First, the positive: I finished folding my laundry while the movie was playing.

The negative: this movie.

Set-up: high-schooler Diane isn’t allowed to date because her mother had a messy divorce from her father. Whether Diane’s mom got pregnant in high school or if she just doesn’t trust men anymore isn’t clear and this reason for Diane not dating is dropped later in the movie when it’s revealed that she’s already betrothed, though they don’t say that, to someone she met five years prior. So, sixth-grade-ish?

Randy is a douchebag who resents Diane’s well-advertised virginity (look, we can spend the entire day parsing the what-the-fuckery of that sentence or just agree that no part of it makes sense, just like Randy’s Australian accent. Yeah. That’s not explained either). He bets Mike, our hero, unfortunately, $2000 that Mike can’t take Diane to the Paradise Bungalows, the go-to hook-up vacation spot for teens (?), by the end of the summer.

I say Randy bets Mike. It’s really Mike who initiates the whole thing. Our hero.

So Mike tries various ham-fisted ways of getting Diane to go out with him, except he’s charmless and creepy. It’s Diane’s friend Judy who has the line I quoted at the top and she pretty much nails it. Mike whines his way into getting Diane to agree to go with him and, after a bear tries to break into their cabin, they kiss. We’re way into the movie, by the way. I just skipped a bunch of it.

On the drive home, Mike learns that Diane would never forgive someone for spreading rumors about her and ruining her reputation. Unfortunately, Judy has found out about the bet. When Mike drops Diane off, Judy tells her, and everyone leaves: Judy and Diane to get away from Mike, Mike and his friend to settle the bet with Randy.

Diane’s mad, but she likes Mike and wants to find a way to forgive him or get out in front of the rumor. Neither happens, but so what. She and Judy drive off to the meet-up point as well. There, Mike tells Randy it didn’t happen and that he lost the bet. Randy doesn’t care because he’s invested in spreading the rumor anyway. Mike makes a new bet: they play chicken and if Mike wins, Randy and his friends keep their mouths shut. Diane and Judy show up at this point, they play chicken, and Mike wins. Everyone congratulates him, Diane kisses him, and Randy gives his word. Mike and Diane go to her house to meet her mom. THE END

This is a rip-off of Better Off Dead..., a small success two years before this came out. That movie had absurd humor, odd dream sequences, and an early performance by John Cusack being charming. This movie has tired slapstick that never lands, dream sequences that even characters within the dream sequence call “dumb,” and a charmless performance by a lead who’s constantly mumbling, lying, and whining. Even beyond the performance, the character sucks. We like Diane as a character, but Mike is forever reminding us that he’s a piece of shit.

The movie just isn’t fun. Instead, it’s ninety minutes of cringe, just constant cringe. It’s limp, lifeless, and every shot looks like a reenactment from America’s Most Wanted. While there’s no nudity or sexual assault, it’s still kind of gross. I’m going to shock you and say that it’s not a recommend.

292. The Devil With Seven Faces

292. The Devil With Seven Faces aka Il diavolo a sette facce (1971)
Director: Osvaldo Civirani
Writers: Tito Carpi and Osvaldo Civirani
From: Drive-In

A woman is mistaken for her twin sister by gangsters trying to recover a stolen diamond.

Julie Harrison, after a party, is stalked by someone who takes pictures of her face. The next day, she visits the lawyer she met that night, Dave Barton, who’s being visited by his friend Tony. After leaving the office, Julie is assaulted on the sidewalk only to be saved by Tony and Dave. She starts a relationship with Tony while Dave starts pursuing an independent investigation into her.

What we learn is that Julie has a twin sister, Mary, who was married to a gangster. She was involved in a diamond heist and ripped her husband off. Now she’s calling Julie, trying to line up safe passage while sundry criminal forces mistake Julie for Mary.

After a fairly lengthy series of crosses and double-crosses, it’s revealed that Tony is Mary’s gangster husband. He and the other gang hunting the diamond cross paths, everyone dies, and Julie leaves safely. As she rushes to catch a plane, the police inspector tells his assistant that Julie died two years prior. The “Julie” we’d been watching was Mary and the diamond she’s carrying is a fake—the real one was never stolen. Dave meets her on the plane revealing that he knows the truth as well, minus the fake diamond, and the pair fly off assuming they’ll live off the sale of the diamond that neither knows is fake. THE END.

There’s very little tension in the film considering there’s an armed gang stalking the lead and the police never trust the principle characters. The sense of a closing net is never present. Instead, the film’s about the various figures crossing and double-crossing each other, but you can only recognize that if you know how the movie ends. Otherwise the moves are too subtle. Since the movie doesn’t spend much time on characters openly distrusting each other or escaping ever-closer moments of peril, the majority of the film is spent with them all just hanging out. The movie doesn’t offend in any particular way, but that’s less to do with the content than it is to do with the fact that it doesn’t move at all. While it’s not painfully boring, it’s just not that interesting, so it’s not a recommend.

291. The Wild Women of Wongo

291. The Wild Women of Wongo (1958)

Director: James L. Wolcott
Writer: Cedric Rutherford
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: archive.org

A prehistoric island populated only by beautiful women and ugly men is discovered by people from an island with only beautiful men and ugly women.

An opening voice-over by Mother Nature tells us of an experiment she and Father Time performed 10,000 years ago. On the island of Wongo, they placed only beautiful women and ugly men. On the nearby island of Goona, only beautiful men and ugly women. The film that follows tells the story of what happened next.

Well, what happens next is very little. Basically, the women of Wongo see a man from Goona, become infatuated, and, through a variety of coincidences, everyone ends up with their ideal partner at the end—the women of Wongo with the men of Goona and the women of Goona with the men of Wongo. There is the threat of ape-men attacking, but while that’s used as an inciting incident, it’s never followed through to any conclusion. The story is about men and women coming together and, at the end, there’s a mass marriage where each man takes turns winking at the camera, except for the final couple that features the film’s main woman. Instead, she winks at the camera. THE END.

So I watched the version of this featured on Elvira’s Movie Macabre because I’ve seen it before, because it’s not that great, and because I could. I’d watched it just over ten years ago from the Sci-Fi box set and I’ll admit to being a little harsh on it back then. It’s a low-key cheesecake/beefcake picture with nice cinematography. Having watched nearly 300 other movies from these sets, something being fluffy and silly doesn’t offend my sensibilities anymore. Sure, the gender politics are pretty retrograde, but everything’s consensual and everyone involved seems to be having fun. That’s nothing to get angry over. Plus watching the version with Elvira’s interjections helped. The movie’s silly, but her occasional raspberries upped the energy level a lot.

I mention retrograde gender politics, but even that’s less than you’d imagine, especially with this kind of plot. What’s interesting is the movie’s definitions of ugly and attractive. Elvira pops in after the first appearance of a woman with, “Is that one of the pretty women, or the ugly women?” It’s a little mean-spirited, but it’s also a fair question: What are this movie’s standards and how do they reflect the audience’s expectations? Because when the “ugly” men appear, they’re all kind of buff, well-tanned, and, at worst, look like really fit hipsters. In fact, they don’t look dramatically different from the attractive men.

With the women there’s at least a difference between the so-called ugly ones and the women of Wongo, but it almost seems like the only real difference is a variety of body shapes. All the women of Wongo have the same pin-up figures. The women of Goona range from fat to thin, tall to short, and have obligatory make-up to add additional features. When it comes down to it, though, the movie seems to be saying there’s only one standard of beauty and it’s represented by the rigid sameness of the women of Wongo. One of the Goona women is tall and therefore ugly, but, really?

There’s the additional element of the movie suggesting punching your own weight because everyone ends up in love—not just the attractive people. The uglies pair off maybe even faster than the attractive people do and are visibly excited about their partners. So I guess I’m saying don’t let incels see this because it suggests their 80/20 rule is bullshit (if any part of that sentence confuses you, be happy in your ignorance and don’t Google it).

In the end, the movie is harmless fluff that, with the right mindset can even seem kind of sweet. It’s real dull, though. Even though it’s only 72 minutes, it still manages to drag. However, it’s pretty silly so it’s one of those qualified beer-and-pretzel recommendations. Don’t watch it alone and make sure you can goof on it.

Like I said above, I watched this more than ten years ago. The flick’s in the public domain so I uploaded a copy to the Internet Archive here. Since then, it’s been downloaded almost 29,000 times. I feel a little proud of that, like it’s evidence that people are using these movies I’ve been sharing.

290. The Babysitter

290. The Babysitter (1969)
Director: Don Henderson
Writers: James E. McLarty from a story by George E. Carey and Don Henderson
From: Cult Cinema

An assistant district attorney has an affair with a babysitter and is then blackmailed by a motorcycle gang facing murder charges.

How am I getting all these movies in a bunch? First The Teacher, then My Tutor, and now this. Adults having affairs with minors or people coded as being dramatically young. Leaving aside the fact that there are at least three movies like this in these sets (I’m sure there have been more that I’m forgetting), they all come up within two months of each other. Mathematically, how does that happen?

To be fair, the titular babysitter does seem to be an adult—she’s not coded as a child, but still lands in the college-age category—so the movie doesn’t have the pedophilic edge that My Tutor and especially The Teacher had. Thin defense, I know.

Anyway, the movie is about George, an assistant to the DA who’s potentially preparing to run for the position himself. He and his wife go out for a political dinner and hire a babysitter from a service—Candy. That night, George drives Candy home and there’s some flirtation.

Meanwhile, a motorcycle gang learns that George has been assigned as prosecutor to a murder case involving one of their members. The member’s girlfriend, Julie, decides to ingratiate herself into George’s house and get evidence of his daughter being a lesbian to use as blackmail. The plan works, only the daughter is hooking up with her girlfriend behind frosted glass. However, at the very same time, Candy comes over and hooks up with George. Julie gets pictures of that and their continuing relationship over the next two weeks.

Finally Julie calls, gives George the blackmail threat: get her boyfriend off or she sends the pictures to his wife and boss. She tells him the whole story of how the gang murdered the woman. They wanted revenge on her for killing one of their members in a car accident. The boyfriend “just wanted to hurt her,” but she died anyway.

George tells Candy about the blackmail threat and Candy brushes it off. He learns that she knows about Julie dealing drugs, but refuses to give him details that he could use to have her arrested because that “wouldn’t be fun.” In the end, George gets the conviction, using part of Julie’s description of events to sway the jury, and Candy gathers some friends to torture Julie into handing over the negatives. Candy and her friends plant weed at Julie’s place and leave her tied up for the cops. Meanwhile, George has written his letter of resignation, but his boss refuses it. He already has the pictures and thinks it’s funny. George rushes home to find his wife has copies as well, but she immediately forgives him. The final shot is Candy dancing with a new man at a dance club. THE END.

How is this cheap 50s b&w exploitation film coming out in 1969? There’s a sense of it trying to impose a moral lesson, but the outrage seems to be at the idea of George having to face consequences for his actions. He starts the affair with Candy the day after meeting her. Then the shock moment at the end when Candy refuses to help him because she doesn’t want to rat out her friends’ weed source. The implication is that she’s doing something wrong, not that George is looking for a way to use his power to escape responsibility for what he’s done.

Don’t worry, though, the movie is very clear that his power gets him out of facing consequences. When he talks to his boss about the pictures, the boss treats it like a joke. He even tells George that Julie told him the whole story and that he’s going to leave her locked up so no one else hears it.

I don’t know—powerful men abusing their power to facilitate their sexual impropriety? Just isn’t sitting well when I’m in PA and the clerical sexual abuse files are being released. Or when people who got toppled by #MeToo are getting paid gigs playing themselves up as victims.

You don’t need politics of the moment to be turned off by this movie. It’s cheap softcore porn masquerading as a real movie. If you want a modern comparison, think Neil Breen: George, the main character of this movie, is also the writer and producer. So he wrote a porno and cast himself in it as the guy who gets laid.

Apparently he liked the experience so much that he made a not-quite-sequel the next year with the same babysitter plot and tagline: “She came to sit with baby...And went away with daddy!” That movie, Weekend With the Babysitter is also in this set! There’s yet another one of these that I’ll have to watch!

Not only does the movie have gross morals, it’s dull. It takes, literally, 55 minutes of this 75 minute movie for George to get the phone call from the blackmailer. Everything up to then is just George moping, sex scenes, and a general skeeviness. The movie doesn’t even seem to worry about him getting caught since he doesn’t put much effort into hiding the affair (considering the end, I can see why).

It just sucks on every level and I’m not happy that I have to watch this deflated potato take another run at it in another movie—one that’s apparently 15 minutes longer and doesn’t include the blackmail plot. Great. So it takes longer for less to happen. I cannot wait for this all to end.

Skip the movie. Burn any copies you find.

289. Pink Angels

289. Pink Angels (1972)
Director: Larry G. Brown
Writer: Margaret McPherson
From: Cult Cinema

A gang of gay bikers is headed down the coast to a drag ball in LA while a demented militia leader is planning a siege on the US.

The titular “Pink Angels” are a 6-man motorcycle gang who are all gay. THE END

I’m not exaggerating as much as you think I am. That one sentence is both a summation of the plot of the film and the entirety of the gag. “Hell’s Angels, but gay.” You’d think you’d have to do more than just that to get funding let along a cast and crew, but apparently not in 1972.

Oh, don’t forget the racist gags.

The weird militia plot only pops up every twenty minutes or so with the leader doing some skit. There’s no real connection until the very end of the movie when a biker gang that the Pink Angels pranked earlier pick up the Angels, failing to recognize them because they’re in drag, and take them to the party that turns out to be at the militia man’s house.

Each scene lasts forever and, like many of these movies, if a song comes on in the background, the scene goes until each and every note has been played (if you’ve paid for the song, might as well use the whole thing). The whole thing is interminable and I just wanted it to end. And then the final shot is all the Angels lynched! Fuck this movie.