Cannibal Rollerbabes (1997)

Directed by Kalman Szegvary
Starring Paul Noiles, John Sorbera, Lisa Heughan
Unrated
Canada

"But why eat him?"

Any movie with the moxie to call itself Cannibal Rollerbabes is bound to be weird. There's just no way around it. But to throw those two garish elements together - hot girls on rollerskates (or so-so girls on rollerblades, in this case) and people-eating, and then to drizzle a homey, small-town, let's-put-on-a-show vibe on top? Well, this was not cobbled together by committee. This was a singular vision realized. The awesomely named Kalman Szegvary is that starry-eyed visionary, and in 1997, he made one very nutty Canadian fever dream come-true. Shot on what looks like 16mm film stock snatched from the bottom of a stagnant pond, there is something entirely otherworldly about Cannibal Rollerbabes that belies its relatively recent vintage. It looks much more like the low-rung title on an all-night quadruple shock-show from 1975; even the evil genius's weapon of mass distraction - a jumbo transistor radio with a whirlygig glued on top - looks like a Fonz-era artifact.

The story, such as it is, is pure low-grade hokum, a confusing mash-up of Italian post-apocalyptic gangwar flicks and...I dunno, that Village People movie, maybe. Scott (John Sorbera) is a small town guy who works at a diner.

Said diner may also be a pizza joint that employs a jump-suited disco queen in a purple dunebuggy, but that might also just be a bit of random awesomeness. After a hard night of slinging hash, Scott decides to take off with his FM DJ friend Chuck (Mark Tyler) to the country for a week of fishing, rollerblading, and bromancing.

They drive out to Chuck's cabin-by-the-lake and run into some bizarrely dressed chicks that seem sorta hot to trot. But Scott, a perennial stick in the mud, wants to stay home and rest, because the ride up was too cold. Scott complains about the cold a lot, which begs a host of questions. Ostensibly, Cannibal Rollerbabes is supposed to take place in Los Angeles, but it was very obviously shot in small-town Ontario. Are Scott's near-constant complaints about the weather supposed to throw us off, to make us think that LA is experiencing an unusual cold snap? Or perhaps these are the complaints of the actor himself, miffed that he must perform underdressed during those cold Canadian nights, just to preserve this pathetic ruse about the film's true location? Regardless, it really makes Scott sound like a pain in the ass.

Meanwhile, Atman (Paul Noiles) a hair-gel slathered, bespectacled, gym-toned, spandex short-ed, open-shirted guy in a dune buggy, shows up at some underground bunker festooned with birthday party decorations, and informs his group of militant roller-disco girls that their 'guest' has escaped, and needs to be fetched. So the girls take off through the woods - on rollerskates - after some fat guy wearing a fanny pack, and not much else.

Meanwhile, Scott and Chuck go fishing and Chuck tells his friend about the abandoned old scientific lab on a deserted island near the lake. Then Scott complains about being cold again, so they go to a bar. There, Scott first sees Atman, now under his more media-friendly guise of Mayor Caplan, head-honcho in whatever awful backwater they're in. Snooping around, Scott gets the 411 on the mayor from a local: "People around here think he's God because he went to college."

Later on, Scott has a nightmare about Atman, and when he wakes up he finds a letter in the empty wine bottle he caught when he was fishing. The letter was from a beautiful blonde princess, trapped on the island. Scott had a vision about her earlier. He goes to see the sheriff to ask him about it, but the jumpy lawman tells him it's just a local myth. By the way, the sheriff has a hostile secretary named Judy (Judy Levesque) who consistently dresses in skimpy outfits that reveal her ample cleavage and womanly figure. Dunno why, but it's a bright spot in the murk, that's for sure.

The two city-boys go to see a psychic who tells Scott he's supposed to be with the message-in-a-bottle-princess, but has to go to the deserted island to get her.

Scott mulls it over during a rollerblading trip to the park with Chuck. Things quickly go awry when Atman shows up with machete - he's also on roller blades - and they have a seriously awkward fight.

Meanwhile, Chuck gets absconded by two of the roller-chicks, who take him off to the island. Scott goes back to Chuck's place and plays video games and grills a steak, then heads off to the woods to look for his pal. He runs into a kid with pointy ears (Patrick Leggett). He's an elf named Random, and it's his job to defend the woods against Atman and his "Centurions"(two dudes dressed, vaguely, like bikers) who show up out of nowhere and do battle with our idiots/heroes. Amazingly, the two fight off the bikers, and Random gives Scott a special stick to fight Atman with.

By the way, Atman drives an evil dune buggy with a Led Zep sticker on the windshield. That was a nice touch. He also runs his operation out of what looks like an abandoned amusement park 'castle'. At any rate, Atman finds out that Scott is on his way to slay him with the magic stick, so he sends out his rollerbabes to nab him. He has to kick a balloon out of his way when he's yelling at them. There's balloons everywhere, for some reason.

Scott gets caught by the rollerbabes and gets thrown into a "cell" - clearly somebody's bedroom - where he finds his Princess (Amy Van Elle) waiting for him. She sorta explains what's going on, although all I really got was that Atman castrates all the men in town, so that he can keep control over all the women. Then Atman slips something in Scott and Princess's drinks, and they make sweet Canadian love (side-boob is shown) interspersed with Scott running over rocks down at the river while an Elton John-esque ballad plays.

Later on, Scott discovers that Chuck's been eaten - they had to justify the title somehow - and he tells Atman that "I met a little man in the woods who thinks I'm a demon", which may be the single greatest line of dialogue I've ever heard. And then he falls under Atman's spell via his 70's jumbo transistor radio. Things get weird from there.

Judging just from the celebrity skin/boner-popping factor, Cannibal Rollerbabes is a fiasco. Spike (Canadian Playboy model Lisa Heughan), the jump-suited cleavage queen from the opening scene, is Atman's sometimes-lover, but she never does unzip that thing all the way, and the other girls are either plain-Janes or shot from too faraway to really get a good look at them. Princess Anna is pleasant looking enough, but the sex scene is so weirdly choreographed that all erotic potential is thrown, forcibly, out the window. And yet, there's something so screwy, so inexplicable, so eye-abusingly 'What the what?!' about it all that Cannibal Rollerbabes retains a ragged, homemade charm, even in its draggiest, most amateur moments. There is magic in this movie. Saggy, mostly useless, highly Canadian magic, but a benign sorcery nonetheless. It's one of those things, man. You really have to see it to believe it.

Availability: Cannibal Rollerbabes is available on DVD.

- Ken McIntyre

Kiss Me Quick (1964)

Directed by Bethel Buckalew
Starring Jackie DeWitt, Claudia Banks, Althea Currier
Unrated
USA

"I have to shoot my sex bombs to the pool before they explode."

Kiss Me Quick! is often cited as the greatest nudie-cutie film ever made, but that's not saying a whole lot, considering the mind-sapping nature of this curious micro-genre. The nudie-cutie's heyday was the 1950's to the mid-60's. At the time, nudity on film was still taboo (although a thriving underground porn-loop business certainly existed), so to skirt the issue, crafty bastards like David F Friedman presented the public with "Naturist" movies, quasi-documentaries that could, if you squinted, serve as educational exposes on the nudist lifestyle. Doris Wishman was the reigning queen of naturist movies, having cranked out piles of 'em, in rapid succession: Hideout in the Sun (1960), Diary of a Nudist (1961), Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls (1962), etc. The first nudie film to break away from the naturist angle was Russ Meyer's Immoral Mister Teas. Despite being as slow as molasses, the idea of peeping on naked women for no other reason than, you know, it's fun, was such a revelation that Teas caused a veritable avalanche of similarly themed lightweight teasers. Being benign little enterprises, the "Nudie-Cutie" title soon caught on.

By the mid 1960's, the nudie-movie morphed with the exploitation film and a wave of 'roughies' hit the grindhouses. Winking burlesque girls were no match for murder, rape, drug abuse and general mayhem, so the nudie-cuties days were numbered, but not before a last-gasp clutch of 'monster-nudies' hit the screens, cleverly mixing the era's obsession with spookshows and creature features with good ol' fashioned T&A in fun, sloppy flicks like Ed Wood's Orgy of the Dead (1965), House on Bare Mountain (1962), and of course, Kiss Me Quick!.

One thing you'll notice right away about Kiss Me Quick! - it looks terrific. Seriously cheap, but terrific. Bright, vivid colors, creative camera angles, crystal clear photography. Amazingly enough, it's the work of Lazlo Kovacs (RIP), who would later go on to shoot everything from counter-culture classics like Easy Rider (1969) and Hells Angels on Wheels (1967) to Ghost Busters (1984). But at this point in his career, well, a buck's a buck. The director, Bethel Buckalew (?), had an amazing 20 year run of directing grimy sexploitation like Country Cuzzins (1970) and A Scream in the Streets (1973), capped off with the hallucinatory non-action girl-biker flock Cycle Vixens (1978), which is amazing for all the wrong reasons. It was produced by sexploitation legend Harry Novak, and the swinging, clarinet-driven surf-punk/beatnikjazz ditties were composed by The Gallstones. So, an all-star line-up behind the camera. And in front? Well, some of the finest topless magazine models the 60's had to offer. So we got that going for us, too.

In one of the more inventive cost-cutting measures I can think of, Kiss Me Quick! eschews with on-screen opening credits, instead utilizing a sexy monster-girl to purr the names of the players: Hotti Totti, Gigi String, Gertie Tassle, etc. Pretty awesome.

As with most nudie-cuties, the plot is negligible-bordering-on-non-existent. Basically a fat Stan Laurel goober with a pasta strainer on his head named Sterilox (Frank Coe) beams down from the Planet Buttless to find a perfect female specimen for the Buttless men to breed with. Naturally, he materializes in the kooky castle of one Dr. Breedlove (Max Gardens), a wise-cracking groovy-ghoul who has developed a special sex machine - or sex bombs, or sex something. Breedlove is (very) loosely based on Dr Strangelove, but he's mostly an unhinged FM radio DJ with a non-stop patter of bad puns ("You couldn't find Jayne Mansfield in Boys Town!") spat out in a pseudo-Lugosi accent.

And that's pretty much it. The bulk of the 70-minute movie is a series of pretty incredible stripteases, which will have the average full-blooded hetero-male banging on the table and howling and smacking himself in the head with a mallet like the wolf in Red Hot Riding Hood.

Kissme (Jackie DeWitt) is our first bump n' grind star. She's strapped to Breedlove's Sex Machine, which causes her to undulate suggestively while seriously low-rent mad scientist props bubble and smoke behind her.

Breedlove shows up and worries that she'll break his machine, so her sets her loose and tells her to hand a fizzing beaker to Boob-ara (Natasha), who seizes the opportunity to do a burlesque/contortionist bit. Then two other girls show up with their own beakers, and everybody shakes their tits around.

And then, sorta crazily, Frankenstein shows up.

Breedlove explains to his chubby alien friend that Frank was originally a girl, but he fouled up the experiment. That might explain why Frank joins the girls in the furious frugging.

Sterilox asks for a tour around the joint. Since the budget did not allow for more than one set, he is instead encouraged to peep through a portal, where he gets an eyeful of girls working out on primitive 60's exercise equipment, including one of those crazy vibrating belts. By the way, ass does not look good on those things, regardless of what condition said ass is in. Believe me.

Then Breedlove gets a visit from his old pal Dracula (he looks like some creaky vaudeville comedian on an off-day), who shows up to bite Sterilox's neck, but ends up breaking a tooth. Turns out our cosmic visitor is "mostly metal". Then the mummy shows up. She's Breedlove's chauffeur, apparently. By the way, all these monsters are slathered in hilariously dimestore make-up. Whenever Breedlove turns to the side, you can see where the make-up girl just gave up on him. It's pretty incredible.

Oh, I almost forgot - there's a super-hot striptease with a busty chick in a sweater, too. But still, Sterilox is not swayed. And then he sees it, behind yet another gyrating nubile: "The Instant Butler." It's actually a piece of cardboard taped to the wall, but it's supposed to be a machine that will do you every bidding. Sterilox falls instantly in love with it, and asks Breedlove if he can have it. The kindly doctor agrees, but knowing that the blundering Sterilox is going to be in hot water if he returns home without a female, Breelove insists that Kissme go with him, so that she can maintain the complicated machine. So, off they fuckin' go.

You'd figure this might make Breedlove a little sad - Kissme was his Girl Friday - but then he gets a whole new shipment of girls to experiment on. They arrive on his ass-first on his conveyor belt. He tags them with stickers, like cuts of meat. The end.

Sexist? Sure, but 1964 sexist. They didn't know any better back then, man. Funny? Yep. Breedlove's gag-heavy monologues are endlessly quotable, and Coe's nutty Stan Laurel routine is pretty dead-on. Sexy? Way sexy. Boner City USA. The girls are all drop-dead gorgeous in that ethereal 60's-sex-goddess way, all crazy-curves and easy smiles. Of course, an hour's worth of hip-shaking and booby-twirling might be a bit much for modern bird-watchers, but for fans of tease n' tickle, this is top-notch stuff, and the monster angle makes it a compelling and really sorta-wonderful time capsule. The world this was made in - a world of cigarette smoking, whiskey gulping, red meat eating cads and lady-killers - is long gone, but this is a great way to live the Manly Life vicariously for a good 70 minutes. They most definitely do not make them like this anymore.

Availability: Kiss Me Quick! is available from Something Weird Video.

- Ken McIntyre

Crazy Animal (2007)

Directed by John Birmingham
Starring John Birmingham, Brinke Stevens, Ron Jeremy, Lloyd Kaufman
Unrated
USA

"I thought she was just, uh...slutted out, or something."

Crazy Animal is not a teen sex comedy, even though it gives you every implication that it is. It does, after all, have tits, cheap gags, hot Euro-chicks, asshole jocks, cheeseball music, and a misunderstood nerdy protagonist. However, its also got rape, murder, cross-dressing, and slaughterhouse footage. By the end, you will be entirely unsure whether you've just watched John Waters directing Revenge of the Nerds, or a gay-themed glam-metal musical. Shot in 2005 for $80,000 by then-film student John Birmingham, this genre-mashing, acid-dipped revenge-flick baits you with classic teenage hijinks up front, and then drags you into a very dark alley and pummels you for a good hour or so. But hey, there's a happy ending!

Crazy Animal opens with Ron Jeremy having a heart attack. So that's a good sign. Jeremy is Ricky's sweaty dad, who offers his young son a little advice before shuffles off to the hereafter: find love, or you'll be living like a crazy animal. And then he dies. That's the first black and white flashback.

The second one involves Troma boss Lloyd Kaufman. Lloyd is Jeff's dad, a banjo-picking evangelical weirdo who's always telling his son to kill people and fuck them in the ass. Troma eventually picked this one up for distribution, so Lloyd must have really enjoyed his spittle-spewing scenes.

So, that stuff happened in the old-timey black and white days. Now we flash-forward to the present, where Henry (Atom Gorelick) finds himself in the middle of a frathouse sex orgy. Henry doesn't actively partake in any of the now-snoozing nookie on display, but he does slip on a condom and masturbate furiously to the scene. Unfortunately the phone rings and wakes up the sex-revelers before he can complete his mission.

We then get to meet Jeff (the dramatically named Steven McClosky II), the frathouse's resident lady-slayer. He looks and sounds as gay as Paul Lynde, but whatever, this is not my universe. Jeff rises from this pile of semi-nude girls on his bed and announces to Henry and their other buddy Chris(Anthony Mongiello) that they have a mission-to-party at some spring break hot spot. And then we get to look at his naked ass for awhile. And not in a comedic Apatow-esque way, either. More of a gay porn-y, Jeff Stryker-eseque way. So that was weird. Especially after all the tits and girl-parts a minute ago.

Anyway, we then meet out protagonist, Ricky (director Birminham). A razor-sideburned, pink-skinned goth-boy with a serious case of the miseries, Ricky flashes-back to happier times with his equally gothy old girlfriend Veronica (Jessel) who was raped one evening by Jeff, and killed herself shortly afterwards. Rocky goes down to the beach and watches the dolphins frolic while a Jesus and Mary Chain-y tune plays on the soundtrack.


Cut to: four girls goofing around, singing into bananas, and plotting revenge on Jeff, who we have now established as a serial rapist. The quartet of lovelies include: Jen (Anise Fuller), Jeff's former girlfriend and accuser; Meese (Danica DeCosta), a happy-go-lucky militant vegan, and Katia (Lene Pedersen, Miss Norway 1991) and Svlena (Maria Zyrianova) the awesomely-accented Eurochicks. I'm not sure how they figure into things, but I am glad they're there.

So Jeff and his gang of creeps show up at the house. The girls, at this point, have staged a mock murder-scene, with Jen brandishing a sword and the slashed Euro-girls hanging from nooses. This freaks the boys out, but only for a minute. I assume there was some reason for this hoodwink, but I think it got lost in translation somewhere.

Anyway, we now cut to Ricky, who is dressed like one of those Steel Panther guys. You know, like a guy satirizing Vince Neil, or something. Ricky slathers on some make-up and rocks out while Jeff and Chris peep in on him. Jen explains at some point that he's dressed this way because jock-rapist types respond to rock n' roll singers in some significant way. Anyway, he's part of the plan.

First though, there's a party to be had. Chris takes a champagne n' tits bath with the Euros. Meese - I'm not sure what happens, but she has some sort of flashback or something that involves really gruesome and heart-rending footage of pigs being slaughtered. Honestly, what the fuck? There's also a subplot about Henry's dad, Peebody (Bryan Kimmel), a high-rolling Hollywood producer who now lives on Whiskey Beach, mourning the death of his wife (Brinke Stevens, who shows up via flashback in a Koala bear costume). So that's going on.

Utilizing spandex-rock to confuse Jeff and Chris, Ricky shoots them with tranquilizers and drags them back to his black-walled hideout. Jen and Meese are there as well, as is half a drugstore's worth of cheap Halloween props. And then everybody tells bits and pieces of their goofy life stories.

Meanwhile, back at the beach house, the Eurochicks have Henry tied to the bed. They have a camera trained on him and are attempted to coerce him into a rape confession. He is not a rapist, however. He's a guy that masturbates into condoms. He does remember that terrible night with Jen and Jeff though, and recounts it for them. And then Svlena tells a puzzling non-story about a fly, and it strikes you that she's so attractive, you'll listen to her drone on about anything in that weird accent of hers, even some dumb fuckin' story about a fly.

And then everything goes wrong at the Halloween house. Blood, murder, insanity, and a surprise guest.

And then there's a Scooby Doo ending, complete with a homeless guy doing the hotdog-in-a-donut thing.

Bizarre by anyone's standards, Crazy Animal's oddball blenderizing of horror, black comedy, slapstick and performance art reminds me a lot of Stephen Sayadian's 1989 Dr. Caligari remake. It might also fit nicely on a bill of Kuchar Brothers flicks. But Troma? Sure, some of the elements are there, but Crazy Animal in no Terror Firmer. Despite the outrageous trappings, this is less of an exploitation movie than it is an experimental film. There is very little logic involved, and the characters all seem as if they drifted in from different movies entirely. I think Birmingham might have a Dali fixation or something. Still, despite its arthouse inclinations, Crazy Animal does have its charms. And they both speak in broken English.


Availability: Crazy Animal is available on DVD.

Link: Crazy Animal official site.

- Ken McIntyre

Love Goddesses of Blood Island (1964)

Directed by Richard S Flink
Starring Launa Hodges, Billy Rogers, Carol Wintress, Dawn Meredith
Unrated
USA

"Do it, Desiree! Rip out her black heart!"

One of the more bewildering films in the Something Weird catalog - and that's saying something - Love Goddesses of Blood Island is a nudie-cutie without the nudies. It's also a hardcore gore film, one of the very first ever made. If you thought Werewolf in a Women's Prison was an odd genre mash-up, well, this one is infinitely odder. Essentially a lost film, a 20 minute highlight reel of Love Goddesses' more gruesome moments was tacked onto SW's Floridian horror double-feature DVD of Death Curse of Tartu and Sting of Death in 2002. At the time, those lunch-loosening clips were the only evidence that this insane movie even existed, until last year when Frank Henenlotter's cabal of garbage-pickers unearthed a twice-as-long chunk of the film for his Sexy Shocker series. At 47 minutes, this version is still missing a reel or two, but it does manage to tell the whole terrible tale. And given the glacial pace this beast moves at in this truncated form, perhaps we should be thankful we don't yet have an extended director's cut to slog through.

The awesomely named Richard Flink was the visionary behind this gory little messterpiece. A building contractor by day who also ran his own drive-in theater, the enterprising Mr. Flink was clearly inspired by his neighbor HG Lewis and the massive success Lewis's groundbreaking splatter bum-out Blood Feast experienced when it shocked and awed drive-in goers across America throughout 1963. Why not shoot his own version? Blood Feast actor William Kerwin was brought in to cobble a script together. The original title was Six She's and A He (that title - complete with misplaced apostrophe - is on the opening credits of this version), and was most likely influenced by some overwrought EC comic. There is a chance that the full version contains something resembling a sub-plot, but none is offered here. The film simply spits up an absurd premise and flounders around in it for a half-hour or so.

Said plot involves hapless astronaut Fred Rogers (Bill Rogers) - no relation to the beloved kiddie show host - who is forced to abort a mission and ends up floating aimlessly on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Eventually he washes up on the shores of Blood Island, a tropical paradise occupied by exactly six young women in gold lamé bikinis. The women drag him through the sand to their temple - quite obviously the pool area of a low-rent Miami Beach resort - where they feed him grapes, bananas, and roasted pig.

Then they shave him with a machete and inform him that he will not only toil in their fields all day long, but he will be forced to make savage love to all the girls in succession for the next six nights. Should he fail at this mission, he will end up like the last dumb motherfucker who washed up on Blood Island. Smash cut to: a mannequin head on a pike, covered in what looks like Vaseline, tomato sauce, and a cheap wig.

The women are heavily armed with spears and knives, so Fred is forced to accept this terrible fate. But first, he gets to listen to the amazing love goddesses theme song while watching the girls clumsily dance around the pool. The pool, by the way, is filled with milky water. Just what the hell is in that thing? Party time over, Fred gets to work plowing the fields and, later, boning all these weirdo chicks.

All the girls are clearly insane, but man-hating Rebecca (Carol Wintress) is especially sadistic. In one of the most demented scenes I've ever witnessed, she has a flashback to her encounter with the last sap that washed up on shore.

"I was the one who cut off that man's head," she nonchalantly tells Fred, referring to the rotting noggin-on-a-stick glimpsed in the film's opening. And then we see how it happened.
Rebecca is dressed in what looks like a space-girl outfit, complete with a teased-up pompadour. She circles around a man dressed in military gear. He is tied down to a concrete slab. As he squirms and screams in terror, Rebecca stabs him in the abdomen with an oversized knife. After opening a sizable hole in his belly, she jams her fist into the cavity and starts yanking out ropy intestines. Then she tears out the man's heart and shows it to him. After mercifully passing out, Rebecca uses the knife to hack off the dude's head. She leaves it there on the slab, dead eyes staring into the abyss.

"When your time comes," Becky warns Fred, "I'll again be chosen to use the knife."
Fred responds by staring off into space. I can sorta understand his reaction. She does have a tendency to drone on.

Desiree (Dawn Meredith) is Fred's next mate-for-the-night, but as they embrace for the ritual lovemaking, she whispers to him that she'll help him escape, as long he takes her with him. She explains that, like him, she accidentally washed up on the island. In her case, she escaped from a 'Japanese concentration camp' the year before, and has been trying to get away from these screwy broads ever since. Together, the two formulate a foolproof plan while dutifully humping for the benefit of the love goddesses peering in on them from the dark recesses of the jungle.

There's a good chunk of film missing here, so when we abruptly cut to the next scene, the effect is much like the on-purpose missing reel gag in Planet Terror. A bunch of horrible stuff has clearly gone down, but knowing exactly what is not at all necessary. All we really need to concern ourselves with is how currently-fucked Fred is. Tied to a totem pole, our blood-soaked hero writhes and screams as the girls - including his co-conspirator Desiree - circle him and stab him with spears. Eventually they tire themselves out, and while the other girls fall into a stab-induced trance, Desiree gives Fred the signal, and they haul ass out of there.

They make it all the way to the beach (burlap, Astroturf, and a couple buckets worth of sand) before the island's queen bee Aphrodite (Launa Hodges) shows up. Desiree wrestles on the Astroturf with her and eventually knocks her brains out with what is supposed to be a rock, but is very clearly a sponge. And then that maniac Rebecca shows up, and she blunders her way into a jaw-dropping gore-death.

With the remaining girls hot on their heels, an exhausted Desiree and a badly wounded Fred limp towards his raft, desperate to get off this cursed island. Will they escape the manicured clutches of the Love Goddesses?

There's no way around it: you simply must see this film. Yes, it's terrible, nonsensical and mostly tedious, but it's also completely and utterly insane. From the loony clarinet-driven space-age bachelor-pad ditties blaring away on the soundtrack, to the seriously awkward bikini dances and the actually-sorta-shocking lashes of proto-splatter, at times Love Goddesses seems like it was somehow beamed in from another planet or an alternate dimension, or something. How could anyone in 1964 dream up something so visceral, so maddeningly random, and so confusingly chaste, all at the same time? Why show a graphic disemboweling, but no sun-warmed breasts? Why shoot half the movie at an actual beach, and then the other half - including beach scenes - on a hilariously shoddy and unconvincing set? And what's in that fuckin' pool?

Unfortunately, we may never know the answers to these questions. The folks at Something Weird ran into a dead-end when they went looking for Mr. Flink. He produced 1965's hippies vs. jellyfish monster opus Sting of Death, but gave up the movie business shortly thereafter, and has yet to resurface. No one else involved with Love Goddesses is either still alive or willing to discuss it. So, this is pretty much it. 47 completely disorienting minutes of z-movie delirium courtesy of Richard S Flink, building contractor and cinematic visionary. That blistering Miami heat can surely fry a man's brains.

Availability: Love Goddess of Blood Island is available on DVD from Something Weird.

- Ken McIntyre

Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (1988)

Directed by David DeCoteau
Starring Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens, Michelle Bauer, Buck Flower
Rated R
USA

"Goddamn that fuckin' imp."

A sort of Holy Grail for 80's cheese-seekers, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama is very much a product of its time. Over the top titles were all the rage (See Surf Nazis Must Die, Flesh Eating Mothers, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, etc), and it certainly had that. Mall culture was at its zenith, and it took place at a mall. Nerds were the heroes of the day, and Sorority's got three of them in lead roles. Most importantly, there were three major female horror stars at the time - Brinke Stevens, Michelle Bauer, and Linnea Quigley - and this film featured all three. Plus, it had bowling. And a foul-mouthed imp. How could you not like this movie?

Three quintessential 80's nerdboys - Calvin (Andras Jones), Keith (John Stuart Wildman), and Jimmie (Hal Halvin) - are sitting around their dorm room one listless night, chugging Bud, watching splatter flicks, and reading skin mags. To relieve the boredom, Keith mentions that he knows where the new pledges for the Tri Delta sorority are being initiated, so our three bungling heroes head out to peep some coed flesh. And they get quite an eyeful.

Taffy (Brinke Stevens) and Lisa (Michelle Bauer) are the two pledges in question. The cabal of sadistic sorority sisters include Rhonda (Kathi O'Brecht), Frankie (Carla Baron), and queen bee Babs (Robin Rochelle, RIP). In a fetish-baiting scene, Babs paddles the girls, and then sprays them with whipped cream.

Afterward, they take a well-deserved shower. The fellas are Scooby-dooing outside the sorority house the entire time, running from one window to another, taking in all the kinky girl-on-girl action.

Eventually Babs catches on and nabs them. In one of those only-in-an-80's-movie plot developments, their punishment for peeping - and the final step of the pledge's initiation - is to break into the bowling alley down at the mall and steal a trophy. Figuring this is a great way to get to know Taffy and Lisa a little better, they boys agree, and away they go.

Getting in is surprisingly easy, since the absent-minded janitor (Buck Flower) has locked himself in a closet, and has left the front door unattended. However, they are not the only surprise guests at the closed alley. A spandex-suited cat burglar named Spider (Linnea Quigley), is already inside. So is Babs, Rhonda, and Frankie. They're in a control booth, watching the action through video cameras.

Meanwhile, Buck is still stuck in the closet. He bangs and bangs on the door, but it will not budge.
"Fuck," he grunts, "that's stuck tighter than a nun's cunt."

Jimmie grabs the biggest trophy he can find, and the gang prepare to split. Spider's part of the gang now, too. Evens up the girl/boy ratio. But then he drops it, and smoke begins to pour out of it.
"Holy shit," mutters Spider.
"No," says Calvin. "Unholy shit."
They peer over the cracked trophy as it hisses and pops, and are stunned to find a wisecracking latex imp huddled inside. From the get-go, the pint-sized, big eared monster seems less than trustworthy, but he is offering free wishes to thank the kids for releasing him from his bowling trophy prison, so a few of them take him up on it. First is Jimmie, who wants money. The imp gives him a pile of gold bricks. So, he's psyched. Then there's Taffy.

Brinke Stevens is the only 80's scream queen that was ever capable of pathos. Even in light-hearted romps like this, there's a palpable sadness to her characters. Taffy might be one of the saddest. When it's her turn for a wish, she asks to be prom queen. The imp outfits her in a lacy white dress. She spins around and around in it, deliriously happy. Later on, of course, the dress is revealed to be nothing more than tattered garbage bags, and poor Taffy is forced to fight demons dressed like a deranged hobo for the rest of the film.

Keith wants to bang Michelle Bauer, naturally. He is granted his wish, and innocent young Lisa is suddenly transformed into a hot-to-trot vixen who just wants to fuck. She drags him into a locker room (I'm not sure why there's a locker room in a bowling alley, but then it's not really my business), and gets to work. There really is no downside to this particular wish, except that it turns out Keith is afraid of sexually aggressive women. Lisa quickly disrobes and then spends the next ten minutes trying to yank the clothes off a squirming, panicked Keith. I'm not sure what the cautionary tale is in this particular bit, but no matter: Michelle Bauer is the undisputed queen of maneater roles, and she's both hilarious and dead-sexy in this short-but-boner-popping scene.
"Keith, I have your pants!"
Indeed you do.

Spider is having none of this, and decides to just bail. The skittish Calvin joins her. Good thinking on their part - already, the wishes are going sour. Jimmie's gold turns out to be nothing but hunks of wood sprayed with gold paint. Taffy's dressed in rags. Keith's terrified of Lisa's vagina. Up in the control booth - or whatever is - things are also going awry. The sorority sisters had nothing to do with the imp at all, and yet they get a dose of Imp-juice (or whatever; it looks like a bolt of lightning), which turns Rhonda into a budget Romero zombie, and Frankie into the monster's bride. And then they pick up axes and start chasing the other kids around.


Taffy, already crushed because of the dress, quickly runs afoul of zombie Rhonda and Bride-of-Frankensteined Frankie. They snatch her up and snap her in half. Keith, crazy-legging his way out of sex with Lisa, runs into the terrible two as well, and they French-fry his face. The imp corners Babs and turns her into Elvira, for whatever reason. And then I think she death-lesbos Lisa. I'm not sure how that works, but that's what happens.

Around the one-hour mark, Buck's crazy ol' janitor finally gets around to explaining the current wave of mutilation. Thirty years ago, at this very alley, a terrible and much-abused bowler named Dave McCabe started bowling perfect games. Soon after, everyone who'd done him harm began turning up dead. "Awful dead, all tore-up", even. Naturally, Dave got popped for the murders and was promptly sent to prison, but he went to the gas chamber claiming that he'd used black magic to become a better bowler, and that things just got out of control. It was the imp that had done all the killin'.

"That is about the stupidest damn story I've ever heard," says Spider. It is pretty close.

Buck tells the kids they've got to get the imp back in the trophy, or his reign of terror may never end. And so, the plucky Spider and her hapless geek-pal Calvin run around the alley, battling the monster girls and chasing the imp.

There are poorly staged fight scenes, a girl-on-fire gag, and even a low-speed car stunt in an empty-parking lot at 3AM. And, as was the standard for the 80's, an improbable-but-satisfying ending. Roll credits.

While the towering trio of scream queens is a rare treat (well, sorta; there's always Scream Queen Hot Tub Party and Nightmare Sisters) and the goofier-than-usual tone is hard to dislike, Sorority Babes is still marred by a couple of annoying factors. For one, every print that's surfaced since '88 (if, indeed, there's even more than one) has been too dark. You literally have to squint half the time just to see what's going on, especially in scenes that feature the imp. Also, there's no real standout moments, no classic and/or unforgettable scenes. What most people remember about the film in Buck's semi-demented, sandpaper-throated mumbling - and you can find that in dozens of films - and the three actresses. Again, nice to see 'em all in one place, but they spend 40 minutes together in a bathtub, naked, in Nightmare Sisters. So, it's not really about that, either. We don't not go back to Sorority Babes because it's good or because it's particularly memorable, we watch it over and over because it represents a time and place in the world when many of us were blissfully unaware teenage numbskulls, when even the simplest pleasures kept us enthralled.

An imp trapped in a bowling trophy would not pass muster in this thorny modern world, but in the 80's - pre-cell phone, pre-internet, when Casios seemed like magic and a VCR was a gateway to narcotic wonderment - yeah, sure. Imp in a bowling trophy, why the fuck not? And here is the most important part - spoiler alert, by the way - at the very end of the film, nerdboy Calvin vrooms off into the sunrise (it was a long night) on the back of Spider's motorcycle, having accepted an invitation to 'her place', presumably for a good boning. Imagine, a world where you fight ancient evil at the mall, and afterward, you split to have savage 80's sex with Linnea Quigley, the most lusted-after b-queen in history? That is the ultimate wish-fulfillment fantasy for aging cult-goons like myself. It still sounds like the best night ever to me.

The quintessential 80's movie is different for everybody who lived through the decade, really. High school zeroes prefer the Breakfast Club or Revenge of the Nerds, former mall-queens love Dirty Dancing and Footloose and Flash Dance, some dig Back to the Future or Nightmare on Elm Street or New Wave Hookers, but for many trash-film fans growing up in the era, this one managed to encapsulate all of their interests and desires into one adorably cheeseball premise. Girls, monsters, bowling, the shopping mall. An 80's movie-nerd paradise. For that reason, it will remain a beloved cult item until we're all dead. And after that, who gives a fuck?

Significantly, most of the people involved with Sorority are still working today, over 20 years later. Although he appears to be concentrating mostly on gay-themed films at this stage in his career, director David DeCoteau has a long and winding resume full of fun junk like this: Dr Alien (1989), Beach Babes from Beyond (1993), Creepozoids (1987), and of course, Nightmare Sisters (1987). Linnea, Michelle, and Brinke are all still going strong: Brinke appeared in ten films in 2009 alone. Genre legend Buck Flower had a hell-for-leather run through the lower-rungs of the movie business, acting, writing, producing, and growling his way through hundreds of brain-boiling B & Z movies before his time finally ran out in 2004. Producer Charles Band is still a major figure in indie-film, and his Full Moon production company continues to crank out nutball opuses like the Gingerdead Man series. Soundtrack composer Guy Moon has racked up an armful of Emmys over the last two decades for his work in children's television. Even the voice of the Imp, Dukey Flyswatter, managed to carve out a niche for himself. When he wasn't acting in cult-films like Surf Nazis Must Die, he was fronting shock-rockers Haunted Garage. A bonafide Hollywood legend, Dukey still pops up in odd places here and there, and is plotting out both a Haunted Garage resurrection and a stageplay as we speak. Carla Baron joined the surprisingly lengthy list of former cult actresses turned (ahem) "psychics". Unfortunately, Robin Rochelle, a glamazonian, scene-gulping, b-goddess-in-the-making most remembered as the Final Girl in the original Slumber Party Massacre, committed suicide in 1996, after a long battle with alcoholism.

Sorry, I don't really know how to put a positive spin on that one.

Availability: Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama is available on a too-dark DVD and a too-dark VHS. Totally fucks up Michelle Bauer's full-frontal scene. But what are you gonna do?

- Ken McIntyre