Big Doll House(1971)

Directed by Jack Hill
Starring Pam Grier, Judy Brown, Sid Haig, Brooke Mills, Pat Woodell
Rated R
USA

"You don't look like a hardened criminal to me"

 The funniest part of this whole movie came right at the beginning for me. Not that that this is a funny movie in any way, or that it's low budget automatically creates funny scenes, or even that it's directed by Jack Hill. No, the funniest part for me was seeing the Metro Goldwyn Mayer intro. I mean somehow Roger Corman secured major distribution though this major studio! How is that even possible? You've got to give it to the man, selling a movie about women in prison to MGM. So yeah, that cracked me up a bit, especially after watching the last MAG movie which was also a Roger Corman production. And like Ken said about the man, he's been using this formula for fifty years now, and it still works.

Big Doll House and indeed Attack of the 50ft Cheerleader are perfect examples of that Roger Coman Formula. Forty two years apart, different directors and producers, and yet it's so obvious that they're related. Both offer nothing more than what you think you're going to get. And both deliver. Whalla! Perfecto. What a formula!

The plot of Big Doll House is pretty simple. A bunch of American babes are in some sort of Banana Republic prison for no detectable reason. They get tortured every once in a while by the sadistic guards and fight amongst themselves for power. And unlike the misleading tag line in the otherwise wonderful poster art, these women are less than pleased by men. They're only real desire is to get the fuck out of there. Still, they make due by having cockroach races, engaging in various dominant and submissive lesbian trysts and dancing around on heroin.

 The only males in the film are a pair of horny fruit and vegetable delivery men(Jerry Franks and Sid Haig) and a hapless prison doctor who's flat performance throughout the movie provide a lot of chuckles.

Pam Grier made her debut in Big Doll House and it's easy to see she's the real star of the film. She lights up every scene she's in and her future as a box office draw is pretty clear. Jack Hill is often credited for discovering her but in his own words she just showed up for a casting call and the rest was history. Her performance alone makes this film worth watching and her brief scenes with Jack Hill staple, Sid Haig are golden.

Grear(Grier) lets Harry(Haig) feel her up and molest her now and then in exchange for cigarettes and heroin for her junkie slave. Fair enough. But life in this women's prison, as sexy as it is, isn't always a bowl of cherries. The main guard is a total pervo and uses some strange combination of military styled BDSM to torture the ladies. Everything from electricity to poisonous snake torture shows up in her sessions, all as a masked figure watches from the distance.

At this point the girls have had it and they get to work planning their escape. Personally I would have liked a little more implied lesbian bonding at this point. They've been cat fighting for the whole film so far and now they're friends and it would have been hot, but whatever.

From this point on it's guns and murder as the girls fight their way out. They trick the boys into helping them, there's another snake scene(only in the Philippines, man)and even a cat who delivers a key securing their escape. Unfortunately all this goodness leads us to the films one major flaw; the unnecessary rape scene.

Eww. Sure she's the bad guy and she had some sort of comeuppance due, but...gross. This scene would have played out way better with some light to maybe heavy lesbian torture by one of the former prisoners. It would have made more sense and ended up a lot hotter. All the men fail at this point in the film. Harry, once at least an understandable character, becomes intolerable. Fred, the other fruit guy does nothing and the hapless doctor becomes pathetic as he looks away. Oh well.

But even before you can process any of this, all hell breaks lose as a bunch of prison guards show up and start shooting. Craziness ensues and in true Jack Hill form, nothing good happens in the end.

Big Doll House is often cited as the first of the women in prison films, and that claim is often disputed by weird Internet people citing earlier examples. I can see their point is some cases, but give me a break. Are these weak-ass examples distributed through Metro Goldwyn Mayer? No. They are not. So yes, it's safe to say that we owe Roger Corman a big pat on the back for introducing the concept to the world, and therefore creating the genre.

So for that, and for introducing us to Pam Grier, and even despite the unfortunate rape scene, I have to give Big Doll House a huge Rumspringa Woo.

-Drew

10 Violent Women (1982)

Directed by Ted V. Mikels

Starring Sherri Vernon, Dixie Lauren, Sally Alice Gamble

Unrated

USA

"God dammit! No one speaks while I'ms talkin'! You understand that?"

From legendary cult director Ted V. Mikels, whose work includes such classics as Astro Zombies, The Corpse Grindersand Blood Orgy of the She Devils, comes a movie so full of action, laffs, and boners that verifying the actual number of "violent women" that actually appear in the film will probably be low on your list of things to do: 10 Violent Women!

A near 50/50 split between heist and women-in-prison film, 10 Violent Women is a movie that, due to its construction and non-stop unintentionally humorous awkwardness, never gets stale or boring, even if every element of the plot has been done to death before and that the damned pop/funk score never stops "bwanow" -in' away (P.S. :"bwanow" is my attempt to phonetically interpret the sound of "funk bass").

Anyway, "In the beginning...there were 10 good girls." (or so reads the introduction), but after an underpaid and oversexed male demolition expert who is working with a group of female gold miners (?!) [...]


[...] carelessly detonates some explosives in a cave while there is still a miner occupying it, the titular violent women kick the shit out of the jerk and decide to get out of the mining biz and take up armed robbery. Fair Enough.

The ladies quickly plot and execute a jewelry store hold-up, making off smoothly with nearly a million dollars in jewels.

Shortly thereafter, some Arabian dudes take off after the girls when they find out that they stole an ancient scarab thing that belongs to their "master", so that's not good.

The girls proceed to celebrate their successful (for the time being) getaway with a late night squirt gun fight in the park, which reminds me of this one time me and my nephew were...oh wait, that's not a real story. Anyhow, blah blah blah...nipples.

The ladies, high on life and adrenaline, head to Vegas to see a dude goes by the name'a Leo the Fence (director Ted V. Mikels himself), but when he offers them cocaine instead of cold hard cash, homeboy gets a bottle to the head. The ladies take their jewels back, plus the coke, and head for the hills; but not before Sheila stabs/stomps Leo to death with her high heel.

Later on at a Mexican food restaurant, Sheila approaches two dudes for no reason at all and tries to sell them some coke. Turns out the guys are undercover agents (!). Sheila ends up getting shot and the other girls get sent down the river.

Once locked up, the ladies have to deal with the sadistic and perverted section warden Ms. Terry and her uni-browed and mustachio'd religious wacko assistant Madge, as they work together to both seduce and punish the ladies in fittingly exploitative scenes of gratuitous S&M power play eroticism.

There's also some stone cold shower fightin', lady-on-lady action, which is fittingly awesome [...]

[...] and lusty lesbian lovers More and Chapin, who help the newly incarcerated gals concoct a plot to make a break for freedom.

Will they escape, or will they remain behind bars, prone and helpless to the whims of the warden? Its all pretty by-the-numbers, but no less the entertaining for it.

As my mathematical smartitude dictates: 1/2 heist movie + 1/2 women in prison film = 100% goodly entertainment. In addition to sweet content, the print and audio of the film is really nice as well.

It's like $6.00 from MVD, so you should probably buy it.

- Jeremy Vaca

Axe (a.k.a. Lisa, Lisa) (1977)

Directed by Frederick R. Friedel
Starring Leslie Lee, Jack Canon, Ray Green, Frederick R. Friedel
Rated R
U.S.A.

A claustrophobic slice of semi-sleaze distributed by Z-movie zeitgeist Harry Novak (Kiss Me Quick, Please Don't Eat My Mother), Axe (or, Lisa, Lisa) was filmed in the mid-1970s in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the time still a drive-in hotspot where many exploitation entries tended to play.

Coming in at a little over an hour, Axe is a lean, mean little picture offering a twist on the rape/revenge formula to create a moody, modest cinematic triumph.

The film opens on a starkly-lit leafless tree and farmhouse at sunset, an organ and piano ambling through an unnerving theme as the credits roll. The soundtrack then abruptly switches to cymbals and other percussion as the scene shifts. Hand-held cameras follow three thugs up to one of the top floors of an apartment building located elsewhere.

The trio settles into one of the units to await the return of its inhabitant. There’s Lomax (Ray Green), kind of a Charles Durning-type chomping a cigar; Steele (Jack Canon), maybe looking a little like Robert Pine (the Sgt. from CHiPs); and Billy (writer-director Friedel), whose ’fro and beard make some of us think of Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light Orchestra.

The group explore the apartment a bit, finding a blonde wig and women’s clothing, items that encourage them to refer to the apartment’s inhabitant as a “fairy.”

Genuine suspense builds as they spot from a window the man -- Aubrey (Frank Jones) -- for whom they are waiting. He arrives with a male companion, and soon Lomax and Steele rough up Aubrey while his partner watches in horror.
















The beating ultimately proves fatal, and as Steele and Lomax advance on Aubrey’s friend he leaps from the window.

“Why’d he do that? It’s 12 floors?” says Steele. “It’s only nine,” deadpans Lomax.

Soon after the thugs are on the road and looking for a hideout. Billy sits in the back seat, expressing misgivings over what’s happened. They stop at a convenience store, and while Billy waits in the car, Steele and Lomax get unreasonably offended at the poor quality of fruit. They start out throwing apples at the frightened female cashier, then practice skeet shooting with the produce right there inside the store.
















“Lady’s got some nice melons, Lomax,” says Steele as they approach the counter. “Maybe she’s got some other nice melons, too?” Once they force her to remove her top, you’re really starting to hate these sadistic-seeming jerks. They try to play a game whereby they make as though they’ll shoot apples off the cashier’s head, William Tell-style.
















More abuse follows, then the creeps finally get bored and leave.

As they drive along, frequent crosscutting happens between the trio and the farmhouse from the credits. There we find young Lisa (Leslie Lee), shown gathering eggs and killing a rooster.
















By herself she cares for her catatonic grandfather (Douglas Powers), entirely unresponsive as she feeds him a raw egg, then bathes him.

As Lisa slowly performs her duties, she’s nearly as expressionless as her grandfather, seemingly resigned to living out this decidedly morose existence.
















When the men arrive, we’re already feeling unsettled, with the scene at the convenience store readying us for more trouble to come. The trio force their way into the house, initially claiming to Lisa, “We don’t mean any harm, ma’am.” Once they discover it is just the young girl and her grandfather, that settles it.

“This place’ll do just fine,” they conclude. (Shudder.)

Policemen soon arrive, and following the thugs’ orders, listless Lisa is able to convince them to leave, after which she feeds the fugitives. Meanwhile, Billy is getting increasingly agitated, and when he tries to run off the other two go after him.

We stay behind with Lisa, alone in a bathroom. She looks in the mirror, then begins to hallucinate -- going mad, it appears.
















In this, her only starring role, Leslie Lee manages to exude a genuinely haunting vibe throughout. A moment later she grabs a straight razor and is amid an attempt to cut her wrist when Billy, having snuck back into the house, arrives to interrupt her.

The other two return, and we resume this interesting and tense dynamic. We have Steele and Lomax, killers without consciences and clearly ready to commit further atrocities. There is Billy, caught in between but implicated nonetheless. And Lisa and Grandpa, two seemingly helpless, mostly silent victims-in-waiting.

That the remainder of the film pushes things over into a rape/revenge formula might seem predictable, but the execution (pun intended) from here on out is anything but.
















While not as brutal or intense as Last House on the Left, I Spit on Your Grave, or other such films of the subgenre, there remain several stylish -- even uncanny -- sequences that together lift this low-budgeted thriller into something a bit more memorable than your average grindhouse fare.

In other words, Axe should satisfy those of a certain taste.
















- Triple S

The Candy Snatchers (1973)

Directed by Guerdon Trueblood

Starring Tiffany Bolling, Susan Sennet, Brad David

Rated R

USA

"You are a pig."

"What are you so uptight about? You want her to die a virgin?"

Candy (Susan Sennet) is an innocent young schoolgirl whose father (Ben Piazza) runs a jewelry shop. This is not to bode well for sweet Candy, as unbeknownst to her a terrible trio of desperate scoundrels have concocted a devious plan to obtain her fathers jewels; and Candy is the key ingredient in their recipe.

The kidnappers plan is simple: contact the father, offer Candy in exchange for the jewels, make the trade-off and ride off into the sunset with their newfound wealth. What they don't take into account is that Candy's dad may have some unwholesome ideas of his own and that his daughters kidnapping may not be as powerful a bargaining chip as they had hoped for.

The gang makes their move on an idyllic spring day as Candy is walking home alone from school. The three bandits roll up in their creepy kidnapper van and slowly follow behind her until the moment is ripe. With malicious intent, they strike.

Once Candy is captured, she is promptly blindfolded, bound, and gagged. Just for good measure the vilest of the trio, Alan (Brad David), hits Candy, calls her a bitch and proceeds to stare off in space with a goofy yet menacing look on his face.

The three criminal masterminds - the aforementioned Alan, his sister Jessie (Tiffany Bolling), and rotund teddy bear Eddy (Vince Martorano) - drive Candy to a desolate area high above the city. They've already prepared a stash spot for her until the deal goes down: a 3 foot deep hole in the ground. They toss her in and proceed to cover the hole with wood slats and dirt. To ensure that she stays alive in her temporary housing, they bury a metal pipe in the ground to serve as an air hole.

In a semi-fortuitous turn of events (for Candy, at least), a mute autistic child named Sean (played by director Guerdon Trueblood's own son, Christophe) just happens to be playing nearby in a bush. Upon seeing what happens, he wanders over to the premature grave and begins dropping his snacks down the tube. He also seems to enjoy plugging and unplugging the hole to hear the volume of Candy whimpering change.

The trio proceeds to make contact with Candy's father and sets up a drop-off and exchange. When he doesn't show, things start to fall apart for the amateur criminals. The threesome must change their plans, becoming increasingly willing to do whatever it takes to complete their mission. The result of this desperation comes not only at the expense of Candy, but also themselves.

To reveal much more would only serve to lessen the experience of the film but suffice to say nothing goes quite as planned for anyone involved.

The characters personalities are perplexingly inconsistent and much of the plot plays out conveniently convoluted, but such oddness is what makes the movie as endearing as it is. Without these presumably unintentional additions, the film would undoubtedly fall through the cracks as just another 70's crime caper. What makes The Candy Snatchers the cult classic that it is is indeed the unpredictable nature of its story, and I have to applaud Subversive Cinema for the lovingly realized releasing of this little gem that could have just as easily slipped into the abyss of obscurity.

If you are a fan of unique and trashy 70's exploitation, consider this a must see.

- Jeremy Vaca