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

Double Agent 73 (1974)

Directed by Doris Wishman
Starring Chesty Morgan and her giant boobs
Rated R
USA


“Flowers are pretty, aren't they?”

Having score a modest, but presumably quite surprising hit with 1973’s Deadly Weapons – Doris’s first stab at turning glum Polish tit-queen Chesty Morgan into some wobbly, narcolecptic superspy – she quickly returned to the well with this nonsensical, wrong-headed caper, which manages to not only ruin giant boobs for even the staunchest breast man, but also feature the ugliest fashions, furniture, and fixtures that the 70’s had to offer. Add a script that appears to have been written over a liquid lunch, toss Doris’s standard random camera shots and wonky editing into the mix, reduce the production budget to day-old donuts and scratchy stock footage, and sprinkle the whole ugly mess with an incessant, wildly honking stripper-jazz score, and you’ve got the literally amazing Double Agent 73.

Chesty Morgan was a Polish immigrant with a hair-raising, hard-luck story. Orphaned at a young age, she arrived in the US at the start of World War II. She later married a wealthy American, but when he died during a robbery, she took to exotic dancing to pay the bills.

Her mammoth breasts – surely some perversion of nature – measured a whopping 73FF, the largest natural breasts on record, at least during her heyday. A big draw on the topless dancing circuit for decades, it was only natural that some enterprising filmmaker would want to capture this fleshy phenomenon on celluloid. Luckily – or unluckily, depending on who you ask – that someone was the great Doris Wishman, already a legend for her run of nudie-cutie films in the 50’s and 60’s, and well into her roughie/sexploitation phase when she crossed paths with Chesty. They made two films together and, despite the raging ineptitude they both flaunt, both Deadly Weapons and Double Agent 73 remain staples in every sleaze-beast’s diet.

During the credits, Chesty takes photos of things with her boobs. She does this by lifting one of them up. It’s a hefty mound of chest-fat that normally hangs from her body like a tortured rubber sack. Opening with the money shot is a strange way to go about things, but Doris clearly assumes that we, the viewers, will be delighted to see this unholy udders again and again. Sadly, she is mistaken. And we still have 72 minutes to go.

The story begins. Exterior house: Camera zooms in, camera  zooms out. No reason. Inside: Two guys, one with a crazy birthmark on his face, play cards. Some other dude roots around the joint. The fellas find him, bust him in the head, and then run him over in their car. Somebody finds him while he dies on somebody’s lawn and he tells them it was some guy named Topler. And also that he had a scar on his face. And then he dies.

Cut to: nudist camp. Naked people playing volleyball. Somebody throws grass on a dog. Chesty is Jane, and Jane has on a crazy outfit, which includes giant shoes, a too-small bra, and pantyhose. This is while she’s sunbathing. But then her vacation gets cut short by a telephone call. It’s her boss – he’s got a new mission for her. She heads to New York and gets her assignment. She must topple heroin kingpin Topler! To do this, she must take photos of all his associates. Why? Because one of them is him, and they don’t know which one. Well, except that they know he’s the one with the scar. By the way, Chesty’s dialogue was overdubbed because her accent was too thick. Which is a  bummer, because this movie would be ten times as awesome is she had an impenetrable eastern European accent.

Anyway, because it would be way too simple for her to find the scarred guy and then kill him – or, even going with the cockamamie plan, just bring along a tiny spy camera – they implant a camera in her boob.
I know what you’re thinking – now she’s going to have to take her shirt off every time she wants to take a photo. Bingo! See how that works?

Also, turns out the nurse at the hospital (actually somebody’s bedroom) is a double agent, so Jane has to choke her to death with a telephone wire! And then she takes her picture!

So then she goes to a hotel and beats a guy with her boobs. And the some dude kidnaps her, and then lets her go. She puts on her lipstick first, though. Lipstick, at a time like this?

She splits, and he plans on shooting her as she wobbles away, but she leaves her lipstick in the seat, and his car blows up! Then Igor – AKA Topler – finds out Jane’s in town, and orders a hit on her.

Meanwhile, she wanders around town in weird bell-bottoms finding clues while her friend – in town visiting – gets stabbed to death in the shower, because the hitman  thinks it’s Jane.

Jane comes home, finds her friend dead, and then shakes her head and looks at her watch.

And then she goes to the zoo to look at monkeys. While their, she runs into another agent and they go for a walk. She says, “Flowers are pretty, aren’t they?”

Ivan finds out the guy killed the wrong girl, and he’s pissed. The guy goes back to kill her – but she’s ready for him. She gasses him with a magic tea kettle, and then chokes him to death with ice cubes! And then she takes his picture. Then the agent dude calls her for a date. She’s pretty siked. She wears a hideous outfit, but it seems to go ok. They even smooch on the couch. So that was nice for her.

Suddenly she’s somewhere else entirely. The house has leopard skin wallpaper and there’s zebra striped sheets. Some guy walks in and she kills him by throwing her earring at him. It stabs him in the neck and kills him.

Almost every guy in the movie has a bad haircut and a mustache, which makes it difficult to follow who’s who. The chief mentions something about a race. So I guess we’re going to the races. And then the agent calls somebody and says he’s falling for Jane.  So then Agent Mustache shows up at the race track in a denim ensemble, including a jaunty hat. Doris can’t afford to shoot inside the racetrack, so she just inserts stock footage while Agent Denim loiters in the parking lot, smoking a cigarette.

It’s all for nothing, though. She’s not at the racetrack, she’s at some dentists house, wearing a clown outfit.

She hides in the shower and karate-chops and chloroforms the dentist’s girlfriend. Then she rubs salve of some kind on her boobs.

Naturally the dentist – who cannot tell Chesty’s gargantuan melons from his girlfriend’s more reasonable breasts, proceeds to slobber on ‘em once Jane enters the room. She’s boob-poisoned him!

Then Ivan finds her and ties her up! He spits in his eye, so he punches her in the face!
And then Gerta, the dentist’s girlfriend shows up, and slaps her around some more.
Strangely, Ivan’s boss, Topler, AKA Mr. T, tells him to let her go. But why? We may never know, because Kjane takes a busted bottle and rakes Ivan’s face with it! And then she splits.
Meanwhile, Jane’s boss tells his crony some bad news…the camera in her boob is set to explode! Will they be able to remove it in time? And did she get the elusive Toppler?

Yes and no. Surprise ending!

There is really no way around it – Double Agent 73 is a terrible movie. But it’s terrible in many unique and captivating ways. From Chesty’s eye-scorching bell-bottom ensembles to her droopy mega-boobs to her dead-eyed stare, Miss Morgan is a revelation, less an actress than a suicidally depressed sideshow attraction.

Together with Doris’s penchant for nausea-inducting camerawork and her knack for ugly-ing up every set she uses with gaudy knick-knacks and clashing patterns, these two cinematic juggernauts have achieved the near-impossible: they’ve created a sexploitation film that can put you off of sex for a month.

PS: Doris kept making movies until her 90’s. Death is pretty much the only thing that stopped her. Chesty Morgan is alive and well and living in Florida. She owns her own apartment building and makes lemon pies and watches Fox News a lot.



- Ken McIntyre

Fuego (1969)

Directed by Armando Bo
Starring Isabel Sarli, Armando Bo
Rated X
Argentina

"I need men! I need men!"

Laura (Isabel Sarli) is a woman on fire! She’s a nymphomaniac, a sex fiend, whose depraved lust drives her to ever-lower humiliations. No one man can satisfy her, not even Carlos, her adoring and long-suffering husband. She struggles to stay faithful, but her insatiable snatch forces her to cuckold Carlos again, and again, and again.

Fuego chronicles the torment and frustration of their seemingly doomed love affair, while delivering eye-popping nudity and nonstop lewd behavior.

Directed by Armando Bo (the “Russ Meyer of Argentina”), Fuego starts as every movie should, with our buxom black-haired bombshell skinny-dipping in a lake, then getting toweled off by her horny lesbian housekeeper. Meanwhile, Carlos (Armando Bo, again) ogles Laura from a distance. His heart is gone.

When Carlos runs into Laura at a party, he proposes marriage almost immediately. She consents, and the two immediately get freaky behind a neighbor’s chicken coop.  While her reputation as a floozy is well-known around town, Laura still decides to make a go at monogamy. (This triggers a vicious and tearful beating from Andrea, her aforementioned lesbian housekeeper.)

The monogamy gig doesn’t go so well. As soon as Carlos leaves for work, Laura (decked out in a fur coat and silver gogo boots) takes to the streets, flashing her tits at male passersby, then grabbing a mustachioed horndog for a quick screw. When the deed is done, the dude scrams, and a frantic Carlos finds Laura in a post-coital stupor of shame and depression. Ever the loving husband, he forgives her and vows to help her overcome her “affliction.”

Still, Carlos’ jealous streak is getting hard to control. When he catches Laura humping the electrician, he delivers a flurry of laughable fake punches and draws a pistol, while a sobbing Laura’s pleads “Don’t kill him! Don’t kill him!”

Clearly it’s time to seek professional help. A psychologist/gynecologist (who looks like Van Helsing from the 1931 Dracula) diagnoses nymphomania, but not before a gynecological exam launches Laura into a leg-trembling orgasm.

As Carlos’ jealousy grows, Laura’s genital indiscretions set the scene for Fuego’s awesomely tragic finale. It may be a colossal downer, but how else could such a sordid dime-novel romance end?

 Isabel Sarli is a pulse-pounding pile of pillowy pulchritude. Her gravity-defying jugs explode from her dress in near-comic Jessica Rabbit fashion, while she devours both men and scenery alike. Barely a scene goes by where she doesn’t groan and squirm and fondle herself for no apparent reason. She can’t keep her hands off of herself, and who can blame her? The cameraman smothers the screen with Isabel’s eye-popping cleavage and swooning close-ups her pouty, dolled-up face. (As a slightly unsettling tangent, with all that make-up, Sarli occasionally resembles an extremely sexy version of Divine, the famous drag queen).

Sarli may be the star, but Armando Bo is still good as Carlos, the long-suffering husband. His anguished hamming is the perfect side dish to Sarli’s erotic hysterics. The two were real-life lovers and that chemistry translates to screen, in their face-smooshing tonsil-hockey (you can practically taste the saliva), their naked canoodling in a snow bank, and Bo’s gun-brandishing fits of jealousy.

The music is awesome, too. The tango-infused theme song is crammed with strings, bongos, and electric organs, all set to a painfully romantic melody. It’s a catchy as it is campy.

So you have a jaw-dropping South American sex symbol, ample nudity, torrid romance, groovy tunes, un-PC lesbianism, exhibitionism, and occasional acts of titty-tickling. What’s not to like?

Well, the pace. Fuego is a tight 90 minutes long, but it feels longer. The plot isn’t so much a story as a doomed behavior pattern: temptation, adultery, self-loathing, repeat. After three or so of these cycles, my mind started wandering, until Laura’s horny antics snapped my attention back to the screen. Even with Bo’s anguished over-acting and occasionally gorgeous camerawork, there’s not much to recommend Fuego when Sarli isn’t on screen. Still, when she is, hot damn is it worth the wait!

Availability: The Sizzling Latin Double Feature DVD from Something Weird Video.

-Paulo Phibes

Leslie, My Name is Evil (2009)

Directed by Reginald Harkema
Starring Kristen Hager, Gregory Smith
Rated R
Canada


"I don't care what Jesus wants." 

Charles Manson was a charismatic Schizophrenic folk singer who took advantage of the freewheeling 60's peacefreak movement, forming a loosely-knit harem of pie-eyed hippy chicks and preaching to them about a screwball endtimes scenario that involved Beatles tunes and machine guns bolted on dune buggies. Manson's loony dream ended in the senseless murders of seven innocent people, including actress Sharon Tate. The gruesome crimes shocked the world, and Manson became an iconic boogieman, the man who killed the 60's and ushered in the sick, sick 1970's. Naturally, given the bizarre and sensational crimes of the Manson family, there have been many cinematic interpretations over the years, from the infamous '76 TV movie Helter Skelter to Jim Van Bebber's gory, cruel, decade-in-the-making Manson Family (2003). Leslie, My Name is Evil (misleadingly re-titled Manson, My Name is Evil for the DVD release), mines similar territory, but from an entirely different angle: it's a fictional take on the Manson court case that focuses on one of Manson's female followers, Leslie Van Houten, and an idealistic young juror who develops a crush on her.

Van Houten (above, middle) was involved in the murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca on August 10th, 1969. Along with her accomplices, she was sentenced to death for the crimes in 1971. The sentences were later commuted to life in prison. She's still serving time. A former high school cheerleader, the photogenic and fashionable Van Houten was only 19 at the time of the Manson murders. Between her good looks and demented courtroom antics - she frequently lapsed into giggle-fits when the prosecutor described her crimes - she makes for a perfect cinematic subject, an acid-gobbling death-angel in denim that neatly encapsulates everything that went wrong in the late 1960's.

Directed by Canadian indie-film workhorse Reginald Harkema (Monkey Warfare), Leslie is a deep-black comedy that revels in the psychedelic excess of the Manson era, mixing  Giallo-esque period-piece production design with vintage news footage, wrapping it in iconic imagery and a doomy acid-rock soundtrack as it cleverly merges the nightmare world of Manson with the equally sadistic pro-war, pro-Jesus culture of American suburbia.

Straitlaced chemistry student Perry (Gregory Smith, Hobo with a Shotgun) meets Dorothy (Kristin Adams) for the first time at the library. She’s a cute but clearly insane Jesus freak. She shows him an awesome (but phony) Jack Chick tract about a hippy girl who takes acid and fucks the devil. Foreshadowing! He’s into science, but you know, you do what you have to get laid in this world.

Meanwhile, Leslie (Kristen Hager, Being Human) is at the women’s clinic, getting an abortion. So things aren’t going so well for her. At this point, Perry and Dorothy are an item. They even go to church together. That’s where Perry’s uptight dad (Peter Keleghan) meets Dorothy for the first time. He smokes (in church), and laughs about “gooks” with his son’s new right-wing, evangelical girlfriend. All systems are go for another  blandly patriotic nuclear family. Except....well, Perry's not entirely sure this is what he wants out of life. Things aren’t getting better for our girl Leslie, either. Now dad’s moved out, and mom’s no fun to talk to at all. Her nuclear family has thoroughly detonated.

Then there’s a pretty sweet montage to move the story along. Over a loner-folk jam, real video images of ‘Nam and college protests are mixed with scenes of Perry and Dorothy doing squaresville stuff while Leslie grows her hair long and makes out with a hippie folksinger on the beach. Said folksinger turns out to be future Manson cohort/patsy Bobby (Travis Milne). One night on the beach, while getting stoned and listening to Bobby jam, Leslie meets two of Charlie's girls, Sadie (Angelica Scannura) and Katie (Kaniehtiio Horn).

Leslie’s a little put-off by the fact that Bobby wants to go for a tumble with Laura (Sarah Gadon), another one of Charlie’s girls, but then Bobby calls her a square, and that changes everything. Who the fuck are you calling square, man? So she splits to visit this Charlie character.

Meanwhile, Perry’s not getting too far with Dorothy. There’s a scene where they make out in his convertible in front of a green screen sunset, but when he tries to go a little further, she shuts him down. “I love you, Perry,” she explains, “But I love Jesus more.”

Leslie goes to meet Charlie down the ranch. She’s a bit overwhelmed at first. Probably because he’s hanging from a cross at the time. He lays his rap on her, they make sweet Satanic acid-hippy love together, and she joins the family. Seems pretty gross - there's a lot of dirty feet and sleeping on the floor and whatnot - but she's into it.

Perry gets a deferment from a chemical company he’s going to work for once he graduates school, so he won’t have to go to Vietnam. This excites Dorothy so much she lets him get to second base while making out outside of school while, just a few feet away, cops bash in protestor’s heads.

Back at the ranch, Bobby shows up to jam with Charlie. First though, he takes some time out to make sweet murder-cult love with Leslie, who is now referring to herself as Lulu. During their post-coital cuddle, he finds out just how deep she’s gotten into all this Charlie jive when she starts ranting about how far-out he is. Bobby, clearly jealous, tells Leslie he’s thinking of starting his own killer-hippy commune, but c’mon, we know that’s never gonna happen, Bobby.

That night, around the campfire, they all drop LSD and have a Satanic jamboree! Even the seven-year old kid gets a dose. That seems irresponsible to me, but what the hell. Charlie does his acid-is-groovy-kill-the-pigs speech, and he and Bobby belt out their smash hit “Will You Follow Me to Hell?”. It’s a pretty sweet jam, I’ll give them that much.



Things start going bad for Leslie soon after. Bobby, on a dare from Charlie, kills a cop, and ends up in prison. In protest, Charlie orchestrates a murder spree. California trembles in fear of the hippy killers. The fear even spreads to the suburbs.

Leslie goes along for the second round of ritual murders, but doesn’t really get stab-happy until the victim is already dead. At least that’s how it looks. Hard to say, since the whole scene looks like a Dandy Warhols video. Check with your local weirdo true-crime enthusiast for more information. Anyway, long story short, Charlie and the girls end up on trial for murder. And then Perry ends up on the jury. Of course, this fucks up Dorothy’s grand plans, but what can you do?

The trial begins. Most of the testimony is about all the “balling” going on at the ranch. In fact, even the jurors, relaxing after a day of court, can’t stop yapping about Charlie’s sexy death squad. I mean, this is all next-level stuff, as far as crimes-of-the-century go.

Also, back at jail, Leslie reveals that she has a crush on Perry. Seems like the looming death sentence would be a bigger concern, but the heart wants what the heart wants.

He kinda digs her too, though. So it’s cool. The problem is, this trial is making him seriously hot and bothered, and Dorothy is still giving him this not-until-we’re-married routine.

One night, after a particularly antics-filled trial day (Leslie lunges at a testifying Laura, and everybody ends up flashing their yellow panties), Perry goes back to the hotel and has a psychedelic dream about stabbing Dorothy to death for Charlie and then getting to bang Leslie for his efforts. There’s some giant bloody boobs in the dream. FYI. That’s probably why Perry woke up sticky.

So finally, Leslie testifies. It doesn’t go well. Note to anybody on trial for murder: don’t mention how fun it was.
The jury goes into deliberations. Everybody wants to put the whole bunch of ‘em to death, including Leslie. Everybody except, naturally, for Perry. He won’t budge on the Leslie thing. And then…the ground rumbles. Earthquake! And during his most terrifying moment, Perry makes his decision.

It bears repeating that the actual title of this film is Leslie, My Name is Evil. The thoughtless, cash-grabbing name change for the DVD release is deceitful for two very important reasons. First of all, no one in the film has any last names, so if anything, they should have retitled it ‘Charlie, My Name is Evil’. Secondly, it’s not about Charlie, it’s about Leslie. “Leslie, My Name is Evil” is an amazing title. I’d buy the poster and the t-shirt. “Manson, My Name is Evil” sounds like something on the bottom rack of the video store. Aside from that dumb decision, Leslie is a frequently brilliant film that combines the overwrought true-crime docudrama with inky black comedy and a John Waters-esque sense of the absurd. Driving his influence/inspiration home, Harkema even cast a John Waters lookalike as one of the jurors. The film looks amazing, with all the throbbing colors and iconic fashion statements of the era fully represented. Every scene is stuffed with classic images, many of them perfectly staged reproductions of actual photos or footage.

Essentially, the whole movie looks like a really bitchin' MC5 gig poster from 1968. The soundtrack - which is fairly screaming for it's own release - is haunting and moody, with tracks from vintage 60's psyche-rockers like 13th Floor Elevators and West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band mixing seamlessly with contemporary drug-droners like Pink Mountaintops and Black Angels. Harkema's political point - were napalm attacks really any different than Helter Skelter coming down fast? - is pretty heavy-handed, and it's difficult to get away from the fact that we're reveling in a fantasy world that is based on real-life tragedy, but otherwise, Leslie, My Name is Evil is a cult classic in the making, a weird and wonderful film that takes one of America's ugliest moments and turns it into a druggy, brooding, frequently beautiful performance piece.

PS: You can hear the Movies About Girls cast talk about Leslie My Name is Evil on Episode 106 of the Movies About Girls podcast!

- Ken McIntyre