Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Pets (1974)

Directed by Raphael Nussbaum
Starring Candice Rialson, Teri Guzman, Joan Blackman, Ed Bishop
Rated R
U.S.A.

With a notorious ad campaign suggesting a misogynist and/or S&M-themed romp through familiar sexploitation territory, Raphael Nussbaum’s Pets is in fact a more complicated -- and ultimately more intriguing -- mid-seventies grindhouse entry. Adapted from a sequence of three one-act plays by Richard Reich first performed in Greenwich Village five years before, Nussbaum’s film integrates the three similarly-themed tales into a single narrative, offering its audience an opportunity to contemplate and perhaps even challenge traditional notions regarding the relative power of the sexes.

What at first appears a fairly typical compilation of scenes alternating between sex and violence eventually turns into kinda-sorta-statement criticizing man’s treatment of woman as somehow less than human -- that is, as like the “pets” of the title. Hard to get too carried away with talk of Nussbaum’s artsy-fartsy pretensions here, though, as the many hallmarks of low budget, amateurish filmmaking -- crude editing and lighting, literally out-of-focus shots, small lapses in narrative logic, etc. -- should ultimately keep us from getting too high-falutin’ about “messages” and whatnot.

Drive-in diva Candice Rialson stars as the wayward teen Bonnie. One of the grindhouse-era’s more memorable figures -- in both senses of the word -- Rialson was said to have provided the inspiration for Bridget Fonda’s Melanie in Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 throwback Jackie Brown.


As it happened, 1974 would be a breakout year for the sleepy-eyed, adorable blonde, a year in which she’d follow Pets with starring turns in a trio of sexploitation titles (Candy Stripe Nurses, Summer School Teachers, and Mama’s Dirty Girls). Soon after she’d land bit roles on TV series and in a few mainstream features like The Eiger Sanction and Logan’s Run. She’d end up back in the B’s, however -- most notably in the notorious, talking-vagina opus Chatterbox! (1977) -- before retiring from the silver screen for good as the decade came to a close.

After a suggestive opening montage showing a bird, a tiger, then Rialson each in cages, we jump into a familiar-seeming ’70s drive-in opening with Bonnie and her abusive brother driving about the L.A. streets. Their talk suggests he’s tracked her down after she’d run away. And -- like a hard-to-tame animal -- she seems anxious to escape back into the wild once again.

Bonnie complains she’s hungry, and they stop at a burger joint, a visit that ultimately results in Bonnie’s brother offending a carful of toughs to the point they decide to teach the “jive-ass honky” a lesson.


As they beat her brother, Bonnie escapes, and the opening credits roll over the sappy title song (“Searching”) in which Bonnie is introduced to us further (“in this wicked world some folks call me evil girl / they’ve got it wrong and they don’t know”).


Bonnie spends the night on the beach, then the next day meets up with Pat (Teri Guzman), yet another wild child on the loose. The pair catch a ride with the affluent-appearing Dan Daubrey (Brett Parker) who has been out for a jog on the beach, the group sharing the space in the vehicle with Dan’s dog, Bibi.

By this point we’ve already seen other canines milling about, and indeed such visual reaffirmations of the film’s title and themes will continue throughout. As they drive, Pat surprises both Dan and Bonnie by pulling a gun and ordering Dan off the highway onto a dirt path.


They tie Dan up with the belt of his robe and shoestrings, take his wallet, then Pat gets him to give up his home address, the location of some cash that can be found there, and his keys. As Bonnie ties up Dan, Pat compares him to Bibi, saying his wife has two dogs, “the four-legged one -- that’s the one she loves and kisses -- and this schmuck.”

Pat leaves in Dan’s car (with Bibi) to go loot his home -- his wife is out getting her hair done, he’s explained -- while Bonnie watches him, gun drawn.


The pair talk, their conversation revealing Bonnie’s dissatisfaction with her young life. We cut away to follow Pat as she visits Dan’s home and robs him of cash and more, the Daubreys’ gardener oddly unconcerned thanks in part to Pat distracting him.


As Pat drives back, Bonnie and Dan continue to talk. She does a seductive dance, then reveals to him the gun is just a water pistol. We see Pat cruelly toss Bibi off a cliff after the dog bites her. She then returns and she and Bonnie leave, but then only Bonnie returns, apparently to check whether or not Dan kept his promise to lie there for a half-hour.

Soon Bonnie figures out Pat has left her, taking the car and all of the loot she hauled. Bonnie and her captive talk a little more, then she gets the idea to have a little fun.

“What do you want, lapdog?” she says to Dan. “You’re sweating, you’re hot.”


Dan tells her to untie his hands and he’ll show her what he wants, but Bonnie has another idea. “No, I’ll show you,” she says with a snarl. “Helpless. The way I’ve always been.”

The pair then make sweet, sweaty seventies love on the grass, after which Bonnie grabs her panties and shoes and skips away -- in enchanting slow motion -- to continue her adventures.


We move with Bonnie into the middle third of the film, leaving everyone else we’ve met thus far behind for good. Caught stealing an apple from a fruit stand, Bonnie’s luckily helped out of a potential jam by an artist, Geraldine Mills, who takes an interest in the beautiful runaway as a possible subject for her paintings.


The pair swiftly bond and Bonnie agrees to Gerry's proposal to work for her, posing as a model for various works while living in Gerry's spacious Malibu home.


Eventually the pair start a sexual relationship. Gerry becomes somewhat controlling of Bonnie, insisting on long hours of posing and not tolerating Bonnie’s leaving the home unattended. Bonnie sometimes calls Gerry "slave driver," and clearly becomes increasingly restless as time passes. However, at other times, Bonnie affectionately refers to Gerry as “Mommy,” a further reference to their unequal relationship.

An exhibition of Gerry’s work at a local art gallery proves successful, with the gallery’s owner, Vincent Stackman, in particular taking an interest in Gerry’s work. And in Bonnie, too.


Ed Bishop, a character actor with a lengthy and varied resume from TV and film, plays Vincent, whose unending creepiness immediately begins to challenge the ladies’ space on the screen for our attention.

Victor wants to buy Gerry’s painting, they agree to terms, and he leaves. “He’s a very wealthy young man,” explains a gallery patron to Bonnie. “But a very strange fish!”

Cut to fish frying in a pan. Gerry is making lunch for her and Bonnie, and Victor happens by unannounced, ostensibly to get his painting. He catches Gerry and Bonnie acting as a couple in the kitchen, which embarrasses Gerry. An uncomfortable meeting follows in which Gerry makes plain his interest in Bonnie.


At one point he and Bonnie discuss painting, including nudes, and Vincent lectures her about how “the great artists of the past, they never completely painted their models in the nude... [because] they believed that by revealing everything a woman lost her mystery.”


Vincent finally leaves, and his visit and interest in Bonnie has appears to stir up some conflict between the women. Bonnie is becoming more agitated and difficult to control, even earning a slap from the dominating Gerry for her insouciance. She complains to Gerry about desiring a man, and asks her why she doesn’t like men.

“I like men,” explains Gerry. “Just as I like dogs until they try to bite me.”

They make up, but are soon interrupted by an intruder breaking into Gerry’s home. Gerry pulls a gun on the man, named Ron.


Ron explains he’s hungry and was just looking for food. He’s willing to work for it, and Bonnie pleads on his behalf. “The windows really need washing,” she weirdly argues, going on about how they need “a man in this house” to fix the sink and do other chores. “We haven’t needed a man,” insists Gerry, who gives Bonnie the gun while she calls the police.

Bonnie ushers Ron into her bedroom, then tells Gerry he’s gotten away. Soon they all retire for the night, and we realize it is as though Bonnie has captured for herself a hound dog with which to play.


The next morning Gerry discovers the pair and how Bonnie has betrayed her. She swiftly decides to put down Bonnie’s “pet.”


“You killed him!” cries Bonnie in horror. “No, Bonnie -- you killed him,” she clarifies.

Soon Bonnie is on the run again, hastily leaving the house by foot. She runs along the beach where dogs seemingly roam free so as to remind us again of Bonnie’s animal-like character.


She ends up back at Vincent’s gallery and while it isn’t clear at first we soon discover she’s hiding there. Gerry comes to the gallery looking for Bonnie, but Vincent covers.

We move into the third and final act. Vincent buys clothes and jewelry for Bonnie, including a bracelet unsubtly inscribed “Vincent's Pet.”


Vincent takes Bonnie to his secluded “house on a hill” where she first meets Lila, Vincent’s cat. He then takes her to his basement to see “where Lila and her friends” live. We hear animal noises, look for a moment upon Bonnie’s alarmed expression, then leave the scene.

Soon Vincent invites Gerry to his house, too, luring her with the bait of his knowledge of Bonnie’s whereabouts. Lots of awkward discussion follows between the pair. Gerry thinks he's trying to seduce her, but Vincent insists “I don’t seduce women… I make them my pets!”


He further outlines to her his warped view of the sexes. “You see, I sometimes see in my mind’s eye a zoo. Not with the usual animals, no. In my zoo there would be only women!” Gerry predictably reacts with disgust, but Vincent has it all worked out.


“They’d adore it! I assure you,” he insists. “Imagine it... they’d have no responsibilities, they'd be well taken care of, they'd be fed regularly, splashing about in the water, playing in the sun, being mated regularly….” He goes on, his vision seeming to make little literal sense but in a figurative way alluding to a not uncommon chauvinistic worldview.

Having had enough, Gerry tries to leave but he keeps her with a promise to show her Bonnie -- whom, he explains, he has “tamed.” Gerry assumes he’s slept with her, but his answer is unclear (“Would you blame me if I have?”). He explains it was Bonnie’s idea that he bring Gerry there, and soon he produces the young beauty.

The three share a drink. “She should be behind bars,” says Bonnie of Gerry, referring to the latter’s shooting of Ron the intruder.


More suggestive talk follows, then Bonnie leaves the two. Vincent then resumes his mad-philosopher-type talk to Gerry, declaring he’s going to “possess” her.

“You can’t possess me!” Gerry objects. “I’m a woman, not an animal.” “Women treat men like animals, don’t they?” he responds before launching into an anti-women’s lib rant about women trying to “take over the world… giving us orders.”

“I’ll show you what you’re made for!” he says. “Possession by a man!” At last he takes her downstairs to see Lila and her friends, too -- a collection of animals ranging from rodents to a tiger, all female, and all in cages... including Bonnie!


Gerry is horrified, but when she says how she wants to rescue Bonnie from her captivity Vincent has a ready response.

“To make her your pet, again?” he asks pointedly.

Will Vincent succeed in taming Gerry, too, to add to his bizarre collection? The finale provides some resolution -- and a surprise twist -- if not a coherent conclusion to the argument about sexual politics the story has introduced.


There are several reasons to satisfy one’s curiosity and give Pets a look. Despite the film’s many technical flaws, the performances by Bishop, Blackman, and Rialson are all above grindhouse standards, with Rialson’s unique ability to switch back and forth between vulnerable and vengeful suiting her well in this particular role.


And while there might ultimately be as much affirming of male dominance going on here as there is questioning of it, Pets does nonetheless recognize that there’s at least an issue to be debated when it comes to the ongoing battle of the sexes. Not to mention offer a few suggestions of how humans might in fact be more like animals than we care to admit.

- Triple S

Monday, December 19, 2011

Hard Ticket to Hawaii/Picasso Trigger (1987/1989)


Directed by Andy Sidaris
Starring: Dona Speir, Hope Marie Carlton, Harold Diamond, snakes, model airplanes, razorblade frisbees, and tits-lots of tits.
Malibu Bay Films 

Andy Sidaris (RIP) was just as obsessive and accomplished a film maker as Russ Meyer, with  (sadly) none of the hipster accolades or high brow literary dissection, but that might all change with his comprehensive 12 volume DVD series. Sidaris had a lurid but imminently marketable vision of a bleach blonde Shangri-La, with bikini-stretching government agents and their muscle-tearing Kung-Fu sex toys taking on the most vague forms of machine gun evil imaginable in lush landscapes of extravagant beauty, and this 80's born Sidarisian wonderland found a happy home in the blurry-eyed world of late night cable television. Still does, in fact. Click on anything form USA to Cinemax at 2 AM, and the next popped top is most likely Andy's doing. What makes his films so watchable, even after many repeated viewings, is their complete lack of pretense, their campy absurdity played as straight as humanly possible, and of course, the chicks. His unwavering faith in "Bullets, Bombs, and Babes" became such an exact science, that the DVD booklets come with a handy guide for how many of the three B's are included in each chapter. And of course, at least one and sometimes all three come rolling in without fail, every time.


Hard Ticket to Hawaii is his first film in this gonzo series. Try and keep up with me on this. Donna (Dona Speir) and Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton), two chesty blondes that couldn't possible exist in any other time than the cocaine and silicone fueled 80's, are government agents. I'm guessing the US government, but God knows what division hired and trained these two. They're working undercover as cargo plane pilots, secretly ferreting out dope smugglers and the like. Right off the bat, they're up to their bra-stuffing tits in trouble, as not only is a contaminated snake running amuck, thanks to their inept handling of clearly marked snake boxes, but they discover a sinister cabal of diamond smugglers and dope dealers on the far side of the island. I'm not sure how much you have to worry about diamond thieves that attempt to move their stolen ice by model plane, but they do have plenty of machine guns. But before we get ahead of ourselves, I must explain the snake. See, he's been shot up with some kind of cancer, and if bitten, his victims will be infected as well. That particularly nasty fact doesn't even matter much, since the serpent is so berserk, he just tears his prey up into bloody shreds, as a couple of hapless honeymooners soon find out. Anyway, Seth Romero (Rodrigo Obregon), the drug dealer whose as mean as the contaminated snake is on to our bubbly supergirls, thanks to an entirely unconvincing transvestite bartender/spy, so they call for back-up, and some old pals show up, including a pony-tailed Kung Fu guy (Harold Diamond) and a weapons expert (Ron Moss) who rigs up the most implausible looking incendiary devices you've ever seen. Like a skateboard bomb, for example, or a razor-tipped frisbee. Between showers and skinny dipping and drunken revelry, the unlikely team of undercover Feds concoct a scheme to bring down the bad guys- it involves motorcycles and bazookas, with a surprise appearance by that goddamned snake-and it all ends in a flurry of explosions and kicking. Of course, the good guys win, and the girls live to blunder and jiggle another day.


Despite the over-reaching tongue-in-cheek plot contrivances and the gratuitous nature of...well, everything, "Hard Ticket" is a seriously well-crafted film, aided greatly by the amazingly lush location and Hope Carlton's Playboy bunny charm. I wanted to kick the pony-tailed guy's teeth in the second he showed up on the island, but that was probably part of the plan as well. The DVD has a host of extras, including Andy and gravity defying miracle of nature Julie Strain clowning around in an impromptu intro, a complete set of trailers, a still gallery, and some handy b-movie making tips from Sidaris. The whole thing is a blast, both literally and figuratively speaking, from start to Finish.


Picasso Trigger is Hard Ticket's high concept follow-up, featuring many of the same players including lethally blonde agents Donna and Taryn and their Kung Fu fighting pal. First, though, their is intrigue in Paris to ponder as vaguely sinister arch-criminal Salazar decides to turn his back on his evil ways and give back to the city that he's taken so much from, donating a priceless painting of a big blue fish- The Trigger, naturally, to some swanky museum. But wouldn't you know, as soon as he strolls out, his new life as an honest citizen sprawled out in front of him, he's assassinated by some dirty sniper. Or is he? Well no, he isn't. Saddam himself must of have picked up some pointers from this film, as Salazar has merely dispatched an unlucky look-a-like to take the bullet for him so that he concentrate on his life's work without interference. His life's work being revenge on the g-string wearing secret agents that killed his brother- you know, the diamond/drug guy from Hard Ticket to Hawaii.


And so, the team gets back together, amidst much crazy talk of snuff films and a few sub-Vegas vaudeville T&A acts, to take on the Picasso Trigger and his swarthy henchmen. PT contains much of Hard Ticket's plot elements- including the Mcguver-esque weaponry. This time out, you get missile launching crutches and a boomerang bomb. The latter you could think about for days- if it's got a bomb attached to it, why the Hell would you want it to fly back? The model airplane hijinks are back too, as a payload bearing craft blows up Taryn and Donna's rather boss cigarette boat. It all ends in a climactic showdown at Salazar's remote hide-out, and in lieu of no cancerous snake, a well-placed surfboard helps out the cause. Explosions and a hot tub after-party ensue.

Being a sequel- or at least a semi-sequel- Picasso Trigger is more formulaic than its anything can happen predecessor, but Sidaris wisely upped the ante on the cheap thrills quotient by littering the film with no less than 7 Playmates, and all of them find the time to get at least half-naked somewhere in the mix. All in all, it's another righteous display of 80's excess, as loud and as implausible as the decade it was made in. The DVD contains much of the same extras as "Hard Ticket", with the addition of some sexy Julie Strain out-takes from some of her films further along in the series. The best part of it all is watching Andy himself living it up with Strain at his side, flashing freely and declaring her love for the T&A auteur as his long-time muse and business partner, wife Arlene, looks on, bemused at the whole silly affair. He's obviously a man that lives the dream and for that- not to mention all the tits and bazookas- Sidaris deserves a rousing round of applause.

Or just buy his movies, either way.

PS: Andy passed away in 2007. I was honored to speak with him a couple times, and I am happy to say that he was a prince of a fellow. He will be missed. Bazookas are just no fun  without him.


- Ken 

Friday, December 16, 2011

Biscuit Roller Boogie


From some screwy German TV show circa '78.
Happy Friday, MAGnation!
Stay tuned for a new episode of the MAG podcast tomorrow!

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