Space Thing (1968)

Directed by Byron Mabe
Starring Karla Conway, Cara Peters, Merci Montello, Fancher Fague
Unrated
USA

“This 'love' thing was getting out of hand.”

A Diane Lane-esque ginger beauty lays in bed next to her shlubby middle-aged hubby Jim (Steve Vincent), who's embroiled in his science fiction magazines. He loves 'em, can't get enough, spends most of his time thinking about  space travel and babbling about alternate dimensions. She's had enough of it, and tells him that if he doesn't pay her some attention, she's throwing all his goddamn sci-fi bullshit out. So he bangs her to shut her up. She's appreciative, but even as they bathe in the aferglow, he finds himself distracted by his outer space stuff.

Soon, he drifts off to sleep, dreaming about his life in another galaxy. Cue the Laugh-in-esque credits, scrawled in dayglo swirls on the bodacious bods of the the space girls.

In Jim's dream, he is a Captain Kirk-esque starship captain, the victim of a mutiny by “rapscallions” and set adrift in his “space canoe” to fend for himself. He spots an enemy ship and, bravely, steers himself into its orbit. Then he attempts to board.

Connie (pint-sized Playboy playmate Karla Conway), who is naked except for a constantly slipping towel,  lets him in. Through the front door. How else?  They are soon joined by Captain Mother (Cara Peters, another playmate), who, by her name and the looks of her ridiculous/bonerific outfit, is running this ship, and a chubby oaf named Willie (Dan Martin). On the voiceover, Jim talks about how repulsed he is by these disgusting creatures.  Damnit Jim,  have you gone space-mad? Anyways, he tells Capn' Mother that his ship was blown up, but he escaped using his supersonic sneakers. She tells him he can stay and do her grunt work. He tells her he's a Colonel back in Kansas, and therefore not required to do any heavy lifting. She laughs in his face.

Meanwhile Connie gets dressed. Sort of. I dunno if an outfit that skimpy counts as 'dressed'. Then she wakes up her roommate Portia (Merci Montello, playmate number 3), to let her know there's a handsome man on board. Portia doesn't like getting up without a good reason.

Jim wanders around the ship and finds a mirror. He is shocked when he sees what he looks like as a “Terranian”. So that's why he was freaked out by bare-assed Connie! Maybe he's usually a lizard?

Anyway, man-hungry Portia sidles up to him and tells him she's from Kansas, too. Then she makes out with him, but her jealous boyfriend Cadet (Stan Isfloride) shows up and knocks Jim the fuck out.

She runs to Captain Mother and tells her it was all Jim's fault. Capt Mother storms off to deal with him. Too-tan Astrid (the incredibly named Fancher Fague) rolls her eyes and calls Portia a liar, so they tussle a bit until Willie breaks it up. Don't you know the rules of girl-fighting, Willie? Nobody breaks up a, sexy girl fight!

To keep himself out of trouble, Jim pops invisibility pills, and then just skulks around the ship, watching all the amorous antics. Like when Portia and Cadet get it on while wearing silver boots that I'm pretty sure are covered in duct tape.

Or later on, when Portia and Captain Mother canoodle.

Willie sticks around to catch that one, too.

Things get a little weird when Captain mother pulls out a whip, but that's space love, baby.

Apparently there's a “no men” rule on the ship, and Portia's been breaking it all over the place.

And then an asteroid smashes into the ship! Which I think is a meatball pinging off a pie plate.

Luckily they all survive. Connie celebrates by seducing Jim while wearing what looks like a torn-up green curtain.

Then everybody sits down for dinner. Their futuristic space stools are very clearly garbage cans. They eat steak-flavored jelly beans. On the voiceover, Jim complains that he misses “juicy meats”. Then he storms off, sneaking into the control room to fiddle with some knobs. What are you up to, Jim from Kansas?

Turns out, Captain Mother is on a mission to Kansas to scoop up some 'specimens' for experimentation.  When Jim found this out, he figured the only solution was to alter the ship's course so that it would smash into an asteroid and kill them all, thereby sparing Kansas from an attack by hot chicks with space leotard wedgies. But Mother orders Willie to land on the nearest planet before they can crash. Thwarted!

The planet turns out to be pleasantly warm, so they lay down some blankets and mellow out. Captain Mother gets it on with Astrid, which is nice, because I was beginning to think she wasn't going to get naked like all the other girls. Whew.

But what about poor Willie? Doesn't he get to bang somebody? He runs into Connie, who's been running around in circles, topless, with Portia for the past ten minutes, and offers his services. She just shakes her head at him and wanders off. Sorry, Willie.

Meanwhile, Jim has sex with Portia while wearing shiny gold pants. “This is ridiculous,” he says. No kidding.

Captain Mother, determined to keep her ship strictly lesbianic, decides to have sex with Jim, just to prove...well, I'm not sure what it's supposed to prove. But she does it. And then she realizes that maybe men aren't so bad after all.

And then she gets back in her space ship and blows up the Earth. Or something like that. The end.

Directed by the same nutball that made the infamous She Freak, Space Thing is incredibly cheap and clunky and stupid. There's no getting around that. However, the film looks great (camerawork is credited to 'Sy Klops', who is most likely sludge-flick DP wizard Gary Graver), and the girls are hot and naked for pretty much the entire running time which, mercifully, is only 80 minutes. If I saw this when I was 14, I'd probably think it was the greatest film ever made. I sorta feel that way now. Boners will be popped!

Space Thing is available from Something Weird.

- Ken McIntyre

Murder Rock (1984)

AKA Slashdance
Directed by Lucio Fulci
Starring Olga Karlotos, Maria Vittoria Tolazzi, Gerette Geretta
Rated R
Italy

"You've got to grit your teeth and dance, even when you're friends die!"

The work of Italian splatter-master Lucio Fulci has been praised, critiqued, damned and dissected for decades thanks to the enduring cult appeal of gut-spillers like Zombie (1979), Gates of Hell (1980), The Beyond (1981), and the notorious New York Ripper (1982). But like many Italian directors, Fulci was incredibly prolific, and he dipped his toes into many different genres over his five-decade career, from spy thrillers to post-apocalyptic gladiator romps. He also helmed his share of giallos, as well, including this high 80's pseudo-slasher, a sort of spandex-packed Suspiria-lite that plays like a jazzercize-y workout video with bonus boobs and bloodshed. While it is certainly not the grue-stained maestro's best work, this restrained little whodunit does show a more mature side to Fulci, especially given his  proclivity for show-stopping ultra-violence. But how well does ol' Lucio wear maturity? Let's find out.

 One of Murder Rocks's most dominant traits is its godawful soundtrack, composed by Keith Emerson - a long way from ELP - and performed by Emerson and a caterwauling singer named Doreen Carter. The titles are a good indication to the banality of the songs - "Tonight is the Night", "You Are Not Alone Tonight", "Not So Innocent", etc.Ick. Emerson manages to squeeze out two of these disco/AOR/synth-rock mashups within the first ten or so minutes of the movie. At least the second song is accompanied by girls in leotards.

  The film takes place at a prestigious New York City ballet school, where a clutch of overachieving dance students are up for a career-making spot in some Broadway-bound dance revue. Only three of the eight (or so, I lost count) girls are getting picked for the show, so there's a major rivalry going on. Like in Fame. At the same time, a killer is on the loose.

 Said killer finds one of the girls, Susan (Angela Lemerman), in the shower (right before she's running around in the killer combination of leg warmers and nothing else) and, after chloroforming her, sticks a bejeweled pin through her boob and stabs her right through the heart.

 Seen-it-all detective Borges (Cosimo Cinieri) is summoned to investigate, while the rest of the troupe attempts to carry on without their fellow student.

Another student, Janice (Carla Buzzanca), does an awesome Flashdance rip-off routine at what looks like a piano bar.

 The camera mostly focuses on her vagina, which is nice. Afterwards she goes home and finds Susan's boyfriend Will (Christian Borromeo) lurking around.  But then he vanishes, and somebody stabs her canary to death. And then she gets snuffed, too.

 Borges continues his investigation. "Could it be a paranoid who hates dancers?" He muses. Don't all paranoids hate dancers?

 Dance coach/potential victim number 3 Candace (Olga Karlotos) has a dream about a dude chasing her around and sticking her with her pins. She sees the dude on a billboard, figures out who he is - he's an actor/model named George (Ray Lovelock) - and goes to visit him at a flophouse. He spooks her when he stumbles in the room drunk, and she splits, leaving her purse. Seems random, but it makes sense later.  Meanwhile, Det Borges visits the boys in the lab, who tell him they've got the killer's voice on tape, since he's been calling and taunting them, ala Zodiac. So that's happening.

Candace calls George, and he brings her purse back. Then they have lunch together. Chemistry! Borges drags the gay kid in the dance troupe in, and after slapping him around, he confesses to the murders, even though it wasn't really him. He just made the phonecalls to get famous. Seems viable.

 Meanwhile, Candace and George get it on. He comes by to see her at the school, and one of the students, Gloria, (Belinda Busato) runs up to him and makes-out with him. So that was weird.

 He tells Candace that he and Gloria used to model together. If that's not weird enough, a Chinese fortune teller calls George a murderer, and later that evening, Candace's agent calls her and tells her that once, a few years back, George was banging an underage girl and she died mysteriously soon after. So things aren't looking good for George.

And then Candace almost gets the pin-death courtesy her co-coach Margie (the awesomely named Gerreta Geretta), who hates her. She figured she'd copycat the killer, and no one would expect. But it turns out she doesn't have it in her.

And then another dancer, Jill (Maria Vittoria Tollazi), gets it! But her paralyzed little sister takes photos. So there's a clue involved.

 And then Gloria - who's the last girl-dancer left -  rides to school on her bike, while wearing a fur coat. Classy! Meanwhile, the boys at the lab develop the kid's pics, but all they get is the killer's torso. Not too helpful.

 And then Jill's brother Bob yells at Gloria for being a whore, and then limps away. Seconds later, she gets the booby-pin.

 So then only Candace and George are left. So it's got to be one of them. And it is!

There's a couple of red herrings tossed into the mix here, but the motive for all the killing is fairly obvious, and there's not enough suspects to keep you guessing, so the mystery quotient of Murder Rock is pretty thin. Also, unlike the majority of Fulci's horror films, there's no real gore and very little bloodshed. Nudity is minimal as well. So what's left? Well, pretty girls. And dancing. There's plenty of dancing. Dancing and Keith Emerson's awful giallo-jams. That may be enough for Fulci obsessives, but sleaze-beasts looking for a primo spandex-slasher will want to skip this tepid workout and head straight for the sleazy, sexed-up Killer Workout instead.

- Ken McIntyre

Club Dead (2000)

Directed by Mike Bowler
Starring: Tommy Kirk, Lisa Bawdon, Leonna Small, Ron Waldron
Unrated
USA

"Something's out there, and it stole my beans."

Low budget high weirdness. Club Dead is a feast of implausibility and pseudo-Satanic twists of Cain. Although it's copyrighted 2000 on the box, it looks to have been made in the early 90's, what with the gigantic computer room and the mind-blowing 80's holdout hair styles and fashions. It's an epic (110 minutes!) aerobic killer thriller about a shadowy, possibly Satanic Mafia that funnels money and influence into a fading beauty's low-rent gym. With a new look and modern equipment, "Benson's" gym guarantees that it's members will "lose weight and look great", or they'll never charge a penny, and their formerly ragged looking 50 year old proprietor, now a perky 30 year old, is walking, talking proof of the success of "Plan EX". Mr. Ex, the Phantom of the Nautilus that's running this whole wicked scheme, is a mysterious man in black who skulks around in the shadows of the gym and takes the whole weight loss thing so seriously that he's prone to cutting off body parts of people that refuse to get with the program and lose that unwanted flab quickly enough. A local college newspaper decides to do some undercover investigating, and their star reporter Doyle Shakespeare joins up to see what Mr. Ex is really up to. She finds a club full of hypnotized exercise zombies, and when Ex gets wind of her plans to blow his cover, he lays some witchcraft on her and soon she too, is under his spell. It's up to her editor and long-time friend Cathy to take on the demonic workout guru and liberate the world from the shackles of his exercise Nazis.

Despite the cavernous leaps of faith necessary to buy into the ultra-high concept plot, Club Dead is an entertaining, campy thriller, with plenty of quirky characters and a healthy dose of tongue-in-cheek humor. Although low on nudity, saved for a brief shower scene, it's got an impressive body count. With multiple electrocutions, an impaling, and countless stabbings. I'm still not sure that when you get stabbed in the belly, blood immediately pours out of your mouth, but I'm not gonna experiment with it, either. Fans of old school slashers and striped leotards will have a field day with this one.

- Ken McIntyre