Chai Lai Angels: Dangerous Flowers

Directed by Poj Arnon
Starring Jintara Poonlarp, Bongkarj Khongmalai, Supakson Chaimongkol, Bunyawan Pongsuwan
Rated R
Thailand

"How dare you kick my face!"

There's this pearl, see. It's at the bottom of the ocean. It keeps all the fish in line. This one stone-faced karate dude is sworn to keep it safe. But then this other guy - one of those blandly handsome, vaguely evil types - kidnaps the karate dude's kid and uses her for leverage to find out where the pearl is. That bad guy also has a seriously annoying transvestite henchman. The best one always do, don't they?

At first, this turns out to be a bad idea. The kid is actually a karate master, just like her dad, so she kills a lot of dudes first. But they finally get the best of her.

So...I am not sure who works for whom or how anybody gets involved in all of this, but somebody calls the Chai Lai Angels - five female Asian mercenaries/secret agents, ranging in attractiveness from sorta-cute to drop-dead gorgeous. Just like in the landmark 70's television series Charlie's Angels - the clear inspiration here - they girls change into different outfits all the time, and they report to an eccentric Bosley-type boss named, conveniently enough, Boss. That's the set-up. A lot of fighting and clowning and camaraderie ensues.

A very low-budget affair that tries its best to get by on sheer exuberance, Chai Lai Angels features some of the shoddiest wirework this side of a 70's Turkish Superman rip-off. Of particular note is a spectacularly unconvincing fight scene between the Angels - wrapped only in bath towels - VS a gang of black-suited thugs on a mall escalator. In the hands of a competent director, the scene would have been jaw-dropping. Here, it's just eye-rolling. Still, pretty girls! In towels! Doing high kicks!

Despite the almost constant hand to hand combat, the girls do occasionally find time for romance. Rose (Khongmalai)- the bustiest of the Angels - gets engaged to a handsome young banker, and when she gets home, she does a very gratifying underwear dance. So that was pretty awesome.

Unfortunately, he's kidnapped and beaten by a gay black pirate minutes later.

The cross-dresser henchman hires a bunch of comic-booky assassins to kill the Angels once and for all. A rain-soaked battle royale ensues outside of what looks like a mini-golf castle. One oddball inconsistency with this film is that sometimes the girls are bunglers and sometimes - as in this scene - they are possessing of supernatural powers, including Hulk-like strength, and the power of flight.

Despite this surge of superheroine-ism, the girls still end up trapped in a flimsy white cage. Luckily, the fifth angel shows up in a tank.

Etc.

The bad guys - of which there seems to be an endless supply - finally locate the sacred pearl-of-whatever on some deserted island. And they would have gotten away with it, too (whatever it is they were planning on getting away with; I am not sure that was ever explained fully), but then the Chai Lai Angels pop up out of nowhere to engage in the oft hoped for but rarely witness Epic Bikini Battle.

And then, for whatever reason, Rose performs a disco number inside a giant plastic ball.

A bunch of stuff happens after that, too. Most of it involves chicks and guns.

While it is never great, and while it occasionally lapses into full-retard mode, Chai Lai Angels: Dangerous Flowers is consistently entertaining, and maintains a goofy, ragged charm.

Despite the frequent bouts of graphic violence, the tone, for the most part, is light and fluffy; the action dips into ice-cold Tarantino territory for part of the climax - a guns blazing, kill-everybody free-for-all - but then the cross-eyed double-agent shows up again, and who can stay mad when there's a cross eyed double agent shooting up the joint? A bit of nudity and a less insane dubbing job would have been nice, but still, a fun, frothy movie.

PS: the film ends with a five-minute fire-fight that's supposed to be footage from the planned sequel, Chai Lai Angels Go to Battle. Sadly, said sequel has yet to emerge.

- Ken McIntyre

Cool It Carol! (1970)

AKA The Dirtiest Girl I Ever Met
Directed by Pete Walker
Starring Janet Lynn, Robin Askwith
Rated X
UK

"C'mon, Carol...just what kind of party did you think this was?"

Director Pete Walker is best known for his pitch-black, gut-bucket, 70's sex/horror flicks: Die Screaming Marianne (1971), The Flesh and Blood Show (1972), House of Whipcord (1974), and Frightmare (1974). All four films are raw, mean-spirited stabs of unhappiness, color-soaked nightmares of beautiful people doing ugly things and ugly people doing...well, even uglier things. Peter Walker was/is a pisser, that's for sure.

Significantly, Walker also made his share of sexploitation flicks, including the 3D Four Dimensions of Greta and spy spoof Tiffany Jones (both 1973), but even those were surprisingly mirthless. Cool It Carol! is also, theoretically, a softcore film, possibly even a sex comedy. It does, after all, contain all the necessary elements - kicky dollybird, fumbling boyfriend, greasy pervs with weird mustaches - but much like the horror flicks Walker would soon direct, Cool It Carol! is glum, gray, and depressive. You won't know whether to pop a boner or gulp down some hemlock.

Things start out cheery enough, at least. Carol (heartbreaking Janet Lynn, one of the most adorable 70's Brit actors you'll ever lay eyes on) and her slacker sometimes-boyfriend Joe (Robin Askwith, the chimp-faced denim-demon from the Confessions of... series) leave their tiny Midlands town to try and make something of themselves in swinging London. Carol wants to be a model; Joe just doesn't want to work very hard. On the train ride into the city, the two old friends have sex together for the first time. Carol's not thrilled with Joe's performance, but realizes she may have an exhibitionist streak.

This comes in handy when she gets to town and starts auditioning for modeling gigs. Since she has no photographs to give away, she merely strips down in front of agents.

When this fails to snag her any work, she does a nude shoot with a pin-up photographer. He promises to try and sell the pictures to Playboy. In the meantime, Carol and Joe are starving, and Joe' s attempts to find work have come up empty. Joe contemplates robbing a bank; to keep her idiot friend out of jail, Carol offers to try our prostitution instead.

This goes surprisingly smooth, at first. Carol racks up some regulars, and Joe acts as her ineffectual but loyal pimp. One night, in desperation, Carol and Joe agree to shoot a porn flick together, while a bunch of sweaty old weirdos in bowler hats watch.

That scene is meant to be funny, by the way, but it's mostly just depressing.

Anyway, once the film gets around, Carol becomes an in-demand nude model, porn star, and big-ticket escort.

So, a happy ending, then?

Sort of. Not really. Nobody's ever really happy in a Pete Walker movie.

Slow and deliberate - a Walker trademark - but still compulsively watchable, Cool It Carol! turns the way-out 60's London mod scene squarely on its perfectly coiffed head. Leave it to mean ol' Pete to turn the grooviest era of the world's grooviest city into a drab and heartless hive of casual villainy.

PS: Sadly, besides a couple of blink-and-you'll-miss-her cameos in the incredible Twins of Evil and not quite as incredible Satan's Playthings (both 1971), this is Janet Lynn's only substantial role. A shame, because not only was she a convincing actress, she was an absolute doll.

- Ken McIntyre

Super Xuxa Versus Satan (1988)

Directed by Anna Penido
Starring Xuxa Meneghel, Xuxo the dog, and Xixo the caterpillar-penis
Unrated
Brazil

"Which road should I choose? Darkness or Sclerosis?"

Xuxa Meneghal was a fledgling model/B-actress who lucked into a kid's TV hosting gig in the mid 1980's and became one of Brazil's many national obsessions, hovering somewhere between soccer and transsexual porn. Naturally, her TV-bound kiddie fame would eventually cross over into motion pictures, and thusly we arrive at 1988's Super Xuxa Versus Satan, a preachy, environmentally conscious message movie disguised as highly hallucinogenic, semi-retarded children's fare. Which, in turn, is a disguise for what it really is: a boner movie.

I don't know where this is supposed to take place. I mean, somewhere in Brazil, clearly, but some neon-colored cartoon Brazil-ish burg made up primarily of cardboard and spraypaint. The devil's "Down Mood" has permeated this accursed city, turning citizens against each other in violent struggles. Shitty City, I guess we could call it.

Into this ugly brown-town rides bouncy blonde enchantress Xuxa on her gleaming white bicycle. With her puppet dog Xuxo slobbering happily away on the back of the bike, the hotpants-sporting TV host tosses paintbrushes to the local children, and they immediately get to work paining the entire town in bright, sunshiny splashes of color, elevating moods and messing up the devil's work pretty good.

Seeing as this is 1988 - pre Google - news doesn't travel as fast as we're used to.The devil, at this point, is still pretty happy with himself. Watching the nightly news down in the bowels of Hades with his two toady sidekicks (including one deadringer for goblin-nosed darkwave nerd Mortiis), El Beezelbub chortles away as the news anchor reports on all the rampant death and destruction happening topside. But then they cut to Xuxa and her mural project, and all the fuckin' peace and happiness that's spreading over the populace as a result. And he does not like what he sees.

Surely you must know, Xuxa, that this means war.

Beat from her day of frolic and merriment, Xuxa returns home to her sparkling white apartment. While she prepares her dog's dinner, the devil shows up and snatches the pup, dragging him down to Hell with him, where he tortures the mutt with a cookie on a string.

Xuxa is perplexed about her missing dog, but figures a nap is in order before she makes any sudden moves. She has a bed with big foamy arms that come to life and wrap around her when she climbs into it. And then it sings her to sleep. It's super creepy, especially when it starts gently rocking her back and forth and Xuxa coos in sweet, pseudo-erotic slumber. Good thing that bed doesn't have fingers. Who knows where they'd end up.

The devil finds the meanest kid in the world - Rafa - and brings him down to hell to be his apprentice. The kid is covered in filth and slime and forced into manual labor. Dunno why. Meanwhile, a gang of punk rock motorcycle maniacs drive through a fast food restaurant, terrifying the patrons and destroying the joint. Also dunno why.

Xuxa jumps through the TV screen and ends up in hell, so she decides to go find her dog. She runs into a caterpillar who tells her that "Size doesn't matter" (that's a relief!) and then vomits a rainbow on her fingernail. For protection, I think. And then they do a dance where Xuxa lifts her leg over her head.

While she's cavorting with the animated phallus, the devil's henchman are asking the boss if they can torture the dog a little.
"You've already poisoned the milk of the starving children?" He asks.
They have. He tells them they can give the dog fleas.

This is some fucked-up kid's movie.

Xuxa, meanwhile, ends up tromping through the desert, which makes her very hot and sweaty. So she takes off some clothes.

Later on, she makes it to the beach, where she runs into a pink dolphin that's been caught in a net. He's worried about getting his eyes plucked out. Xuxa frees him, and then she rides the big pink dolphin to safety.

Did you get that? She rides a BIG PINK DOLPHIN.

So, anyway. Xuxa and her hotpants have many exciting adventures - and she sings many ear-gouging songs - until finally she faces off against evil. At first, the devil bests our plucky heroine, and turns her into an evil, Courtney Love-esque hag!

"A bad person like you has only one exit", he tells her. That sounds dirty to me.

But then she shoots a rainbow at him. The devil hates rainbows.

And then everybody "comes" with Xuxa. The end.

I am assuming she got her dog back, too. I was pretty woozy by the end.

As a musical, Super Xuxa VS. Satan is awful. The songs are tuneless and clang-y, and everybody looks miserable during the dance numbers. As a kid's movie...well, that one's hard to say. I guess it depends on how much Ritalin said kid is gobbling everyday. I imagine most children would stare quizzically at it for five minutes and then wander off to find something more sensible to do. But as a bug-fuck crazy, 3AM mind-fryer? Well, in that case, it's a masterpiece. The goofy subtitles are senseless, making a bizarre story even weirder, the political and environmental concerns seem wildly out of place - as does Xuxa's skimpy outfit - and the sexual innuendos are so rampant that they can't possibly be accidental. Maybe there's just a serious cultural disconnect here, but this does not look like the work of sane individuals. More Pervirella than Sesame Street, Super Xuxa is cheap, senseless, and potentially brain-damaging.

Highly recommended, obviously.

PS: Xuxa is still going strong. And yes, search around, and you can find naked pictures of her.

Clip: the entire film is available on Youtube. Here's a high-kicking taste of the delights that await you.

- Ken McIntyre

Zombie Bikini Squad (2009)

Directed by Yohei Fukuda
Starring Eri Otoguru, Chise Nakamura, Manami Hashimoto
Unrated
Japan

"Well...this seems promising."

From the man who brought you Tokyo Gore School - to say nothing of Schoolboy Crush, AKA Gay Love 2 - comes the impossible-to-ignore Zombie Bikini Squad, AKA Oneechanbara. A sort of live-action splatter-toon shot and edited with teenage speed freaks in mind, Oneechanbara is based on a video game (which, in turn, is based on a Manga) that I have never played, and know nothing about. Luckily, 95% of the movie is just a hot chick in a bikini killing zombies, so a working knowledge of the back story is not really necessary.

There is a plot, of sorts: Aya (adorable Eri Otoguro), her plump sidekick Katsuji (Tomohiro Waki) and a sad-sack, leather-clad female assassin, Reiko (Manami Hashimoto) team up to find Aya's long-lost sister, Saki (Chise Nakamura).

Unbeknownst to our heroes, schoolgirl Saki has joined forces with mad scientist Dr. Sugita (Taro Suwa), the man responsible for the devastating zombie invasion that has decimated the planet. At least that's what I think was going on. This movie is very distracting. Did I mention it stars a Japanese cowgirl in a skimpy bikini?

Anyway, that's basically it. A wisp of a plot, non-stop violence, and hot Asian chicks in fetish-y outfits. The perfect prescription for an adolescent-baiting video game, but does it work as a movie? To be honest, I wasn't always sure it was a movie. Many of the jump-cutting, dimestore CGI-laden action scenes - and they pour one on every 45 seconds - look as though they were lifted directly from the X-Box console. In that respect, Oneechanbara: Zombie Bikini Squad often seems like the world's laziest video game, like some new innovation wherein you don't even have to play the thing anymore, where it just plays itself until you fall asleep on the couch, having exhausted yourself from an 80 minute-bout of two-fisted, hot Japanese chick-inspired masturbation. I can see something like that working.

Unfortunately, 'looking just like a video game' is not one of my favorite film attributes. The problem with Oneechanbara is that it never elevates itself beyond its game adaptation roots. That's a shame, because with just a bit more attention to character and dialogue - and with a few gratuitous nude scenes - we'd really have something special on our hands. It does look pretty awesome, but there's nothing but a bunch of sputtering wires and circuits under that fur-lined bikini. It ain't got no heart.

Umm, game over, man. Game over!

- Ken McIntyre

I Am Virgin (2010)

Directed by Sean Skelding
Starring Adam Elliot Davis and all the naked girls in Portland, Oregon.
Unrated
USA

"...just a buncha junk..."

If, like myself, you sat there in the theater watching Will Smith in I Am Legend and thought to yourself, "What this movie needs is more ass", than you are in luck. First-time director Skelding's low-budget one-man show is actually pretty faithful to Smith's $50 million dollar time-waster, only instead of CGI man-beasties, Skeldings post-apoc Portland, Oregon is overrun with naked, vampiric Suicide Girls. Oh, and instead of a German Shepard, this dude has a Bassett Hound. Otherwise, same deal.

The story takes place three years after some Romero-esque plague has decimated the world's population. Anyone still walking is either a sex-vampire or Ron Jeremy. Adam Elliot Davis stars as Robby, the neatly-dressed, Topher Grace-esque spawn of religious fanatics. Robby's parents managed to brainwash their offspring into waiting-until-marriage before dipping his wick into any of the local talent. Unfortunately, the world ended before he found the right girl, and now he's not only the last man - well, the last non-infected man on Earth- he's also the world's last virgin.

Robby spends his days like most last-men-on-Earth do - grocery store raids, a visit to the cinema (All Convoy, all the time), then back home before dark to play Chess with a blow-up alien fuck doll, Vlog to no one, and then quietly masturbate himself to sleep.

Somewhere in that busy day he also creeps around town in his SUV, looking for survivors. All he finds, however, are undead, sex-mad, tattooed she-wolves who paw away at each other like extras in a Misty Mundae movie until they notice Robby ogling them in the shadows. Then they make chase, offering/demanding to suck and fuck him into manhood. Luckily for Robby, he's wily enough to escape their clutches and remain human...at least for now. For the first 1,000 or so days that this bullshit has gone on, the vampire-sluts have remained in the dark; lately they've been sneaking ever closer to his hideout and using "tools" (AKA dildos-on-a-stick). What will happen to our hapless virgin when Satan's sluts figure out how to use sunblock? And really, what's the harm in fucking a vampire anyway?

These questions - and a few others, including 'What the fuck is Ron Jeremy doing here?', are all summarily explained as I Am Virgin unspools to its dramatic stripclub-bound umm...climax.

Here's the important thing to know about this film: I Am Virgin is not what you think it is. It is not a splattery scuzzball horror-com, although that may have been Skelding's intention. Instead, it's something more along the lines of a latter period Jim Wynorski or Fred Olen Ray faux-fuck flick, or even a heavily cut Joanna Angel tattooed alt-babe bang-a-thon. There are half a dozen softcore sex scenes liberally sprinkled throughout the film, and while they are shot with a decent amount of gonzo punk-porn vigor, they don't actually serve the plot at all. In fact, Robbie is just a tangential observer for most of them, and doesn't really interact with the girls until the final reel. Certainly, there's lesbian-centric softcore has its legions (ahem) of fans, and if you're among 'em, I Am Virgin will scratch your particular itch. But if you're looking for something along the lines of Zombie Strippers - which is the way this film has been marketed - you'll most likely be disappointed.

That being said, I Am Virgin is technically impressive. Skelding's production design - the empty streets, burned-out cars, abandoned buildings and mummified corpses - is a fully realized vision, and a great example of just how much you can do with just the barest of essentials. Half of Skelding's doomsday is achieved with balled-up newspapers, and it's as effective as many similar productions with a hundred times the budget. There's also an assload of naked girls to soak in - albeit all of 'em of inked n' pierced neo-punkettes - and Davis's acting is much stronger than you might expect.

All in all, above par for a softcore spoof. It's just a shame it's not much more than that.

- Ken McIntyre

She Mob (1968)

Directed by Unknown
Starring Marni Castle, Monique Duval, Twig, Eve Laurie
Unrated
USA

"Do snakes come out at night?"
"You better believe it."

A Texan production loaded with whacked-out local talent and a ten-gallon hat's worth of crazy, She Mob is one of exploitation cinema's greatest mysteries. There is no director listed anywhere in the credits, which means it could be anyone's doing: Russ Meyer? Doris Wishman? Harry Novak? Orson Welles? Any one of them seems like a reasonable guess. What we do know is that She Mob is a stellar slice of late 60's roughie cinema, a riot of bad hair, revealing lingerie, clumsy ultra-violence, even clumsier sex, shameless overacting, and buckets of ass. It's a gritty melodrama, a goofy spy spoof, grungy sexploitation and a hard-hitting crime flick all rolled into one glorious 82 minute ball of jaw-dropping wonder.

Big Shim (Marnie Castle) is a sweaty, belligerent, bull-dyke prone to wearing leather cone-bras and thigh-high boots. She and her small-but-enthusiastic girl-gang - including a pneumatic, pug-faced pixie named Twig (essayed, naturally, by an actress named Twig) and a beehived blonde with swollen, scarred Frankenboobs named Baby (Eve Laurie, in an awesomely druggy performance) - have just broken out of jail and are laying low in a safe house somewhere on the outskirts of town.

Shim is content with balling Baby on a nightly basis, but the other girls are craving man-meat - they have, after all, been locked up for the past five years - so they whine and complain until Shim breaks down and calls her connection for a rent-a-stud.

Said connection is a superfly man-mountain who refers her to Tony, a high-rent gigolo currently servicing local rich bitch Brenda McClain (also, oddly enough, played by Marnie Castle!). Tony knows Shim from way-back. He agrees to take care of her man-hungry stable for his usual fee.

No sooner has the blouse-wearing Tony entered the She Mob's lair when Shim lays the bad news on him: not only will he be fucking her friends for free, but she's also holding him for ransom. If Brenda does not pay her $100,000 by midnight, Shim promises to turn her man-slut into a "choirboy", which I am assuming is some sort of castration threat.

So that's what's happening there.

Brenda comes home to her swank pad - two TVs! - and looks around for Tony.
"Tony, tony!" She cries. "Did you get your vitamins? I'm ready!"
Alas, Tony is nowhere to be found. Brenda checks her mail and finds Shim's ransom note. Initially she dials up 911, but thinks better of it and hangs up on the cops. And then she calls girl detective Sweety East (the amazing Monique Duval, spoofing then-popular female TV sleuth Honey West) to ask for help.

Sweety East - who may just be my favorite movie character of all time - shows up in a too-small, ass-crack flaunting silver space-girl suit. She also happens to be cradling some sort of jungle cat. A lynx? Ocelot? Something like that. Sweetie seems sort of irritated by Brenda and her dumb problem, but she agrees to take on the case. And then she picks up her bobcat or whatever it is and splits.

Back at Shim's place, the girls all take turns tussling with Tony. But when a suddenly bi-curious Baby joins in for an impromptu three-way, the Boss-Dyke goes bananas, slapping Tony in the face so hard he squirts blood. And then she grinds her cigarette in his crotch. Ouch!

Sweety returns to Brenda's, sans exotic pet. She makes a phonecall to her gadget guy - she needs a shoebox with a homing device in it, which seems like something she could cobble together herself - and then suits up in one of Brenda's ugly rich broad dresses to make the drop-off. For whatever reason, it takes her 7 minutes to put on the dress, and the camera gazes lazily at her naked ass the entire time.

Meanwhile, under the cover of darkness, Baby and Tony try to escape from Shim's clutches. They manage to sneak out of the house, but Tony's car gets stuck in a ditch, so they take off running. Shim and the She Mob chase after them, guns blazing. Disgusted by her lack of loyalty, heartless Shim shoots Baby in the face with her shotgun. Goodnight, Baby.

Tony manages to get back into his car and hauls ass down the highway, but the dope flips his wheels and it blows up, nearly burning down the surrounding woods. Shim drags the battered stud out of the burning vehicle and takes him home.

Then she heads out to the bridge for the pick-up. She smacks the in-disguise Sweetie in the head with her gun and takes the dough. When she gets home, she says, "Well, we're rich. Let's have a party."
And then, for whatever reason, the girls dress the unconscious, half-dead Tony up in women's lingerie.

By the way, once again, a plot device makes for a great excuse to show several minutes' worth of up-close booty. This may very well be the greatest ass-crack movie of all time.

After dressing him up in the undies, the girls string Tony up and whip him. And then Shim stabs him in the guts with her tits. And then she decides to hack his penis off.

And that's just what she does.

Not really. Then Sweety East shows up, and an epic battle between the asscrack detective and the greasy lesbo-beast ensues. And it's as good or as awful as you imagine it is.

Alright, so it's clearly not arthouse material. But for trash-film fans, She Mob is pure bliss. Mr. or Mrs. director, whoever you are, thank you for this loony, wonderful mess. This would be a much darker world without Sweety East.

She Mob is available from Something Weird.

- Ken McIntyre