THE LADIES CLUB (1986)

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'LADIES CLUB' EXPLOITS FANTASY OF GETTING EVEN

Detroit Free Press (MI) - April 11, 1986

Author: CATHARINE RAMBEAU Free Press Movie Critic

Every woman who has ever been raped has surely fantasized about getting even with her rapist.

That's the premise of "The Ladies Club," as it was of "Rape Squad" and " I Spit on Your Grave ," other films in which vigilantes punish their rapists with impunity.

So it's too bad that despite decent acting and the film's avoidance of the standard-issue nude scenes this 90-minute film seems to exploit women while giving lip service to their desire for justice. Too bad, too, that it looks like a TV movie-of-the- week.

Perhaps that's because almost everyone involved hails from TV and television's KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) theory is more obvious on a large screen. Perhaps the problem was simply beyond the control of director and screenwriters. (On her first feature picture, director Janet Greek used the pseudonym A.K. Allen, reportedly because of problems with the film's editing and marketing.)

"LADIES CLUB" opens with the gang rape of policewoman Joan Taylor (Karen Austin), complete with a ruinous beating and endless anti-woman filth spewed by the trio of rapists. It continues stacking the deck, tossing the usual rape statistics and stereotypes -- men who blame women for being raped, the violated and now catatonic kid sister -- into this nasty stew of violence. Yes, these stereotypes exist; but reliance on them undermines the film.

During her recuperation, Taylor makes friends with obstetrician Constance Lewis (Christine Belford), whose own daughter was raped and murdered. When the jury pronounces Taylor's rapists not guilty, cop and doctor organize a ladies' club and begin locating, drugging and castrating career rapists.

P Not a bad idea, perhaps. But I have an ugly suspicion "The Ladies Club" (originally called "Violated") may appeal less to women who have been raped than to men who hate women and enjoy seeing them humiliated.

Any movie so thoroughly focused on gratuitous physical, psychological and verbal violence against one sex should be suspect. Since rape is an emotionally loaded issue on which hardly anyone one is neutral, and since the film's political attitudes are neither radical enough nor conservative enough to please either side, "The Ladies Club" fails.

THE LADIES CLUB

Area Theaters

RATING: 3 out of 10

Joan Taylor-Karen Austin

Lucy Bricker-Diana Scarwid

Dr. Constance Lewis-Christine Belford

Richard Harrison-Bruce Davison

Directed by A.K. Allen. Screenplay by Paul Mason and Fran Lewis Ebeling from the novel "Sisterhood" by Betty Black and Casey Bishop. Music by Lalo Schifrin. Cinematography by Adam Greenburg. Edited by Marion Segal and Randall Torno. Production design by Stephen Myles Berger. Produced by Nick J. Mileti and Paul Mason. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.

PARENTS' GUIDE: R; extreme violence, intense subject matter, profanity, bad English.

MAD MAX (1979) U.S. release (1980)

REVIEW / MOVIE\ MAD MAX' GETS IT THRILLS FROM ALL SIDES

Boston Globe - July 4, 1980

Author: Bruce McCabe Globe Staff

Directed by George Miller, co-written by Miller and James McCausland. Starring Mel Gibson. At the Beacon Hill and suburban theaters and drive-ins. Rated R.

When I was in Cannes last year, the chic film to see was this futuristically styled, gothic Australian motorcycle opera which also functions as an homage to the American B picture and its graphic concerns.

Ironically, the film is being distributed as an exploitation picture by the studio, American International, which has kept the B picture alive as a feature film even as television has appropriated the form.

The film is a compendium of references to the American films which have treated the outlaw of the modern Industrial Age, an outlaw who functions within the law (wearing the policeman's badge) as well as without. You can see references in "Mad Max" to everything from "The Wild One" and "A Clockwork Orange" to "Easy Rider," "Death Wish" and "In Cold Blood," not to mention a host of American International Pictures' motorcycle movies that sucked the life from the originals and left them as empty husks.

The references are not obvious enough, however, to make "Mad Max" pretentious. It has been skillfully crafted to appeal to both the drive-in crowd and the cineaste. There is enough violence and retribution to satisfy the most pseudo-pathological sensibility. Simultaneously, there is enough restraint and taste to keep the film from sliding into the mire that so often covers the genre. There are also psychological and political overtones rarely dramatized in the conventional genre. Director George Miller suggests that the violence of the motorcycle outlaw and the lawman who pursues him is rooted in a repressed homosexuality that manifests itself in strange forms. What redeems the suggestion is Miller's irrepressible humor. He squeezes the ritual of the genre for all it's worth and then some with a sort of grinning-death's-head japery.

The scenario involves a war to the death between a sleek, bullet-headed, futuristic highway patrolman named Max (Mel Gibson) and a decadent motorcycle gang. The war begins when a member of the gang, a psychopath called The Night Rider, burns to death in a car crash concluding a wild police chase. The gang, led by another psychopathic personality called The Toe-Cutter, vows vengeance. Max's partner is burned to a crisp in a fiery crash precipitated by the gang. The piece de resistance, however, is the gang's pursuit of Max's wife and infant son. When they are both run down on the highway, Max snaps and methodically sets about exterminating the vermin that has made his life such a nightmare.

As directed by Miller, the film makes the genre's conventions almost congenial. Cars are always breaking down at the most inopportune times (the motorcycles don't). Max's wife and son persist in leaving him at the most hazardous moments. At one point they have to be rescued from the gang's clutches by a crippled old woman brandishing a rifle. The ideas aren't original but they're redeemed by Miller's consistently deft manipulation of them. He operates with surgical proficiency.

If punk is a sensibility as well as an adjective, "Mad Max" is a punk movie. Its Australian setting enhances it, authenticating its futuristic aura. The landscape is a bleak desert sliced by a highway under an impassive sky. Death and destruction are cleaned up quickly and effectively. It's hard to get involved with these accidents because the people who have them are as flat and colorless as their surroundings. These people almost need speed and violence to remind them they're alive. They're almost dead anyway.

A BUMPER CROP OF SMASHED-UP CARS by Tom Shales

A Bumper Crop of Movies On Smashed-Up Cars

Washington Post, The (DC) - September 6, 1977

Author: Tom Shales

America's love-hate relationship with the automobile has gotten awfully lopsided in favor of hate. As evidence we have a new race of movie that promises audiences they will see car upon car abused, tortured or demolished. Children, especially, seem driven to these vehicles.

"Thunder and Lightning" and "Grand Theft Auto," now separately dominating a large number of area screens, deliver the promised carnage in abundance. There are at least 15 smash-ups in "Thunder" and no fewer than 35 in "Auto - a bumper crop of four-wheeled corpses.

Auto wrecks have long been staples of movie comedy, and car chases are practically Essence du Cinema. But never before have collisions themselves been the whole point of so many popular films. Ads for "Auto" say, with anything but subtlety, "See the greatest cars in the world destroyed!"

Considering the rigidity of the form and the regularity with which the machines are thrown at one another, you almost get the feeling you're watching auto porno - a movie made for a drive-intheater full of unoccupied cars. Or maybe they're exploiting a widespread grudge against Detroit, and have been made to titillate the little Ralph Nader that lives within us all.

More likely, the films represent a rebellion against machines in general and a backlash against the materialist excesses of a time of plenty. "Auto" makes a point of smashing up not just cars, but expensive cars. A bronze Rolls-Royce is in fact the star of the film, with a yellow Porshe and two black Lincoln Continentals in supporting roles. A Cadillac Seville is spared only because it fails to start.



As a movie, "Grand Theft Auto," about a money-fueled chase from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, is pretty much a crashing bore, with a spoiled-brat mentality behind it. Ron Howard, who co-wrote, directed and plays the lead role in the film, completely lacks the ability to sustain a story between collisions. Aspects that are bluntly imitative of Stanley Kramer's "Its a Mad, Mad, Mad World" and Steven Spielberg's "The Sugarland Express" don't help; they just remind you how superior the originals were.



But "Thunder and Lightning" is not only in the new tradition of crash-'em-ups but also in the old American tradition of crackervilly humor. David Carradine, who is getting to be a pretty ingratiating rascal on screen, and Kate Jackson star as a moonshiner and honeybunch in the Florida Everglades. They zoom around protecting the small businessman against organized moonshining in a black '57 Chevy that survives somersaults, fenderbenders and leaps through the air.

Perhaps because one may be expecting something a bit mor malicious, and cheerful high spirits of the fflm come as a breezy surprise, and Corey Allen's whizbang direction is masterful for a small-budget film. "Thunder and Lightning," except for its overly scatalogical dialogue, is good clean wanton destruction. The final scene of reunited lovers riding in a truck driven by sympathetic old geezers brings back a hundred bucolic-romantic movie memories.

In defense of both films, it should be noted that almost all the damage is done to property rather than people; mangled human bodies as a matinee diversion. Virtually every crash, no matter how devastating, is followed by a scene of the people in the cars walking or swimming away from the scene, dazed but unbloodied. Thus we have violent films striking a blow against violence.

To some extent, the movies also seem a reaction against television - even though both exploit TV names (Howard of "Happy Days," Jackson of "Charlie's Angels"), there is a comic reference to Carradine's old "Kung Fu" series, and an actor playing a hit man in "Thunder" complains about too much violence on the air.

Nevertheless, the films provide an alternative to television in that TV treats us as consumers first and people second and is regularly punctuated with homages and paeans to the glories of merchandise and conspicuous consumption. The auto wreck movies answer that with conspicuous destruction; they take symbols of American affluence and trash them to smithereens.

There is a therapeutic satisfaction to be gleaned from seeing cars killed on the screen (it would be nice if they threw in an electric typewriter now and then). And it may even be healthier in the long run than the sentimentalization of computers and machines in "Star Wars." We have to keep remembering - it's them or us. Autowreck movies give the victory to the people.

ELIMINATORS (1986)

'ELIMINATORS' HAS ITS CLEVER MOMENTS

San Jose Mercury News (CA) - February 1, 1986

Author: GLENN LOVELL, Mercury News Film Writer

THE GoBots/transformer set should have a ball with "Eliminators," a comic-book action adventure that teams a reassembled man, a novice ninja, a resourceful woman scientist and a rowdy charter-boat skipper who is obviously patterned after Humphrey Bogart in "The African Queen."

A hybrid of "Terminator" and the classic western "The Magnificent Seven," this low-budget arrival was shot in Spain (the setting being Mexico) and comes from B-movie merchant Charles Band, whose sci-fi/ horror variations include last year's "Ghoulies" and the fun "Troll," which trundled into town last week.

Producer Band's production values, as always, range from neat-o to non-existent. He opens with a swirling-colors time- travel sequence that looks chintzy even by TV standards, but then he comes on strong with fun robot hardware and first- rate laser-gun effects (by John Buechler of "Ghoulies" and "Troll").

A nuts-and-bolts actor named Patrick Reynolds plays "John Doe," a pilot who crashed a year ago near the jungle lab of an evil, disfigured genius named Reeves (Roy Dotrice). Reeves collected what was left of the pilot and transformed him into a "mandroid" (half man, half robot), complete with one infrared eye and such interchangeable components as jet boots, torpedo-launcher arm and knockout-gas dispenser.

The joke is that most of these sophisticated accessories, including an attachable half-track mobile unit, keep misfiring, leaving our tin-man hero embarrassed and vulnerable.

Little wonder Reeves calls for his $6 man to be dismantled. John blows a fuse over this and flees the compound. On the road he teams with the pretty robotics technician Nora (Denise Crosby), a con man guide (veteran meanie Andrew Prine showing a real flair for comedy), and an uptight samurai (Conan Lee).

The kids should especially get a kick out of the klutzy bad guys and Crosby's whiz-bang reconnaissance robot, S.P.O.T., which is part Tinkerbell and part R2D2.

''Eliminator," in patches, is as campy and clever as the best "Superman" installments. We have director Peter Manoogian and especially writers Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo to thank for this. Their wacky touches and the amusing Tin Man/Dorothy banter between John and Miss Fix-It deserve a more interesting and charismatic hero. Batteries and lubricant were obviously not included with the lockjawed Reynolds.

ELIMINATORS. Directed by Peter Manoogian; scripted by Paul DeMeo, Danny Bilson. Rated PG. (star)(star)

THE EXECUTIONER PART II (1984)

MOVIEGOERS ARE VICTIMS HERE
Miami Herald, The (FL)
September 10, 1984
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic


The Executioner, Part II is an ultra-low-budget action picture from 1982. It is of interest only for its shoddiness, which is surpassing; this is the first film in recent memory to fail in every aspect of the filmmaking craft.

The performances are wonderfully bad; most of the actors, of whom Chris Mitchum is top-billed, have a hard time just reading their lines. And Aldo Ray, who gets star billing, is in the film for a few 15-second scenes, each obviously shot one afternoon and inserted later; Ray is never seen in a shot with anyone else, though he is always exchanging dialogue with characters offscreen. Attempts to disguise this, using a body double and over-the-shoulder shots, are particulary clumsy.

Much of Executioner II is out of focus. The editing is so inept that in a number of scenes, sound effects or lines of dialogue are repeated; in other scenes, they're missing. The dubbing is so bad that it is impossible to tell what language the film was originally made in; it might have been English.

The plot has to do with a vigilante on the streets of Los Angeles, where, the voice of a "radio commentator" explains, the killer "shoots his victims, cuts them with glass or puts live grenades in their clothes." There are a number of subplots, each inexplicable, and one of the characters has recurring Vietnam flashbacks.

Even the ya-hoo crowd comes away disappointed, however, for among the film's missing pieces are most of its of violence and sex. There's one brief flash of nudity that is obviously accidental; it comes as a surprise to the actress, who giggles.

THE EXECUTIONER, PART II (R) NO STARS

CAST

Chris Mitchum, Aldo Ray, Antoine John Mottet, Dan Bradley, Renee Harmon, Jim Draftfield.

CREDITS

Director: James Bryant. Producer: Renee Harmon.

A 21st Century Distribution release. Running time: 95 minutes. Vulgar language, brief nudity, sexual situations, violence.

DEAD END DRIVE-IN (1986)

`DEAD END DRIVE-IN PAYS PUNK HOMAGE TO KUBRICK

The Record (New Jersey) - September 8, 1986

Author: By Will Joyner, Staff Writer: The Record

MOVIE REVIEW @@ DEAD END DRIVE-IN: Directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith. Written by Peter Smalley. Photography by Paul Murphy. Music by Frank Strangio. With Ned Manning (Jimmy), Natalie McCurry (Carmen), Peter Whitford (Thompson), and others. Produced by Andrew Williams for Springvale Productions in association with the New South Wales Film Corporation. Released by New World Pictures. Opened Friday locally. Running time: 85 minutes. Rated R: profanity, nudity, adult situations.

You spot an ad for a movie called "Dead End Drive-In," and what comes to mind? Low-rent, late-night horror , right? Lots of screaming teen-agers caught with their clothes off, lots of blood. Bad acting, bad direction, mercifully bad lighting.

Duck into the "Dead End Drive-In" that opened Friday, and you're going to get something entirely different. It's not a great movie, by any means, but it's also not a picture cynically planned to feed on the public's worst fascination with violence.

First, "Dead End Drive-In" is an Australian production, filmed on the industrial outskirts of Sydney. Second, it's a fairly provocative allegory about the near future an open homage to Stanley Kubrick's classic "A Clockwork Orange" without any pretense to the same profundity, as well as an unabashed echo of "The Road Warrior. "

Third, exploiting an ugly low-budget look, the film is a playful send-up of a punk visual style now irrevocably in vogue all around the world.

The time is halfway through the 1990's. Nuclear mishaps happen frequently. Rioting over dwindled resources is widespread in the United States and Europe. A full-scale racial war has engulfed South Africa.

In Sydney, a cheerful young man named Jimmy (Ned Manning) incongruously jogs through rubble, past lots protected by barbed wire and barking dogs, along a greenish horizon dominated by chemical-spewing factories.

Jimmy's in training to be just like his big brother Frank that is, employed as a tow-truck driver, one of the few lucrative jobs left in this strange, auto-obsessed society. (A tow-truck driver has to be in great shape because any radio call requires combat, against other towing companies and against ghoulish scavengers known as "cowboys. ")

As good as he is, though, Jimmy's also a boy who just wants to have some naughty fun. One night, he borrows Frank's vintage '56 Chevy, emerges from their bunkerlike home (a deserted underground parking garage), and takes his vampish girlfriend Carmen (Natalie McCurry) to the Star Drive-In.

The ad for "Dead End Drive-In" may be misleading, but it's correct when it says, "The price of admission is your life. " The place turns out to be an internment camp for unemployed young people, where, just as they're getting down to sexual antics, their cars are dismantled by roving policemen.

There's no escape, even for the odd ambitious type like Jimmy. Thompson (Peter Whitford), the kindly old man at the ticket booth, issues blankets, and coupon books for junk food and drugs. There's a cafeteria and a shower house, both covered with brightly colored graffiti murals. ("The Lord is coming," one says. "Wear a raincoat. ") This is life, for the duration.

This is also all-too-obvious symbolism of a postindustrial country's inability to motivate its youth, but "Dead End Drive-In" has a crude charm anyway. The drive-in's residents are done up in such an outrageous array of leather duds, black-and-blue makeup, and spiked hairdos that the movie turns into campy street theater, where unsubtle messages are perfectly appropriate.

The unsubtle message is this: Locked up or not, many of tomorrow's (and today's) youth are going to spend their days listening to music, puffing marijuana, and reveling in their rude docility. A few will have the gumption to jump the fence.

Ned Manning, as Jimmy the fence jumper, feigns just enough dated forthrightness to make everyone else who's wandering the dusty, car-strewn landscape half Kafka, half Lower East Side seem hilarious. Especially memorable is a punk cricket match that robs the game of every trace of gentility.

"Dead End Drive-In" has its share of bad acting, misguided direction, and bizarre lighting (the cinematographer went wild experimenting with filters, adding to the movie's glow of abnormality). And it eventually hits a narrative dead end of its own. But at least a razor-wielding psychopath isn't waiting in the shadows there.

THE NIGHT STALKER (1986)

Movie Review- `Stalker' can't find credibility

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - October 9, 1986

Author: CAIN, SCOTT, Scott Cain Staff Writer: STAFF

Charles Napier, a rugged character actor usually seen in supporting roles, is the Dirty Harry of Los Angeles in "The Night Stalker," a lively but unconvincing murder mystery.

Napier plays J.J. Striker, a boozing police detective who muscles his way int o a bizarre homicide case in which the victims are prostitutes. Their corpses are painted like Oriental silkscreens.

Director Max Kleven goes for a tone of gritty realism in most of "The Night Stalker," yet the killer's first victim empties a pistol into his body at point-blank range without doing substantial damage. This immediately puts "The Night Stalker" into the supernatural realm and, when a down-to-earth explanation is provided, it simply can't be credited.

Napier is a solid professional. He does classic hangover scenes and is wonderful as he huffs and puffs during a foot chase, telling himself that he's too old for these antics. Napier is perhaps best known as the cynical bureaucrat who betrays "Rambo" and, if "Night Stalker" had worked out, he might have become a star in the Charles Bronson mold. Too bad.

Robert Viharo, another craggy actor, is a fit companion for Napier as the detective's doomed partner. (Partners exist in movies of this type for the purpose of getting rubbed out.) Gary Crosby plays Napier's jaundiced competitor on the police force. Crosby may yet carve out a career playing egomaniacs who get humiliating comeuppances.

"The Night Stalker." A horror movie. Rated R for abundant violence, profanity and nudity