Thus, Corman’s Concorde era doesn’t have quite the luster or the staying power that the New World era did but it can’t be fully dismissed either.  The occasional gem rose up from the straight-to-video rubble to show that the Corman school of filmmaking could produce films that not only delivered the b-movie goods but also challenged the viewer and showed talent that rose above the expected sex-and-violence grind of low-budget filmmaking.  Perhaps the best film to emerge from Concorde along these lines is Streetwalkin’: thought it hits all the marks of the hooker-story subgenre popular in the early 1980’s, it does so with a smartly-observed and more socially conscious style.

Streetwalkin’ builds itself on the kind of archetypal prostitution drama/thriller style pioneered by the likes of Vice Squad and Angel.  As the film opens, we see hard-luck young adult Cookie (Melissa Leo) and her kid brother Tim (Randall Batinkoff) turning up in a bus station after being kicked out of the house by their parents.  Cookie is quickly zeroed in on by smooth-talking pimp Duke (Dale Midkiff) and by the time the credits roll, she’s one of his girls on the street in NYC.

At the story’s outset, Cookie is totally into being one of Duke’s women… but things quickly change when another one of his girls, Heather (Deborah Offner), threatens to leave and Duke responds by beating her senseless.  Cookie realizes she has to get out of Duke’s clutches and accepts a standing offer from Jason (Leon Robinson), a smoother but no less manipulative pimp.  Jason sends his men out to bump Duke off but things don’t go as planned and soon Duke is chasing down an unknowing Cookie through the New York night, hot for revenge.

If you want to view Streetwalkin’ purely as an exploitation piece, it works like a charm on that level.  It covers an impressive amount of ground in its 84 minutes, delivering a well-constructed plot full of sin and thrills.  In classic Corman production style, it’s attentive to marketplace demands, layering in plenty of gratuitous nudity and a few fights.  Speaking of fights, it’s worth mentioning that the film’s grand finale is impressive stuff that builds up to an feverish pitch as the actors give their all to make the last showdown memorable.

Streetwalkin’ has also got a great sense of style that is rooted in its time and place, with neon-drenched cinematography by Steven Fierberg and a synth-heavy soundtrack that works in a lot of cool period-specific NYC dance music by performers like Konk and Strafe.  The fact that it was shot in the heart of 42nd Street during its final grand era of sleaze is the icing atop the eight-layer cake for grindhouse movie aficionados.

That said, if you pay close attention you will realize that Streetwalkin’ isn’t all cheap thrills.  Director Joan Freeman came from a documentary background and did extensive research with cops, pimps and hookers to learn the milieu she would portray.  As outlandish and colorful as it may seem, Streetwalkin’ has a knowing quality to it thanks to this research, particularly in how it portrays the psychological complexities of the relationship between prostitutes and pimps.  The film was accused of glorifying sleaze but that couldn’t be further from the truth: instead, the hookers and their pimps are portrayed as multifaceted people who live in a continuously dangerous world that requires them to be always on guard and shifting alliances.  The results are fascinating to watch but are also frequently scary.

The film’s verisimilitude is further aided by a well-chosen cast who gives fantastic performances.  Leo gives an appealingly natural and uninhibited performance as the hard-luck heroine, showing a skill for intense heights of emotion that would pay off later on in her Hollywood career.  She’s matched by a downright operatic performance from Midkiff as Duke: though he looks more like a soap opera actor than a pimp, he throws everything plus the kitchen sink into his work and pulls it off on sheer intensity.  If you need proof, look out for a one-shot, one-take scene in which he demolishes an apartment in a rage: it’s one for the record books.

That said, one should remember that Streetwalkin’ is an ensemble piece and the backing cast is packed with a series of smaller yet stellar turns: Robinson is quietly strong as a more distinguished but no less devious rival to Duke while veteran character actor Antonio Fargas does small wonders as another pimp caught in the crossfire.  Farga had played this role dozens of times but his grasp of nuance and body language ensures he is always fun to watch.  Elsewhere, Khandi Alexander is fun to watch as a scheming prositute and Julie Newmar summons up an appropriately sleazy but impressive sense of glamour as Queen Bee, a veteran hooker who serves as a mentor to Cookie.

In short, Streetwalkin’ is one of the few Concorde-era Corman productions that can sit comfortably alongside the highlights of his classic New World era because it balances its cheap thrills with a depth of observational detail and a sense of humanity. You might be getting the b-movie quickie version of the world it portrays but a sincere amount of effort has been made to create a detailed and memorable experience worth revisiting.  The wealth of detail it offers about the Deuce cements its status as a must-see for the 42nd Street aficionados.

SYNAPSE FILMS PRESENTS

TWO NEW THRILLERS IN THE NIKKATSU EROTIC FILMS COLLECTION!

TRUE STORY OF

A WOMAN IN JAIL: SEX HELL

and

DEBAUCHERY

JAPANESE EROTIC DELIGHTS — WITH AN EDGE!

A Wham! Bam! Thank you, ma’am! double-whammy sexy slammer double feature from
the masterminds of Nikkatsu!

Due to their juvenile crimes, a group of fresh young girls is thrown into a horrid, squalid jail. They soon wish they were back on the outside, as a gang of inmates subjects this “fresh meat” to the horrors of being locked up.  Mayumi,  a new inmate with a mysterious past, stands up for herself and fights back!  NO ONE is going  to push her around, and she hatches an escape plan to seek revenge on the person who had  her incarcerated.

TRUE STORY OF A WOMAN IN JAIL: SEX HELL
is a sleazy, sexually graphic and surprisingly violent entry in the “women in prison” genre.  The opening uniform changing, nude medical examination sessions, communal scrubbings in the bathhouse, nimble-fingered lesbians and vicious catfights are all here… and more!

In DEBAUCHERY, the sexy Ryôko Watanabe stars as Ami, a jaded housewife who pitches herself, body and soul, into the Tokyo decadence of the decade in an attempt to pep up her marriage.  She secretly joins the elite “Madame Machiko Society Club” to experiment with discrete sex games and the thrill of making love to anonymous men.  The sexual perversion and sick depravity she is subjected to, by her clients, is much more than she bargained for.  Bondage, beads and whips are only the beginning!  Can she escape this secret life she has chosen, or will it
destroy her forever?

Impulse Films proudly presents two historic stunners from the heyday of the violent sex film. Nikkatsu always delivers. DEBAUCHERY features an original theatrical trailer and both discs include liner notes from Japanese film scholar
Jasper Sharp.

TRUE STORY OF A WOMAN IN JAIL: SEX HELL (1975)

Disc Info:

Director: Kôyû Ohara
Starring: Kozue Hitomi, Seri Kaori, Hiromi Maya
Run Time: 72 minutes
Release Date: April 10, 2012
Language: Japanese
Subtitles: English
Aspect Ratio: Anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1)
Format: DVD
Region: Region 1
Price: $24.95

DEBAUCHERY (1983)

Disc Info:

Director: Hidehiro Ito
Starring: Ryoko Watanabe, Serina Nishikawa, Mizuho Nakagawa
Run Time: 70 minutes
Release Date: April 10, 2012
Language: Japanese
Subtitles: English
Aspect Ratio: Anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1)
Format: DVD
Region: Region 1
Price: $24.95

American Grindhouse, a recent documentary by Elijah Drenner, takes a swing at making sense of the grindhouse concept for viewers of all kinds.  Using cult movie historians Eddie Muller and Eric Schaefer, the first half-hour does a beautiful job of setting up the backstory of grindhouse filmmaking.  It walks the audience through how carny types infiltrated the outer edges of the film business when the Hays Code tamed the racy content of early Hollywood fare and a government decision busted up the monopoly major studios held on movie theaters.  These bits are spiced up effectively with clips from demented early trash-fare like birth-of-a-baby movies and Dwain Esper’s unforgettably demented Maniac.

Unfortunately, the documentary begins to lose focus as it moves into its remaining 50 minutes.  Part of the problem is that the film is so intent on being a short piece — it runs a mere 82 minutes with credits — that it glosses over the distinction between grindhouse films and exploitation films.  Fans could argue this point all day but Your Humble Reviewer’s understanding is that grindhouse is essentially a subset of exploitation fare, namely hard-hitting and intense material that was able to keep the attention of rowdy audiences in rundown inner-city theaters.  In other words, all grindhouse films are exploitation films but all exploitation films aren’t necessarily grindhouse films.

American Grindhouse sidesteps this issue and broadens its focus to cover all sorts of exploitation fare: some of it fits the grindhouse template, like blaxploitation and Nazi films, but other items are included that will make the grindhouse buff scratch their heads, like a few minutes devoted to the Beach Party series.  This segment is fun and makes insightful points about these films allowed A.I.P. to draw in an adult audience to supplement their teenage base — but it really has nothing to do with grindhouse movies.  Even worse, some Deuce staples like the kung fu movie are omitted entirely. As a result, the latter 50 minutes or so of American Grindhouse becomes this blitzkrieg travelogue through the history of exploitation cinema that hits some grindhouse touchstones and misses a lot of others.

Another problem is  the limitation of the filmmaker’s resources.  To their credit, they got some impressive names to appear here — John Landis, Joe Dante and William Lustig among them — but sometimes these figures are strangely underutilized.  For example, Lustig never gets to discuss in detail the grindhouse favorites he made as a director (the unforgettably sleazy and creepy Maniac is altogether ignored).  Conversely, some minor figures get a surprising amount of screen time seemingly because they were available: a notable case is James Gordon White, a lesser-known screenwriter who gets more screen time than Larry Cohen.

Despite these problems, American Grindhouse is fun to watch.  It’s dense with useful information and slickly edited, with tons of clips used to effectively counterpoint the comments of its participants.  It overflows with a trash-cinephile’s love for exploitation cinema and will leave even b-movie veterans compiling a mental list of films they need to check out.

Unfortunately, the erratic focus and too-brief running time result in an experience that lets the real meaning of grindhouse slip away as it bounds from point to point.  One walks away feeling that perhaps this should have been done as a long-form documentary with a sharper, more specific focus, like the excellent A Nightmare On Elm Street series documentary Never Sleep Alone.  Thus, American Grindhouse is best viewed as a fun clip compendium/interview piece combo rather than as a definitive guide to the grindhouse experience.

This disc boasts a new anamorphic transfer of this title, done at a 1.78:1 viewing ratio.  The results are impressive, capturing the film’s glossy style of photography nicely.  The audio portion of the disc uses the original Dolby 2.0 stereo mix and it sounds good for an older stereo mix, using John Williams’ rich orchestral score to nice effect — particularly in a few scenes involving choral accompaniment.

The one downside of this disc is a lack of supplements: there’s nothing here beyond the transfer, not even a trailer.  It would have been interesting to hear a bit about how this odd project came together or at least to see how it was promoted to audiences who thought of Christopher Reeve as Superman.  The lack of extras is odd, as Shout Factory is usually good in this area.

That said, this disc offers a slick treatment for a catalog item and collectors will be happy to have the film on a pressed disc as opposed to a DVD-R.  If you’re a Christopher Reeve fanatic or a collector of oddball Hollywood schlock-dramas, this disc of Monsignor is a safe bet for either type of collector.

To read Schlockmania’s film review for Monsignor, click here.

SHOUT! FACTORY AND BEST BRAINS, INC., PRESENT….

MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000:

THE WILD WORLD OF BAT WOMAN

&

MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000:

GIRL IN GOLD BOOTS

AVAILABLE DIRECTLY FROM SHOUT! FACTORY ON MARCH 20, 2012

On March 20^th The Satellite of Love lifts off once again when Shout! Factory and Best Brains, Inc. release Mystery Science Theater 3000: Girl In Gold Boots and Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Wild World Of Batwoman on DVD, available exclusively from the Shout! Factory store at http://www.shoutfactorystore.com/prod.aspx?pfid=5257670 and http://www.shoutfactorystore.com/prod.aspx?pfid=5257669.

MST3K: Girl In Gold Boots and MST3K: The Wild World Of Batwoman are the newest titles in a special line from Shout! Factory of single episode/single disc releases of fan favorites. Shout! Factory also continues to release new multi-disc collections of beloved and in-demand episodes. Mystery Science Theater 3000: XXIII, a 4-Disc collection of 4 previously unreleased episodes and loads of extras, will be in stores March 27^th.

In MST3K: Girl In Gold Boots, a timeless tale of exploitation, competition, drugs and raw talent-flavored substitute, a young woman’s quest to make it as a professional go-go dancer reveals a devastatingly mediocre portrait of Hollywood’s low-budget underbelly. Thankfully, those schlock ’n’ roll stars aboard the Satellite of Love are here to avenge our boredom and riff our pain away. Comedy snipers Mike Nelson and his robot sidekicks Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot put Girl In Gold Boots in their crosshairs and take it down. May a statue be dedicated one day to their heroism!

In 1966 an understandable attempt to capitalize on the popularity of Batman went horribly, horribly, horribly wrong. The movie that emerged, The Wild World Of Bat Woman, would have stood a better chance had it been written by Bob Kane’s dog. There is a plot, of sorts, involving a masked babe, her team of dancing girls, a mad scientist, an atomic-powered hearing aid and an archvillain named Rat Fink. Don’t try to connect those dots. You’ll lose. Just enjoy the ample opportunities taken by Mike and his robot pals Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot to redeem the movie with barbs, cracks, digs, jabs and other assorted comic punishment. MST3K: The Wild World Of Batwoman includes the short film Cheating, a morality tale about a high school boy whose position in student government is jeopardized by a cheating scandal.

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 series was created by Joel Hodgson and produced by Jim Mallon. After a year on KTMA TV in Minneapolis , its national broadcast life began in 1989 on the Comedy Channel (later to become Comedy Central), where it ran for seven seasons. The show’s final three seasons aired on the Sci-Fi Channel.  The premise of the series features a hapless man who is trapped by mad scientists on a satellite in space and forced to watch old B-movies of questionable worth. To keep sane, he’s built two robot sidekicks, and together they do a running commentary on the films, affectionately mocking their flaws with inspired wisecracks and acting as a demented movie theater peanut gallery. Series creator Hodgson originally played the stranded man, Joel Robinson.  When he left in 1993, series head writer Mike Nelson replaced him as the new B-movie victim Mike Nelson, and continued in the role for the rest of the show’s run.  The format proved to be popular and remarkably durable. During its 11-year run and 198 episodes (including one feature film), MST3K attained a loyal fan base and critical acclaim. The series won a Peabody Award in 1993, and was nominated for writing Emmys^® in 1994 and 1995.

Thus, it was inevitable that horror historians would turn their attention to this subgenre.  Slasher movies are a regular feature in horror movie viewing guides and a select few books — Going To Pieces and Blood Money among them — have devoted themselves fully to the subgenre.  Teenage Wasteland is a recent entry in the field, penned by J.A. Kerswell.  He’s the longtime proprietor of Hysteria Lives!, a well-liked website devoted to stalk & slash fare. Fans of that site will be happy to know his book is tidy, smart and artfully designed from a graphics standpoint.

One of the nice things about Teenage Wasteland is its organization: Kerswell gives a carefully orchestrated history of the subgenre, going all the way back to the Grand Guignol theater and covering all the way up to the post–Scream wave of nuevo-slashers.  The early chapters are reason enough for slasher buffs to buy this book, as Kerswell provides a detailed history of the many and sometimes surprising influences on the genre.  Fans may already be aware of the influence Italy’s giallo and Germany’s krimi had on the genre but it’s nice to get a brisk primer on each — and the chapter on early 1920’s-1950’s influences is revelatory stuff that’ll have even veteran fans scribbling down must-find lists.

During the peak years of the cycle, roughly 1978 to 1984, each year gets a chapter of its own.  Within these chapters, films are covered in a chronological fashion, with each title receiving a breakdown of its production, significant elements and release history.  The latter element frequently includes a mention of the box office figures, as it is surprising to hear what did and didn’t do well.  For example, fan favorite My Bloody Valentine (1981 version) fared poorly during its original release with a middling-at-best $5 million while the critically-reviled campfest The Seduction racked up an impressive $12 million.  Key titles like Halloween and Friday The 13th get extra space while other titles get lesser amounts according to their interest level.

Some fans might take exception to Teenage Wasteland as it doesn’t go too deeply in any direction and Kerswell avoids the kind of obsessive detail or norm-challenging opinions that have become common in modern genre film writing (at least at the fan level).  That said, one must remember that this is a primer on the slasher film, designed to be smart enough to appeal to fans while also remaining accessible enough to be inviting to neophytes.  Kerswell pulls off that balance nicely, maintaining a reasonable, intelligent voice that savvy fans will appreciate but also adding in newbie-friendly touches like fun sidebars and an engaging set of appendices that offer capsule reviews for key titles and all manner of trivia.

Finally, it should be noted that the graphic design of Teenage Wasteland is fantastic.  The design of the book is credited to one Paul Wright, who deserves a round of applause for making the book as entertaining to look at as it is to read.  The design is full color with the exception of a few black-and-white newspaper ads and stills and the imagery shares space with the text on a 50/50 basis.  It’s worth noting that a lot of foreign posters are used so even fans who are familiar with the domestic ad mats for these films will be taken by surprise by some of the stunning alternative-market graphic designs that turn up here.

In short, Teenage Wasteland is both a strong primer on the slasher film and a fun coffer table book for horror fans.  Whatever your level of interest in this subgenre, it’s worth a look for anyone with a historical interest in modern horror trends.

(Note: this book was originally published in the U.K.  It is due for an American reprint in June 2012 under a simpler new title, The Slasher Movie Book.  U.S. slasher fans may want to wait for the reprint as it will be cheaper than picking up the UK edition.)

Monsignor could be seen as the dying gasp of the trashy Hollywood melodramas that were ultimately killed off by the success of prime-time soap operas like Dallas and Dynasty.  It presents Reeve to the audience as Father John Flaherty, a dashing and ambitious young priest who goes off to World War II to serve as a chaplain.  However, he’s overtaken with rage after risking his life to give a dying soldier the last rites and picks up a machine gun to shoot down some Nazis.  This gets him noticed by the Vatican and he’s promptly shipped off to Rome serve under Cardinal Santoni (Fernando Rey).

And this is where a long, slow fall from grace begins for John, aided and abetted by worldly vices and illicit money.  When he discovers the Vatican’s coffers are almost empty, he teams with an old pal from the neighborhood, Ludo (Joe Cortese) and gets into black market sales.  Soon he is seeking out more money by teaming with exiled American mobster  Don Vito Appolini (Jason Miller) to move the Vatican into the world of high finance.  Along the way, John also  finds the time to seduce Clara (Genevieve Bujold), a young woman on her way to becoming a nun.  Scandals and existential angst follow as John wakes up from his sin-coma and works his way back towards redemption.

Monsignor was created by the team of producer Frank Yablans and director Frank Perry, the same team who gave us the evergreen camp-fest Mommie Dearest, but don’t expect the same kind of over-the-top thrills here.  Despite a few brief flashes of nudity, it’s a rather tame affair that focuses more on opulent surroundings and its ensemble cast that any kind of well-moneyed cheap thrills.  It often feels like a slightly pompous t.v. movie, albeit one with a generous budget that allowed some gorgeous location shooting in Italy.  Perry’s direction is blandly competent: he goes for the occasional flourish, like a Latin mass-scored scene where John’s true identity is unmasked to Clara during a religious ceremony, but his work here mainly feels tepid and indifferent.

It doesn’t help that the script by veteran screenwriters Abraham Polonsky and Wendell Mayes is uninspired, built on clinker-heavy dialogue and contrived situations.  Word has it that the film doesn’t really reflect much of the source novel by Jack Alain Leger and the narrative was essentially devised by Yablans from a synopsis of the story.  The end result is essentially a simplistic rise-and-fall narrative and often feels like it’s missing big chunks of storyline, particularly during the flash-forward third act that catches up with John after several years of wheeling and dealing.  The one real interest element of the script is that it asks us to side with an essentially amoral, self-deceiving character — but that is never really explored.

It has often been said that Reeve is miscast as the film’s ambitious sinner hero and that is true.  Though Reeve is committed to his performance role, he’s just too clean-cut and subdued in acting style to convince in the role and comes off as awkward in scenes that require big emotions.  That said, any actor would face an uphill battle with the character of John Flaherty: he’s basically a cipher in his own story, an unsympathetic character who is defined by what the story needs him to do at a given moment to fulfill its rise-fall-redemption arc.  It’s telling that a lot of his characterization comes from other characters describing his qualities to others — or even to John himself — rather than through his own actions.

Thus, the main reason for trainspotters of big-budget schlock to watch Monsignor is its impressive supporting cast.  Rey offers a graceful turn as John’s mentor, making even the creakiest religious philosophy sound convincing, and Miller brings some visceral emotion to a clichéd gangster role.  Fans of Italian cult fare will be amused by the pairing of Adolfo Celi and Tomas Milian as a cardinal-priest team out to take the hero down.  Milian even gets a great courtroom-style scene where he makes his case against John’s corruption in a memorably furious manner.  That said, top honors must go to Bujold, who rises above some terribly written scenes to give a serious, quietly intense performance as the object of John’s forbidden affections.  She’s way better than the material deserves, particularly in her final scene with Reeve.

All in all, Monsignor is a misfire that represents the dying days of the trashy Hollywood soap opera.  It isn’t as entertaining or as campy as one might hope — but it’s conceptually bizarre and has an impressive enough supporting cast to make it worth a look to fans of major studio schlock.

That said, those who really know their New World history are savvy enough to understand that there’s always a gem waiting to be rediscovered.  In the case of Lethal Ladies Collection Vol. 2, it uncovers a much-coveted title in The Arena and gives it an impressive treatment.  Better yet, it adds a few more lesser-known titles and maintains the fan-friendly prices that Shout Factory’s New World reissues are known for.

All three films featured on this set — The Arena, Fly Me and Cover Girl Models — all benefit from new anamorphic transfers taken from genuine celluloid source materials.  The Arena is restored to its full Techniscope (2.35:1) glory for the first time on American home video: the source used has a few emulsion scratches and two brief snippets that had to be taken from a full-frame master but the majority of it looks quite impressive, boasting rich colors, nice black levels and a solid level of detail.  Mono audio is retained for this and it sounds fine, reflecting the above-average dub that was done for this film in Italy.

The element used for Fly Me is a little beat-up in spots, particularly around reel changes, but most of it boasts vivid colors and an a level of detail that is leagues beyond its past VHS incarnations.  Cover Girl Models looks pretty great from start to finish, having the least amount of element issues and impressively crisp levels of detail and color throughout.  Like The Arena, the mono audio mix is used for both of these titles and each sounds fine.

As is usually the case with Shout! Factory’s multi-title packages, a nice effort has been made to provide some bonus material here.  The key beneficiary of the extras-minded attention here is The Arena, which boasts a trailer, a new commentary track and a new featurette.  The trailer here comes from what appears to be a latter-day reissue under the title Gladiator Women and functions as a sort-of highlights reel, complete with a red-band intro.

The commentary pairs director Steve Carver with moderator Katarina Leigh Waters, who is better known to cult DVD fans for the recent line of cult/horror DVD’s she has done with Scorpion Releasing.  If you’ve ever heard a commentary with Carver, you know he has a good memory and is generous with his behind-the-scenes stories.  His track for The Arena is no exception to the rule and he talks at length about the challenges of shooting a film on an “undercover” basis in Italy while dealing with the different customs and superstitions unique to an Italian crew.

Along the way, he reveals a ton of fascinating tidbits, like how Pam Grier’s gladiator getup was modelled after Woody Strode’s in Spartacus and a great story about how Federico Fellini, who was shooting Amarcord nearby, ended up visiting the set and ogling the women.  Waters does a solid job moderating, asking the occasional question to keep the track moving but mostly giving Carver room to share his plentiful memories.  It’s a strong track and a must for any fans of the film.

The featurette does a nice job of filling in the gaps not covered in the commentary.  Carver appears here and his memories are fleshed out by the likes of producers Roger Corman and Mark Damon as well as actor Margaret Markov.  A lot of great material is packed into a tight 12-minute running time: Corman reveals he paired Markov with Grier to capitalize on the success of Black Mama, White Mama, Damon offers some tart recollections about Corman’s infamous tightness with a budget and Markov talks about how Carver demanded the actress not get involved in dating off the set to ensure he’d get his film in the can.  Markov and Damon ended up marrying after working on this film and that is addressed during the end credits of this segment.  All in all, it’s a worthwhile little featurette that will in some gaps for b-movie historians.

There’s only one extra on the disc with Fly Me and Cover Girl Models: it’s a fun 30-second t.v. spot for Fly Me that suggests the heroines “fly out of the screen and onto your lap”(!).  That said, given the generosity of a two-films/one-disc setup, there isn’t much room to complain.

All in all, the Lethal Ladies Collection Vol. 2 is another strong addition to Shout! Factory’s slate of Corman releases and a good value for the cost-conscious cult movie buff.  If battling babes is your pleasure, you really can’t go wrong here: The Arena alone makes it worth the money and the other films further up the set’s value.

For Schlockmania’s film review of The Arena, click here.

For Schlockmania’s film review of Cover Girl Models, click here.

For Schlockmania’s film review of Fly Me, click here.

The Arena is a noteworthy example of Corman’s drive-in feminism in action.  Essentially, the script by John & Joyce Corrington of The Omega Man fame takes the sword & sandal genre that the Italians did so well and adds the “fight for freedom” angle from Spartacus but tweaks it in a pro-female direction.  The main heroines are Bodicia (Margaret Markov), a proud priestess, and Mamawi (Pam Grier), a peaceful Nubian.  Both are sold into slavery after Roman soldiers wipe out their tribes — and they quickly find themselves at the mercy of childish emperor Timarchus (Daniele Vargas), who uses them for his amusement with the help of cruel slave-driver Cornelia (Sara Bay, a.k.a. Italian schlock starlet Rosalba Neri).

At first, Bodicia and Malawi are used as concubines to provide entertainment during orgies, servants during the gladiator fights and to provide pre-fight “companionship” for the gladiators.  However, once standard mano-a-mano combat ceases to be enough for spectacle-hungry villagers, Timarchus uses the woman to be his gladiators.  At first it is a diversion and the women avoid hurting each other — but soon the crowd wants more and Timarchus is willing to kill the women if they won’t comply with the crowd’s whims.  However, the emperor has underrated their desire for freedom — and they will soon to prove to all comers what they’ll do to earn it.

Simply put, The Arena is classic 1970’s drive-in feminist fun.  On the basic exploitation front, it delivers all the fleshly and brutal charms one would expect from this premise: the palace scenes offer the expected debauchery, the arena scenes have plentiful bloodshed and the female stars aren’t bashful about nudity.  The real surprise here is how serious The Arena frequently is.  The script has a genuine core of drama to it, with a real feeling for its gladiator characters male and female, and director Steve Carver plays this up to add some unexpected heft to the film’s cheap thrills.

The serious angle of the film is aided by the artful quality of Carver’s direction.  He goes for an expressive visual style that mixes handheld camerawork with some unexpectedly lovely combination dolly/zoom shots.  His ace in the hole here is the camerawork by Aristide Massaccesi, better known to sexploitation fans as Joe D’Amato.  Say what you will about his schlocky self-directed erotica but Massaccesi was a fine cameraman and his work here gives the film an artsy, genuinely Italian “peplum” flair.  It’s worth noting that the film was shot at Cinecitta in Italy so it has an unexpectedly high level of production value that aids the visual elegance.  Finally, the editing — done mostly by an unnamed Italian editor but credited to Joe Dante — gives the film the punchy pace a New World Pictures classic needs and a suitably grand score from Francesco DeMasi fits the film’s brooding tone nicely.

Finally, the acting cements the film’s pro-female tone.  Markov and Grier had teamed up before on the blaxploitation-themed Defiant Ones knockoff Black Mama, White Mama and the pairing works again here.  Markov has the noble presence to fit her Amazonian looks.  Grier initially adds a lighter touch to offset Markov’s somber quality but as the film’s tone darkens Grier handles a few intense dramatic scenes with confidence.  It’s also worth noting that both excel in the action department — and when they’re slashing up Roman soldiers side by side during the finale, it’s a thing of exploitation-flick beauty.

On the acting tip, it’s worth noting some fun performances in the supporting cast.  Lucretia Love steals a few scenes as a wine-loving female gladiator while the villainous ranks of the palace offer amusingly cartoonish turns from Vargas as the emperor and also Silvio Laurenzi as Priscium, an outrageously campy slave-buyer.  The latter two ham it up in a way that wouldn’t been seen again in this sort of film until Caligula. However, the best supporting performance comes from Neri as the slave-trainer: she’s a grand, cruel-yet-sexy villainess who makes a perfect omega to the Markov and Grier’s alpha.

All in all, The Arena deserves its status as one of the New World Pictures classics and also shows the early skills that Carver would bring to fruition in later films like Big Bad Mama and Lone Wolf McQuade.  If you dig Corman’s particular flavor of drive-in feminism then this film offers a veritable buffet of that sort of thrill.

Fly Me was an early attempt by New World Pictures to transpose its nurse flick formula — simply put, an ensemble drama built around three female leads with plenty of sex and soap opera plotting — to another setting.  In the case of Fly Me, nurses are replaced with stewardesses, presumably in an attempt to cash in on the success of the 3-D, X-rated hit The Stewardesses.  The facts that it was shot in the Philippines (standing in for both China and Japan at different times) and features a handful of scenes with the then-hot element of kung fu fights just add extra spice to this overheated combo.

These are the basic plot threads set up by screenwriter Miller Drake: Toby (Pat Anderson) is the new stewardess who wants to get frisky with a hot-to-trot doctor (Richard Young) but is constantly frustrated by the presence of her meddling Italian-American mother (Naomi Stevens).  Meanwhile, veteran stewardess/kung-fu enthusiast Andrea (Lenore Kasdorf) is baffled when her Hong Kong boyfriend has suddenly disappeared and she finds herself trailed by martial arts thugs.  She’s also got to deal with the attentions of a mysterious new would-be suitor Chiang (Pat Munzon). Finally, Sherry (Lyllah Torena) is involved in a drug smuggling ring but finds herself captured when she skims off the top and in danger of becoming a sex slave.

In other words, this is one crazy hodgepodge of exploitation-flick elements.  Toby’s plot thread plays like an episode of a sitcom spiced up with R-rated nudity, Andrea’s plot thread plays like a hastily assembled cash-in on the kung-fu movie trend (complete with hastily assembled action scenes) and Sherry’s plot thread seems to have wandered in from a rougher, meaner sexploitation film.  On the latter note, the final reel that brings everything together goes full sleazeploitation, feeling like the denouement from something Lee Frost and Bob Cresse might have dreamt up.

This whiplash-inducing cocktail of low humor, cheesecake, awful kung-fu and roughie-style S&M elements shouldn’t work… but somehow, it manages to play like gangbusters.  The madcap tone-shifting and adrenalized pace of the script ensures that the audience is always kept on its feet, wondering what goofball flourish will hit them next, and Cirio Santiago’s patented speedy, no-frills style of direction just amplifies these qualities.  It helps that he maximizes the film’s production value by using the Philippines to picturesque effect.  In fairness, a little credit must go to a young Jonathan Demme, who shot (but didn’t choreograph) those wacky fight scenes, including a pretty hilarious one that features a blind blow-dart assassin(!).

It also helps that the cast is quite likeable.  Anderson shows a genuine skill for light comedy, Kasdorf offers a solid dramatic turn in the most serious of the plot threads and skin-flick veteran Torena is suitably uninhibited in a role that requires to be endlessly bedeviled while topless.  Young makes a solid romantic lead, showing a nice chemistry with Anderson, and even Stevens’ shameless mugging ultimately becomes charming, even though she sounds more Jewish than Italian.  New World fans should also keep an eye out for a fun cameo from Dick Miller as a randy cab driver and Santiago regulars Ken Metcalfe and Vic Diaz sleazing it up in supporting roles.

Simply put, Fly Me is the kind of goofball exploitation quickie that wins you over in spite of your better judgement — and if you’re willing to follow along with its spur-of-the-moment surprises, it can be wildly entertaining.  Gather together some like-minded trashfiends for the best effect… by the end, you’ll probably all be hooting and hollering at its go-for-broke approach to skin, sin and cheap laughs.