Review of Death Wish 3 (1985) by Paul F — 01 Feb 2005

1:20 am, Saturday morning. The wusses have left the building, off to seek the much-rumored "sleep" I've heard so much about. But not me. Not when there's a Larry Cohen flick up next.

[i]Black Caesar[/i] is essentially a blaxploitation variant of [i]Little Caesar[/i], but it's basically just like almost eny other rise-and-fall-of-a-crime-lord flick in film history. Fred Williamson, who almost acts here, plays Tommy Gibbs, who starts out as a small-time hood and works his way up to the big time, boldly breaking through the racist glass ceiling of the mob. It's solid, gritty stuff, almost too good for a venue like this, as evidenced by the lack of audience interaction. Gibbs is too mean-spirited a character to really root for (at one point, he rapes girlfriend Gloria Hendry) and Cohen's script has a lot more bite to it than most B-grade fare. In other words, I loved it, though I'd seen it before. If you're new to blaxploitation, this is one of the five or so must-sees.

Next, an introductory short from [i]Damaged Goods[/i]. You can see part of this in the new-to-DVD [i]Confessions of a Vice Baron[/i], but why would you want to? It's all about VD. In the '30s.

[i]Beauty and the Robot[/i] isn't listed in the RT database, even under its' more common name, [i]Sex Kittens Go to College[/i]. Strange, as there's a lot more obscure films that are accessable. Anyway, most of my friends hated [i]Sex Kittens[/i], especially the ones that were awake, but I enjoyed it. Maybe I was just getting dizzy by this point, but any film that stars Mamie Van Doren, John Carradine, Vampira, Jackie Coogan, Conway Twitty, Tuesday Weld and Steve Allen hanger-on Louis Nye can't be all bad. Well, it can be, but part, nay, all of [i]Sex Kittens'[/i] charm is that it's just the dumbest possible movie it could be. The plot features Van Doren as a college professor with a 268 IQ ("That's 40 above genius!" says one character), gangsters, a sports-predicting robot and enough wacky hijinx to fill a dozen [i]Police Academy[/i] films. It's easily the most idiotic of any film at B-fest, but it's so unapologetically dumb that I kinda have to like it.

In the middle of Sex Kittens, the B-festeurs struck a pornographic cartoon from the '30s by the name of "Buried Treasure." It's really funny and unbelievably sick, and it's on The Other Cinema's excellent [i]The Subject is Sex[/i] DVD.

[i]Death Wish 3[/i] has the same sort of tone as [i]Black Caesar[/i] without all that pesky depth and subtext. It's Charles Bronson. Some friends of his get harassed by punks. He gets angry and kills them. That's about all you need to know... it's a jubilantly fascist film, and unless you advocate the death penalty for purse snatching, virtually impossible to take seriously. Still, tons of fun, and a better choice than the much darker [i]Death Wish 2[/i].

I slept through much of [i]Project: Moonbase[/i]. I have it on DVD as well, and have also slept through it at home. Sorry.

I'd never seen a [i]3 Ninjas[/i] film until [i]High Noon at Mega Mountain[/i], but I don't think I'll be going back for more. It's all about three (very caucasian) brothers whose grandfather (Victor Wong) has taught them to be ninjas. They go to an amusement part to see the favorite star (Hulk Hogan!) of the youngest kid (his name is Tum-Tum because he loves to eat!) and the place gets taken over by terrorists. Well, not really terrorists, but bad guys with machine guns led by leather-faced Loni Anderson and henchman Jim Varney. There's more mugging in this film than New York City gets in a year, the action is insipid, the plot doesn't make any sense, and you get to wondering just how "special" a kid would have to be to enjoy this pablum. It's a brain-melter, but at least it's an energetic one. It's from the director of this year's Lindsay Lohan farce [i]Raise Your Voice[/i].

Skipped [i]Robot Monster[/i] to go to breakfast. It's [i]Robot Monster[/i]. It's got a guy in a gorilla suit and a fishbowl head wandering around Branson Canyon. I've seen it before. Now, if they'd shown it in 3-D, I would have stuck around.

The more I watch Troma films, the more I like them, and [i]Class of Nuke 'em High[/i] has gotten much better with age. It's a mercilessly dumb movie, but it's so energetically stupid and self-depricating that it's still fun. A lot of folks don't take well to Troma's over-the-top, anything-for-a-gag acting, directing and writing style (this is normal), but hey, it's their loss. Trying so hard to offend that it never really manages to be offensive, only gleeful fun, [i]Class of Nuke 'em High[/i] is probably my favorite of Troma's earlier productions.

Next: Robert Urich! Ice-T! Terror from Beyond Space! And the dullest film ever made by a non-Swede?