Ted V. Mikels

"... That kind of dedication powered filmmaker Ted V. Mikels, who once said he’d like to be remembered as 'a hell of a filmmaker who did 28 hours a day, 10 days a week toward the making of films.' Mikels directed 25 movies over the course of five decades, from 1963’s Strike Me Deadly to 2015’s Paranormal Extremes: Text Messages from the Dead..."

An appreciation of Ted V. Mikels for Vegas Seven.

Three the Hard Way

Can I get a "Hell, yeah!" or, at the very least, a "What! What!"

Three the Hard Way is a blaxploitation flick directed by Gordon Parks, Jr. of Super Fly fame and starring legendary football player Jim Brown, football player of some repute and grindhouse hero Fred Williamson and martial arts star Jim Kelly, whom you probably know from Enter the Dragon. They're fighting  Nazis.

It seems a group of business-suited white supremacists have somehow created a poison (unlike today's business-suited white supremacists, they actually believe in science) that will kill only the black residents of Los Angeles, Detroit and Washington, D.C. Jim Brown's buddy finds out about this, they kill buddy and kidnap Jim's girl. So it's time to go out and get some payback. And save a few million people, of course. Give back to the community...

It was seeing shit like this that made the NRA and Ronald Regan
support gun control back in the 60s.

Along with plenty of righteous 70s threads, Brown shows off the tremendous physical grace--vaulting over barricades, leaping down stairwells, hanging on to the hoods of cars--that helped him lead the NFL in rushing for eight seasons (Although note that the suit is worn with a nice pair of kicks--which i am guessing are Pumas or Keds--because no one could do this in a pair of alligator Ferragamos.) Three the Hard Way does not stint on prolonged action scenes and isn't that why we're all here anyway?

 Although the fact that two of those action sequences involve wrecking a herd of sweet Detroit-made sedans and pumping hundreds of bullets into a collection of vintage pinball games does make a me a little sad. The latter takes places once Jim  Brown travels to New York City to get the first member of his posse: Fred Williamson. Fred Williamson is, as always, one smooth badass who always seems to be having a good time in his flicks, even crap like 1990: The Bronx Warriors and he seems to be enjoying Three the Hard Way even more than usual.

 

Then we come across Jim Kelly, or at least his bitchin' Lincoln  Continental having drugs planted in it by a herd of crooked cops. But with a mighty yell of  "Gonna set me up?!" he kicks the crap out of them.

It's a bit like a drawn-out version of a similar skirmish in Enter the Dragon; the next sequence will also reference the climactic car wash battle in Black Belt Jones. Our heroes manage to capture one of the Nazis and figure he ought to be good for some information...

We then get a glorious montage of a red-white-blue clad trio of biker babes coming into Manhattan from Brooklyn. The ladies are Countess, Princess and Empress (the last of whom is played by Irene Tsu of Ebony, Ivory and Jade, so she's rolled like this before). And, well, the ladies handle interrogations in a way that gives pause to even this rather rugged set of gentlemen. (If you want true brutality, call upon the women.)

More fistfights, more car chases, more running around shooting. It occurs to me that we never learn how these guys know each other or how they all became such profound ass-kickers. Usually they at least throw in a line about being Green Berets in 'Nam or, in this case, ex-football players. (Even Kelly, though he didn't go pro--he was also apparently a hell of a tennis player, though i somehow sense he must've had some hoop game as well.) We see Jim Brown as a producer (of the Impressions), but no idea what the other two guys do.

This band of nutjob cartoon white supremacists lacks the over-the-top misanthropic lunacy of a Donald Trump or Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee, any of whom would be a far more ridiculous villain than Three the Hard Way's unctuous businessman. The Nazis of Three the Hard Way aren't really your classic movie Nazis: Their hair touches their collars and they are listening to music with acoustic guitars and synthesizers which, as we all know, is mixing the races. Their Nazi banquet is totally dorky--no The Damned or The Night Porter decadence here.

 

 

It's pretty obvious that our trio of heroes certainly possess physical, intellectual and sartorial superiority  over these schlubs in berets. (A beret only works if you're a chick doing some kind of Bonnie Parker/Patty Hearst or a guy with good hair and cheekbones that could cut diamonds who is somehow affiliated with MI6.)

The climactic attack on the Nazi mansion has that peculiar day-for-night mix where you keep wondering if the battle took three days or we're on an alternate Earth where the days and nights are 15 minutes long. Still, busting up Nazis in a flawlessly spherical 'fro and black leather pants, Jim Kelly comes off like a cross between Dr. J., Bruce Lee and Iggy Pop. Can you imagine anything cooler? Jim Brown shows off his superior skill at kicking down doors and leaping across furniture while firing a shotgun. Fred Williamson lays waste to many bad guys without taking the grin off of his face or the cigar out of his mouth.

One can fantasize that Eric Garner had been endowed with the cop-clobbering powers of Jim Kelly. Or that right at the moment Dylan Roof raises that gun in the Emanuel Church, Jim Brown busts through a stained-glass window, slides down the aisle and shotguns the little cracker with the Moe Howard haircut. A superhero ass-kicking wasted on a redshirt weasel, but still... 

... anyway, Three the Hard Way could do with a little more plot, but it's still pretty damn gratifying.

Ginger

Ginger is another film from that classic year, 1970 -- also the annus mirabulis of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Dinah East, The Party at Kitty and Stud's, Bloody Mama and no less than six vampire movies. It was the era of porno chic and pretty much everyone was working blue.

Ginger sounds totally reasonable on paper -- a "female James Bond," except where Cleopatra Jones crosses the genre with blaxploitation, Ginger crosses it with porn and sets it in New Jersey. The title role was played by Cheri Caffaro, born in Florida, raised in New York City.

Our heroine is even more likely than Bond to drop trou for a mission and she carries the nudity -- and the subsequent action -- far further than Her Majesty's Secret Service would ever dare. But, before anybody gets upset, let me point out that Ginger also has plenty of full frontal junk for those of you who prefer the pole to the hole.

Our heroine makes her big entrance in her bitchin yellow 'Vette ("cars courtesy Derio Oldsmobile Inc.") and goes to an office where she get her "mission." Which is to save the Jersey Shore -- there's some "rich kid" named "Rex" who's dealing drugs and blackmailing summer vacationers and the rich parents of Jersey are willing to throw down a hundred grand to keep the cops out of it. She also gets a cool super-spy briefcase with a gun and ammo and handcuffs and a camera and infrared film and some trail mix and one of  those little spray bottles of Evian and a matchbook that has most of the matches missing and...

Ginger heads off to the Shore, where we get a peep at our villain... Rex. Wearing eyeliner and a studded dog collar.

Really... this guy? What, was everyone else in jail or off fighting Tojo and this was the best villain they could find? Rex's gang consists of suburban whitebros bitching about their fathers' board of directors meetings. Except for the one black guy who is, of course, the drug hookup and is not rich. He's in it for one reason: As he explains, "You promised me all the ass I wanted. White ass." 

  Note pre-self tanner white lines, natural tits and old-school bush.

Ginger promptly infiltrates the gang by gyrating around a bar in hiphuggers and midriff top, thus arousing the prurient interest of one of the wealthy homosexuals in Rex's gang. (No, really, i mean the gang member played by an actor who was actually a gay porn star. Because back in the 70s you could get away with things like gay porn stars in "mainstream" films or a regular major network TV series about science.) This pisses off the ladies of the gang, who challenge Ginger to some kind of bikini catfight on the beach.

Whether it's fuckin' or kickin' ass, Ginger is gonna do whatever she has to do to get the job done. Ginger does not care how many times she must whip her top off or how many chicks she must hogtie with their own bikinis or how many guys she needs to strap down spread-eagle on a bed with piano wire around their balls, she is gonna clean up the Jersey Shore. If only she'd been around in the days of Pauly D.

Anyway, one of the gang girls bends Ginger's ear with an overly detailed account of her entry in the gang, precipitated by a run-in with the demon weed. "Then D.J. took out a joint, took a couple puffs on it and handed it to me... I don't know why in God's name I took it! I'll never know why, but I did!" Ginger comforts the girl by taking off her blouse and making out with her, basically because that's Ginger's modus operandi, regardless of the situation.

Who cares if she doesn't know how to button her shirt? She drinks with her pinkie out like a lady...

She manages to pump her new friend for info about the prostitution ring and of course friend winds up dead. Ginger flashes back to her friend and then to her brother begging her for help -- and totally flips out and strangles the gang member unlucky enough to be nearby. Flashback followed by violence is another Ginger modus operandi. Hey, it worked for Charles Bronson!

So, with the full fury of vengeance -- sure, she seems somewhat wooden and lethargic to the naked eye but, trust me, there is a roiling cauldron of emotions behind that deadpan stare -- Ginger decides to finish the gang off. One the way, there's plenty of breaks for tricks, blow jobs, dominance/humiliation scenarios, various ways of tying people up and the aforementioned flashbacks and castrations.

The adventures of Ginger actually continued into two more films, The Abductors and Girls Are for Loving. Cheri Caffaro went on to a guest spot on Barretta and wrote the script for sororitysploitation flick H.O.T.S. before eventually dropping out of showbusiness, but producer Don Strain is still working -- he produced all the High School Musical flicks. I think we can agree that Ginger and its sequels were the zenith of his career.

Switchblade Sisters

Switchblade Sisters is among the finest films of the girl gang genre -- with brief detours into women in prison, blaxploitation, high school delinquency tales, class struggle, dystopian semi-future, Mean Girlsploitation and Shakespeare knockoff.

Switchblade Sisters is the work of exploitation maestro Jack Hill, who was also responsible (if you want to call it that) for Coffy, Spider Baby, The Swinging Cheerleaders and The Wasp Woman, among others. It was originally titled The Jezebels, but that apparently confused people. And, well, it is hard to find a more straightforward, descriptive title than Switchblade Sisters.

 So, we find ourselves in our urban mid-70s hellhole -- Hill claimed he envisioned Switchblade Sisters as a Clockwork Orange-style futuristic gang movie, hence the wack-future overtones.

We see one of our fair females, Lace, in her bedroom, sharpening her switchblade, dabbling on perfume and listening to some jackhole try to repossess her mom's TV.  Lace is played by Robbie Lee, whom you may recognize from Big Bad Mama. She looks like Linda Blair and sounds like a second-grader doing a Jimmy Cagney impression. Fun whitebread fact: Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were her godparents and she went on to do voices for Rainbow Brite cartoons.

Lace is the leader of the Dagger Debs. We are introduced to the rest of the girl gang when they help Lace take back the cash from the repo man.

Incidentally, the one in the purple top is "Donut," played by Kitty Bruce, daughter of Lenny Bruce and burlesque queen Honey Harlow. Like all sociopathic teens, violence rouses their appetite for fast food, so they head for the local burger joint, where they encounter the Silver Daggers, the male gang for which they serve as a sort of ladies' auxiliary, despite the fact that they seem much tougher than the boys. The Silver Daggers seem to be a bunch of Adrian Zmed/Deney Terrio knockoffs who hang around the snack shack all day but can't even afford to pay for their own French fries...

But, wait, some new girl in school is sitting at the Debs' table in the cafeteria!

This is Maggie, played by Joanne Nail, who had been doing actual Shakespeare on Broadway when she  auditioned for Switchblade Sisters, and wound up acting in The Gumball Rally afterwards. Anyway, in a more overt version of what happens in lunch rooms all over the world every day, Patch's, Lace's second-in-command attempts to jump Maggie. It should be obvious which one is Patch and why she's Patch. In the role of Patch is Monica Gayle, who was better known as a softcore porn cutie, making her Iago/enforcer role a singular change of pace.

Regardless, Maggie remains impassive, then tears off her chain belt and proceeds to use it to whip some ass, impressing Lace. After said fracas, the girls wind up in lockdown, with the mandatory sexually harrassing dyke warden, Moms Smackley (played by Kate Murtaugh, who was "Mom" in Dr. Detroit, a film i will have to do here someday).

Maggie has shown sufficient class to be asked to join the Dagger Debs and here, ah here, the black seed of downfall is planted in the fertile soil of several flavors of  jealousy....

 

But, in the meantime, Lace sends Maggie to see her boyfriend Dominic at the Silver Daggers clubhouse and give him a message.The Silver Daggers are bitching about what they're going to do about the Crabs. Which are apparently another gang, although i cannot help but suspect that many of the Daggers do, indeed, have crabs. Anyway, egged on by the dad from That 70s Show, Dominic reads Lace's letter aloud to his broke-ass, badly dressed, lady-smacking, VD-ridden subnorm brethren. Sure, Lace's prison poetry is far inferior to that of Bonnie Parker, but, shit, i'm surprised these ass-clowns can even read.

Then Dominic adds injury to insult by raping Maggie. I am consoled by the fact that, in the movies, the guy named Dominic usually gets it. Maggie says nothing about it, not wanting to upset her new buddy, Lace. Next week at school, she acts like things are totally fine -- yes, all the gang kids still go to high school --

 -- but Patch senses that something is up....

... and Patch is furious at the idea of Maggie possibly replacing her as War Chief and Lace's bestie. So much so that she will fuck over Maggie and the Debs and even Lace just to make sure she stays #1 BFF. And so she begins working on Lace, telling her that Maggie's gonna steal Dominic. Because Dominic is such a fucking prize.

Regardless, Lace makes Maggie a full member of the Dagger Debs -- although Patch adds that Maggie has to "do a job," which consists of getting the head Crab guy's medallion, which is some sort of plastic swastika badge he got from a box of Göring-Ös. Seems like kind of a pointless errand, but the dumbasses came up with it, whaddya expect? For this assignment, Maggie puts on a girly dress -- Switchblade Sisters is cartoon-like in its insistence that all characters wear the same outfits at all times -- and bimbos him into submission.

 Also, to add to the confusion, Crabs seems to be the name of both the guy with the bad fashion sense and his loudly-shirted gang. And he seems to run some kind of community center here they clean guns and roll joints and type letters to The Man. But Crabs is most upset that his medallion has been taken and so does a drive-by on Dominic's brother and gang rapes his girlfriend. Because cheap shots and picking on women seem to be what makes a gangsta in this town. At least the Debs can actually kick ass and take on men, cops, wardens...

Lace and Dominic fight over a plot twist that will not be revealed here -- yes, for once, i'm keeping the spoliers. Deal. Regardless, the drive-by/rape triggers the most outrageous scene in Switchblade Sisters, the incredible roller rink massacre.

 

It seems someone set up the Daggers and their Debs, but who...?

So Dominic is dead and Lace is in the hospital. In the meantime, Maggie holds down the fort for the Dagger Debs. And, like women eventually do, she figures the boys have fucked things up long enough and it's time for someone with the ability to deduce, strategize and fight -- not to mention read two-syllable words and find her own ass with one hand -- to take over.

Maggie also changes the gang's name to "the Jezebels" -- fuck being the ladies auxillary!

But the ladies still need allies. So Maggie leads them across town to meet up with her old friend, Muff, played by Marlene Clark of Darktown Strutters. Muff is a militant radical, as you can tell by the posters of Angela Davis and Chairman Mao -- the the AK-47s wielded by her ladies' liberation army.

Yes, the women are not letting color or geography blind them to their common goal and their real enemy. The American people of 2014 have much to learn from Switchblade Sisters.

So, will the girls defeat Crabs? Will Lace and Maggie learn to share leadership? And who set everyone up at the roller rink... It all comes together in pair of climactic battles that owe something to Animal House and High Plains Drifter, Shakespeare and Spartacus.

This is a British VHS cover. As you can see, none of the art has a damned thing to do with the movie.

Switchblade Sisters was a bit of a flop in its time -- the change of name, some confusing marketing made what should have been a straightforward sell curiously confusing. However, the movie's status quietly built over the years and being championed by Quentin Tarantino has set Switchblade Sisters firmly in the grindhouse pantheon.

"Let me give you some advice, cop. You can beat us, chain us, lock us up,
but we're gonna be back. Understand? And when we do, cop,
you better keep your ass off our turf or we'll blow it off!.
Jezebels, cop. Remember that name!"