The Wild World of Batwoman

What do you get when you combine go-go-girls, seances, "happy" pills, hearing aids, bare midriffs, lecherous middle-aged men, "Oriental languages," chocolate milk, the Watusi, mad scientists, pool parties and government surveillance?

The Wild World of Batwoman, that's what!

Another flick that operates on an Ed Wood-level of competence, The Wild World of Batwoman is an odd hodgepodge of leftover plot points and cheap sets. It makes the 60s Batman television series look like Game of Thrones..

There's an odd opener of two blondes (one of whom looks a lot like Amy Schumer) and a brunette in baby doll nighties blathering about strawberry yogurt and vampires--apparently this bit was tacked on when the producers were sued for copyright infringement (Who knows why they wouldn't want their intellectual property associated with such a fine work of art as this?) and the movie had to be retitled She Was a Hippy Vampire, although this is all we will hear of vampires. Picking up scraps is part of the the aesthetic of The Wild World of Batwoman--the monster shots are cut in from another movie, there's also street footage of what might be Sweden.

Batwoman is played by une femme d'un certain age with a cockade of Siouxsie Sioux hair, a bustier and a Batman symbol drawn on her cleavage--with eyebrow pencil, I'm guessing. The Batgirls seem to be a random assortment of go-go dancers and cocktail waitresses who recite a lot of Girl Scout-like oaths and "fight evil with all sincerity." We see a guy get mugged, a Batgirl get roofied and kidnapped--the Batgirls' crime-fighting skills seem to be limited to the Frug, the Pony and calling for help. Compared to them, Yvonne Craig's Batgirl is Imperator Furiosa.

So, one of the Batgirls is kidnapped by a couple of motley henchmen and an inept mad scientist with the standard creepy deformed assistant. It turns out they are in the service of Batwoman's arch-enemy, Rat Fink--no idea if he's related to Ed "Big Daddy" Roth's Rat Fink or the Rat Pfink of Rat Pfink a Boo-Boo. Apparently he is trying to get hold of some magical hearing aid that can eavesdrop on anyone, anywhere. And it's also an atomic bomb. Or something.

You know the Ajax company that occasionally pops up in the Disney universe, employers of incompetent ghost exterminators and spluttering ducks? They are too high-end for The Wild World of Batwoman, hence they use the knockoff, factory seconds version...

So, there's much rushing back and forth and escaping and getting kidnapped. The mad scientist keeps dispensing happy pills to everyone, because somehow there's not enough footage of Batgirls (and the occasional hunchbacked assistant) endlessly go-go dancing in midriff tops. That's what the happy pills make you do: Gyrate like it's inpatient talent night on American Bandstand.

Then our plot takes another bizarre turn as suddenly Batwoman needs to contact the spirit world (by holding hands around a table, these folks being too cheap to spring for a Ouija board) to tell her where the bad guys' lair is. Which is odd, because Batwoman has already been to said lair, but "it was dark" and she just can't find it now. Huh? Is it in one of those subdivisions where all the streets are named for types of cacti and all of the houses look alike? Which is actually entirely possible--like the "torture chamber" of Olga's Girls was obviously someone's basement full of random stuff, the "lab" in The Wild World of Batwoman is clearly a garage down to the shelves of cardboard boxes and side door entrance.

The Wild World of Batwoman is dopey and illogical but amusing nonetheless. It's girl power at its goofiest--actually, Amy Schumer's next movie should be a low-budget piece of superchick schlock with Neil Sedaka's "Bad Blood" as a theme song. All the girls will be non-supermodels--Melissa McCarthy, Margaret Cho, Kristen Schaal, Niecy Nash, Jinkx Monsoon, Fran Liebowitz, holographic LaWanda Page. They can let Jennifer Lawrence be their Lena Dunham, maybe bring John Waters out of retirement...

The Donny & Marie Star Wars.... Special?

The Star Wars Holiday Special is considered by many to be the Holy Grail of crappy Star Wars kitsch and, oh, it is not. That honor belongs to the Star Wars episode of Donny & Marie. It makes the Holiday Special look like it was scripted by Billy Wilder and directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

Unsurprisingly, we open with Marie in Leia drag and Donny Skywalker (in white, stack-heel go-go boots) boogieing through their first excruciating musical number in front of a bunch of glitter-covered risers. R2-D2 and C3-PO wander in, along with Chewbacca and Darth Vader because the producers apparently had a platinum account at Western Costume.

But then things start to get (really) weird: Redd Foxx meanders past a primitive green screen as “Obi Ben Okefenokee,” while Paul Lynde briefly turns up to whine and wave his hands in the air as the Grand Moff Tarkin. But the oddest guest star is a visibly, erm, out of it Kris Kristofferson, wearing aviator shades and leaning against a cardboard rocket ship like it’s the only thing that’s holding him up. He lurches through a half-assed disco cover of “I Want to Take You Higher” (Sure you do, Kris, sure you do.), then a half-dozen Stormtroopers show up, accompanied by a slew of chorus girls in white unitards and motorcycle helmets for an awkward dance routine to Up With People-like renditions of “Get Ready” and “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” The whole experience takes about thirteen minutes: Ten to watch and three to try to figure out what the hell you just saw.

Made in Paris

Really, we're just here for the outfits.

Costumes by Helen Rose, hair by Sidney Guilaroff

Made in Paris was released in 1966. But, frankly, aside from the fabulous hair and lovely costumes, it could have been made 10 or 20 years earlier. Especially when compared to other 1966 films like Blow-Up and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Made in Paris is a straight-up throwback to the days of Doris Day, for whom this film was originally slated. And male chauvinism. Good lord, i tend not to give much of a crap about these things, but Ann-Margret is so relentlessly patronized by everyone she comes into contact with, you kind of want to smack all of them. Her included, because she usually tolerates it and sometimes invites it..

This begins even before the credits, where Ann-Margret is on a fancy dinner date--caviar, Crepes Suzette--with a rich Ken Doll, who is apparently the son of the owner of the department store where she is an assistant buyer. He takes her home, he insists on coming in, he thinks he's entitled to some (caviar and Crepes Suzette, after all), she smacks him. The next day at work, he tries to get her in trouble with a client (She adroitly gets out of it.), is found groping one of the models (She rolls her eyes.) and generally acts like an ass.

 "Her only qualification is a good figure."

"Oh, suddenly the little girl's not so sure of herself."

But suddenly Ann-Margret discovers that the head buyer is getting married and now she's going on this season's Paris buying trip. The head buyer--a delightful broad played by Edie Adams--tries to hint that she has a rather, ah, personal relationship with one of the designers there, but then Ken Doll brings Ann-Margret a sandwich and la la la can't hear you. Because now she loves him. And he loves her. Or something.

But off to Paris and the wedding cake-like suite all buyers are apparently ensconced in. No one--not the getting-married buyer, not the (alleged) comedy-relief housekeeping staff--tells Ann-Margret about her predecessor's relationship. Because apparently her sensibilities are too delicate and the screenwriters couldn't bring themselves to have anyone speak the words "sex" or "mistress" or even "nookie." But, what do you expect? The prop department was also apparently unaware that Absinthe is green.

So Ann-Margret changes from her smashing traveling outfit to an adorable nightie. After she falls asleep, the designer, played by Louis Jordan, turns up, puts on his silk pajamas and is about to get into bed with what he thinks is Edie Adams when.... it's Ann-Margret and she is pissed. And now he is pissed. Made in Paris wants to be a bawdy bedroom farce, but nothing happens in any of the bedrooms except people getting cranky and storming out.

 Anyway, Ann-Margret and Louis Jordan make it up over one of the many fashion shows--Made in Paris is like The Women or How to Marry a Millionaire for fashion shows, complete with Euro-accented woman reading out ridiculous names and detailed descriptions--where they bond over their shared love of glamorous clothes. Jourdan drinks Champagne and makes proclamations like "I believe the woman enters the room first, then the gown." As  Mr. Diva says, "Just about the only actor in the whole mess who isn't miscast is Louis Jourdan. And that includes the City of Paris."

Remember how Ken Doll only fell for Ann-Margret after she turned him down? And she only fell for him once he was not just an arrogant, spoiled prick but an arrogant, spoiled prick who would bring her a sandwich? Well, now Ann-Margret wants Louis Jordan because he gave her the brush off and she listened to him make a date with another woman. So she recruits a pal of Ken Doll's to escort her to all the same places so she can stalk him. (This is pretty much the only part of the film i can relate to.)

I do enjoy that Ann-Margret keeps stuffing herself with fine Continental dining while some schmuck with Brylcreem in his hair tries to put the moves on her, only to be given the old... eh. Occasionally she shows some sass and some spine and tells someone to buzz off, but it's usually not so much because they've patronized or belittled her, but because they have outraged her sense of propriety and chastity. (If you want to see a chick in fabulous outfits having a wild time in Paris and regretting nothing, there's always The Scarlet Lady.)

So first Ann-Margret hated Louis Jordan, now she's hooked up with Louis Jordan. Then Ken Doll shows up. Ken Doll brags about the "thirteen hundred and twenty eight women" he's been with, but the idea of Ann-Margret having one mildly risque night with a Frenchman in Paris makes his fucking head explode.

Along with trying and failing to be a sexy, witty, chic comedy (Okay: Chic, yes. Partial credit on the chic.), Made in Paris also sorta wants to be a musical, because it has the singing, dancing Ann-Margret. But no one else in the film sings or dances, so we have the odd situation of her every now and then bursting into song by the side of the Seine or hitting the floor in a nightclub with a flash mob of backup dancers.

Jourdan does justly call her out as wanting the romance and the drama, but not the messy reality (you know, the part with diaphragms and wet spots). In one breath she lays into Ken Doll for his possessiveness, but in the next it's "I believe in marriage." Ken Doll offers her the suburbs and housewifery and a wedding ring. Louis Jordan offers her Paris and Provence and her career and... well, we'll see about the ring.

"I wanted to get married and move to the suburbs and have children. 

Maybe even a station wagon."

Of course, she goes the way of every filmic career girl--which is to give up her career, surrender everything she is passionate about and has worked for, all the things she has achieved... to be someone's wife. We're supposed to pretend that we don't all know that, in three or four years, Ken Doll will be moving on to women thirteen hundred and twenty nine, thirteen hundred and thirty and the rest. And Ann-Margret will be stranded out in Greenwich or Westchester with three kids, subscriptions to Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, a bottle of tranks and a growing sense of resentment. She's no Peggy Olson: She's not even a first-season Joan Holloway.

Made in Paris isn't much of a film on its own--the unfunny comedy of morals and misunderstandings doesn't do much for me, the characters are dippy or douchey or both. But, again, those costumes. And, while it's a dullish movie with great costumes, it's not as much of an exquisitely clad snoozefest as Grace of Monaco. Just remember: We're only here for the fashion show.

The Return of Dr. X.

Every actor has something on the resume they're not exactly proud of. Elizabeth Taylor has Butterfield 8, Bette Davis has Beyond the Forest, Christopher Lee and Nicholas Cage have a few of their own. Hey, we've all taken a bad gig while struggling, or did it for the paycheck because we wanted a vacation or a dinosaur skull or a backyard water park. But there are some actors we consider beyond such things....

... like you'd never think Humphrey Bogart played a zombie or a mad scientist or a zombie mad scientist. But, well, you've never seen The Return of Dr. X. No relation to Dr. X.--it's not a sequel--or to The Revenge of Dr. X., which was written by Ed Wood and is only marginally worse.

So the upshot is that this really annoying intrepid reporter type--played by Wayne Morris as an annoying goofball dork with highwater pants and his fedora flipped up like a hayseed--is trying to interview a famous actress. You can tell she's a famous actress because she lives  in a luxury hotel, wears satin negligees and has a pet monkey and a indiscriminately foreign accent. She is played by Lya Lys, better known from her role in Bunuel's L'Age d'Or. Hey, surrealist manifestos don't pay the bills, aight?

However, when Intrepid Reporter gets to her suite, Famous Actress is dead. Stabbed. Intrepid Reporter prints the story that Famous Actress is dead. Doesn't tell the hotel manager, doesn't call the cops, just leaves the body and informs the authorities with a front-page headline. Of course, Famous Actress turns up, quite pale but very much alive and threatening to sue. But then another body drained of a rare blood type--the same as Famous Actress--turns up and Intrepid Reporter busts into the hospital where he makes friends with Random Doctor.

And just when Random Doctor sends off Intrepid Reporter with the orders to "come back when you sober up" (But he's not drunk; he's just stupid.), Random Doctor is promptly summoned to another hotel room with a dead body, this time "a professional donor," also of the same rare blood type. 

Another blood spot is found at the crime scene, but "It's not... human." Which leads Intrepid Reporter to figure it must be a -- "Gorilla murder... Aw, Mike, if you can figure that one out we'll have a front-page spread on every newspaper in the country for weeks!" (Gorilla murder, Donald Trump candidacy--tomato, tomahto, same difference.) But it's not gorilla, or even animal, so Random Doctor goes to visit a hematologist colleague of his, Dr. Flake. It is here he meets Humphrey Bogart as Kang, apparently Dr, Flake's Renfield figure.

Dr. Flake gives Random Doctor the brush-off and he leaves. Shortly thereafter, Famous Actress arrives, makeup gun apparently set on Three-Day Drunk Elvira, begs Dr. Flake and Kang for help and passes out. All of this is witnessed through a window by Intrepid Reporter.

Rosemary Lane pops up as Joan, Intrepid Reporter's girlfriend who is only present because apparently she's some kind of Uber. Also to prevent us from assuming the obvious about Intrepid Reporter and Random Doctor. (She doesn't and, yes, we've already assumed it about Flake and Kang as well.)

I didn't know Dave Vanian's dad was a butler but, really, it makes perfect sense.

Neither of these men are at all creepy. Which is why Famous Actress still has them for her doctors. And probably why Famous Actress winds up dead. Again. For real this time.

So, yadda yadda yadda, it turns out that Flake is doing experiments raising rabbits and humans from the dead. Among his experiments: Kang, who is actually the feared Dr. X. who was "that skunk who wanted to see how long babies could go without eatin'" and subsequently got the chair. There's some poking around in funeral homes and graveyards and they finally go back to see Dr. Flake who is all like "Hell, yeah, I brought an electrocuted baby murderer back from the dead and am now draining human blood to keep him alive. What?" Of course then Kang reappears and demands the vampire rolodex of people with the magic blood type he needs.  Of course one of them is Joan the Uber-Beard. And off we go...

Bear in mind that this film was released in 1939, long cited as the greatest year in cinema history. The year of Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Ninotchka, The Women, Destry Rides Again, Laughton's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dark Victory ... and The Return of Dr. X. Ultimately, The Return of Dr. X. is an unremarkable C-grade horror movie that's not particularly horrifying at all. It's sole distinction is the slumming appearance as a zombie mad scientist sorta vampire from one of the most respected and iconic stars of all time.

 

* Also, i found out in the credits that it's apparently Dr. Flegg and his assistant Quesne. Whatever.
I'm sticking with Flake and Kang.

Fake-Out

Here is a brief writeup I did for Vegas Seven on the 80's Vegas flick, Fake-Out aka Nevada Heat. All the Pia Zadora, Telly Savalas and Riviera Casino you can stand!

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.