GORE AND VIOLENCE IN THE OFF-SEASON by Lou Lumenick

GORE AND VIOLENCE IN THE OFF-SEASON

The Record (New Jersey) - January 28, 1985

Author: By Lou Lumenick, Movie Critic: The Record

April may be the cruellest month, but January is when exploitation pictures fill the nation's theaters. Low-budget independent quickies have long filled the vacuum between quick-expiring Christmas flops and the next wave of major studio offerings in February.

So many 1984 holiday movies have folded so rapidly ("Dune," "Protocol," etc.) that this month has brought a bumper crop of B movies. These films invariably combine a maximum of nudity, violence, and gore with a minimum of writing, directing, and acting talent. If they're rated at all, they get an R, and their running times are usually under 90 minutes. Most are not even reviewed by critics.

" The Mutilator ," "Emmanuelle 4," and "Surf II: The Nerds Strike Back" (there was no "Surf I," in case you were wondering) already have come and gone in North Jersey theaters during the last three weeks. "Avenging Angel" and "Walking the Edge" are still playing (but probably not for long). This last weekend they were joined by " The Perils of Gwendoline" and "Superstition."



" The Perils of Gwendoline" is unusually ambitious for its ilk, an English-language French production with a reported budget of $4.5 million. (Most exploitationers cost less than $1 million). It's based on a comic strip by John Willie, helpfully identified in the film's press notes as "one of the most recognized, durable, and unique practitioners of the art of bondage illustration. "

Sounds pretty racy, and the TV commercials for "Gwendoline" promise some fairly kinky adventures along the lines of ( the preliberation Jane Fonda's) "Barbarella. " So you can imagine the disappointment at the Hyway Theater in Fair Lawn Friday night when an audience of 32 souls ranging in age from about 10 to 60 discovered a tame, slow-moving knockoff of "Raiders of the Lost Ark. "

Disappointed crowd

Gwendoline (played by Tawny Kitane, the improbably-named heroine of "Bachelor Party") is a wide-eyed American novitiate manquee who's searching for her missing father, a butterfly collector, in 1930's Macao. Accompanied by her friend Beth (Zabou, who speaks dubbed English) and a reluctant mercenary named Willard (Brent Huff, "raised in a backwoods community in the Ozarks," say the press notes), Gwendoline sets out for the land of the Yik Yak (don't ask), where her father was last seen. They meet up with alligators, cannibals in blackface, pirates, and a campy mad queen (Bernadette Lafont) attended by 60 scantily clad gladiator girls.

Although writer-director Just Jaeckin ("Emmanuelle," " The Story of O") contrives to present Gwendoline, Willard, and Beth in various stages of dishabille ("Take your clothes off quick! " is a typical line of dialogue) and some nifty leather gear, there really isn't anything going on to qualify "Gwendoline" as even a soft-core romp. Only the scene where some gladiator girls pulled a chariot got much of a rise out of the Fair Lawn crowd.



Not so "Superstition," a schlocky slasher film that inspired a great deal of audience participation during its near-sellout showing at the Route 17 Triplex a bit later Friday evening. Mostly high-schoolers on a date, they cheered when one guy's head exploded in a microwave oven; applauded when an elderly minister (Stacy Keach Sr.) bought it at the business end of a runaway electric saw; and roared at the awful dialogue ("I thought you loved me," says a libidinous young man when his date balks at some back seat action).

Not that the audience was unaware of James Roberson's absent-minded direction or the film's less-than-taut editing. When, at the end of an endless series of suspenseless tracking shots down the corridors of a deserted house, a character says, "let's get out of here," the audience shouted its agreement.

Hilariously awful

"Superstition" is essentially a slasher film incorporating elements of "Poltergeist," represented by an orgy of modestly spooky special effects in the final reel. There is also a hilariously awful flashback sequence of a witch being executed in 1692. The witch apparently is played by Lynn Carlin ("Taking Off"), who also turns up as a madwoman who advises a detective (Albert Salmi) and a young minister (James Houghton) investigating the bizarre murders that their problem is "you have 20th-Century minds. "



They were lining up, too, for a Saturday matinee of "Superstition" in the downstairs auditorium of the National Twin in Times Square. Upstairs, only half a dozen brave souls (in a 1,000-seat theater) turned up to catch "Walking the Edge," a woozy revenge melodrama featuring Nancy Kwan, who was a big star in in " The World of Suzy Wong" and "Flower Drum Song" a quarter of a century ago.

Kwan still looks smashing at 46, but she and Robert Forster ("Stunts," "Alligator"), a B-movie veteran of above-average talent, fight a losing battle against Norbert Meisel's lame direction and Curt Allen's inane script. The latter concerns a cabdriver (Forster), a former Triple A baseball pitcher ("a right-handed Sandy Koufax") who's now a runner for a bookie. He inadvertently becomes involved with Kwan, whose husband a drug dealer and young son have been brutally executed by mobsters in the film's opening scene.

She wants to get even, of course, and in the course of 93 minutes Kwan and Forster brutally eliminate half a dozen villains of various ethnic persuasions without so much as a visit from the Los Angeles Police Department. Between killings, they fall in love.

"What do we do now? " Kwan asks as they literally ride off into the sunset in Forster's cab.

"Got me," he replies as the movie ends.



Revenge is obviously the theme of "Avenging Angel," which managed

to fill only about a dozen of the 1,127 seats at the RKO Warner later Saturday afternoon. It's a sequel to "An 772077gel," last January's biggest exploitation hit.

The earlier movie concerned a Los Angeles high school honors student by day who was a hooker on Hollywood Boulevard by night. "Avenging Angel" takes place four years later, and our heroine (now played by Betsy Russell, star of "Private School" and the well-stacked granddaughter of political columnist Max Lerner) is studying law. When the police officer who got her off the streets is murdered, she returns to her old precincts to settle the score.

While there are a couple of rousing shoot-outs, the new "Angel" (Robert Vincent O'Neil returns as director) suffers from an overabundance of comic relief. Returning from the first film are Rory Calhoun as a demented drugstore cowboy, and Susan Tyrell as Angel's old cigar-smoking lesbian landlady. Joining them are a gaggle of eccentric street performers, a pair of transvestites, and a baby whose kidnapping becomes a key point of the plot.

"Avenging Angel" did garoer a few laughs from the sparse audience, although it was sad to see poor Ossie Davis as a police captain who gets a lecture on criminal rights from law-student Angel.

Such is justice on the exploitation movie circuit.