The TSL’s Grindhouse: Space Mutiny (dir by David Winters)

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Arggggh!”

— Dave Ryder (Reb Brown) in Space Mutinty (1988)

Space Mutiny, a sci-fi epic from 1988, is full of dialogue about all sorts of political and philosophical concerns but none of it is quite as memorable as the quote above. Dave Ryder says, “Argggggh!” a lot over the course of Space Mutiny. He’s the newly appointed head of security for the Southern Sun, a gigantic spaceship that has spent the last 260 years traveling from Earth to a new planet. Being head of security is important because there are some people on the Southern Sun who are plotting a mutiny. Dave Ryder decides that the most effective way to battle the mutineers is to yell loudly and frequetly. “ARGGGGGH!’ Ryder yells whenever he’s being shot at. “ARGGGGGGGH!” he screams when he finds himself on a very slow and gradual collision course with the head of the mutineers.

When Dave isn’t saying stuff like, “Argggggh!,” he’s saying stuff like, “Go! Go! Go!” When the bad guys open fire on him and his men, it’s time for them to “Go! Go! Go!” When the mutineers are being chased, Dave is quick to tell everyone to “Go! Go! Go!” He’s like the physical fitness trainer from Hell. He never actually yells “Feel the burn!” but you can be damn well sure that he’s thinking it. In fact, there’s a point in the movie where “Feel the burn!” actually would have been a good line. Dave and his girlfriend, Lea (Cissie Cameron), set a mutineer on fire. It’s actually a bit of a sadistic scene and it doesn’t come across as being the big hero moment that it’s obviously meant to be. But, then again, Dave isn’t yelling because he’s a nice guy. He’s yelling because he’s played by Reb Brown. Reb Brown yelled all the way through Strike Force Commando. Why wouldn’t he do the same for Space Mutiny?

Of course, Dave isn’t the only person barking out orders on the Southern Sun. Cameron Mitchell plays the ship’s captain, a wise old man who looks like Santa Claus. John Phillip Law is Kalgon, the main mutineer. He laughs a lot. Cissie Cameron is the captain’s daughter. She falls for Ryder, despite the fact that she appears to be old enough to be Ryder’s mother. (In real life, Reb Brown and Cissie Cameron are married and Cissie is only a few years older than Reb. In Space Mutiny, she’s stuck with an unflattering hair style and is made up to look like an aging cheerleading coach.) There’s also a woman who works on the ship’s bridge. She’s killed in one scene, just to mysteriously turn up alive in the scene that follows. In space, no one can hear the script supervisor. Finally, there’s a group of alien witches who board the ship and spend the entire movie dancing in front of a ball of electricity. Since they don’t actually interact with any of the main characters, it’s obvious that they were added to pad out the film’s running time.

One of the more interesting things about Space Mutnity is that Kalgon actually has a point. It does seem kind of stupid to spend several hundred years traveling to just one planet when there’s other planets nearby that the ship could just as easily reach. Indeed, the mission of the Southern Sun never makes that much sense and the Captain seems to be delusional in his insistence that it does. The Captain’s unending faith and his long-flowing beard makes him come across like a minor biblical prophet, the type who always had to ask a major prophet to interpret his visions for hm. The Captain does not come across like someone who really knows what he’s doing. I don’t care how much Ryder screams, Kalgon had a point!

Today, Space Mutiny is best known for being featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and for later being taken apart by the Rifftrax crew. Space Mutiny, though, is such an extremely silly movie that you really don’t even need any professionals to help you snark your way through it. The film offers up such a treasure trove of material then even the most humorless among your friends will be a comedic genius by the time it ends. It’s a fun movie, made even more so by the fact that the filmmakers apparently meant for the film to be taken seriously. There’s a lot of talk about important issues like freedom, duty, and faith. In the end, what you’ll remember is the screaming.

Shattered Politics #40: The Happy Hooker Goes To Washington (dir by William A. Levey)

Posted on January 27, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“God bless you, Ms. Hollander! You have saved us from recession!”

— Dialogue from The Happy Hooker Goes To Washington (1977)

Le sigh.

The things that I do for this site!

If I wasn’t currently in the process of watching and reviewing 94 films about politicians and politics, I can guarantee that I would never have watched The Happy Hooker Goes To Washington. However, while I was looking for films to review for this series, I went over to Netflix and did a search on “Washington.”

Guess which film came up first?

If you guessed The Happy Hooker Goes To Washington, you would be correct! And you know what? I watched this movie with an open mind. As anyone who has read this site knows, I have never been shy about my love of old exploitation films. The fact of the matter is that some of the most imaginative films ever made were low-budget grindhouse movies. Nothing angers me more than elitist film bloggers who dismiss a film just because it originally played in grindhouse cinema.

But, honestly, The Happy Hooker Goes To Washington is just bad. It’s boring. The acting is terrible. The jokes fall flat. The attempts at political satire are about as clever as what you’d find on any site trying to read like the Onion without actually being the Onion.

In the Happy Hooker Goes To Washington, Joey Heatherton plays Xaviera Hollander, a former madam who is now a businesswoman, magazine publisher, and sex advise columnist. She is apparently the world’s leading authority on sex. We know this because, when she first appears, she’s surrounded by reporters. “When sex is news, you’re news!” one of them tells her.

Xaviera has been called to testify in front of the Senate Committee To Investigate Sexual Excess In America. And goddamn, this movie is stupid. But anyway, Xaviera goes to Washington to stand up for sexual freedom. Accompanying her is an attorney named Ward Thompson (George Hamilton) and, quicker than you can say “Fifth place on Dancing With The Stars,” Ward is explaining to Xaviera why her testimony is so important.

“We’re heading right into the teeth of a new puritanism,” he tells her. “Under the new puritanism, there won’t be any happy hookers!”

Anyway, Xaviera testifies in front of the committee and we get a few flashbacks to some of Xaviera’s past accomplishments. And then she gets recruited by a dwarf (Billy Barty) and is sent to seduce an Middle Eastern ruler and … well, it just keep going and going. This is one of the longest 84-minute films ever released.

Anyway, this movie sucks. (And so does Xaviera! That’s the level of humor that you can expect when you watch The Happy Hooker Goes To Washington.) It’s still lurking around Netflix. Avoid it at all costs.

Shattered Politics #29: Billy Jack (dir by Tom Laughlin)

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Go ahead and hate your neighbor; go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of heaven; you can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowin’ come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after, one tin soldier rides away”

— From One Tin Soldier, the theme song of Billy Jack (1971)

Yesterday, we took a look at The Born Losers, the first film to ever feature the character of future U.S. Senator Billy Jack. The Born Losers ended with former Green Beret-turned-gun-toting-pacifist Billy Jack (played, of course, by Tom Laughlin) saving the girl, killing the bad guy, and getting shot in the back by the police. As Born Losers ended, we were left to wonder whether Billy would survive his wounds or would he just be another victim of the establishment.

Well, audiences had to wait five years to find out.

When Laughlin returned to the role in 1971’s Billy Jack, it was revealed that not only had Billy Jack lived but he was now residing in a cave with his wise Native American grandfather. Billy still had little use for civilization but he would occasionally emerge from his cave. Sometimes, it was to protect wild mustangs from being hunted the evil Old Man Posner (Bert Freed) and his sociopathic son Bernard (David Roya). Other times, it was to protect the Freedom School and, even more importantly, the Freedom School’s founder, Jean (played by Laughlin’s wife, Delores Taylor).

The local townspeople viewed the Freedom School with suspicion and whenever the students went into town, they would be harassed by Bernard and his friends. Fortunately, the students could always count on Billy to show up, say a few angry words, and then lose control. Billy may have been a liberal but he was no pacifist. Jean, however, fully embraced nonviolence and she always made it clear that she wasn’t comfortable with Billy providing her kids with a violent example.

Finally, both Jean and Billy’s convictions were put to the test. First off, the bigoted townspeople tried to close the school. Then, Jean was raped by Bernard. And finally, Billy found himself barricaded in an old mission, surrounded by police and national guardsmen. Even as Jean pleaded with Billy to lay down his weapons and to peacefully surrender, Billy made it clear that he was willing to die for his beliefs.

And, as the film ended, you would never guess that Billy Jack would eventually become a member of the U.S. Senate. But, in just a few years, that’s exactly what would happen in Billy Jack Goes To Washington!

Now, of course, Billy Jack is ultimately a product of its time and that’s both a blessing and a curse. To be honest, if anything could transform me from being the socially liberal, economically conservative girl that you all know and love into a card-carrying right-wing extremist, it would be having to spend any time with the students at the Freedom School. They are all so smugly convinced of their own moral superiority that the townspeople almost start to look good by default. Whether they’re attending improv class or disrupting a meeting at town hall, the majority of the students come across like a bunch of rich kids from the suburbs, playing hippy and slumming by hanging out with poor minorities. As you watch them, it’s difficult not to suspect that most of them are going to get bored with rebelling after a year or two and eventually end up growing up to be just like their parents.

Fortunately, the film is saved by the pure sincerity of Laughlin and Taylor. For all the attention that the film gets for the scenes of Billy Jack beating people up, the most compelling scenes are the ones where Jean and Billy Jack debate nonviolence. There’s an honesty and a passion to these scenes, one that proves that Laughlin and Taylor, as opposed to so many other self-styled counterculture filmmakers, were actually serious about their beliefs. Billy Jack is an essential film, not only as a time capsule of the era in which it was made but also as one of the few films to actually make a legitimate attempt to explore what it truly means to embrace nonviolence.

Billy Jack is also a historically important film. When American Independent Pictures withdrew from the production, Laughlin took Billy Jack to 20th Century Fox. When 20th Century Fox looked at the completed film and did not know how to market it, Laughlin distributed the film himself, without the support of a major studio. And, despite what all of the naysayers may have predicted, Billy Jack was a huge hit.

And every indie filmmaker since owes a huge debt of gratitude to Tom Laughlin.