A Movie A Day #267: Satan’s Princess (1990, directed by Bert I. Gordon)

Posted on October 2, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Lou Cherney (Robert Forster) was a top police detective until a perp with a shotgun shattered his leg. Now, Lou’s a private investigator with a limp, a girlfriend (Caren Kaye), and a learning disabled son named Joey (Philip Glasser). When Lou is hired to track down a missing girl, he discovers that she is now the lover of Nicole St. James (Lydie Denier), the head of a modeling agency. Nicole seduces Lou within minutes of meeting him but, when Lou attempts to return the missing girl to her family, Nicole reveals that she is actually an ancient demon and she possesses Joey. Soon, Joey is carrying an ice pick and throwing people out of windows.

An example of the type of movies that Robert Forster was stuck making before Quentin Tarantino engineered his comeback with Jackie Brown, Satan’s Princess is also noteworthy for having been directed by Bert I. Gordon. Gordon is best known for making cheesy giant monster movies, like The Amazing Colossal Man, Beginning of the End, and Empire the Ants. There are not any giant monsters in Satan’s Princess, which instead emphasizes lesbian sex scenes, possessed children, and Robert Forster using a blowtorch to take on a demon. Satan’s Princess also features the spectacle of a demon fleeing the scene of a crime by stealing a car. Why a demon who can possess people and do almost anything would need to steal car in order to make escape is a question that Satan’s Princess never answers.

Satan’s Princess is even dumber than it sounds but Robert Forster delivers. There is no real reason for Lou to be crippled so I like to think that, one day, Forster announced that if he was not allowed to carry a cane in all of his scenes, he wouldn’t do the movie. Watching Forster give a good performance in even a piece of dreck like Satan’s Princess makes me all the more grateful that Tarantino cast him in Jackie Brown and allowed Forster the chance to once again appear in movie worthy of his talents.

Bert I. Gordon’s career as a filmmaker began in 1954. Satan’s Princess was his 23rd movie and, for over 20 years, it was also his last. In 2014, Gordon finally returned to directing with Secrets of a Psychopath.

A Movie A Day #240: The Funny Farm (1983, directed by Ron Clark)

Posted on September 5, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Mark Champlin (Miles Chapin) is a fresh-faced, aspiring comedian from Cleveland who drives across the country, listening to tapes of Steve Martin. He arrives in Los Angeles, hoping to become a star. Despite being too naive and trusting, Mark starts to find success in the cut-throat entertainment industry. Soon, he is performing at the Funny Farm, a comedy club owned by Gail Corbin (Eileen Brennan, giving the exact same performance that Melissa Leo gave in Showtime’s I’m Dying Up Here). Mark befriends the other comedians, finds love, and hopes for his big break.

There have been several movies and television shows about the drama that goes on behind the scenes in the world of comedy. It’s rare that they ever turn out well. For every successful movie about the struggle to make a living by telling jokes, there are a hundred movies like Punchline or this one. Whereas Punchline tried to pass Sally Field off as an up-and-coming stand-up comic, The Funny Farm was full of actual comedians. Almost everyone in the film is playing a thinly disguised versions of themselves and snippets of their acts are used throughout the movie. (Probably the best known member of the cast is Howie Mandel.) Unfortunately, none of their acts seem to be very funny. Miles Chapin comes across like every forgettable comic who ever bombed on The Tonight Show.

Eileen Brennan does a good job as the club owner, even if she is underused. There is also a good scene where the younger comedians meet a legendary, older comic who turns out to be a racist asshole. During this scene, The Funny Farm actually has something to say about the way comedy progressed and changed over time. Otherwise, The Funny Farm is forgettable.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #49: Hustle (dir by Robert Aldrich)

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Continuing our journey into the dark Hell of the 1970s, we now take a quick look at the 1975 cop film, Hustle.

Taking place in Los Angeles, Hustle tells the story of several different people who find their lives intertwined in the desperate dance of existence. (Does that sound overdramatic? Well, that’s the type of film that this is.)

There’s Leo Sellers (Eddie Albert), a lawyer with bright rosy cheeks and a friendly manner. You look at Leo and you automatically assume that he must be a nice guy, the type of guy who puts on a fake beard and plays Santa Claus down at the local orphanage. But actually, Leo is a lawyer for the mob. He’s gotten rich through crime and his mansion hides all sorts of secrets. He also has a weakness for violently abusing prostitutes.

Speaking of prostitutes, one of Leo’s favorite is Nicole (Catherine Deneuve), an icy French beauty who survives by holding the world at a distance. Though Nicole doesn’t like Leo, she has to keep him happy because Leo could easily arrange for her to be deported back to France.

Nicole is also the girlfriend of Phil Gaines (Burt Reynolds), a cynical homicide detective who, like her, tries to keep the world at a distance. Phil is obsessed with old films and frequently speaks of how much he wishes the real world could be like a movie. Throughout the film, he talks about eventually moving to Rome.

Phil’s partner is Louis Belgrave (Paul Winfield), who is not quite as cynical as Phil but who is definitely getting there. Whereas Phil is always talking about how much the world has disappointed him, Louis mostly accepts things without complaint. He just wants to do his job and go home at the end of the day.

Phil and Louis’s boss is Santoro (Ernest Borgnine, giving a typical Ernest Borgnine performance). Santoro is not a bad guy but, in order to hold onto his job, he has to keep powerful men like Leo Sellers happy.

Santoro also has to deal with the complaints of people like the Hollingers. Marty Hollinger (Ben Johnson) is a veteran of the Korean War and handles the world in a gruff and suspicious manner. Paula (Eileen Brennan) is Marty’s wife and, as a result of his emotional distance, has recently started having an affair.

And then there’s Gloria (Colleen Brennan), Marty and Paula’s daughter. Gloria ran away from home a while ago and soon found herself working as a stripper, a porn actress, and eventually as a prostitute. When Gloria is found dead, Phil and Louis get the case. It’s obvious to them that Gloria committed suicide. It’s not so obvious to Marty, who is convinced that his daughter was murdered and, disgusted by Phil’s cynical attitude, sets out to investigate the case on his own.

One of the more interesting things about Hustle is that really is no murder mystery. Despite what Marty believes, Gloria really did commit suicide. Marty’s insistence that she was murdered has more to do with his guilt over being a bad father than it does with any real evidence. As Marty investigates his daughter’s life, he is exposed to a sordid world of strip clubs and prostitution. He discovers that Gloria’s clients included many powerful men and he decides that the last client she saw must have murdered Gloria.

That client is Leo Sellers. And while Leo may not have murdered Gloria, he is willing to kill Marty to keep his secret life from being exposed. Phil and Louis are forced to choose between remaining detached or protecting Marty from himself.

And, since this film was made in the 70s, it all ends on a really dark note!

Hustle shows up on Encore occasionally. It’s a strange film to watch, as it alternates between being a fairly predictable cop film and being a portrait of existential dread. The movie doesn’t really work; it’s too long, it features some amazingly pretentious dialogue, and Reynolds, Winfield, and Deneuve all seem to be bored with their characters. Probably the film’s best performance comes from Ben Johnson. I imagine that has to do with the fact that Johnson is playing the only character who behaves in a fairly consistent way.

And yet, if you’re like me and you’re fascinated with the nonstop fatalism of 70s cinema, Hustle does have some historical value. It’s one of those films that you watch and you wonder how anyone survived the 1970s!

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.