Killer Force (1976)

          A heist thriller that sacrifices believability and logic in the name of plot twists, Killer Force—also known as The Diamond Mercenaries—features an offbeat cast and a moderately exciting climax filled with bloodshed and chases and gunfights. Getting to the finale requires a bit of patience, since the picture’s first two acts are a bit on the sluggish side, and none should seek out Killer Force hoping for anything along the lines of resonance or substance. This is manly-man escapism of the most vapid sort imaginable, although the macho posturing is leavened by leading man Peter Fonda’s sensitive-dude mannerisms. Plus, it’s hard to take the movie too seriously, not only because of the far-fetched storyline, but also because of two peculiar visual tropes: Costar Telly Savalas wears sunglasses throughout the entire movie, removing them only in the final shot, and Fonda sports a goofy perm that looks like a half-hearted attempt at a white-guy Afro. The innate silliness of Killer Force is part of the movie’s appeal, but that’s to be expected of any movie featuring O.J. Simpson in a supporting role.

          Set in the South African desert, the picture revolves around a heavily fortified diamond mine. Harry Webb (Savalas), a cold-blooded security specialist, arrives at the sprawling facility because clues indicate that someone is planning an inside-job robbery. Mike Bradley (Fonda) is a member of the private army that patrols the facility and the surrounding area. Criminal mastermind John Lewis (Hugh O’Brien) has assembled a small team to invade the mine and steal diamonds. His accomplices include easygoing “Bopper” Alexander (Simpson) and sadistic ex-solider Major Chilton (Christopher Lee). Another player in the convoluted plot is Chambers (Stuart Brown), the facility’s administrator. Distrusting Webb, Chambers asks Bradley to play double agent by seeking out and joining the conspirators, thus drawing them into a trap. Complicating matters is Mike’s romantic involvement with Chambers’ fashion-model daughter, Clare (Maud Adams). And so it goes from there. Intrigue compounds intrigue, with the body count growing as the date of the inevitable heist attempt draws ever closer.

          About half of what happens in Killer Force makes logical sense, although everything goes down smoothly in a dunderheaded, Saturday-matinee sort of way. There’s a little romance, a little sex, a little male bonding, and lots of dudes grimacing with fierce determination. Director Val Guest—a somewhat unlikely candidate for this gig, seeing as how he’s best known for his sci-fi pictures—shoots Killer Force with the bland, boxy style of episodic television, so Killer Force doesn’t get any points for style. Still, the cast is hard to beat as a random assortment of familiar faces, and there’s just enough action to keep the picture’s blood pumping.

Killer Force: FUNKY

Au Pair Girls (1972)

First, a word about the above poster—although this UK sexploitation film did indeed hit American screens bearing its original title, Au Pair Girls, the schlock merchants at Cannon Film Distributors apparently assumed that the titular phrase referring to young women who trade domestic services for lodging with a host family in a new country was too opaque for the intended audience. Thus, Cannon marketed the picture as The Young Playmates, even though people buying tickets for The Young Playmates actually saw Au Pair Girls, title intact. Anyway, the picture was helmed by UK director Val Guest, and his signature handsome production values are put in the service of a silly storyline peppered with leering shots of women and wan attempts at comedy. At the beginning of the flick, four ladies from around the globe report to the offices of a staffing agency. Next, each is sent to an assignment somewhere in the UK. Thereafter, the movie toggles between the resulting subplots, each of which is a variation on the sex-comedy theme. The two sleaziest threads of the movie involve Anita (Astrid Frank), an uninhibited Nordic type who eventually ends up in the bed of a super-rich sheik, and Randi (Gabrielle Drake), who spends most of the movie riding naked in the passenger seat of a horny bloke’s car. Concurrently, Nan Lee (played by the dubiously named actress “Me Me Lay”) is hired to look after a rich twentysomething so sheltered he’s never even kissed a woman, and Christa (played by the mind-meltingly sexy Nancie Wait) ends up running with fast company including an obnoxious pop star. Every scenario in Au Pair Girls is designed for optimal ogling, so there are lots of scenes with women in miniskirts climbing ladders and/or ladies changing their clothes in plain view of others. The dialogue is as juvenile as the rest of the film, so upon seeing gorgeous babes naked, male characters say things like, “Now that is a wunderbar plus!” and “Come on, you shattering creature!” If one felt the need to identify praiseworthy elements, it could be said that the culmination of Christa’s storyline comes dangerously close to respectable drama, the cinematography is glossy from start to finish, and the movie is never mean-spirited.

Au Pair Girls: LAME

Toomorrow (1970)

          There’s a reason wholesome Aussie thrush Olivia Newton-John seemed so comfortable on camera in her first major American movie, the blockbuster musical Grease (1978). Unbeknownst to stateside audiences, she’d been acting in English movies and TV shows for several years, following her debut performance in the obscure Australian picture Funny Things Happen Down Under (1965). The most noteworthy of Newton-John’s pre-Grease credits is Toomorrow, a bizarre hodgepodge of music and sci-fi that has a small but cultish fan base.

         Playing the movie’s female lead, Newton-John displays every aspect of her G-rated appeal, singing and go-go dancing through her performance as a girl-next-door coed who performs in a band called Toomorrow while wearing a succession of miniskirts and short-shorts. Blonde, ebullient, and smiling, she’s a vision of virginal sexiness, whether she’s delivering unfunny one-liners, playing vacuous music, or simply hanging out with the aliens who abduct Toomorrow. Yeah, aliens.

          Written and directed by Val Guest, a UK fantasy-cinema veteran whose credits include The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), Tomorrow begins in outer space. Against a backdrop of trippy incidental music, a glowing spacecraft hurtles toward Earth and fetches the human-looking John Williams (Roy Dotrice) from his English estate by way of a glowing transporter beam. Once aboard the starship, John strips off his human shell to reveal that he’s a blue-skinned, slit-eyed alien, and that he’s the “Earth observer” tasked with identifying interesting developments by the human race. According to him, there haven’t been any—but then he’s told by fellow aliens that a new rock group, Toomorrow, has invented musical vibrations deemed crucial to the survival of the alien race.

          John resumes his human guise and woos the band by pretending to be a musical impresario. The band members, who are students at the London College of Arts, also get embroiled in a murky subplot involving campus protests. Guest vamps through several dull scenes of Toomorrow making lighthearted mischief (a wan riff on the Beatles’ signature tomfoolery), before the plot gets going. In a typical scene, drummer Benny (Benny Thomas) asks a lunchroom full of students if they mind listening to a rehearsal by calling out, “Hey, any of you cats mind a groove?” Naturally, they don’t, so the tacky lip-synching commences, since every number Toomorrow performs is a perfect studio production.

          The best tunes have some kick, although the band’s musical bag is a totally squaresville vibe that recalls vanilla pop groups like the Association, and the music is ultimately the least interesting element of the movie. More arresting are the sci-fi bits, like the scene in which the band members get tossed around a spaceship in slow motion while regressing back and forth to their childhood selves. And then there’s the sex. Guest indulges his randy side with lots of peekaboo glimpses at buxom supporting players. For instance, outrageously curvy British starlet Margaret Nolan appears as Johnson, an alien masquerading as an earth girl in order to seduce band member Vic (Vic Cooper), the band’s resident tomcat.

          How all this is supposed to add up is a mystery. The musical numbers get overshadowed by narrative nonsense, the sci-fi content is too geeky for casual viewers, and the smut feels out of character with the rest of the movie. Therefore, the amazing thing about Toomorrow is that it exists—did the producers even read Guest’s script? It’s no wonder Newton-John distanced herself from this strange flick, and it’s no wonder Toomorrow has yet to receive proper worldwide distribution. According to Wikipedia, the movie played for just one week in London during 1970, and then sat on a shelf (excepting bootleg copies) until receiving a UK-only DVD release in 2011.

Toomorrow: FREAKY