Reform School Girls

Reform School Girls

United States - 1986

Director - Tom DeSimone

New World Video, 1987, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 34 minutes

You'll have to get you ass over to Paracinema if you wanna read my review of this puzzlingly popular 80's cult-favorite. If you're too lazy to read, I'm not sure what you're doing here, but I'll give you some posters as a consolation prize.

These posters are on loan from the fantastic Wrong Side of the Art

Warrior Queen

Warrior Queen
United States - 1987
Director – Chuck Vincent
Vestron Video, 1989, VHS
Run Time – 1 hour 19 min.

Long before I fully understood the unstoppable social force of the behemoth Barbarian genre I fell victim to the allure of the Warrior Queen cover art. At the vulnerable age of 14 this was no surprise. The film however, was a shock to the system, something I was not prepared for. It was like being an ignorant heathen and stumbling into a full throttle religious ritual. It took some time for me to come to terms with the subsequent viewing experience, and a full six years before I was willing to experiment with barbarians again. To be perfectly honest, Warrior Queen is more of traditional sword and sandal picture than barbarian per-se since it is set in the Roman Empire, but the latter term is more appropriate to the abruptly crude content.

In retrospect there was no reason not to take this film at face value, but I can now understand why such a solidly built exploitation powerhouse as Sybil Danning is looking profoundly bored in her role here. What should be a mildly arousing display of young nubile nakedity for sale in a Pompeiiean slave market becomes somehow simultaneously uninterestingly natural and painfully scripted. Part of this is the disturbing lack of dialogue, but mostly it’s the mechanichal disinterest of the camera, as if somehow group coitus is an everyday experience and warrants no special presentation.

But that’s why I wanted to see this movie, because it is special, particularly at 14! It’s not everyday that we get to see Tally Chanell (Vincent’s Slammer Girls) stripped naked in a slave market and sold to a brothel with a giant cock-n-balls obelisk in the foyer. Nevertheless it’s all shot with the grainy clinical expose feel of a 70’s porno film or one of those German “What Your Daughters Are Really Doing” movies. It’s not a narrative but a series of vague threats.

It’s not nonsense either; Nonsense would infer the intention of sense that had failed, but this is a collection of asensical tableaus. Naked people being sold; sweaty guys arm wrestling; people fucking in a harem. No wonder I was traumatized. Judging by the way the women nibble at a their partners like week old corn on the cob, these people feel a bit violated and directionless too.

Suddenly, enter Donald Pleasence (Will Penny, THX1138) who navigates this emotional desert with magical grace. He has always been a strangely convincing loony character actor, but in Warrior Queen his neurotic gibbering is an astrolabe of precise genius that guides him through these shoals of garbage. I can see now that Pleasence is simply a man driven into the safety of his own head by the world’s inability to understand him. He was not a character but simply himself.

Sybil, Rick Hill of Deathstalker 1 and 4, and Tally Chanell commiserate outside Vesuvius' jurisdiction.

Warrior Queen is a Pentecostal tent revival in which the principal actors are dismissively set loose to improvise, move, act, maybe even speak in tongues, should the spirit somehow move them. Alas, only Pleasence, possessed by his own strange demons masters this movie. Practically oblivious to all the other uninspired parishioners, he flits about in his own world having a grand old time while reality literally crumbles around him in climactic Vesuvian footage (which Chuck Vincent stole from Italy’s 1959 Steve Reeves vehicle Last days of Pompeii.)

Deathstalkers

Deathstalker

Argentina/USA - 1983

Director - John Watson

Vestron Video, 1984, VHS

Run time - 1 hour, 20 min.

The first is always the best, if not the weirdest. The box features a great tagline and art that seems distinctly He-Man-ish to me. The film features Rick Hill as the titular character, as well as the late Lana Clarkson who went on to become the Barbarian Queen. Hill appeared again in the unbelievably terrible Warrior Queen with Sybil Danning and again in the fourth Deathstalker.

Deathstalker II

Argentina/USA - 1987

Director - Jim Wynorski

Vestron Video, 1987, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 25 min.

Probably the goofiest and perhaps dumbest of the series Deathstalker II stars Wynorski (whom I've talked about more elsewhere) regular John Terlesky (Naked Cage) as Stalker, and the series only appearance of zombies and goofy cartoon sound effects for almost everything. Monique Gabrielle is the love interest, she went on to do film a slew of B-movies and adult movies. Although I'm pretty sure the Deathstalkers were all backed by Roger Corman during his brief Argentina/Mexico phase, this is the first that bears evidence on the video sleeve in the form of his production company New Horizons.

Deathstalker III: The Warriors From Hell

Mexico/US - 1988

Director - Alfonso Corona

Vestron Video, 1989, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 25 min.

It's been years since I watched this one. It was the most difficult to get on VHS. I tried four times to order it online and only got it on the last try about 6 months ago. I don't remember much of what happens, but the cover art is what first drew me to all of these films. 10 years ago my good friend Regis and I decided we were going to rent all the films with rippling sweaty-dude paintings on the cover, so we did, it was awesome, end of story. All of these paintings and many more 80's Dungeons and Dragons fantasy art featuring epic mullets and impractical clothing were done by Boris Valejo.

Deathstalker IV: Match of Titans

US - 1990

Director - Howard R. Cohen

New Horizons Home Video, 1992, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 25 min.

Finally the man who wrote the entire series gets to sit in the directors chair and let me tell you, does it ever pay off. Many of the sequels have used recycled footage, particularly in the setup, but as I recall this one uses a lot of it. However, my recollection is that many of the names in the credits sounded eastern European, and I definitely remember copious breasts (exceeding the high bar set by the first three films) so I've always held that it was filmed in a former Soviet satellite state where people would do almost anything for American dollars, including bathe each other for the camera. Oh yeah, Rick Hill is back as Stalker and Corman workhorse Maria Ford appears as the love interest. She drew her bread and butter from her chest and Corman's payroll for years.

So, thanks for sticking with me on this brief quest through Deathstalker.In any case it fits with my effort to preserve lost VHS (the Deathstalker/Deathstalker 2 DVD is way out of print last I checked) and the role VHS box art played in drawing me into the exploitation fold. In that sense for me Deathstalker was a case in point. I was inspired by my friend at The Scandy Factory to post some of my old VHS boxes since this is probably all the "review" these films will ever get from me. Check out his blog for loads of great VHS scans, and here for some vintage pics of several of the lady stars.

Slammer Girls

Slammer Girls

United States - 1987

Director – Chuck Vincent

Lightning Video, 1988, VHS

Women In Prison films are a lot of things besides just women in prison. They can be anything from truly uncomfortable social commentary like Born Innocent, to hard core cut-n-paste porn like 99 Women or cheap fart-joke comedy like Slammer Girls. While this film might fall short of the actual fart bullseye, it hit quite a few branches on the way down.


The first tinny strains of music on the soundtrack bring back memories of many an uber shitty barbarian movie. Not surprising considering director Vincent helmed one of the shittiest, Warrior Queen, made the same year as Slammer Girls, and starring exploitation clydsedale Sybil Danning (Chained Heat and Jungle Warriors and Rick Hill, (Deathstalker himself in the first and fourth of that epic series). Vincent’s use of a regular stable of actors doesn’t stop at barbarians though.

A good-ol boy politician Jerry Calwell extols the virtues of electrocuting prison inmates, a position which apparently wins him the governors seat and the ire of an anonymous gloved hand which shoots him in the family jewels during his victory party. In an act that would make OJ and Cinderella proud, the cops run around trying to fit the assassins dropped glove to someone’s, anyone’s hand, winding up with innocent and dumb as a bag of wet sand Melody Campbell. Newspaper man Harry Weiner (that should give you a pretty good idea of where the humor is headed) decides to go undercover in the prison and expose Governor Callwell’s shady double business as manufacturer of JC Electric Chairs.

Melody is sent to prison where she meets a plethora of very crudely executed character types just groaning like overfilled sacks of offal with expletive-inducing puns ready to burst the shoddy seams. Thankfully - this is a women-in-prison film after all - their little tunics are strained too, and the ladies take it in stride to frequently relieve such pressure with surprisingly proactive nonchalance. Perhaps Chuck Vincent’s penchant for hiring former porn stars has something to do with this carefree attitude. In any case it does make the film more bare-able.
One such boob assault is committed by Tank (Tantala Ray of something called Tantala’s Fat Rack) and Mosquito against a whimpering nude Melody. Also on the inside is Mrs.Crabapples, the harsh prison matron who enjoys punishing the prisoners (though she falls short of lesbianism), some of whom don’t like it and some who do.
“Don’t I get any lashes? Not even just a few?”
Melody being the former, (much to the exasperated delight of her cellmates) finds herself time and again the scapegoat of the other women’s shenanigans and punished ruthlessly by Crabapples and her beefcake guards who double as barbarian strippers when the girls throw a welcome-back-from-solitary party for Melody. The crude, bludgeoning humor is ruthless and clearly must be meant to weaken your defenses for the final deluge of double entendre to come cascading from the ruptured sack.

Calwell’s mistress Candy Treat (Tally Brittany of, ahem, Warrior Queen) wants to be the prison warden because she was once in a Women In Prison film but didn’t get any good lines, and she wants to punish Melody for blasting Callwell’s dingaling. That seems like a plot thread that might take some actual acting from Brittany, so instead she takes most of her clothes off and gyrates with lots of “boi-oi-oi-oing” noises in a failed attempt to raise Callwell’s new transplanted penis for the solitary gay punchline of the film.

Finally, during a musical number resoundingly barked by the prisoners during Melody’s wedding (to Weiner) Calwell and Crabapples are revealed to be her parents, which doesn’t make much sense, but doesn’t have to at this point. Slammer Girls has absolutely no qualms about wallowing in stone dumb humor, dragging its knuckles intentionally through a base combination of slapstick and titty-flick that would make Benny Hill proud. The seemingly unassailable standards of WIP films make a lot of them seem almost forgettable except for occasional extremes of sex, violence or “exotic” locales (see Caged Fury). Even if it is remarkably simple (or not so for Chuck Vincent), Slammer Girls manages to stand out because the film, and those involved send-up those standards with glee.

Jungle Warriors

Jungle Warriors

a.ka. Euer Weg fuhrt durch die Holle

Germany - 1984

Director- Ernst R. von Theumer

Media Home Entertainment, 1985, VHS

What a whole load of good vibes I got off this movie. Sybill Danning is in it, and I saw a photo-still of her holding an assault rifle and standing with a bunch of girls in bikinis. "This son-of-a-bitch has got to be really good," I thought. I read that it was directed by a German guy, and originally went by a German title, cool, I like German sensibility. Fuggin' guns and drugs 'n' girls in small clothing, what could be better, right?

It opens with a short battle scene involving Woody Strode in a beret and sporting a small children's bow and arrow. Lethal in jump cuts at all ranges, Strode and Co. kill all other people in the scene, whoever they're supposed to be.

A fat white guy, John Vernon (Chained Heat and tons of other crap) is a sleazy, cocky American drug dealer who heads down to fictional cartel country to cut a huge deal with an even fatter white guy (posing as a brown guy). In the meantime blonde jerky-stick (Marjoe Gortner of Starcrash) is dragging his squad of supermodels down to South America for an exotic photo shoot. Get it? Massive narcotics deal, plus massive sex appeal equals action movie! With hot chicks! And no action!


This turns so quickly into a talkie that it's hard to really shake the first couple of scenes from your mind. Wait, Marjoe just got impaled on a jungle trap, are you really going to attempt to develop the shallow ridiculous plot for the next hour? I was made sad by so much of the repeated foundering at intrigue this attempted that, with the CIA ops and cartel and fat white dudes, it completely lost me.
John Vernon and Sybil Danning are both remarkably disappointing in the wake of Panther Squad, and Chained Heat, some of my recent favorites. All in all, this flick is punctuated by a few moments of effectively repugnant behavior and a more or less awesome soundtrack (except for a scene of 80's pop pap). And as excitingly gross (no really) as that is, the movie never seems ready to admit that that's it's purpose. If only we could admit that sometimes all we wanted was big boobs and bloodsplosion medicine. Then maybe we wouldn't get tricked into gagging repeatedly on this completely inedible spoon called "plot".

Some DVD covers from Europe and Japan, poor suckers.A crappy French poster:Compare the Jungle Warriors video box at the top, with the box art from Future Hunters, I think they're the same artist!

Panther Squad

Panther Squad
France, Belgium - 1984
Director – Pierre Chevalier
Lightning Video, 1986, VHS
Run Time - 1 hour, 27 min.


This looks good so far, I can already tell that it is edited from several different movies, or unfinished ones anyway, and is headed red-line, straight down the what-the-'eff-obahn.
The opening scenes concern the launch of a "Space Jeep" the first step in a program to colonize space(?). Cheap 20-year-old sci-fi spaceship footage is intercut with a guy in an office shot in south-western Europe (Italy, France, Spain?), and a third reel of a droopy old man stuck in a closet. He's the president of N.O.O.N., New Organization Of Nations, addressing the world live to announce the successful start to their space program. The broadcast is abrupty jammed by Clean Space, a world terrorist organization bent on preventing the pollution of space. They've developed a magnetic wave beam of some sort to control the "Space Jeep" which they intend to hold hostage indefinitely. When N.O.O.N. plans to launch a second "Space Jeep", Clean Space abducts their new pilot and issues an ultimatum.
At this point, N.O.O.N. is fed up, and calls in their best rogue agent (mercenary, hitman?) Ilona (Sybil Danning) and her considerable assets to solve the problem. She arrives somewhere in Spain I think(?), and meets up with super-agent Frank, a total hangdog lush who slurs her in the general direction of some badguys. Ilona calls in her super secret agent-esses, the Panther Squad, whom we have witnessed in a previous scene must pass a rigorous screening test before receiving the stamp of approval on their bulging curvaceous files.

After a quick dip in the pool when they arrive, the Pantheresses gear up in their bikini's.

Oh, wait, they're already ready, um they go out and track down Clean Space, which as it turns out is led by barely understandable French mental patients.

Just as the insane Spanish general (probably the best character in the movie) who is exploiting Clean Space for his Fascist plot raves himself into a tyrannical triumph speech, the girls arrive and stumble their way to a narrow, ridiculous, and uninspiring victory.

The only two real connecting threads that weave their way through this disasterpiece of haphazard frankenfilm are Danning's usual broad rump, and Frank (Jack Taylor, I swear I recognize this guy from something!?) the barely-conscious drunk who provides an awkwardly inserted point of ironic metaphorical humor.

The director, writer, and editor must have been drunk when they made this, and you should be too to enjoy it. I was, and therefore did.


Watch the Panther Squad trailer at Cult Trailers.

The awesome still shot of Sybil Danning that became the cover art.