The Lonely Lady

THE LONELY LADY (1983) 1/2*
The Lonely Lady is one of the all-time great stinker movies, 91 minutes of unpleasant characters in unsavory relationships with unbelievably bad actors speaking dialogue that should have never been uttered or ever written in the first place.

Like the (believe it or not) even more awful, killer Santa picture Silent Night, Deadly Night, The Lonely Lady potentially takes the heat off viewers by undercutting a procession of controversial scenes with unintentional humor. I could see hooting and howling in derisive laughter at the performances and the dialogue throughout Silent Night, Deadly Night and The Lonely Lady.

I found myself appalled more than anything else throughout The Lonely Lady, so I was basically too appalled to laugh.

The Lonely Lady especially lays it on thick whenever the title character — aspiring young screenwriter Jerilee Randall, played by the immortal Pia Zadora, though she’s never lonely — expresses her outrage at her perpetual exploitation by Hollywood writers, directors, actors, and producers, every one of them sexist pigs who just nonstop use and abuse her.

At the same time, however, the camera lingers on this exploitation from the rape by garden hose early on in the picture to some of the least sexy movie sex ever captured on celluloid.

On top of all that, Zadora’s real-life husband, Israeli multimillionaire industrialist Meshulam Riklis, funded Butterfly and The Lonely Lady with both pictures starring none other than Zadora. Legend has it that Riklis bought a Golden Globe award for his wife and her performance in Butterfly.

Zadora beat out Elizabeth McGovern and Howard E. Rollins Jr. in Ragtime, Kathleen Turner in Body Heat, Rachel Ward in Sharky’s Machine, and Craig Wasson in Four Friends, all five better-received performances in better-received films.

It remains inconceivable that Zadora — who made her motion picture debut in the 1964 cult film Santa Claus Conquers the Martians — won that award on her own merits.

Riklis was more than 30 years older than Zadora, and that’s not any different than the age gap between Jerilee and her much older husband, veteran Hollywood hack screenwriter Walter Thornton (Lloyd Bochner), in The Lonely Lady.

All those factors combine to make Jerilee’s speech at the Academy Awards — highlighted by that risible line I don’t suppose I’m the only one who’s had to fuck her way to the top! — the absolute worst scene in a movie populated by predominantly bad scenes.

Most of them involve Jerilee sleeping her way through some of the ugliest men imaginable.

Let’s take a look at one more scene that epitomizes The Lonely Lady.

Jerilee and Walter argue outside their Beverly Hills home, near the swimming pool seen first in one of the film’s most appalling scenes.

Jerilee: Walter? Walter, come to bed.
Walter: Haven’t you had enough wine? Go sleep it off.
J: If you’ll come with me.
[W turns away.]
J: I’m trying to say sorry.
W: With a head full of drink!
J: We don’t have to make love.
W: Thank you.
J: We could talk. We need to talk.
W: Why didn’t you go off with Dacosta? He would’ve enjoyed it.
[W picks up the garden hose that raped J earlier in the film.]
W: Or is this more your kick?

That’s even worse than the argument between Kathryn Harrold and Luciano Pavarotti in Yes, Giorgio that culminated in the infamous line I don’t want to be watered on by Fini.

That garden hose, in fact, might have once belonged to Fini.

The Lonely Lady flopped so badly that, thankfully, Hollywood never adapted one of Harold Robbins’ trashy novels again.

Now, I call that a happy ending.

Samurai Cop (1991)

SAMURAI COP

SAMURAI COP (1991) ***

An outtake is defined as “a scene or sequence filmed or recorded for a movie or program but not included in the final version.”

Blown lines and stunts, we all know the routine by now.

Hal Needham and Jackie Chan may have made outtakes for the end credits a cinematic institution, but Iranian “jack of all trades and master of none” Amir Shervan (1929-2006) directed SAMURAI COP, a feature movie solely comprised of outtakes.

Shervan trumped such legendary figures as Dwain Esper, William “One Shot” Beaudine, Bert I. Gordon, Bill Rebane, Ray Dennis Steckler, and even Ed Wood in absolute sheer incompetence.

Like a select few bad movies, SAMURAI COP is so, so, so bad in so, so, so many marvelous ways that it passes all the way through bad into good. It belongs filed next to Efren C. Pinon’s THE KILLING OF SATAN and Claudio Fragasso’s TROLL 2.

— Mathew Karedas, a.k.a. Matt Hannon, stars as Joe Marshall. Most people, though, just call him “Samurai Cop.” Joe must be the least convincing samurai in all history, cinematic and otherwise. For one, Joe’s entire look screams more Fabio and Kato Kaelin than, let’s say, Toshiro Mifune and his most dangerous weapon brandished is that damn speedo he spends what feels like the entire second half of the movie in. Anyway, for somebody allegedly well-versed in the Japanese vernacular, he sure does struggle pronouncing the name “Fujiyama.” When asked by his partner Frank Washington (Mark Frazer) what “katana” means, Joe snaps back “It means Japanese sword.” You don’t say, you don’t say.

— Samurai Cop arguably spends more time being a ladies man than anything else. No, seriously, he beds three, er, two women and he even blatantly talks about the beauty of another woman in the presence of his lover. Smooth, real smooth. Late in the 96-minute spread, he tells his future conquest, “Let’s just say … I can read eyes.” I wish that you couldn’t read dialogue.

Here’s a dialogue exchange from the Planet-X:

Nurse: Do you like what you see?

Joe Marshall: I love what I see.

N: Would you like to touch what you see?

JM: Yes. Yes, I would.

N: Would you like to go out with me?

JM: Uh, yes I would.

N: Would you like to fuck me?

JM: Bingo.

N: Well, then let’s see what you’ve got …

[Nurse investigates Joe’s bulge]

N: Doesn’t interest me. Nothing there.

JM: Nothing there? Just exactly what would interest you, something the size of a jumbo jet?

N: Have you been circumcised?

JM: Yeah, I have, why?

N: Your doctor must have cut a large portion off.

JM: No, uh, he was a, he was a good doctor.

N: Good doctors make mistakes too, that’s why they have insurance.

JM: Hey … don’t worry. I got enough. It’s big.

N: I want bigger.

[Nurse walks away]

I doubt that any screen lothario has ever partaken in dialogue that bad and the sound that we just heard is Rudolph Valentino saying “Thank you” for having made only silent movies.

That dialogue plays like a combination of a porno movie and “Dick and Jane” (most of the rest of the movie belongs to knocking off LETHAL WEAPON) and it belongs alongside the SHARK ATTACK 3: MEGALODON interchange in the anals, er, annals of cinematic history:

Cataline Stone: I’m exhausted.

Ben Carpenter: Yeah, me too. But you know I’m really wired. What do you say … I take you home and eat your pussy.

Boy, that’s just about as great as the whole “Fini can water you” debacle from YES, GIORGIO.

— Lead actor Matt Hannon thought he was done with the picture and got himself a short haircut. Several months later, Shervan looked up Hannon and informed him they were going to reshoot scenes. Unfortunately, Hannon still had short hair. I say unfortunately because Hannon wears one of the least convincing wigs ever made during SAMURAI COP. It does not help that Hannon’s wig flies off during a late fight scene and the actor also displays his obvious displeasure having to wear his wig. Yeah, it’s that bad.

— The chase scenes alternate between moving incredibly slow (nothing like slow-moving cars …) and being artificially sped up (… except for cars that zip along unnaturally). Yes, there are times when the action in SAMURAI COP plays like a silent film projected at the wrong speed.

— Not sure that I want to spend that much more time and space on SAMURAI COP, because I don’t want to risk writing a dissertation. Yes, over 750 words feels like I have been writing on this movie for a long time. However, there’s so many more things wrong but right about SAMURAI COP that we could be here all day, ironic for a movie that lasts a meager 96 minutes. Just imagine SAMURAI COP at GONE WITH THE WIND length.

— In a review long ago, I wrote that the 1979 Chuck Norris action vehicle A FORCE OF ONE combines a standard issue cops and criminals plot acted out by a good cast with martial arts and a “very subtle” anti-drug message that plays like one of those infamous 1980s TV commercials, only featuring roundhouse kicks.

On that note, we can end this review with a public service announcement from SAMURAI COP: “Now I’m telling these son-of-a-bitches that we respect the Japanese of this country, who are honest businessmen. And yeah, this is the land of opportunity for legitimate business, not for death merchants who distribute drugs to our children through schools and on the streets. Now I’m telling these motherfuckers that if they continue killing our children to make their precious millions that they deposit in their secret Swiss bank accounts, counselor, before your lawsuit even gets off the court clerk’s desk, I’ll have their stinking bodies in garbage bags and ship them back to Japan for fertilizer.”

Beautiful, absolutely beautiful, and it makes me want to pop a top on an ice cold one and blast Alice Cooper’s “I Love America.”

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978)

ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES

ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES (1978) Three stars

“In 1963, Alfred Hitchcock made a motion picture entitled THE BIRDS, a film which depicted a savage attack upon human beings by flocks of the winged creatures.

“People laughed.

“In the fall of 1975, 7 million black birds invaded the town of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, resisting the best efforts of mankind to dislodge them.

“No one is laughing now.”

— Introduction to ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES

Watching ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES in full for the first time in possibly 30 years, it brought to mind KING KUNG FU.

Both are extremely low-budget labor-of-love parodies and tributes to both older and contemporaneous movies. Both have their dead spots and their high points. Both try many, many, many jokes. Both are filed under cult movies and “so bad they’re good.” Both love their filming locations, Wichita in KING KUNG FU and San Diego in KILLER TOMATOES. Both show people having a darn good time making a silly little movie. Both are so endearingly goofy that I end up forgiving all their various sins and transgressions and enjoying them.

Unlike KING KUNG FU, though, KILLER TOMATOES inspired three sequels — RETURN OF THE KILLER TOMATOES! (1988), KILLER TOMATOES STRIKE BACK! (1990), and KILLER TOMATOES EAT FRANCE! (1991) — plus an animated series and two video games.

Let me highlight what I liked (or loved) about KILLER TOMATOES.

— The songs are great. We have “Theme from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes,” “Puberty Love,” “The Mindmaker Song,” “Tomato Stomp,” and “Love Theme from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.” I am sure that millions and millions proclaim GREASE the best musical from the film year 1978. No way! I say it’s KILLER TOMATOES all the way. I mean, both the opening and closing musical numbers are fantastic. “Theme” should have been a hit a la “The Blob” by The Five Blobs in 1958. “Love Theme” gives us better opera than YES, GIORGIO, Pavarotti’s feature film debut and farewell. I should have selected it to play at my wedding. “Puberty Love” kills the tomatoes. It’s that bad. Even badder. Just the sheet music for “Puberty Love” alone kills tomatoes smack dead in their tracks. Future Soundgarden and Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron sang “Puberty Love” around the tender age of 15. Maybe one day Pearl Jam will cover “Puberty Love.” It couldn’t be any worse than “Last Kiss.” By the way, you can’t throw tomatoes at the performers during “Puberty Love,” because all the tomatoes will be dead.

— KING KUNG FU combined King Kong and kung fu, according to a report from man on the spot Captain Obvious. KILLER TOMATOES affectionately kids monster movies, for example. Notice how the Japanese military always struggles against Godzilla. Well, in KILLER TOMATOES, the American military cannot lick our title characters. Rather, it takes playing a horrible little song named “Puberty Love” throughout San Diego Stadium. Tim Burton must have been taking notes before he made MARS ATTACKS!

— Fans of imported monster movies should have a great time with the character Dr. Nokitofa (credited to Paul Oya). KILLER TOMATOES purposely gave Dr. Nokitofa a bad dub, you know, one of those wildly inappropriate voices that just does not fit the character. I love it and I wish they gave his character more scenes with more lines. I busted a gut at his scene. When Dr. Nokitofa corrects somebody for calling tomatoes “vegetables,” he says “Technically sir, tomatoes are fags” … then his colleague Dr. Morrison says, “He means fruits.” Yes, there’s some bad taste humor in KILLER TOMATOES. Some of it works and some of it does not. Nature of the humor, so they say.

— There’s something absolutely brilliant about a character being chased by a “killer” tomato, relentlessly down the street, up the stairs, and through the hallway.

— I must admit to feeling grateful none of my newspaper bosses ever said that I have a great ass, like the editor (Ron Shapiro) tells Lois Fairchild (Sharon Taylor) in their first scene together.

— With a reporter named Lois, of course that affords KILLER TOMATOES an opportunity to kid SUPERMAN. KILLER TOMATOES came out a good two months before SUPERMAN, one of the most wildly anticipated releases in 1978.

— KILLER TOMATOES kids JAWS much more affectionately and successfully than GIANT SPIDER INVASION, A*P*E, THE HILLS HAVE EYES, and ORCA: THE KILLER WHALE, all of which took pot shots at Steven Spielberg’s game-changing summer blockbuster.

— I cannot have much of any ill will toward a film that works in a cameo for the San Diego Chicken (Ted Giannoulas) and thanks “Every Screwball in San Diego County,” that’s including Mr. Chicken, for the great crowd scene near the end of the picture.

— In conclusion, I thank director and co-writer John DeBello and fellow writers Costa Dillon and J. Stephen Peace (all three each took on even more roles) for their efforts in making a fun little movie.