The Curator of Schlock #290: Lola

13 Friday Sep 2019

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Charles Bronson, Lola, Richard Donner, Susan George, The Curator of Schlock, Twinky

The Curator of Schlock #290 by Jeff Shuster

Lola

I think you’re growing up too soon, girl.

I don’t like it when box art lies. This goes back to the days of Mom & Pop video rental palaces, when you’d see some movie you’ve never heard of with an intriguing cover only to be disappointed when you popped it in the VCR when you got home. This brings us to tonight’s movie, 1969’s Lola from director Richard Donner (of Superman fame).

Look at this DVD cover.

Lola1

We have Charles Bronson in a coat brandishing a pistol. This brings to mind Paul Kersey, the vigilante from the Death Wish movies, but there’s one big problem. Charles Bronson doesn’t have a mustache, nor does he brandish a gun in this movie. The back of the case claims that the movie was directed by John Sturges, but it was, in fact, directed by Richard Donner. The backs reads, “Charles Bronson, Susan George, and Trevor Howard star in this gritty portrayal of a man struggling to keep his demons at bay.” Nope. Again, I’m not seeing it.

This is a goofy 60s comedy about a thirty-eight year-old man dating a sixteen-year-old girl.

Lola5

Susan George plays Lola (also known as Twinky in some versions), a sixteen-year-old English girl who just happens to be having intimate relations with Scott Wardman (Charles Bronson), a close to middle-aged writer of pornographic fiction who’s living in a London flat. Lola tells Scott that she spilled the beans to her parents, and her father is furious. Scott asks her what the age of consent is in England. She says it’s sixteen, but England can still deport Scott or send him to jail for other reasons. Lola consulted the family lawyer on this. Scott chases Lola out the apartment, but then chases after her. They decide to get married in Scotland, where a man can marry a sixteen-year-old girl. Problem solved!

Lola

What am I watching here? The movie presents this situation as cute and zany. I wasn’t alive in ’69. I’m not that clear on what the social norms were, but I’m surprised that at no point in this movie do we find an angry mob surrounding Scott and beating him to death. Maybe if John Sturges had directed this movie.

Lola2

Lola’s father says their marriage won’t work out. Lola’s mother seems more sympathetic and wishes them the best. I can’t help, but notice how attractive Lola’s mother is. Then I realize she is none other than Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore from Goldfinger). There’s a theme song for Lola that’s sung by Jim Dale, the narrator of the Harry Potter books, that I mistook for a lost Dave Clark Five track.

Lola 2

Scott and Lola move to New York City where Scott begins a career as a failed novelist. Scott is required to enroll Lola in high school, as it is the law.

I keep imagining there’s an alternative version of this movie where Lola falls in love with the captain of the football team and asks Scott to drive them to prom.

Anyway, Lola leaves Scott a Dear John letter after they get into a fight over her cat.

The end.

What does it all mean? This movie is messing with my head.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #289: The Evil That Men Do

06 Friday Sep 2019

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Charles Bronson, The Evil That Men Do

The Curator of Schlock #289 by Jeff Shuster

The Evil That Men Do

Charles Bronson returns to the Museum of Schlock!

It seems like only yesterday that I began this blog. I remember that one September five years ago when I covered all five Death Wish movies.

Oh, wait. It was six years ago.

Six years of my life spent apart from Charles Bronson.

How did I let this happen? Time to rectify this misfire on my part. Time to partake in the second greatest mustache in cinema history (first place goes to Franco Nero). September is Charles Bronson Month here at the Museum of Schlock!

Evil1

1984’s The Evil That Men Do from director J. Lee Thompson features men doing evil things to other men. But if Charles Bronson is doing the evil things, are they really evil? Charles Bronson is America’s vigilante, and who doesn’t love a vigilante? To hate Charles Bronson is to hate America itself.

The movie begins with a Welsh gentleman named Clement Molloch (Joseph Maher) who goes by the moniker, “The Doctor.” They call him the Doctor because he is a real medical doctor, but he uses his medical expertise to perfect methods of torture to be used by any South American dictator with the money for his services.

Evil2

I mean this guy’s methods are disgusting. The Doctor is kind of the guru of torture. The movie begins with him electrocuting Jorge Hidalgo, a reporter who’s been investigating him. Any of you ever watch that Nickelodeon show Mr. Wizard? Remember the episode where he used electricity to cook hot dogs for lunch? This is kind of like that except with a real live human being.

Some Israelis try to assassinate the Doctor, rig a car bomb in his car, but the operation goes awry and the Doctor gets away again. A man named Hector travels to the Cayman Islands to convince a retired CIA assassin named Holland (Charles Bronson) to come out of retirement and kill The Doctor.

Evil3

The Doctor is fairly evil. In fact, I might go as far to say he’s Kidnap Syndicate evil. Holland says he’s retired and doesn’t do that sort of thing anymore, but it’s not long before he flies out to Guatemala to take out the Doctor. Holland tells Hector that he wants to pose as a family man. He’ll need a pretend wife and a pretend child. Hector hooks him up with Rhiana (Theresa Saldana), the deceased reporter’s wife, and their young daughter, Sarah.

Evil4

The two of them manage to catch a glimpse of the doctor at a local cockfight. Holland decides the best pathway to the Doctor is through the men who work for him. He tracks Randolph (Raymond St. Jacques), a burley man in charge of the Doctor’s communications. Holland follows Randall to the US Ambassador’s office. It seems that the Doctor has blackmailed Paul Briggs (John Glover of TV’s Smallville), the U.S. Ambassador of Guatemala, into aiding his nefarious activities.

There’s some throat slitting and ball crushing as Holland works his way through the Doctor’s organization. He manages to kidnap the Doctor’s sister in an effort to root him out of hiding. I’m not going to spoil the ending for you, but if you think the Doctor is making it to the end of this movie without a painful and humiliating death, you don’t know Charles Bronson.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #8: Death Wish 5

27 Friday Sep 2013

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Charles Bronson, Death Wish, Michael Parks

The Curator of Schlock #8 by Jeffrey Shuster

Death Wish 5: The Face of Death

If you haven’t figured out by now that the face of death is Charles Bronson, there’s no helping you.

I want to make something clear. When Death Wish 5 The Face of Death was released theatrically, it was under the moniker of Death Wish: V The Face of Death. It was bad enough that we got stuck with the Roman numeral V instead of just a plain old 5, but when it got released on DVD, they removed the number entirely so all we’re left with is Death Wish: The Face of Death. This is unacceptable. Removing the numeral ignores the legacy of Death Wish 2, 3, and 4. This movie is Death Wish 5. Don’t let anyone tell you any different. On to the review that isn’t a review.

September was supposed to be Death Wish Month here at The Drunken Odyssey. The trouble was I didn’t realize we were still in August when the review for the first Death Wish went up. This meant I had to review Death Wish 5, and I’ve been avoiding Death Wish 5 for many years nown. It’s the Death Wish movie that even Death Wish fans hate. But I promised myself that September would be Death Wish Month so here we go.

In Death Wish 5, we find Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) in the witness protection program. His name is now Paul Stewart, but I’ll keep on calling him Paul Kersey for the rest of this review because I’ve been calling him Paul Kersey for every other review. Anyway, Kersey is getting his life back together. He’s dating a beautiful fashion designer named Olivia Regent who also happens to have a cute little girl. And he’s posing as a professor of who-knows-what. They don’t say. They don’t really say why he’s in witness protection either. It might have something to do with those two drug cartels he wiped out in Death Wish 4: The Crackdown, though this goes unmentioned.

Anyway, Kersey’s girlfriend’s ex- is, obviously, Tommy O’Shea (Michael Parks), an Irish mobster in the Irish Mob. O’Shea’s main way of earning is going over to business owners in the New York Garment District and shaking them down for money. If they don’t comply, bodily harm is usually the result in the form of electric saws to the stomach and hands shoved into hot presses. For some reason, Kersey thinks it’s a good idea for Olivia to become an FBI informant and get Tommy O’Shea sent to jail. This results in Olivia getting her face smashed into a bathroom mirror by one of O’Shea’s goons. Undaunted, Kersey still convinces his girlfriend to testify against O’Shea, which results in her get shot in the back before falling to her death.

Later, O’Shea beats up Kersey and steals his little girl back. O’Shea’s man in the FBI reveals that Paul Kersey is the vigilante killer from years back. For once, the criminals in these movies grow a brain and start taking precautions against Kersey. Of course, these precautions do no good. Whether it be poisoned cannolis or exploding soccer balls, O’Shea’s men die one by one. One even gets juiced by an electrified fence because what would a Death Wish movie be without a degenerate getting electrocuted to death. The movie ends with Paul Kersey knocking Tommy OShea into an acid bath where we get to see him dissolve in excruciating detail.

Death Wish 5 came out in 1994, which might account for its lameness. The Death Wish movies of the 80s were an exercise in excess. Every nightmare scenario from street thugs taking over the world to drug dealers killing our children was played out in those schlock masterpieces. Looking at them now, one wonders how anyone ever took them seriously. But the 90s were a new decade and those kinds of excesses were no longer welcome. Death Wish 5 demands us to take it seriously and falls flat as a result. And thus this series fades away when it should have burned out.

Oh well. At least we got to see “the most brutal hit and run in film history.”

___________

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47) is an MFA candidate and instructor at the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #7: Death Wish 4

20 Friday Sep 2013

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Charles Bronson, Death Wish 4, The Curator of Schlock

The Curator of Schlock #7 by Jeffrey Shuster

Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (Drugs are Bad!)

Death Wish 4 The Crackdown. If you think this movie title suggests drugs, you’re right! Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) is getting his life back together after the event Death Wish 3. He’s cut back to shooting only three street thugs a week as opposed to the usual five. He’s dating Karen Sheldon, a single mom who’s also a fearless reporter. Karen even has a cute, teenage daughter that Kersey comes to love as if she was his own daughter. Her name is Erica.

Unfortunately, Erica hangs out in those video arcade parlors. Do you know who else hangs out in those video arcade parlors? Drug dealers! Drug dealers that prey on innocent children! One of these drug dealers is named Jojo and he sells drugs to Erica! About a half hour later, Erica is in the emergency room violently overdosing on cocaine. She dies as her mother and Kersey look upon the scene with horror. It doesn’t take long for Kersey to head down to the video arcade and take care of business.

Unfortunately, drug dealers operate on a whole other level than your average street thug. They dress in plain clothes so they’re harder to spot. Instead of switchblades, these guys prefer to use guns and will shoot back at vigilantes like Kersey. Fortunately, Bronson gets off a lucky shot, sending Jojo falling on top of a bumper car cage, his body getting juiced until he’s fully cooked. Jojo is dead and the uplifting music tells us this is a good thing.

When I was watching Jojo get fried, I couldn’t help but think this was the shortest Death Wish movie ever. I was only about 13 minutes in and Kersey had gotten his revenge. But there’s more to this story. And old rich bastard by the name of Nathan White has taken an interest in Kersey’s vigilante activities. You see, Nathan White’s daughter also died from an overdose and he wants Kersey to take care of all of the drug lords and their enforcers in the greater Los Angeles area.

Unlike street thugs, the drug cartels are made of trained professionals who use actual guns. Still, Paul Kersey must have been taking espionage lessons because he’s able to infiltrate every one of their operations with ease. Kersey poses as a bartender, a Napa Valley wine salesman, and a day laborer at a fish processing plant. It’s amazing how Kersey can take on two drug cartels and get out completely unscathed. When he was taking on a few street thugs in Death Wish and Death Wish 2, he had all kinds of knife wounds, even took a bullet. Not so in Death Wish 4 The Crackdown. Kersey doesn’t get a scratch on him as he takes out the enforcers of both cartels, which consist of home video store clerks, opera aficionados, and corrupt cops.

Kersey manages to toss one man who’s the size of a linebacker crashing through a glass door, sending him careening over the 30-story balcony.

Kersey also takes out three cartel hit men in an Italian restaurant, one of whom is played by Danny Trejo. How does he kill these hit men? He blows up the restaurant! Now I know some you may have some qualms about all of the restaurant employees who got caught in the blast, but you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. The two drug cartels end up blaming each other for the deaths of their men and a violent shootout occurs. Kersey’s instigation tactics worked and the scene ends with the lone drug lord Ed Zacharias limping away before being executed by Kersey. It was the cocaine distributed by Zacharias that killed Emily. With Emily’s death finally avenged, Kersey can call it a day.

Not so fast! It seems that rich old Nathan White was not rich old Nathan White after all, but another drug lord! He used Paul Kersey to eliminate his competition and with that job done, he puts a hit out on Kersey. When his goons fail to kill Kersey, the new drug lord decides to kidnap Karen and hold her hostage. When Karen manages to break free, he shoots her in the back in front of Kersey. Karen is dead, the drug lord’s machine gun is jammed, and Paul Kersey is holding a grenade launcher. We know the end of this story.

What I learned from Death Wish 4:

Taking out drug cartels is easy as pie.
Erotic cakes don’t taste so good.
You can find machine guns with silencers just lying around video rental stores.
Drug dealers wear gold chains.
Drug dealers like to overdose their customers.
Charles Bronson can catch a second wind faster than Hulk Hogan.
Napa Valley is beautiful and you ought to take a trip up there some time.
If you have a nightmare where you shoot and kill a bunch a rapists only to find out one of the rapists is you, just ignore it. The dream means nothing.
Don’t get in a drug dealer’s face and tell them you’re going to tell the police everything you know. They tend to stab you in the chest if you do that.
Don’t shoot Paul Kersey’s girlfriend right in front of him when he’s holding a grenade launcher. He tends to blow you up if you do that.

___________

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47) is an MFA candidate and instructor at the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #5: Death Wish 2

06 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, The Curator of Schlock, Uncategorized

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Charles Bronson, Death Wish 2, Jeffrey Shuster, Revenge films, The Curator of Schlock

The Curator of Schlock #5 by Jeffrey Shuster

Death Wish 2: Who’s To Blame?

Oh boy. I guess we have to talk about Death Wish 2 before we get to Death Wish 3. We know we’re in trouble as soon as we see producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus credits appear on the screen. Still, we retain Charles Bronson and director Michael Winner. We lose Herbie Hancock on the score, but gain Jimmie Page. What could possibly go wrong?

Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) has gotten his life together since the events of Death Wish 1. He’s got a new girlfriend, his daughter is being released from the mental hospital, and his maid makes some mean Mexican food. Unfortunately, Kersey decides to buy his girlfriend and daughter some ice cream which makes a gang of local thugs angry. They steal Kersey’s wallet, find his house from the address on his driver’s license, break into his house, repeatedly rape his maid, kidnap his daughter, and rape his daughter, who then decides to jump out of a warehouse window only to get impaled by a spiked fence.

So Kersey’s life has yet again gone to pieces because of a gang of street thugs. But unlike the first movie, Kersey got to see what these thugs looked like (one of whom looks an awful lot like a young Lawrence Fishburn). Kersey must have a photographic memory because he can remember what each of these thugs looks like down to last detail. It’s also a good thing that Los Angeles is a small town because I can’t imagine the trouble he’d have of running into each of these guys in a big city.

The first thug he runs into is named Stomper because he likes to stomp people and deal drugs in rat infested basements. When Kersey finds Stomper, he asks, “Do you believe in Jesus?” Stomper replies “Yes, I do.” Kersey replies back “Well you’re gonna meet him.” before shooting Stomper in the chest. As the bullet pasts through him, Stomper violently shakes and convulses before hitting the ground. No doubt he’ll be a midnight snack for the rats crawling all over him. One down, four more to go.

Next up is Jiver. Kersey finds him when he hears a woman scream out of a dark alley. This scream leads him to a parking garage where Jiver and a bunch of other dudes are harassing a middle aged couple. The gang is about to rape the middle aged man’s wife when Kersey starts shooting at them. This proves effective since most of them die. Jiver is wounded and slinks away to an abandoned warehouse, but this allows Kersey to savor the kill, stare right into Jiver’s eyes and tell him “Goodbye” before pulling the trigger. Two down, three to go.

The final three gang members are easy enough to find because their doing some dippity do dance to Jimmy Page’s “Oh Mama” in the middle of a public park. They deserve to die for the dancing alone. Anyway, Kersey simply follows them around town, getting on each bus they get on. They don’t recognize Kersey because he’s wearing a winter hat in the middle of summer. Kersey catches the three of them on a weapons deal. Cutter(Lawrence Fishburne) thinks he can protect himself by holding a boombox in front of face. It doesn’t work. Apparently, Kersey’s bullets can go right through boomboxes and hit you in the face. Kersey pumps Punkcut’s guts full of lead giving Punkcut a slow and agonizing death. Don’t worry. Punkcut dies before he can tell the police anything useful. But the final thug, Nirvana, manages to escape. Four down, one more to go.

Kersey must be feeling pretty good about life at this moment. He asks his girlfriend to marry him and she suggests they get “smashed” in Mexico. Unfortunately, Kersey still has Nirvana to deal with. Nirvana is one big dude. The LAPD manage to catch this guy, but not before he beats up a couple dozen police officers. Nirvana gets his day in court. The judge sends Nirvana to the Wayward Youths Temporarily Insane Asylum where he’s sure to released in a couple of months.

Kersey decides to dress up as a doctor, faking an ID and everything so he can slip in and take care of Nirvana. However, when he reaches Nirvana, Nirvana starts wailing on him. Apparently, thugs are much harder to kill when you don’t have a gun. No worries. Nirvana manages to get his hand stuck in some high voltage electric machinery and Kersey flips a switch labeled Danger Power Supply. Nirvana gets juiced with electricity like those hot dogs Mr. Wizard used to electrocute on Mr. Wizard’s World. Don’t fool around with electricity, kids! You might get cooked like poor Nirvana.

You’d think Paul Kersey would have a happy ending after all of this, but his fiancé finds one his fake doctor IDs, realizes he’s the vigilant killer, and decides to leave him. This is a problem because it leaves Paul Kersey without any loved ones left for street thugs to kill. If only he had an old Korean War buddy named Charlie who lived in New York City and who is constantly being harassed by gang members for protection money. Oh well.

10 Things I Learned From Death Wish 2

Winter hats are still sylish in the summertime.
Don’t buy ice cream in Los Angeles.
If you want a cool nickname, become a street thug.
Don’t dance to Jimmy Page’s solo music.
Lawrence Fishburne has bad taste in sunglasses.
Don’t leave fake doctor IDs lying around for your fiancé to find.
Boom boxes don’t deflect bullets.
Only bad people listen to Jimmy Page’s solo music.
Electrocuted hot dogs aren’t half bad.
Mr. Wizard still creeps me out a little.

___________

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47) is an MFA candidate and instructor at the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #4: Death Wish

30 Friday Aug 2013

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Charles Bronson, Death Wish, Herbie Hancock, The Curator of Schlock

The Curator of Schlock #4 by Jeffrey Shuster

Death Wish (Fill Your Hand)

AMC had a Death Wish marathon a few weeks back. I don’t know if the movies AMC airs these days are true classics or what classic even means these days when it comes to cinema. Maybe it’s the influence a movie has over the larger culture that makes it classic and Death Wish certainly had influence. The movie helped give rise to the vigilante genre for better or for worse. Mostly worse.

In Death Wish, Charles Bronson plays Paul Kersey, a “bleeding heart liberal” that sympathizes with the underprivileged. What Paul Kersey doesn’t know is that the underprivileged HATE bleeding heart liberals, especially wealthy architects like him. A gang of these underprivileged (led, obviously, by a young Jeff Goldblum) decide to break into Kersey’s apartment where they beat his wife and rape his daughter. The assault leaves his wife dead and his daughter a mental vegetable. The police seem to have better things to do than to catch the men responsible.

While visiting Tuscon on business, Kersey learns that Arizonians just shoot and kill the underprivileged. When he arrives back in New York City, Kersey discovers that one of his Arizona friends snuck a gun in his suitcase. Kersey decides to start taking midnight strolls in dangerous parts of the city and when one of the underprivileged tries to mug him-BAM! He’s dead! Kersey makes front-page news every time. Apparently, the police don’t like this “vigilante activity” as they call it and when the lead detective catches up to Kersey, they request that he leave New York.

I honestly don’t understand the police in this movie. In an earlier scene, the lead detective of the vigilante case has a meeting with the police commissioner and the district attorney. While sharing in bowl of hard candy, they discuss what do about their prime suspect, Paul Kersey. The commissioner and district attorney state how new statistics show that muggings have decreased significantly since the vigilante started killing muggers. They don’t want this statistic getting out because they fear the streets will be filled with vigilantes killing muggers as opposed to the streets being filled with muggers killing decent citizens. The lead detective offers to arrest Paul Kersey, but the district attorney doesn’t want to turn Kersey into a martyr. So we see that that the NYPD has no interest in lowering the crime rates or upholding the law. I’m sure this all meant to be topical, to show the audience how our institutions are failing us, but it makes no sense. They would either let Kersey continue his vigilante activities unabated or they would arrest him and make an example out him.

What’s the character arc here? We see Kersey start out as a pacifist, a man who hates guns because his father was killed in a hunting accident, a conscientious objector who served in a medical unit during the Korean War. Yet, he switches over to killer vigilante as soon as he unwraps that gun his Tuscon friend gave him. Maybe he’s tired of being afraid. Maybe he thinks he’s a modern day cowboy. I can’t tell. Kersey still acts the same around friends and colleagues, still comes off as the same nice guy, bleeding heart liberal. It’s that persona that makes us love Paul Kersey. This is a man we’d invite over for dinner. Or maybe we just want to invite Charles Bronson over for dinner because he’s just so damn pleasant. There’s no creep factor like there is with real world vigilantes such as Bernhard Goetz or George Zimmerman.

Death Wish is well made. There’s no denying that. We may have lost Technicolor beauty in the 1970s, but the cheap film stock adds much to the ugly mood of the picture. Director Michael Winner shows us a decaying New York that audiences first got a glimpse of in Midnight Cowboy. The musical score by jazz musician Herbie Hancock complements the action on screen. The fusion of traditional instruments and electronic synthesizers creates a haunting atmosphere that lingers long after the credits have stopped rolling.

The final scene in the movie has Paul Kersey landing in Chicago. As he walks through the airport, he sees a multi-racial gang harassing a woman, knocking her luggage out of her hands. Kersey goes over to help her, the gang making obscene gestures in his general direction. Kersey forms his hand into a pretend gun and fires.

We wouldn’t get a sequel to Death Wish until 1982, but the wait would prove to be well worth it. The Death Wish sequels are the epitome of schlock, but that’s a subject for another day.