'Little Fauss & Big Halsy' (1970) - Sidney J. Furie.

One of uber-blond bombshell, Robert Redford's earlier films, while infrequently documented remains a boisterous, frequently sweet natured, surprisingly intimate dramedy about two disparate motorcycle misfits, Little Fauss (Michael J. Pollard) and devilishly handsome serial womanizer, Big Halsy (Robert Redford) who slowly form an uneasy partnership to race, Little Fauss's fleet, expertly-tuned bike. The grossly self-absorbed rapscallion, Halsy has selfishly contrived to use the ingenuous and trusting, Fauss's bike and racing licence number, due to his current suspension for numerous boozy transgressions, and, sadly, the introverted, homely Little Fauss forgoes his own undemonstratively expressed ambitions as a single racer, browbeaten by, Big Halsy's relentless charisma and no less beguiling rhetoric, his cumbersome ego, vanity and a seemingly limitless facility for fabricating vividly colourful myths about his own dubious racing prowess that far outweighs his actual, all too modest talents on the track!

'Little Fauss & Big Halsy' is not only a breezily wonderful, sun-hazed view of early 70s dust bowl California, and the wholesomely greasy, high octane, hyper adrenalized risk-laden life of poor, itinerant dirt riders, but the delightfully awkward pairing of perma-twitchy, Michael J. Pollard and magisterially macho matinée idol, Redford was quite an inspired bit of casting; their vastly contrasting personalities, world views, philosophies and acting styles made for a ceaselessly fascinating pair of ill-matched racers! While Little Fauss and Halsy Knox's sporting alliance never quite gels, even as their working partnership becomes ever more volatile, you can still see genuine flashes of appreciation for the others unique, wholly contradictory talents.

Off the chaotic track and away from Halsy's noisome grandstanding there's an earnest humanity beneath all the broad, alpha male theatrics, especially endearing are, Little Fauss's delightfully earthy, kind-hearted parents whose genuine love and almost smothering affection for the shy, expert racer is, for me, the warmly pulsing heart of this utterly disarming film. Perhaps, no award-laden classic of vintage Americana, but still rather beautiful in its singular fashion. While Redford's striking star quality is undeniable, you can't help but feel this is ultimately about the softly-spoken Little and his hard-earned moment in the sun! Sidney J. Furie's unassuming, 'Little Fauss & Big Halsy' is a well-made, fundamentally light-hearted, nicely observed character piece with some zestily memorable performances from a fine supporting cast, Noah Beery Jr. is a sheer delight as blustering 'Pop' Fauss, playful Lucille Benson oozes palpable maternal warmth as 'Mom' Fauss, with a young and lissome, Lauren Hutton positively crackling as a witheringly sexy, William S. Burroughs reading kook! and the righteously choice, sawdust kickin', boot stompin' score by the Man in Black is certainly no less enticing!

 

 

 

 

 

'Exterminator 2' (1984) - Mark Buntzman.

With the dingy, skell-strewn city streets overrun with murderous sub-human vermin, these onerous, opportunistic parasites had proliferated far beyond the established due processes of the corrupted law's pitiful ability to cope with this rising tide of toxic humanity! Against such extraordinary evil, this relentless vanguard of skeevey villainy, flamboyantly headed by the demonically X-Rated street thug 'X' (Mario Van Peebles) there is, perhaps, only one steadfast, triumphantly thug trashing 80s iconoclast who might righteously combat this maniacally misanthropic murderer...The Exterminator!!!

Inexperienced first time feature director, Mark Buntzman might not have been the ideal choice to continue 'The Exterminator's incandescent legacy of fearless flame-throwing vengeance as, sadly, the sequel lacks the dark, gritty dynamism of Glickenhaus's landmark original. If enjoyed solely as a terrifically trashy, Bad guy BBQ-ing, B-Movie bonanza of Armoured garbage-truck driving death-dealing delirium then, quite frankly, 'Exterminator 2' remains an incendiary, intermittently insane, far from cerebral celebration of gnarly Ghetto retribution; the final edifying peek at scum-clogged street cleaner, John Eastland's singularly incandescent fury! The Exterminator keeps it real....REAL HOT!!!

A far from sleek, undeniably brutish, and occasionally baffling exploitation feature, this modestly budget Cannon films production is, sadly, all too often maligned, unfairly given short, snarky shrift, but seen in its pristine Blu-ray edition, 'Exterminator 2' has a wildly uncouth, joyfully hysterical, freakishly compelling B-Movie charisma all of its own, and one of this absurdly entertaining film's defining high points is the mesmerizing intensity that handsome headcase, Mario Van Peebles brings to his vivid performance as deranged, Manson-esque murder messiah 'X', whose hysterical, uncommonly explicit delight he expresses over his glibly despotic deeds makes for an exquisitely nasty nemesis for high-octane justice junky, John Eastland to exterminate with his own inimitable expertise for criminal-fuelled conflagration!!!  

 'The world lied...so he came back!' - Weirdlingwolf.

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Nightmare City' (1980)  - Umberto Lenzi.

Excluding his razor-sharp, fabulously flamboyant Gialli, 'Nightmare City' has always been the, Umberto Lenzi film that frequently draws me back into its fetid, warmly worm-infested folds, not because it is the very best of maestro, Lenzi's mercurial career as the reigning slaughter-savvy sultan of super stylised celluloid shock, but because it is arguably the most consistently entertaining, fiendishly inventive, fearsomely flesh flaying, eminently re-watchable, mesmerising bloody phantasmagoria the celebrated Cannibal King ever created!

Not long after an anomalous military plane makes an unscheduled landing when it proceeds to violently discharge its gruesomely grimacing, grot-faced cargo of hyperbolically hateful, disturbingly fleet, wantonly weapon-wielding, mayhem manifesting murder mutants in a breathlessly bravura display of barnstorming B-Movie mania that grabs you viciously by the throat and refuses to relinquish its grip until the quite literally nightmarish conclusion!

Proceeding rapidly at the dizzying rate of some delirious fever dream, our Stoic journalist hero, Dean Miller (Hugo Stiglitz) and his earnest surgeon wife, Anna (Laura Trotter) find themselves desperately lost in an unfamiliar, ever more threatening environment as this apocalyptic virus tears pitilessly through the city, fatally spreading its psychotic contagion deep into the corpse-clotted countryside! Everywhere our increasingly desperate couple turn, preternaturally strong, boggle-eyed, pus-drenched ghouls appear seconds away from brutally tearing them asunder in order to sate their ravening hunger for fresh blood! Even if outlandish gore and relentlessly violent incident wasn't enough of a distraction we have another killer score by maestro, Stelvio Cipriani which is no less infectious than the pernicious plague rendering humanity into a rabid, insensate, blood-craving horde of mouldering, madly accelerated murder-maniacs!

There have been far too many snarky snits who have cruelly gainsaid the manly performance of the undeniably mighty, Hugo Stiglitz, and I am resolutely not one of them, he expresses a robust, Gary Cooper stoicism, a dogged, Everyman resolve that creates a pleasingly stolid, weighty counterpoint to his increasingly neurotic wife, and all the unleavened charnal chaos surrounding them! 'Nightmare City' remains one of the fleetest, gloriously wrong-headed, luridly left-of-centre examples of blissfully batso, Euro-zombie bellicosity thus far conceived! For me, this gore-iously savage, screamingly nihilistic, deliciously demented doomsday shocker elevates terror Titan, Umberto Lenzi to that of an untouchable splatter deity! Lenzi Lives!!!!

 

                                                                            'STIGLITZ!!!!!'

'American Ninja 3 : Blood Hunt' (1989) - Cedric Sundstrom.

As though to give skull crushing credence to the age-old adage of 'third time lucky', director, Cedric Sundstrom's feisty third instalment in the beloved American Ninja opus is a demonstrative, trampoline-sized leap above the disappointing sequel, this time cannily giving powerhouse side-kicker, Curtis Jackson (Steve James) far more of a prominent Ninja-nuking role as the vest-bursting Jackson! The limber, Bon Jovi-haired newbie, David Bradley and sword-master, Curtis meet at a martial arts competition and subsequently decide to investigate the inevitably suspicious, diabolically shady machinations of 'The Cobra' (Marjoe Gortner), the duplicitous fiend who contrived the Karate games merely as an invidious rouse to evilly expand his own comicbook-tastic, super-virus making villainy!!!!

Having a new director helming the good ship Ninjutsu appears to have galvanized the previously flagging fist-flinging franchise, since there's considerably more pep to the Ninja-strewn narrative as Curtis, Sean and the delectable 'Ninjette Baby' (Michele Chan) courageously, if somewhat foolhardily take on the malevolent pharmacist and the deeply corrupted General Andreas (Yehuda Efroni), erstwhile despotic ruler of the island who so callously murdered Sean's martial artist father during a bungled heist at a karate tournament many years before.

American Ninja 3 : Blood Hunt' is positively tumescent with all the stridently stimulating 1980s action movie ingredients: righteously delivered revenge, explosively exciting knockdown martial arts mastery, a triumphantly coiffed ninja hero, the immortally cool dude, Steve James and the mesmerizing Ninjette Baby! Sundstrom's moorish martial arts madness made ever more irresistible by its cherry sweet topping, the splendidly rousing, brain-wormingly wicked theme by maestro, George S. Clinton, all in all this Cannon classic is a deeply satisfying, Ninja-enriched B-Movie treat! 

'Faster! Stronger! Braver than a force of super Ninja!' Right on Cannon!!!'