Movie Ad of the Week: FUTUREKICK (1991)

The sci-fi kickboxer pic FUTUREKICK, starring Don "The Dragon" Wilson, opened at the Ford Wyoming Drive-In in Detroit on September 6, 1991 -- 29 years ago today!

The Endangered List (Case File #155)

WELCOME TO OBLIVION (1990)

Starring
Dack Rambo (Kenner)
Clare Beresford (Grace)
Meshach Taylor (Elijah)
Mark Bringelson (Big)
Charles Dougherty (Zig)
Diana Quijano (Radio)
Emily Kreimer (Shiela)
Orlando Sacha (Bishop)
Ramsay Ross (Lazarus)

Directed by
Augusto Tamayo

Produced by
Luis Llosa

Co-Producer
Sally Mattison

Screenplay by
Len Jenkin
and
Dan Kleinman

Associate Producer
Margarita Morales Macedo

Camera
Cusi Barrio

Edited by
Augusto Tamayo
and
Dan Schalk

Music by
Kevin Klingler

Sound by
Edgar Lostaunau

Assistant Director
Pili Flores Guerra

Stunt Coordinator
Jose Luy

Special Makeup Effects
Thom Schouse

A
Concorde Pictures
release

Running time: 80 minutes

MPAA rating: R

WELCOME TO OBLIVION, a cheap but straightforward futuristic action movie that Luis Llosa produced in Peru for Roger Corman's Concorde Pictures, received a theatrical release in Cincinnati, San Diego, and other cities beginning in February of 1990. A screener cassette from Concorde was sent to Variety critic Lawrence Cohn at the end of that year and his negative review (below) appeared in the January 28th, 1991 issue of Daily Variety.

For whatever reason, WELCOME TO OBLIVION never made it to home video. Instead, an alternate version was constructed by editor Robert L. Goodman consisting of sequences from the original film, new scenes produced by Mike Elliott and directed by Kevin Tent -- including an appearance by Corman as the President of the United States -- and footage pulled from BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, WARLORDS OF THE 21ST CENTURY, THE WARRIOR AND THE SORCERESS, WHEELS OF FIRE, CRIME ZONE, LORDS OF THE DEEP, and DUNE WARRIORS. Music by Terry Plumeri and Ed Tomney was also added, and the title was changed to ULTRA WARRIOR.

Daily Variety - November 16, 1992

Nearly three years after its release as WELCOME TO OBLIVION, the Frankenmovie known as ULTRA WARRIOR emerged from the bandages as a videocassette sporting new Boris Vallejo box art on December 17, 1992 from New Horizons Home Video. This version, also a no-show on DVD and Blu-ray, currently has an IMDb user rating of 1.6 out of 10.

We find it impossible to believe that WELCOME TO OBLIVION is worse than ULTRA WARRIOR. It's time for some company to put out a special edition Blu-ray with both versions and a featurette that explains why this happened.

Movie Ad of the Week: SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE and HOUR OF THE ASSASSIN (1987)

Moviegoers in the New York area may have felt a slight case of déjà vu when they flipped to the weekend section of the Daily News on May 15, 1987 and saw this ad for HOUR OF THE ASSASSIN...

...because it's a recycling of the ad design for SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE, which had breezed through New York one month earlier (April 10, 1987).

Pam is back? Actually, she never left.

Hot on the heels of Pam Grier’s comeback in Quentin Tarantino’s JACKIE BROWN (1997) and the release of the Tarantino/Miramax-backed blaxploitation coffee table book What It Is, What It Was!, New Horizons Home Video reissued three of the movies that Grier starred in for producer Roger Corman under the tag line “She’s back.” Here’s the four-page promotional brochure that New Horizons sent out in early 1998 to advertise their Pam Grier (“The Queen of Blaction”) line of VHS tapes. It’s the same approach Orion Home Video had taken ten years earlier when they released a half dozen of Pam’s American International movies at the height of the video boom, except those were priced higher for rental and these carried a $14.98 SRP. Compare this brochure to the ho-hum way in which Shout! Factory is currently pushing the same movies on DVD/ Blu-ray -- three of them together in a “Women in Prison” collection and the fourth in a separate “Lethal Ladies” volume -- and you might actually believe for a minute or two that Pam's name is no longer a major selling point. It is, but since Shout can’t get its niche titles into major retail chains anymore unless they’re packaged as 3’fers, and because rental shops and smaller independent stores like Entertainment Outlet are nonexistent outside of a few major cities, no one is going to see Pam’s name on the front of a DVD/Blu-ray case anyway unless they go looking for it -- online.

One-Sheet of the Week: SILK (1986)

SILK (1986)

One-Sheet of the Week: THE SISTERHOOD (1987)

THE SISTERHOOD (1987)

BIG BAD MAMA II (1987)

Reviewed by
The Keeper of the Pit

Hay, I mean, hey gang, the Keeper here, jest taking some slime off whilst listening to Flatt & Scrugg’s “The Story of Bonnie & Clyde.” Time to dust off my bowl & think Depression, & there’s nothing like some chicken-lickin’ pickin’ to get the ole Keep in a banjocular vein!

Long about 1967 Arthur Penn scored a big hit with BONNIE AND CLYDE, witch did much not only in the style of sinematic violence to come, but witch lickwise did much to Dunaway with the old Warner Bros. method of mythologizing the gangster. (Baby)face it, gang, Hollyweird has long acted like the gangster is scum kind of hero, when axe-ually he’s jest scum kind of scum, pond my word.


Not the type of guy to let his own brand of story-telling go unreekcognized (he had already done a mean despunking of the gangster hit and myth with MACHINE GUN KELLY almost a decade previously), King Cheapo Roger Corman splattered the screens of ’67 with THE ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE, witch at the time took all the critikill pans the review-hacks had saved up while praising BONNIE AND CLYDE to the skies and beyond. Seems there were too many references to whops and crazy Irishmen; never mind the fact that the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was the result of the long-standing war between, you got it, crazy scum who happened to be of Irish and Italian persuasion. Still & malt, ole Roger escaped from 20th whatever the critikill slurs. Ya might say they only ethnicked him!


By 1970 Corman was out there with BLOODY MAMA, the first of a series of MAMA movies. Shelley Winters played Ma Barker with CONsiderable verve under Corman’s direction, & her assordid gang of relatives & rejects gave new demeaning to many a perversion. Should you ever find this titular title on video rental, be sure to (banjo) pick it up -- the monster and I incest!


Spooking of titular titles, by 1974 Corman’s New World Pictures found itself riding thigh, uh, high with Steve Carver’s BIG BAD MAMMARIES, er, MAMA, starring the always remarkable Angie Dickinson as Wilma McClatchie, a gun-totin’ hip-slinger of a reel woman.


New World’s market at this point in slime was pretty much car crash & burn, & BIG BAD MAMA slayfully mixed said formula with udder New World staples, like titties and leer.


Even the Angie D. bod was on bountittieful display, as many a men’s magazine of the day can attest two.


SET in the 1930’s BIG BAD was a fun PITure, light-hearted without being light-headed. A message of sordid sorts lay there, about banks, land, family sticking together through hell & dry weather. Also on set, uh, handling Angie’s set, I mean, also on hand were Tom Skerritt & also William Shatner, doing a fine turn as the flip side of his repertoire, a coward.



Surely this was a flick whereon the ghouled Captain was more than WILLing to trade his enterprise for a booby prize, eh? (Hay, why should Nimoy be the only guy that KEEP’s his ears warm?).


Ah, butt back then in ’74 even the most light-hearted of folk could by the choice of their path through life be light-headed toward tragedy. Crime, even when cornspun rather than Capone-run, does not pay. What seemed a drive-in romp turned downer with an ending witch found Angie D.’s daughters tooling down the road laughing about the last heist only to find out it WAS the last heist: it seemed Angie D. had met her Wilmaker!






& now a word from your pun sir. Much to his dismayhem, the Keeper can only admit (one) that the drive-ins are on their last GASp. Old New World is long gone, new New World is more successful with video releases than theatricks, the mall has replaced the Passion PIT as the home for happy zombies. Where for most of his (such as it is) life, the Keeper could catch films on giant, outdoor concrete screens, now he has to suffer through nothing but the latest big budgie product the majors use to illuminate the little boxes they call theaters. How many indepundent pix pass through such venues could be counted on one of the monster’s tentacles…the majors rule. Little pictures have nowhere to go…no neighborhood theaters anymore, no drive-ins, no play-dates at the mall. I mean, when I grue up in the 50’s (sure that’s dating myself, butt when ya look like the Keeper, you HAVE to date yerself!) & went to outdoor ogle the 50 Foot Woman, that’s how big she looked. I mean, she was TITanic! & ass fur as the Keeper is concerned, that’s axe-actly how Big Bad Mama’s should be Hayes-seed!


Cut the hay to 1987. Corman/Concorde do some theatrick still, but ole Roger didn’t survive making movies until retirement by being a dummy: nowadaze most Concorde product moves through video, the “B” now “B” & “C” market of the ‘80’s. Rare is the Concorde pic witch even sees the light of a mall box, so Corman thrives on video deals with MGM/UA, foreign sales, cable, etc. & wonder of wonders, seems to make his usual skillful killing, whilst the outfit witch is now New World flounders like a fish out of Wanda.


So, to survive & thrive in the changed market, Corman of late makes sequels. Jest like big $ Hollyweird. It KEEPs up the sinterest in which might lay doormat on shelves, witch makes dealers happy. “SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE 2? I didn’t know there was a SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE 1!” (& then he slaps down his “2” bits!) “DEATHSTALKER 2? Yeah, I’ll take it. When they comin’ out with SORCERESS 2 WHOSE ASS IS ONE?”


Witch brings us 2...


In the true grue blue tradition of Hollyweird sequels, it safely ignores certain events of its predecessor (Fur instants, the Frankenstein monster could die in a sulfur PIT one PITure, then be floundered, uh, found in a block of ice in the next. Witch beats a bolt in the neck!). So, BIG BAD MAMA 2 jest opens with Angie D. & her two daughters (& who can argue with an open Angie D. plus 2 daughters, letch KEEP it in the family way!) as they watch the loco Tex-ass law of 1934 come onto their homestead & blow the old man away in the name of the Morgan Crawford bank.







Morgan Crawford’s the name of the piece’s villain. He’s a bigpig, uh, wig banker & loco business-poison, played by Bruce Glover.


Soon he’ll be running for governor whilst Wilma & her 2-girl gang run for their lives as they look for slaymates & playdates.


They’d rather knock over banks than get knocked up…like the John Solie 1-sheet sez, “Untouchable? She’s unstoppable!” & before you know it, Robert Culp as Daryl Pearson, “Voice of the West” for the Philadelphia Eagle, catches their act of daylightheaded robbery & of curse wants their story.


Wilma & the gals spot him on their tail, so the youn’uns engage in some skinny-dipping to sucker him into their clutches as Ma draws a bead on him. Before he knows it, they’ve stripped him down to his hat without him so much as getting felt! Why, he doesn’t even get to ask Wilma “What’s a Ness girl like you doing in a place like this?”




Ah, butt this is a dizzylulu of a story. Shortly the gals have in their hands & band the son of the perspiring governor Crawford, & he licks the idea jest swell.


I mean, his dad’s that kind of guy. When Wilma & gang stick up 1 of his fundraisers & a lackey jest sez why don’t we jest shoot shoot it out, ole Morgan replies “Jewelry can be replaced. Wealthy contributors can’t.”


Gradually the tone gets more political. Sleazy sets witch look no cheaper than the rest become “Hoovertowns,” & the spectre of the dust bowl looms even larger.

After a stop at the Jackson County Fair...


...& a visit to Culp’s favorite bordello (a SET witch can also be seen in another Depression-era Corman quickie, DADDY'S BOYS)...


...Culp and Angie D. get it together in footage not nearly as vivid as BBM1’s.



Maybe she wandered from DRESSED TO KILL to BODY DOUBLE, I dunno…


Angie’s an old lady butt firm, as Lenny Bruce used to say, butt I have my doubts.


Rewind!


Still pause!


Rewind again! (Down, monster, down!)


You be the judge, butt I look at it this way: drool, pant, slobber! Who knows, by the next sequel they may have to call it OLD BAT MAMMARIES.


From there we go to the wrap-up: a return to the family boneyard & homestead, from witch Ma & the gals will go straight. Will Culp, when he learns of the upcoming bloodbath from the loco loco law, turn journalistic jellyfish & root for the boys with the badges? In udder words, will he CELLAR out? We won’t tell, unless someone forces us to watch FATAL ATTRACTION AGAIN.




[Originally published in Temple of Schlock #12, October 1988]