Policewomen (1974)

While some viewers may enjoy watching leading lady Sondra Currie kick ass and strut around in revealing outfits, those without an affinity for the actress will find little to enjoy in Policewomen, a grade-Z thriller about cops who go undercover in a smuggling ring. The action is dull and fake, the one-liners are painfully stupid, and the acting is terrible, with Currie’s lifeless performance setting the pace for her equally inept costars. Plus, because people who seek out movies like Policewomen usually settle for trashy elements in lieu of worthwhile ones, it deserves mentioning that at least one widely available print of Policewomenis bereft of nudity and even swearing (the audio drops out whenever someone curses). Yet it’s hard to imagine that the inclusion of rough stuff could make much difference. Anyway, the story begins with Lacy (Currie) trying to prevent a jailbreak at a women’s prison. Despite her karate jobs and right crosses, several badass mamas escape and join the criminal gang of Maude (Elizabeth Stuart), an aging crone portrayed in the “dragon lady” style of the era. (You know a movie’s in trouble when you wish Shelley Winters would show up to add some vigor.) Having impressed supervisors with her valor during the jailbreak, Lacy meets with top cops including Tony (Frank Mitchell), who put her through a series of tests to confirm she’s got the right stuff. (Sample dialogue from Mitchell:  “Now, you’re a very pretty girl, and you obviously have a way with escaping female prisoners, but . . .”) The highlight of the movie, speaking only in veryrelative terms, is Lacy’s sparring session with a karate instructor played by the always-enjoyable B-movie madman William Smith. Lacy flips Smith’s character on his ass several times, and Smith plays the scene for high comedy. So, even though the scene is stupid and unfunny, at least the scene wants to be something, which is more than can be said for the rest of the movie.

Policewomen: SQUARE

C.C. and Company (1970)

          So it’s the late ’60s and you’re Roger Smith, a former leading man now sidelined by various health problems but happily preoccupied with a new marriage to stage-and-screen sex kitten Ann-Margret. Your bride has entrusted you with the management of her career, and you already have a track record of producing (for instance, a coming-of-age feature with Jacqueline Bisset) and writing (including several episodes of the TV show on which you starred, 77 Sunset Strip). The next logical step is creating a vehicle for your titian-haired missus, right? Well, sort of. C.C. and Company is a showcase for Ann-Margret, to be sure, providing her with intense dramatic scenes and sexy peekaboo moments. But it’s a biker flick, and it’s also the first movie in which football star Joe Namath plays a leading role. So you’re Roger Smith, and your best plan for boosting your wife’s stardom is relegating her to a supporting role in the Joe Namath motorcycle picture that you’re writing and producing? Ours is not to judge, and it should be noted that as of this writing, Ann-Margret and Smith are still married after more than 40 years, so C.C. and Company must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

          And, indeed, though it’s awful in terms of dramatic credibility, C.C. and Company is enjoyable as a collection of glossy surfaces. The plot, no surprise, is pedestrian: Hog-riding outlaw C.C. Ryder (Namath) runs with a nasty gang until he falls for fashion writer Ann McCalley (Ann-Margret), but when C.C. tries to break from the gang for a new life with his lady, the gang’s leader, Moon (William Smith), kidnaps Ann to force a showdown. The movie’s visuals, courtesy of director Seymour Robbie and his team, are kicky and vivid—biker fights, fashion shows, romantic interludes, and so on. Namath’s couldn’t-give-a-shit attitude makes him watchable even though he can’t act, and Ann-Margret’s flamboyant vamping is a hoot. Naturally, her beauty is spotlighted at every opportunity, since Roger Smith knew what he was selling. Adding the X-factor that makes C.C. and Company a full-on guilty pleasure is biker-movie regular William Smith (no relation to the producer-director), as the villainous Moon. With his enormous biceps, handlebar moustache, and wicked line deliveries, he’s a great comic-book baddie, ably abetted by supporting thugs including fellow B-movie stalwart Sid Haig.

C.C. and Company: FUNKY

Boss Nigger (1975)

Blaxploitation stalwart Fred Williamson was well on the way to becoming a bad-movie auteur by the time he wrote, produced, and starred in this brazenly titled Western, so Boss Nigger features his signature elements of a take-no-guff protagonist and substandard storytelling—in Williamson’s cinematic world, attitude is everything and quality is a needless luxury. Presumably conceived as a dramatic riff on the previous year’s comedy blockbuster Blazing Saddles, this blaxploitation joint employs the same narrative contrivance as the earlier film—a black man becomes sheriff of a frontier town, much to the chagrin of the white locals. However, instead of being installed in the job through political chicanery, as in Blazing Saddles, Boss (Williamson) seizes the vacant sheriff’s position in order to hunt down a rival—and also to tilt the race-relations scales in favor of African-Americans. “Sorry, we can’t stay for supper,” Boss says in a moment indicative of the film’s obviousness, “but we got us mo’ whiteys to catch.” Much of the picture comprises uninspired scenes of Boss and his comic-relief sidekick, Amos (D’Urville Martin), humiliating white people while they pursue a criminal named Jed Clayton (William Smith), a standard-issue Western villain who kills for fun and profit. All of this should be diverting in a trashy sort of way, but the movie is too enervated to enjoy. Director Jack Arnold, a veteran whose career stretches back to sci-fi classics including The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1955), seems utterly disinterested in his work (Can you blame him?), and the generic funk score clashes with Arnold’s old-fashioned visuals. Plus, Williamson’s script lacks both restraint and taste—during the climax, for instance, Williamson features Boss getting crucified by the bad guys.

Boss Nigger: LAME

Piranha (1972)

Starring drive-in stalwart William Smith, Piranha is a grungy thriller produced in South America that bears no relation to the cult-fave 1978 Joe Dante flick of the same name. (In fact, not a single killer fish appears onscreen in this movie, excepting the one featured in a stock shot running beneath the main title.) The gist of the piece is that an adventurous American nature photographer, Terry (Anha Capri), heads to Venezuela for work, accompanied by her brother, womanizing party boy Art (Tom Simcox). They hire Jim (Peter Brown) as a guide, but soon fall into the web of Caribe (Smith), a swaggering gringo who promises to help the crew find interesting photographic subjects, like a remote diamond mine. In its broadest strokes, the plot of Piranha is okay—Terry’s got baggage from childhood trauma, Jim’s romantically interested in Terry, Caribe is an operator with a secret agenda, and so on. Plus, since it turns out Caribe is actually a psycho trying to draw Terry away from civilization so he can rape her and kill her companions, it’s not as if the picture wants for dramatic content. The problem, or at least one of them, is the directionless script and the padded running time. Piranha contains perhaps 30 minutes of purposeful(ish) dramatic scenes, and the rest of the picture comprises endless montages of jungle animals, primitive locals, and other National Geographic-type material. There’s even an interminable motorcycle race. Compounded by the amateur nature of the acting—excepting Smith, who is as menacing as possible given the movie’s stupid dialogue—the narrative dead weight makes Piranha a long journey not worth taking.

Piranha: SQUARE

Chrome and Hot Leather (1971)

The premise of this drive-in flick sounds like the kind of hypothetical inquiry jacked-up dudes might debate in a bar: “Who’d win in a fight, bikers or Green Berets?” Dramatizing a battle between these unlikely adversaries ensures that Chrome and Hot Leather has plenty of hand-to-hand combat, macho swaggering, and vehicular mayhem. It’s all a bit outlandish and silly, to be sure, and the plot is simultaneously lame-brained and overwrought, but there are enough biceps, chains, guns, machines, and weapons in this movie to keep any fan of tough-guy cinema happy. What’s more, the picture is decorated with a coterie of attractive ’70s starlets and a steady onslaught of hard rock. Things get started when wholesome teenagers Helen (Ann Marie) and Kathy (a young Cheryl Ladd, billed as “Cheryl Moor”), unluckily end up on a country highway at the same time as a motorcycle gang called the Devils. One of the bikers whacks the girls’ car with a chain, spooking the girls and causing them to fatally drive off a cliff. Afterward, Kathy’s fiancé, Vietnam vet Mitch (Tony Young), finds out what happened and determines to track down the gang. To aid his quest, Mitch recruits his Army buddies (one of whom is played, without much flair, by R&B legend Marvin Gaye), and the soldiers go undercover as a biker gang. Eventually, Mitch targets the Devils’ muscle-bound leader, T.J. (William Smith), gaining information about him by seducing T.J.’s main squeeze, the nubile Susan (Kathy Baumann). And so it goes—Chrome and Hot Leather never escapes the familiar routine of bar brawls, meaningless sex, and open-road riding, but the picture is so jam-packed with lurid sensations that it moves along nicely. Smith, as always, cuts a formidable figure, so he blows nearly everyone else off the screen—not the biggest accomplishment—although Baumann’s considerable physical charms make an impression. This is awfully low-rent stuff, but since that’s the point, Chrome and Hot Leather must be considered a grimy sort of success.

Chrome and Hot Leather: FUNKY

Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973)

“I never did manage to see Invasion of the Bee Girls,” the film’s screenwriter, Nicholas Meyer, notes in his autobiography, The View from the Bridge. “Maybe one day. People who see it on my résumé keep telling me it is a camp classic, but I never know what this means or if it’s a good thing.” Rest assured, Mr. Meyer, it’s not a good thing. According to Meyer’s account, producers hired him to flesh out their basic notion of a horror movie in which women prey on men. He provided a fanciful story about an experiment that gives women insect-like appetites; these women then suck life energy from male victims during sex. While it’s rather difficult to imagine a worthwhile movie emanating from that storyline, Meyer’s subsequent sci-fi credits (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Time After Time, and so on) justify giving him the benefit of the doubt. In any event, Meyer describes being aghast when he was shown a rewritten version of his original screenplay, and if the finished film is any indication, his reaction made sense. Invasion of the Bee Girls is a cheap-looking, lurid, silly thriller with barely any trace of character development or narrative momentum. In place of these qualities, the movie has naked chicks screwing men to death, to the accompaniment of the kind of funked-out music one might hear in a low-rent strip club. Wandering through this sensationalistic sludge is reliable B-movie actor William Smith, who plays a detective investigating mysterious murders until he’s captured by Dr. Susan Harris (Anitra Ford), the psycho who transformed a bevy of babes into a coven of killers. Invasion of the Bee Girlsoffers a few kitschy distractions for fans of grimy drive-in cinema, including an endless array of breasts and some bizarre sci-fi imagery once the film decamps to Harris’ trippy lair, but unless that sounds like enough to keep you interested, take Meyer’s lead and avoid this bargain-basement clunker.

Invasion of the Bee Girls: LAME

The Last American Hero (1973)

          Based on a nonfiction story by Tom Wolfe, which was in turn based on the career of real-life NASCAR driver Junior Johnson, The Last American Hero is a solid character piece elevated by the documentary-style realism of its racing sequences and by uniformly good acting. The screenplay, by William Roberts, is a bit on the thin side, relying on broad characterizations and a hackneyed structure, but the aforementioned strengths help smooth over shortcomings in the writing.

          Jeff Bridges stars as Junior Jackson, the movie’s fictionalized version of Johnson. He’s a willful young man living in the Deep South, working in the family business of running moonshine. Junior’s skill behind the wheel comes in handy for evading cops, but because local police know all about the Jackson’s operation, Junior’s father, Elroy (Art Lund), is in and out of jail on a regular basis. When the legal bill related to one of Elroy’s arrests exceeds what the family can afford, Junior steps up deliveries but also joins demolition-derby races organized by an unscrupulous promoter (Ned Beatty).

          Soon, Junior graduates to the big time of the NASCAR circuit, where he competes with a super-confident champion (William Smith) and courts a racetrack groupie (Valerie Perrine). The story gains dimension once Junior starts running with a big-city crowd, because his aspirations to independence and integrity wither upon exposure to pressures like the need for sponsorship. In particular, Junior gets into an ongoing hassle with Burton Colt (Ed Lauter), a hard-driving entrepreneur who sets usurious terms and expects humiliating deference. All of this interesting material serves the concept encapsulated by the Jim Croce-sung theme song, “I Got a Name,” because the thrust of the story is Junior’s search for identity.

          Bridges is great, as always, winningly essaying Junior’s transition from naïveté to worldliness, and the supporting actors fit their roles perfectly. Lund and Geraldine Fitzgerald provide earthy gravitas as Junior’s parents, while a young Gary Busey adds an impetuous counterpoint as Junior’s brother. Perrine, all blowsy exuberance, captures the damaging caprice of a woman caught in fame’s tail winds, and Smith is understated as a man who realizes his moment in the spotlight is slipping away. Lauter rounds out the principal cast with his petty villainy, providing a formidable obstacle for the hero to overcome.

          Much of the credit for this ensemble’s work must go to director Lamont Johnson, whose handling of the movie’s visuals is as strong as his guidance of the actors. Though usually an unassertive journeyman, Johnson surpasses expectations by elevating Roberts’ humdrum script into something memorably humane.

The Last American Hero: GROOVY