Urge To Fast Forward

 

 (imdb)

URGE TO KILL-1989-A record producer Bono (Peter Gordeno) invites a would-be singer back to his swinging pad for some hi jinks. His place has cameras everywhere and a computer nicknamed "Sexy" controls everything. After a night together, the producer leaves and the singer invites her friend over. After a massage, things go awry. The singer is scalded to death in the shower and her friend is burned to ashes by a tanning machine. Later Bono has his girlfriend Jane (Sarah Hope Walker) and two other women over. After frolicking in a bubble bath, the two women disappear. Other weird things happen and it seems Sexy has taken over. The computer later manifests herself as a green woman who kills Bono by throwing him into the computer monitor. 

Featuring nudity, cat fights and mud wrestling, this movie sucks! The director Derek Ford made many sexploitation movies in England, wrote several books and came to a bad end, dying in 1993 at the age of 62.

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Caged Heat

 

CAGED HEAT-1974-Jackie Wilson (Erica Gavin) is arrested in a drug bust and sent to a woman's prison where she meets Belle (Roberta Collins) and Pandora (Ella Reid). The place is run by a hung up wheelchair bound warden McQueen (Barbara Steele) and a pipe smoking doctor (Warren Miller). She puts Pandora in solitary because she had a picture of her boyfriend in her cell. They pick fruit, have fights in the showers and walk around topless. Jackie's cellmate is lifer Levelle (Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith). 

When one inmate Maggie (Juanita Brown) tries to rebel, Jackie is also blamed. They are sent for CPT where the sadistic pipe smoking doctor gives them shock treatments as punishment. Later Jackie and Maggie revolt, steal a truck and then a police car. They almost get arrested for prostitution when they meet up with Maggie's friend Crazy Alice (Lynda Gold). Meanwhile the ⁰doc rapes the comatose Belle (and cries about it). Maggie and Jackie go back for revenge and a bloody shootout caps the finale.

This was screenwriter (and future Oscar winner) Jonathan Demme's debut as a director and also features a soundtrack written and performed by John Cale. I've read Michael Bloomfield plays guitar buon it but I'm not so sure...

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Wrestling Women

BELOW THE BELT-1980-A waitress named Rosa (Regina Baff) trains to become a woman wrestler (well, I guess she couldn't train to become a male wrestler...). Since she's tried various occupations no one believes she'll succeed. She's trained by Mildred Burke (a real life former pro wrestler) and she practices on her DJ boyfriend.  She trains hard, her gum chewing friend comes on to her and she's dumped by her boyfriend. She goes to Florida to train under the weird looking Jean (Billie Mahoney). Dolph Sweet plays Jean's husband, an alcoholic who can't remember which character in has to play in the ring and says "old wrestlers never die, they just fake away". The conceited butch ladies champ Terrible Tommy (real pro wrestler Jane O'Brien) gives her a hard time. After some adventures and soul searching Rosa gets her title shot at Tommy. Shirley Stoler from THE HONEYMOON KILLERS plays another wrestler.

BELT is very low budget but the acting is fairly good especially by Baff (who had roles in THE GREAT GATSBY and ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ) and it was made before the big budgeted flop ALL THE MARBLES. Wrestling fans might want to see it for the footage of WWWF wrestlers at Madison Square Garden in the late '70's.

Besides other wrestlers like Lenny Montana and Tiger Joe Marsh the only other "actor" (beside Sweet) I recognized was TV actor Herb Voland. The Firesign Theater provided some voices. I don't know anything about the director Robert Fowler. This is based on a novel by Roselyn Drexler who's other novel Lily was also made into a movie.

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8 or 10...Who's Counting?

10 VIOLENT WOMAN-1982-Ted V. Mikels, the creator of THE DOLL SQUAD and ASTRO-ZOMBIES, returns with his “woman in prison tale”. 

8 women are tired of working for a living so they rob a jewelry store of a million dollars in diamonds. They go to Las Vegas to sell the loot to Leo The Fence (director Mikels). He offers them cocaine in exchange for the diamonds but they don't accept it. One of the woman gets shot (and later dies) and another stomps Leo to death with her high heel. 

After running around in the dark and stealing a guy's clothes they go to a club to sell the coke. The heel stomping woman deals to two narcs and is shot dead. The others are arrested and sent to prison where their section is run by Miss Terry, sadistic lesbian and her hench-woman Madge (“a hypocritical religious old creep”) with a limp, wart and mustache. Once in a while Terry clashes with a social worker but usually abuses the inmates especially one woman (who refused her carnal come-ons) who she tortures with a riding crop and a wet towel while Madge prays loudly. Only the lone African American attendant seems to care. 

After a shower cat fight, the remaining girls escape and some of them become belly dancers for a Sheik (it was his diamonds they stole). 

This a goofy violent movie with some nudity and comedy (intentional and unintentional). The acting isn't the greatest (Mikels himself gives a good performance) but the worst part is most of the night scenes are too dark to see! 

Co-screenwriter James Gordon White wrote both THE INCREDIBLE TWO HEADED TRANSPLANT and THE THING WITH TWO BRAINS! It starts out with only eight women. By the time they get to jail they are only 6 but they meet 2 prisoners who help in their escape so I suppose in reality there were 10 women! Ted V. Mikels, probably the last of the old time '60's-'70's low budget filmmakers (contemporaries like Ray Dennis Steckler, Al Adamson and  Larry Buchanan are all gone) is still going strong at 84 and recently released ASTRO-ZOMBIES:M4.    

This was filmed in 1979 but only released in 1987 (I saw it in the now defunct Drake movie theater on Woodhaven Blvd in Queens, NY!)

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