Angel of Heat (1983)
D. Merl A. Shreiberman
Full Frame DVD
This ridiculous starring vehicle for porn starlet Marilyn Chambers starts off promisingly enough. With ENTER THE DRAGON inspired opening credits that feature Chambers performing really shitty karate moves complete with the strobing effect from that classic. But since that clearly isn’t enough to hook an audience in they have Chambers go full frontal nude as well. Then add a weird effect that has her fade to sketches of herself periodically that have nothing to do with anything. I noticed right away that she has some odd looking tits. I dunno if she had some really early 70’s implants or just oddball boobs but they sit really far apart and seem rather hard. Like they don’t want to move from the perch on either side of her boney chest. Otherwise she’s an attractive lady. I’ve seen her in recent years at conventions and she still looks really good actually. Her new boob job is much nicer in fact.
The plot has her working for a secret agent cabal that does mop up missions for the US government that are so dangerous even they don’t want to know about them. Her group is called THE PROTECTORS and she is a perfect weapon, or so we are told. Mean while Mary Woronov and her goofy dude sidekick Stephen Johnson are assigned by another secret government agency to find out who is stealing high tech microchips and why. Woronov is a nymphomaniac who will bed down anyone and anything while Johnson is a goofy genius of the “aw shucks” variety. We get to see Chambers in action when she catches an intruder played by fellow porn star Randy West and proceeds to bang him. up until now the movie has been a little silly but relatively played straight. But suddenly it becomes a slapstick comedy with West badly dubbed with a Chinese accent AND subtitled in English with subs that don’t match what he is saying at all. It is a weird joke that really isn’t funny as much as it is disconcerting an disorienting. Plus my friends and I couldn’t figure out who he was and kept commenting on how he looked like Marjo Gortner.
Eventually our leads all separately end up on an island where a reclusive genius is working on some top secret scientific mumbo jumbo, More importantly he is the spitting image of a really strange dude who comes into my work, except this guy in the movie wears silk pants and a cape. though I could see the guy from work doing that too if people would let him. Johnson and Woronov go to a disco with the dudes stacked wife, but this disco has mud wrestling and naked dancing girls. Upstairs at the disco some sort of shenanigans are going on that we never actually see but hear about second hand that deal with blackmailing of employees to steal the microchips so dude with the cape can use them in his secret schemes to take over the world. Chambers tries to get into the club and has to get all hot with a midget who looks like Gary Busey and rides her like a pony (probably the movie’s highlight). She puts a Vulcan death grip on him and gets her info, which really isn’t anything at all. Eventually all the good guys end up working together and figure out the nutty cape man is creating androids (who love to have sex) to take over the world, and are controlled by sound. turns out his sexy wife is an android and she has fallen in love with Woronov after their heated round of mud wrestling at the disco. Lots of guys in thongs and speedos prance around as androids making my friend Mike really nervous and there is a lame climax with cheap ass melting robots and bad slapstick comedy.
Intentionally bad movies are a particularly painful breed. Bad because you have no money, or no talent, or no patience for the production are all fine and good. Bad just because things didn’t work out in your favor and the odds were against you is fine too. But bad because you set out to make a movie that is intentionally stupid to try to get laughs is often just insulting and irritating. ANGEL OF HEAT is one of those movies. Occasionally it is amusing, mostly when Mary Woronov is on screen since she is always fun to watch and gives her all. But this is such a threadbare and embarrassing production that to have it all be so purposely inane makes it feel like being in a room with a friend who wants to get on your nerves.
Weirdly enough the opening credits actually read ANGEL OF HEAT: THE PROTECTORS BOOK #1 so it looks like they were wanting to launch some sort of low budget comedy/ espionage series. Clearly that didn’t happen. If they had played it more straight and went for a more action/exploitation feel ala Andy Sidaris they could have been onto something. But it missed the boat.
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