Man that cat is one bad DUDE!!!

The Guy From Harlem (1977)

D. Rene Martinez Jr.

Mill Creek

1.85 (Open Frame DVD)

This is a blaxploitation epic for those who felt that DOLEMITE was too polished and high tech for their tastes. A dime store circuit classic that for reasons unknown to this viewer has yet to get the cult status it so richly deserves. Imagine a ghetto action movie, minus the choreography to pull off the action, directed by folks who seem to have only seen store front porno movies, but are way too shy to actually shoot any on-screen sex. Hire a lead actor who consistently looks like he has either shit his pants or might cry at any given moment as your bad assssss title hero from Harlem, but set the whole shebang in Miami ('cause the title THE GUY FROM MIAMI doesn't really have a great ring to it, does it?) and you are partially there. Then find a bunch of day laborers, convicts and back street radicals to fill out the supporting roles and you might come close. To make the whole films feel just right you would need to scout locations with the most eye punishing day-glo seventies decor possible that had to blind the junkies crazy enough to actually come see the inspired trash and you might land a butt nugget comparable to this anti-classic known as THE GUY FROM HARLEM.

"Bitch, I'm the GUY FROM HARLEM!"

The flick stars blue-eyed brother Loye Hawkins as Al Conners, aka The Guy From Harlem, a black private dick who's a whiny sex machine to some of the chicks when he isn't running a cut rate detective agency. When one of his pals from up north in the CIA arrives with a job he leaps at the offer of $2000 to help out. "Two thousand dollars! For that kind of money I'll do what ever the hell you want me to!" he exclaims. Turns out the gig is easy street. They just want him to watch over an African Princess who is stopping over in Miami and they know the local Mob is gonna try to kidnap her. Seems the CIA has a leak and they only trust The Guy From Harlem. What they do not trust is his raging libido, because they warn him about sixty five times not to sleep with her as it could cause an international incident. They proceed to stress over and over that "she's cute, real cute, a real looker. But it could strain international relations." Then they tell him they have to pose as man and wife while he looks after her so the mob doesn't catch on! From there it is only a ticking clock before he slips his dick from Harlem into her majesty's secret cave. The moment he meets the Princess (Patricia Fulton and about six tons of blue eye shadow) she bitches about how much she needs a body massage from the rough plane ride. Hint Hint.

"Honky assassin masseuse at work."

Eventually he shows her some class by ordering room service for the both of them. Two New York strip steaks and a bottle of J&B scotch! When it arrives the poor maid delivering it is struggling to push the cart over the two inch orange shag rug, like someone from LAWRENCE OF ARABIA pushing a buddy over a sand dune. Then suddenly Al jumps up and punches the bitch out cold! POW! The princess flips out; "Why'd you hit her?" To witch Al exclaims "It was a MAN, baby!" and he rips off the maid's wig to reveal a knocked out cold dude. "I could smell a good New York Strip steak from a block away!" and he pulls open the tray to reveal a pistol underneath! Maybe The Guy From Harlem is useful after all!

"It's a MAN baby!"

He takes the Princess to his white girlfriend's apartment, saying that it's safe, before shooing the cracker ho out the door for the night, so he can get down to making the beast with two backs. But remember earlier when I mentioned the filmmakers being too embarrassed to actually show any real skin? They start making it and the movie cuts to not only the next morning, but hours later and Al has sent the princess on her way. The plot is over and she has returned to wherever the hell she came! And the movie isn't even half over yet! Then we meet some street thugs who hire AL to do a drop of some drugs and money to someone who works for head mobster "Big Daddy" who are holding their daughter for ransom. Al is smarter this time and asks for much bigger money of $2,000. When he asks who Big Daddy is, Al gets one of the best descriptions of a villain in movie history: "the thing is nobody knows what Big Daddy looks like, very few people have ever seen him. All we do know is, he's a white guy who is six foot two, with blond curly hair. And man, you talk about muscles... he's got the biggest muscles! And he wears bands around his arms. But nobody knows what he looks like. Nobody's ever seen him!" Naturally when Al walks right past him in a gym the very next day while setting up the delivery, he doesn't even notice him!

"When the CIA arrives, people listen."

Meanwhile we meet Sue (Wanda Starr with the biggest Afro in screen history) the girl he's supposed to be helping. She's tied to a chair in some cabin in the woods with a honky tormenting her. Some big muscled, wife beater shirt wearing, mullet headed bo-hunk motherfucker, who vacillates between calling her a nigger, and trying to paw at her dark chocolate titties. Funny thing is that no matter how aggressive he gets or mean he tries to be, this tiny little women, who is bound and tied, still manages to fight him off, kicking him in the balls, pushing him away with her feet, talking shit to him, calling him a honky. And he backs down at very turn. When he finally gets made enough to throw her to the flow to attempt to rape her she wiggles out of her ropes to which he yells "Damn, I knew I should have tied those ropes tighter!", and it becomes glaringly clear that wasn't in the script! She slipped out of the ropes on her own! Outside The Guy From Harlem has infiltrated the compound and is whooping the asses of all the dudes that are guarding the place in some of the most insane action scenes ever put on film. Seems The Guy From Harlem does his best fighting from the ground. A typical fighting move being to kick his legs like a little kid throwing a temper tantrum. The ending is action packed, but I don't want to spoil how it all goes.

"Real mobsters wear scary suits."

Some movies are bad. They throw money at the screen trying to cover ineptitude. Then there are movies that wear that ineptitude like a badge of honor. Then there are movies like THE GUY FROM HARLEM, that are completely fucking clueless that they are inept at all. It exists in a bizarre universe where time and space stand still and only craptastic spectacular nothingness like this remain. I'll take this over a $200,000,000 piece of shit any day of the week. In fact, I am ready to watch this one again.

And I haven't even mentioned the incredible theme song the flares up when the main character walks on screen, or takes off his pants, or the boom mic that gets as much screen time as most characters, or how each scene is covered in medium shot, or how it is all lit from one giant light. The list goes on and on. Amazing. Truly and utterly amazing.

Review © Andrew Copp

Here is the AMAZING trailer available on the Synapse 42nd Street Forever Vol #2 trailer compilation.

Day #17, that Gila Monster will have his moment in the sun

On Saturday night I was finally back in town and decided to take in some classic drive in swill for the Halloween Horror Challenge.


THE GIANT GILA MONSTER (1959)
D. Ray Kellog
Public Domain
Full Frame

This classic 50's monster mash is such a delight that I've totally fallen in love with it. For years I have seen clips of it on TV specials, horror hosts shows, compilation tapes, and Sci-fi, horror history documentaries, but never had gotten around to seeing the actual movie. It's the quintessential 50's drive in horror fare, with EVERYTHING a movie from that era needs to be definitive: dancing teenagers, fast cars, hillbillies and rednecks, a lovable town drunk, a town sheriff who is looking out for the kids, AND a teen hero who's a grease-monkey, father figure to his semi delinquent friends, and a wanna-be rock singer! He also takes care of his widowed mom and handicapped sister who can't walk due to her malformed legs. So he's just a swell guy all around, and even the big city disc jockey takes a shine to him after he saves the man's ass when he catches him drunk driving one afternoon. Instead of turning him into the police, our hero tows him into the shop to fix the fender bender he just had and let the fat bastard dry out. In fact, he's so squeaky clean/awesome that when he swipes the tires off a crime scene car the sheriff just looks the other way!

Frenchie does NOT seem to be enjoying chase's banjo ditty. in fact looks like a projectile vomit is on the way at any minute.

Then there is the Gila Monster itself. One of the greatest monster creations of all time. Whomever got the bright idea of just getting a regular Gila monster/lizard and plopping it down in miniature sets and making a movie around it was a freakin' genius. Seriously. I mean i can't account for how this movie played in 1959 and if audiences thought that shit looked realistic (to be fair the miniatures are pretty nice) but it's classic hilarity now. But even more than that, the Gila Monster is so damn cute, you can't hate him. The way he lurks around in the bushes watching the action from just off screen, sitting there blinking his lizard eye, just wanting to be loved. You feel for the big guy.

Just chilling behind some bushes, listening to Chase and the Sheriff chew the fat.

And he's smart, too. He knows when to knock a car full of obnoxious humping teens down a cliff and eat their asses, and when to hang back and just listen to the sheriff and his buddy talk about the crime scene at hand. It's not until the horrible singing at the barn party at the end that he freaks out and decides it is time to just eat the whole damn town.

Town Drunk, doing what he does best. getting ready to go for an evening drive.

That brings us to the highlight of the movie. No, not the awesome Gila Monster attack on the barn party, though that is pretty great. Nope, it's the middle of the movie out of nowhere full on song number from lead actor Don Sullivan called "Laugh Little Children," or as it has become known to fans, "The Mushroom Song". It happens right after the main character Chase has come home to find his girlfriend Frenchie has given his crippled little sister leg braces to finally walk. Now up until this point we nave never seen, nor heard mention of his little sister, her plight or her need for leg braces. In fact, we never knew she existed until now. But he walks in and this little girl gets up, tries to walk toward him, but falls down. She gets up again and walks a few steps and starts to fall again, but heroic Chase catches her. She gets all teary eyed over the fact that she practiced all day so she could have it together enough to impress him when he got home. We're trying to figure out if this is his illegitimate kid, or what? He whips out a handy banjo and starts singing a little tune to her about how a little "mushroom" tried to grow tall but couldn't and kids laughed at it. So the Lord said "laugh little children laugh". When he's finished, the girl, apparently his sister, says "laughing is important, isn't it?" to which he replies "I've never felt more like laughing than I do right now!"

"Alright! Five HUNDRED dollars right here and now and I will make sure Chase NEVER sings again!"

Yeah, that has got to make her feel a shitload better! And no, she doesn't manage to run away on her new leg braces when the Gila Monster comes after her, though she tries. I got the feeling the director hated this little girl. Especially after her close-up revealed she has a nasty mustache.

I'm not even gonna talk about the little man crush the sheriff seems to have on the lead character, or how the lead character practically sexually assaults a woman in a hallway that we discover in the next scene is his MOTHER! Sheesh!

"Well sheriff I can only get my arm about THIS FAR up there. can you deal with that?"

But I will talk about how the movie's explanation for the Gila Monster's size is simply that in Russia a baby was born at 30 pounds so giantism is a real thing. Maybe lots of minerals had been being dumped in the river from the old coal mine and made the Gila Monster get real big, because it happened to a baby in Russia, so it must be possible!

Awesome. That is all I have to say. Oh yeah in June it was the 50th anniversary of this classic!



And here to amuse you, or hurt your head, "The Mushroom Song"


Reviews © Andy Copp

Man that was a LOW BLOW!!!!

LOW BLOW (1986)
D. Frank Harris
BCI/ NAVARRO
1.85

Part of the Maximum Action 10 pack (now out of print)

Before reading the excellent one two punch books GODS IN POLYESTER and GODS IN SPANDEX I had never heard of Leo Fong. I had maybe seen his name here and there, but never knew who he was. But after reading his recollections of making kung fu styled action films with pennies on the dollar I fond myself really fond of the guy and had to find some of his films. Then after checking out the movie movie WILD RIDERS in one of the BCI DRIVE IN CULT CLASSICS packs there was a trailer for LOW BLOW and I was completely sold. My girlfriend and I HAD to see this movie! We become more than a little bit obsessed with seeing our first Leo Fong movie. I almost didn't get to as the MAXIMUM ACTION set that I found on Ebay never came and after a little research I found that it was out of print. I sent some emails to the company I ordered it from explaining that I NEEDED my Leo Fong fix! That I would not be a complete cult film fan until I got Leo Fong into my life! And they came through, in some dusty corner of the DVD warehouse, hiding under a million copies of GIRLS GONE WILD THE CATHOLIC YEARS was one last copy of MAXIMUM ACTION with not one but TWO Leo Fong movies in the set. Joy was about to set in my peoples!!!


We were not disappointed at all. Within five minutes of the opening of LOW BLOW it had lived up to the what we had expected. The movie hits the ground running, not unlike the vastly inferior LETHAL WEAPON 2 with the action already in progress. A thugs are robbing a coffee shop, roughing up the patrons and generally being loud pricks. The next building over is the office of tough guy Private Investigator Joe Wong (played by our hero Leo Fong) who is aggravated by the noise and ruckus. He throws on his members only jacket and tells his pretty and perky secretary "I'm gonna go see what all the noise is about!" Within two minutes those trouble makers are eating the floor with much foot being put to ass, and Mr. Wong has barely broke a sweat at all. But low and behold some nasty bastards are taking some old ladies purse outside, so they are gonna have to be taught a lesson too! But it is all in a day's work for Mr. Wong. Ass kicking is a way of life! He also has a comic relief car that only he can start by popping the hood and whacking it with a tire iron.Leo Fong's screen presence is a strange one at best, with his pinched up face that consistently looks like someone in the room has just farted, and stiff walk like he may flip out at any second. He's wound tighter than the rubber bands holding the roll of twenty's that was the budget of this flick. His line delivery, all ten of them, is fast, and to the point. Like lines are just a waste of time to get to some ass kicking. He might very well hop out of the screen and punch you at any moment.

The plot finally kicks in when a blond California bimbo is being indoctrinated into some Johnstown styled cult run by a blind Cameron Mitchell and his African Princess named Karma (played by respected black actress Akosua Busia, who actually gives a great performance here). It is never really explained what the cult is actually doing, but it is all about love, enlightenment, and digging in the fields all damn day long. At one point it is revealed they are planting, wait for it, asparagus! Evil bastards!!! Seems the bimbo is the daughter of a rich industrialist played by Troy Donahue and he wants his little girl back. After witnessing Mr. Wong whopping the ass of some Latino's who were trying to steal his hub caps he decides that Wong is the man for the job!

But wait! After some shenanigans in the camp where Mr. Wong gets mildly roughed up (and Karma is clearly enjoying herself, because her nipples clearly get hard after every bit of torture she inflicts on Mr. Wong!) he decides he cannot do this alone. So he holds a tough man contest to find some teammates to help him infiltrate the compound and get the now drugged and wigged out babe to safety. So now it is THE DIRTY DOZEN street style!

Weird thing about this movie is that it is almost family friendly in some ways. The violence (outside of one nasty head squishing) is mostly hand to hand combat kung fu stuff. The gun play is very toned down. There is no bad language or sex to speak of at all. Watching it you can't help but to feel like Leo Fong was trying to appeal as wide a base as possible. And make no mistake, this is Leo Fong's show. He wrote, produced and starred in this bad boy. He raised the financing and made it happen.

There's tons of weird moments to recommend here, like several of Karma's freak outs, the bad guy who gets thrown into a pile of cute puppies who proceed to lick his unconscious body, Leo Fong's attempts at breakfast table comedy, the REALLY out of place macho bonding casual racism that will make you uncomfortable, the muscle bound blond pit fighter chick, that head squishing i previously mentioned, or the incredible compilation worthy action scene were Fong chases four bad guys into their car. He gets so pissed he rips the cables out of the engine, beat the CAR up, smashes all the windows out with a two by four and then buzz saws the top of the car itself off just to kick them all in the ass and send them on their way! Truly it is one of the most amazing scenes I have ever seen in an action film!

So before Seagal, before Van Damme, there was Leo Fong! And he did it for the among of money those guys spent on hair stylists.

Leo Fong, APPROVED!!!

Andy Copp

The Perfect Violence

Ultra Violent
Issue 10

When you stop to think about the magazines that cover the horror genre today you might get stuck on the big buck ones that are full color and come out monthly or even bi-monthly. Those have their worth for getting out the news on the big films (or studio press releases as it may be in some cases) but for my money THE best magazine in the genre right now is ULTRA VIOLENT, severed hands down. You may have to wait a year for each new issue, and they don't generally cover the latest in cinematic slop that is coagulating the cinematic multiplex sewer pipe. But what they DO deliver is some of the BEST fucking writing on the genre going. UV has the most knowledgeable genre staff writers on the planet. I challenge anyone to find people who can compare brain cell for brain cell with the people writing for them when it comes to knowledge of our beloved genre. In a day and age where every hack with a blog (ha, that sounds familiar, as he looks around the room and realizes he is talking about himself in third person) thinks they are an expert because they read the IMDB and visit a few message boards, thank god for the people who write at UV because they really, honestly know what the fuck they are talking about. (Okay, it should be known that I wrote a couple of reviews for ONE issue, four years ago. But I EXCLUDE myself from all the accolade in the previous paragraph. I hardly wrote enough to be considered any kind staff writer, at all!)

With that in mind it says a lot to call Issue 10 their best issue to date. And I can say that because I have read them all, right from the beginning. The magazine has grown in leaps and bounds as writers came and went and the staff finally settled in with the group they have now, who frankly all are fantastic. But even with that there are sometimes articles that don't quite make it, either the content is only marginally interesting (really a matter of opinion of course), or maybe it comes off a bit rushed. Nothing feels that way this time. Everything clicks just right.

This issue is all highlights so it is hard to pick ones to recommend, but a stand out for me is the interview with illusive Documentarian Robert Hendrickson who directed the incredible 1973 MANSON and has continued to fight legal battles regarding the film and it's copyright ever since. He's a fascinating (and quite ornery) character who has, as far as I know, never been interviewed elsewhere. His talk is in depth and quite enlightening. Publisher Scott Gabey should be proud of his work on this interview. Also terrific is Art Ettinger's amazing, career spanning talk with Giovanni Lambardo Radice aka John Morghan aka Dirty Mike to CANNIBAL FEROX fans. This is no slobbering fan boy talk where just questions about getting his head drilled by Fulci, or getting castrated by Cannibals come up. This mother covers his family history, his commercial and stage work, his sexuality, his genre work, working with various actors and directors, going to conventions... You name it Art asks it. An in depth and groundbreaking interview that would be worth picking up the issue for alone. Mr Ettinger has developed his skills as an interviewer to an art form that mirrors the days of the old SECONDS magazine. Topping this one for him will be difficult. But I look forward for him to try. Also of immense worth is the interview with indie/cult director Eric Stanze by Ally Melling. Eric has been interviewed a lot by the underground zine press so getting info out of him that is new and fresh is not an easy feat but Ally has done so. She also manages a solid interview that covers his history without being the type of talk that degenerates into questions of "you've made some crazy disturbing movies, do you love gore?" that would belittle his intelligent work. She takes the high road showing she really gets what he is doing, thus bringing out good intelligent answers. It is a great piece that counter balances the other pieces on classic genre/exploitation by celebrating a true indie visionary. Her work as an interviewer is exemplary as well. Lest be it for me to let you believe that only the interviews are worthwhile. Heather Drain's piece on BLITZKRIEG: ESCAPE FROM STALAG 69 is an exceptionally well written piece that not only spotlights the intense dedication it takes to make an independent film in this day and age (especially one that is part of a genre that has laid dormant for 25 years!) but also explores that very genre and how it works. If you weren't interested in this movie before this article, you will be after it as she really explores the characters and their roots, the actors playing them and how they chose to perform those roles. It is an intriguing piece. (Now I just wish i had the time to sit down with the movie which is sitting on my work table right now!).

To say all of this stuff is great, even when there is an excellent interview with my favorite filmmaker of all time Alexandro Jodorowsky in this issue just goes to show the high level of excellence on display here. Plus there is a shit-ton more, and plenty of reviews to! So get on this train and pick this up. It should be hitting stands soon (if not already). Grab a copy today!

Ultra Violent Magazine