Phantom Empire (4 Stars)

This is a cult classic film made by Fred Olen Ray in 1986. In fact, it's the epitome of cult classic movies. It crashes from one extreme scene to another, and the majority of film fans just won't get it. Those on the right wavelength will gasp in awe.

The film begins with a married couple being attacked by a deformed man who stumbles out of a cave. Only the woman survives. As a result of the news reports, an expedition is made into the cave, because there are rumours of untold riches at the other end. 

There are cannibals who like to roast pretty girls on a spit...

There's a robot...

There are dinosaurs...

There are bikini-clad cave girls...

And there's an alien queen who's crashlanded on Earth.

The only cave girl who loses her top is Michelle Bauer. The people in the expedition save her from a cannibal, so she betrays her people to help them escape.

There's something wrong with these men. Michelle Bauer is topless, and they're staring in the opposite direction.

All this was filmed in 10 days from November 21st to December 1st 1986. Can anyone apart from Fred Olen Ray do something like this? It was his first film that he financed himself, and it established him as the king of low budget movies.

It's been six years since I last watched this film. I don't know why I waited so long. So many films, so little time.

Housewife Report 3 (4 Stars)

This film, made in 1972, was recently included in a list of the worst films ever made. It's the only one of the six Housewife Report films in the list. I felt tempted to give the film five stars, just to rebel against the bad judgement of the people compiling the list, but I can't call it a perfect film. A four star rating should be enough to tell the world I disagree with the poor rating by people who think they're smarter than me.

The film was released in English (dubbed) with the title "Give 'em an inch". That title is in contrast to the film's message, so I'll stick to the literal translation of the German title. Maybe the film should have been called "Divorce Report", because divorce is the only topic from beginning to end. The film's message is that when a couple get divorced it's always the man's fault. There's also a second message, that women who marry young are more likely to get divorced, so they should wait until they're older and know what they want.

After an amusing opening scene during the credits, the film settles into the typical style of the 1970's report films. A group of experts are gathered in a room talking about the problem of divorce in today's modern society. They're a group of doctors, psychiatrists and social workers, i.e. people who should know what they're talking about. In their midst are the married couple Bernd and Brigitte Mittler, who we know from the first two films. They've been sent out to interview housewives who have recently left their husbands. Supposedly they were both sent out, but in the following vignettes it's only Brigitte who we see as an interviewer.

Each of the reports has the same format. Brigitte Mittler interviews a woman about her marriage problems, and in a flashback we see what led up to the divorce. We hear the woman in voiceover explaining what was happening. At the end of each vignette the experts give their opinion on what just happened. They use a lot of fancy words, but what it comes down to is that they're saying, "The man did everything wrong. The woman was right to find someone else.

What makes this film different to its predecessors is that Bernd and Brigitte play an active part. Before the beginning of each vignette there's a short scene showing their married life. This was probably intended to show that not all marriages end in divorce. This is also the first film in which we see Bernd and Brigitte naked. Maybe after two films fully clothed the actors complained that they were the only ones keeping their clothes on.

1. Sabine married Bruno when she was 19 and he was 31. Their sex life has settled into a dull routine. Then she wins a holiday in Venice in a television quiz show. Bruno is too busy to go, so she takes the holiday by herself. It's an ugly little hotel, but Sabine has an affair with the hotel's owner, Mario. She wants to stay in Venice with him, but she decides against it because she doesn't want to lose her children. She returns home after two weeks, and her sex life improves dramatically.

This vignette shows an affair that doesn't lead to divorce. It's also the only vignette in which the couple have children. Is that a third subtle message? Children hold a marriage together?

2. Irene is a teacher, her husband Milan is a trainee doctor. I don't know about other countries, but in Germany after graduation medical students have to work as underpaid trainees in a hospital for two years before being allowed to call themselves doctors. Milan has no time for his wife. He leaves home early, he comes home late, and when he goes to bed he falls asleep fast, leaving Irene unsatisfied.

One of Irene's older students, Gerd, helps her carry her shopping home. Gerd seduces her, and they have sex. She swears this will never happen again, but he seduces her again in school a few weeks later. Then she sees that Gerd's friends have been spying on her. Because of this she changes schools and leaves her husband. She says that if she'd been sexually satisfied at home she would never have been seduced.

So it's the husband's fault if a teacher has sex with one of her students? That's what the experts tell us.

3. Margit and Otto have both fled from the DDR (East Germany) to Munich. They both feel like outsiders with their strange accents, so they marry one another when she's still 17. All that Otto is interested in is getting a good car, something better than a Trabi. He reads car magazines in the bath, he reads car magazines in bed, and he even reads car magazines during sex. Eww! Margit assumes things will get better when he finally buys his car, but it's worse. He goes out on long drives, and she suspects that he's seeing other women. Margit goes to one of Otto's friends, a car mechanic called Wastl, for sympathy. They become lovers, and she leaves Otto.

That was a question for all new arrivals in West Germany from the DDR: are the riches of the West more important than love? Otto made the wrong choice.

4. When she's only 18, Beate marries Herbert Gessler, the owner of a large family business. His age isn't stated, but he must be at least 20 years older. He's unfaithful to her, so she hatches a plan to get the other company executives, all men, onto her side. She hosts a party where she's wearing revealing clothing, and she puts on a weepy performance. With their votes, she becomes the company's leader. She demotes her husband to a minor role, and she thanks all the stupid men who supported her by firing them and replacing them with women. And in the process, she begins a new relationship with Dirk, her lawyer's son.

Girl power! Yay!

5. Uschi is the 20-year-old wife of Eugen Fendt, the publisher of a pornographic magazine. Because of his fascination with pornography, he's unable to have normal sex. Uschi has to stand in the street pretending to be a prostitute. Eugen picks her up and takes her home for sex. That's the only way it works. Poor Uschi feels demeaned, but she loves her husband and does what he wants. One day Eugen is delayed, and she's picked up by another man. He pays her 100 Marks (50 Euros) for sex, a good price in 1972. She leaves her husband, because she would rather be a real prostitute than a fake.

Once more, it's all the man's fault. His sexual hang ups have driven his wife into prostitution.

6. Agnes is the young wife of a hairdresser called Albert. I don't know how tall the actress Maria Faber is, but she towers over her husband and all the other men around her. Albert is unable to perform in bed, probably because he's intimidated by her. Their next door neighbour is an Italian called Tonio, a pizzeria owner, played by the remarkable actor Rinaldo Talamonti. He's very small, about 5'3", but he's confident about his height. When he makes love to Agnes he stands on a chair. This continues until Albert buys potency pills from a dubious doctor. In voiceover it's suggested that the pills are fake – this was long before the invention of Viagra – but Albert's problems are psychological, so the pills work because he believes that they work. This makes Agnes abandon her affair with little Tonio.

So we see that good sex can save a marriage. I already knew that without the help of experts.

If you check the film's IMDB page, you won't find Rinaldo Talamonti listed. There's a good reason for his omission. The German erotic films of the 1970's, whether they were report films or Bavarian sex comedies, didn't name the actors. There were no credits, neither at the beginning nor the end of the film. IMDB, which wasn't started until 30 years later, has to rely on its contributors recognising the faces of the actors. This might succeed for the major actors, but minor actors who only appeared in one or two films are rarely named. Evidently, the person who added "Housewife Report 3" to the database didn't know Rinaldo. That's remarkable. He was one of the greatest comedy actors of the 1970's, and he's still making films today. Long live Rinaldo!

Here's Rinaldo standing on a chair to make love to Maria Faber as Agnes.

Size doesn't matter if you're a good lover. That's what men like to believe.

Rinaldo isn't just a good lover, he's a good singer. He serenades Agnes with "O Sole Mio" while they make love.

But in the end he's rejected. Agnes returns to her (slightly) larger husband Herbert.

7. The problems in marriages aren't only the result of sex. Elisabeth has married Duke Kuno of Ladenburg. They have a lot of beautiful land, but they don't allow people to walk through it and enjoy the scenery. The local vet, Dr. Moll, is leading the protests to open up the land for public use. Elisabeth finds her husband's refusal to compromise unpleasant, so she leaves him and marries the vet.

The experts talk a lot about this case. They point out that divorces aren't common in the landed gentry, because the wives want to hold on to their money and position of authority. Elisabeth is a rare example of a woman who puts her ideals above money.

The duke's mother is played by Rosl Mayr, the grand old lady of German sex comedies. She appeared in supporting roles in at least 50 sex comedies in the 1970's. No film was complete without her. She's also unlisted in IMDB. Maybe someone will read this review and add her name.

Concerning Bernd and Brigitte Mittler, there's an interesting intrigue. Brigitte wants a baby, Bernd doesn't. He says they're too young. She says she's on the pill, but she throws away her birth control pills and replaces them with glucose tablets. In the final scene she says she's pregnant. Will Bernd be furious? Not at all, he's a good husband. He's so happy about becoming a father that he forgives his wife's deception.

Children hold marriages together. That's the message. Would you rather believe that, or just call it nonsense from one of the worst films ever made? I'll leave it up to you to decide.

Malibu Express (4 Stars)

In my review of "Return To Savage Beach" I complained that Andy Sidaris' films were only available on DVD. Did someone read my review? Beginning in 2018, all 12 of his films were remastered for Blu-ray, and I now have his complete collection on Blu-ray in my hands. This was a must-buy for me as a fan. I'm happy to say that the picture quality is noticeably superior to the original release, though not perfect. To quote the review from Blu-ray.com:

The 1080p Blu-ray presentation is sourced from a new 4K restoration. The image is generally very nice, with minimal print damage or encoding artefacts getting in the way beyond some distracting wobble that makes its appearance with some regularity in a number of shots and scenes. The image is densely grainy, a snowy, swarming field that is nicely complimentary of the image's textural qualities. Those details are not stellar, but they are firm and steady, revealing skin, clothes, and environments with sufficient clarity and stability. Colours are firm and nicely saturated, reds maybe a little overblown, but the palette is steady without much evidence of fading. Black levels, however, do appear raised and flat with mild purple push at times. Skin tones appear accurate. For what was a low budget exploitation film, the end result is certainly not at all bad.

This is the first film in the Andy Sidaris collection, made in 1985. According to Wikipedia, it's a partial remake of the film "Stacey" (1973), which I haven't yet seen. I'm not sure to what extent this is the case, because the main subject of "Malibu Express" is the illegal export of computers to Russia, something which wasn't happening 12 years earlier.

In the early 1980's the PC revolution was beginning. IBM PCs were cutting edge technology. There were other PCs at the time, but the equipment we see is the IBM XT. It was illegal to export them to Russia, but some companies sold them to companies in Europe that sold them for a profit to Russia, avoiding the trade ban. The private detective Cody Abilene is given the mission to investigate a company that's suspected of carrying out this illegal trade. While investigating the Chamberlain family the chauffeur is murdered. The murder is unrelated to his case, because the chauffeur has been blackmailing several members of the household, but Cody gets sidetracked into trying to solve the murder, despite being attacked by henchmen in the smuggling ring.

The opening and closing credits are shown as a woman with ridiculously long nails sitting in a dark room typing the text on a computer screen. According to the director's commentary, she was an employee of a computer store that Andy paid to type the credits. The view alternates between the typing and the screen itself.

Watching the film today, 35 years later, it has a glorious retro appeal. It's difficult to imagine that this was considered high tech at the time.

Note the slightly distorted text, due to the rounding of the computer screen. This was a low tech screenshot, by today's standards. Andy had to set up a camera to record the text as it was displayed on the screen.

The awkward lettering of the opening credits is in contrast the beautiful curves of the actresses. Alongside normal actors, Andy Sidaris liked to add Playboy models to the cast for eye candy. Sometimes the nudity was relevant to the plot, sometimes it wasn't, but let's be honest, who cares?

Lorraine Michaels was the Playboy playmate of the month in April 1981. As Liza Chamberlain she displays her talent in pouring coffee for Cody on his yacht. He needs to keep his mind on the job. She's one of the murder suspects.

Linda Wiesmaier was the Playboy playmate of the month in July 1982. She plays June Khnockers (don't forget the H), a racing driver who assists Cody in his investigations. As you can see, she's a fast girl.

The first two playmates play significant roles in the film, but the others are totally irrelevant to the plot. Kimberley McArthur (left) was the Playboy playmate of the month in January 1982. Barbara Edwards (right) was the Playboy playmate of the month in September 1983. They play two girls who sneak onto Cody's yacht to take a shower. They don't even make him coffee!

Normally I approve of showering together, but look how cramped the space is on the yacht. How can they possibly clean themselves?

The woman I find most beautiful in the film is the Austrian actress Sybil Danning. Though not actually a playmate, she was featured in the August 1983 issue of Playboy.

During her career she was typecast as a deadly woman (I shan't use the common French translation). Sometimes she was a good girl, sometimes she was bad, but she always left a string of dead bodies behind her.

Before you accuse Andy Sidaris of being sexist, he also cast men on the basis of their looks. He picked them from the pages of bodybuilding magazines. John Brown (left) was Mr. Universe in 1981 and 1982. Richard Prose (right) is credited as having been Mr. Arizona, but I don't know what year.

Andy Sidaris likes to fill his films with beautiful people, male and female, but he's not shy of appearing himself in cameo roles in most of his films.

I'm happy to say that the Blu-ray contains the extra features from the original DVD release. Julie Strain joins Andy in talking about each of his films. She used to think of herself as the unofficial spokesperson for Andy and his films. I wish she'd been in the film itself, but it was made five years before she began her acting career.

Andy claims that people have difficulty telling him and John Brown apart. I'm not sure. If I look carefully, I think I can tell the difference.

Housewife Report (3 Stars)

Can you guess what this is? Yes, you're right, this is my 3000th post since I started my blog on 14th September 2010.

My 1000th post was published on 22nd October 2013.

My 2000th post was published on 18th April 2016.

Today I'm writing my 3000th post on 30th July 2018.

If I plotted those dates on a graph it would look like my speed of writing is increasing, but I won't make a big deal of it. It might slow down in the future. I keep on saying I want to cut down on my films in order to catch up on the television series I like. I haven't got around to doing this yet, but if I do that it'll slow down my written output. Maybe next year. At the moment there are still so many films I want to watch.

"Housewife Report" (original German title "Hausfrauen-Report") was made in 1971 as an adult alternative to the highly successful "Schoolgirl Report" (1970). A series of six films was made from 1971 to 1977, but they never reached the same popularity as the Schoolgirl Report films. Maybe it's because the topic wasn't as controversial, but it could also be because the director Eberhard Schröder wasn't of the same calibre as the directors who made the Schoolgirl Report films.

"Housewife Report" is structured the same way as the first Schoolgirl Report film. Eight short vignettes are shown, separated by interviewers approaching random people on the streets of Munich to ask their opinions about divorce. I might have thought the interviews were genuine if I hadn't recognised the first woman interviewed. It's Rosl Mayr, the star of almost 100 films from 1952 to 1981. She's such a well known face in Germany that it's obvious she was shown first so that the viewers would know that the interviews aren't meant to be taken seriously. They're all scripted.

And what does Rosl have to say about the rapid increase in the German divorce rate? "I blame it on the Italians. Women leave their husbands because the Italians are so good in bed".

That sets the tone for the later informative discussions. When the film speaks of divorce it's always about women leaving men, not the other way round. Several reasons are given for the increase in the annual German divorce rate from 47,000 in 1969 to 57,000 in 1970.

1. Male potency decreases with age.

2. The advertising media gives women unrealistic expectations about sex.

3. Older women want a second chance to get the sex that they missed out on when they were young.

4. Today's women are emancipated and are prepared to leave if they don't get what they want.

Of course, the second and third reasons could apply just as much to men wanting a divorce, but the film is one-sided.

After the initial explanatory speeches people are sent out into Munich to visit women at home who have filled out questionnaires. The young couple Bernd and Brigitte Mittler are followed. They interview eight married women. What's common to all eight women is that they've had sex with other men. The question of divorce is secondary. Most of them want to stay with their husbands after refreshing their marriage by having an affair.

I'll just point out one of the women. Edith Heimann is the wife of a wealthy marketing director. She's played by Sybil Danning, who was 18 at the time. That's amazing. I'm a fan of Sybil Danning, but I couldn't recognise her in the film. If she hadn't been listed in the credits I wouldn't have suspected it was her. Moreover, she doesn't look anywhere near 18. In the photo above I would have guessed her age between 35 and 40.

Maybe she looks a bit younger with her hair open, but I'd still guess her age at 25.

This isn't one of the best erotic films of the 1970's, but it offers an interesting view of German culture.

Malibu Express (4 Stars)

This is the first film in the Andy Sidaris collection, made in 1985. It's actually the third film that he made, but for some reason he distanced himself from the first two films he made, "Stacey" (1973) and "Seven" (1979). It's his last 12 films that he promoted as his official collection.

Andy Sidaris specialised in making low budget action films for the direct-to-video market. However, he always made the best of the budget he had available. "Malibu Express", for instance, features a helicopter chase, something you would not expect in a low budget movie. The five minute scene must have eaten up all the money he had available – unless, of course, he had a friend who offered him the use of his helicopter for free.

His films often feature the same characters, so you might think that they should be watched in order. This isn't the case. There's no continuity in the first nine films, so they can be watched in any order. Only the last three films follow a strict order, with references to events in the previous films. It's common for actors to be re-used; i.e. if they're killed in a film they return in a later film with different names, so please don't give yourself a headache by trying to make a consistent series out of them. I tried. I failed.

Andy Sidaris admitted that he picked his actors out of magazines. If he saw a woman he liked in Playboy he contacted her and offered her a role. He picked male actors out of bodybuilding magazines. Considering how often he worked with non-actors, his films are remarkably good. That's the result of his skill as a director. The films that resulted from this technique have a lot of eye candy: beautiful women and muscle-bound men.

Apart from the eye candy, there are typical traits to his movies. The plots are always complex. There is usually a plot twist at the end. There is almost always a summing up, when the main characters stand together drinking champagne.

The film's title is irrelevant to the story. It's the name of the yacht which belongs to the hero, private detective Cody Abilene. Here he is at the end of the film drinking champagne with the police, the CIA and his friends. I doubt you can tell who's who.

The film has two plots which run side by side. The first plot is the smuggling of computers to the Russians. That's something I remember from the early 1980's. When personal computers were invented it was a big technological advance for the West, leaving Russia far behind. Russia wanted IBM XT's, but America made a trade ban. To get around this Russia bought IBM XT's from European countries which didn't participate in the trade ban. In the film the CIA is investigating a company that is allegedly selling computers to European companies with the sole purpose of selling them to Russian state-owned companies. The CIA asks Cody to stay with the Chamberlain family, friends of his, because they are investors in the American computer company.

When at the house a second plot unfolds. Lady Chamberlain's chauffeur has gambling debts. He's making money by blackmailing all three of her children. Early in the film he's shot, and everyone has a motive, so Cody assists in finding the killer. This becomes the film's main story, and the computer smuggling fades into the background. It isn't until the end of the film that Cody reveals over champagne that the computer smuggling and the chauffeur's murder are connected.

Andy Sidaris was a genius, in my opinion. He made 12 outstanding films from 1985 to 1998 which will always be remembered. At least, they would be remembered if they were properly distributed. His films have never been released in England. In America the films were released in 2005 on DVD in four box sets with three disks each, packed with special features. Those are the DVDs that I bought soon after their release. I'm glad that I moved fast, because they soon went out of print, and they were replaced by a single box set, all 12 films on three DVDs, highly compressed, no special features. That's the only version available in America today, I'm sorry to say.

In Germany the strange step has been made to release all 12 films on a single Blu-ray disc in DVD quality. It's a relatively cheap way for new fans to acquire all the films, but don't expect any remastering. I don't know if the German Blu-ray includes any special features, but it's preferable to the current American DVD release, if you're able to play Region B Blu-rays.

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Phantom Empire (4 Stars)

I'm a strange person. Okay, anyone who's known me a few years will heartily agree with that statement, but why am I saying it now? Let me tell you a bit about myself and my strange habits.

As my friends and blog readers already know, I have a lot of DVDs and Blu-rays. I buy most of them online. I place my unwatched films in a pile next to my computer. Since I sometimes order a few films at a time, especially when I order films from Germany (in bulk to save money), the pile can grow as high as 20 films, but usually it's between 5 and 10. You might think that when I want to watch a film I pull a disc out of that pile first, but that's not always the case. Sometimes I'm in the mood to re-watch old films. Even when I do pull a disc out of the pile it's not from the top or bottom of the pile, it's just whatever film I'm in the mood for. Sometimes a film remains in the pile for a long time. For instance, I waited 18 months before I watched "X-Men Origins: Wolverine". That might seem like a long time. But listen.....

Today I decided to pull "Phantom Empire" out of my pile. I knew I'd had it for a while, but I wasn't sure how long. So I checked. And it turns out that I bought it on March 22nd 2006. The film has been lying in my unwatched pile for eight years, while newer films have been coming and going. That's all the more amazing when I consider that I moved house in May 2008. The DVD was physically lifted and carried from the pile in my old house to the new pile in my new house.

Looking at my unwatched pile now, it contains 12 DVDs, none of which have been in it for more than a few months. I could easily empty the pile within a week, if I wanted to. If I give those films priority. If I don't buy any more. Let's see. The pile hasn't been empty since I've lived here. Maybe I should make it a goal.

As for the film... if I'd known it would be so good I might have watched it years ago. It's an expedition to a lost world that has everything: ugly cannibals, beautiful cave women, dinosaurs, killer robots, and Sybil Danning dressed as if she's on her way to a fetish convention. This was Fred Olen Ray's first self-financed film, and he made it in 10 days from November 21st to December 1st 1986, saving money by using the props from a film that he had just finished working on. One day he will receive the appreciation he deserves.