At least it's kosher?

Goodbye, 2025! Still working on that backlog, which is thankfully(??) not much larger than it was a year ago. Our movie watching has dropped dramatically in the past few years; given our recent viewing habits – My Neighbor Totoro (1988); Follow That Bird (1985); A Muppet Family Christmas (1987); and about 3/4 of Fantasia (1940) – it's not hard to guess the main reason why. For now, a New Year's Eve tidbit from "the before times".

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Going Steady (1979)

[aka Yotzim Kavua, aka Lemon Popsicle II]

Grade: D+

Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, and fat Jeff

Do you remember, the last time that you saw Israelis screw? I think you do.

Tammy? Gym mat

Or when you saw them running through the surf and showing their rear view? I know you do.

bum bum bottom

When Benji's mother wanted to know if his girlfriend is a Jew? I'm sure you do.

Delicious eggs

And as you watch this, do you say "Oy vey!" and wish that it were through? I think you do. I know you do!

"Yes, every Friday the same prunes."

Clerical errors

From reading the titles of these two films, you might think they have something fairly obvious in common. In fact, they do not -- at least if you're thinking of genre -- but do have at least two other shared traits:

• both are set in the past (relative to the time of filming);
• and both feature preachers tempted into sins of the flesh while in their place of worship.

Oh, and they're both on Disc 3, Side B of the Drive-In Movie Classics set from Mill Creek, and came out in 1974. So there's that too.

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Black Hooker (1974)

(aka Street Sisters)

Grade: D-

Is there anything more fundamental to human cognition than naming? As children, our entire sense of the world is built from the people and things around us we learn to name.

And we instinctively assume those names carry some sense of the underlying properties of the thing being named: how many of us would hesitate to go out on a date with someone named Cuthbert Fartington, or Ma Dong-Suk, no matter how admirable they otherwise seemed?

Thus, when you get a movie called Black Hooker, you're expecting the movie to have something to do with a sex worker of African heritage (with an outside chance of Papuan or Australian Aboriginal, we suppose). And this we do get: one of the main characters is, in fact, a "painted woman" who trades her body for money.

However, a title like Black Hooker -- especially when attached to a film dating from 1974 -- brings with it other expectations. You know the kind: pimps and wisecracks, decadence and violence.

A soundtrack with funky basslines, Fender Rhodes, and clavinet, summarized in one onomatopoeic metonym: chicka-waka-chicka-waka.

Above all, it should have a cynical, streetwise outlook, the attitude of the old iconic trickster, not often playing by the rules but always finding ways to survive in a hostile world. In other words, blaxploitation.

Black Hooker has some of those things -- but Black Hooker is emphatically not a blaxploitation film. It's no cousin to Shaft and Super Fly and Dolemite and Foxy Brown.

Instead, it's that unlikeliest of things in 1974: a spiritual descendant of the moralizing films of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.

In fact it's even set in that era -- with the film's events taking place in some unspecified window between 1935 and 1955 -- though little suspension of disbelief can endure when the soundtrack's intermittent chickas and wakas abruptly return viewers to the 1970s.

We're familiar with the Sack branch of this tradition, from films like Drums O' Voodoo, Midnight Shadow, and The Devil's Daughter, but a commenter on IMDb suggests it's really an heir to the films of Oscar Micheaux, whose work we don't know.

Weirdest of all, Black Hooker stars a white man (Durey Mason, with a whiff of Bill Fagerbakke about him).

Well, OK, it's more of a Chloe, Love Is Calling You situation: the unnamed man in question -- introduced to us as a boy (Teddy Quinn) -- is the bastard child of the Painted Woman (Sandra Alexandra) and a white client.

She wants nothing to do with him, so this utterly white-passing lad is raised by his saintly grandmother (Kathryn Jackson) and strict, resentful grandfather (Jeff Burton), a preacher who may not always practice what he preaches.

It's not the plot material or character roster that knocks Black Hooker out of the blaxploitation category, though, but its tone. The opening 15 minutes feel like a Christian morality film or maybe a nostalgic 1970s TV movie.

Much of it consists of long shots of children running hand in hand through fields, accompanied by a score that's somewhere between Joe Raposo and what you'd hear in Aisle 9 at Kmart. 

All this couldn't be more at odds with the implications of the title. And then all of a sudden we get the Painted Woman topless, screwing a john, and telling him things like:

"I want you to bite into my flesh until I can feel the pain. 'Cause that's the way I get my pleasure. There ain't no love, [but] a whole lot of hate in it. That's the way I want you to take me. I want you to take me with all the hate. I want you to bite into my flesh."

That is one holy hell of a tone shift. (As is the ensuing scene where the Painted Woman's pimp beats the crap out of her john because...reasons.)

It's about time that we acknowledged Black Hooker certainly wasn't conceived under that title, but grafted on by producers who, one imagines, were gobsmacked by the unmarketable mess they'd received. So, they chose to hoodwink audiences into thinking they were seeing a blaxploitation flick, instead getting...this.

We know the film is an adaptation of a play by director Arthur Roberson -- hardly a surprise, given the staginess of the "three characters in a room" scenes that dominate the film's running time.

Another commenter on IMDb says the working title may have been Don't Leave Go My Hand, which makes sense since it's the title of one of the songs in the soundtrack. It's also gone by the name Street Sisters (which isn't really on point either).

The same commenter has a vivid story about the film's test screening:

"When I worked with L.A. County, I knew Art Roberson fairly well...We were both social workers in the ghetto (really) in the 1970s. [...] The movie [was] premiered for friends and associates at Warner Bros. screening room in Burbank. At the end of the showing, it was greeted by dead silence, replacing excitement or applause.

I think the viewers realized that the director had blown a pretty good chance to do something worthwhile after all his work, investment and attention to this film. [...] As sort of a metaphor for that all-too-sensitive evening's experience, after the showing, as the cars were wending out of the Warner Bros. lot, I clearly recall the car of a black viewer rear-ending the car of a white viewer who had stopped short at a traffic light...an embarrassing wreck."

Watching Black Hooker, the thing we found ourselves asking over and over again was this: "Who on earth is this movie for?"

It's far too salacious for the bluenoses, and far too straitlaced for the degenerates. It's got a heavy-handed, moralizing tone that feints at themes of Christian redemption, but doesn't even begin to pay off on them: quite the contrary, as the film is relentlessly downbeat, with no redemption arc for anyone.

Here and there, moments of psychological insight and humanity pop out. After treating her son like garbage for the entire movie, the Painted Woman finally cracks a bit, takes a measure of pity on him, and tries to explain why she can never be the mother he needs: "What you want, I don't have to give."

There's something bracing and genuine about that moment -- wherein, much like the closing scenes of Carmen, the scheming hussy suddenly becomes a human being.

And if we can't forgive the grandfather for his betrayal and hypocrisy, we at least get some insight into his motivations when he makes a small attempt to live and love within his values, only to be rebuffed. One can only imagine what he would have posted on r/deadbedrooms.

If Black Hooker were a slightly better film it might qualify as one of those haunting, depressing movies whose atmosphere covers for its flaws. Alas, it's not: it's dull, maudlin, stagy, and tries to have its morality cake and eat it too. For every moment that rings true psychologically, ten others feel like the contrived manipulation of characters who are seldom more than cardboard cutouts.

It's a film that nobody wants -- which is too bad, since Roberson shows flashes of ability. With the right people, maybe he could have made something of value. Instead, he made a joyless, alienating film that doesn't even work as a nostalgia trip, then or now.

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Jive Turkey (1974)

(aka Baby Needs A New Pair of Shoes)

Grade: C

Now, if you were looking for pimps and wisecracks, decadence and violence, chicka-waka-chicka-waka, and a cynical, streetwise outlook, this film has you covered.

Jive Turkey is total grindhouse comfort food: it doesn't matter that much if it's innovative, surprising, or even good, because the film's sounds, styles, and spirit are appealing on a visceral level.

True, Jive Turkey can't embrace the chic (or the ka-waka) of the 1970s wholeheartedly, because as it repeatedly tells us, it's set in 1956.

There's a title card to that effect, but just to make sure anyone coming in late gets the point, the characters announce the fact at least twice: "Now this is 1956!" Who says that?

IMDb commenters have noted some of the anachronisms in Jive Turkey, from its cars to its baseball caps. We're sure there are plenty, but can't bring ourselves to care too much -- or at all, really -- given that the whole point is applying 1970s aesthetics in a 1950s pre-Civil Rights context.

You could sum up Jive Turkey in a couple of sentences: "When racist police and the Mafia try to shut him down, numbers kingpin needs all his wits to survive. But can he survive betrayal from the inside?" Something like that.

Our kingpin is the Pasha (Paul Harris), a smooth-talking, well-dressed man who exudes cool from every pore.

Take the best parts of Morgan Freeman and Iceberg Slim, with a tiny dash of what Jordan Peele will look like when he hits his late fifties, and you've got the right idea. One reviewer claims he lacks charisma, which is odd to say the least: to our eyes, if there's anything he's got, it's that. And having Pasha run the numbers racket makes him more sympathetic than if he were peddling dope or women. 

That said -- even with Ernie Lee Banks singing "Life is a numbers game in each and every way" over the title cards -- it's not really a film about the numbers racket, which makes the original title, Baby Needs A New Pair of Shoes, seem a bit on the nose.

(Though then again...)

The revised title, Jive Turkey, does a better job of emphasizing the key point: as the film's antagonist, Big Tony (Frank DeKova), notes in an early scene, "One of your people works for me and I know everything you do." The question is, who?

Well, if a jive turkey is "someone unreliable [who makes] empty promises", or "someone who behaves in a glib and disingenuous fashion" (to quote two definitions you can find online), we meet one pretty early on in the person of DuDirty (Banks). If you want to talk nominative determinism, there's your man.

Still, looks can be deceiving, and Jive Turkey expects you'll be surprised by the inner nature of at least two characters by film's end. Some viewers will be, some most assuredly won't.

It's not really worthwhile to walk through the plot, or to introduce you to characters like the straightbacked Sweetman (Reginald Farmer) --

-- or the mad assassinatrix Serene (billed in the film under her own name) --

-- or Mama Lottie (Frances E. Williams), matriarch of the opium den.

Mama Lottie's scenes are also among the film's most visually striking, with well-placed reds and blues highlighting each character. Hardly subtle, but if you're a sucker for that sort of thing, it hits the right spot.

Jive Turkey manages to wind things up early, with the key action sequence finishing about 10 minutes before the end of its running time, leaving room for a dance sequence and a denouement (including a couple of big reveals). If this suggests we might not be dealing with a model of tight filmmaking here, well, you're not wrong.

And we don't want to oversell Jive Turkey. By any reasonable standard it's an utterly average genre piece with a few interesting twists -- on the level of a TV movie with nudity, violence, and racial slurs (including one unnamable but alarmingly catchy song describing DuDirty's state of affairs as, uh, "deeply in debt but ostentatious").

Still, it's fun, hard-edged, and never feels like it's insulting the viewer's intelligence. And it's possible we enjoyed Jive Turkey more than we'll enjoy the most famous examples of the genre, many of which we haven't seen yet. We do tend to root for the underdogs!

Brand recognition

These two films have a huge plot point in common, but revealing it would be a spoiler of colossal proportions.

So instead, we'll note another resemblance: both movies explicitly invoke and subvert stereotypes -- though one does so a hell of a lot more effectively than the other. 

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I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? (1975) 

Grade: F

Oh, Bob Dishy. Is there any name that flows off the tongue so nicely? Seriously, just try saying it right now, aloud to yourself: Bob Dishy.

A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but Bob's moniker communicates so much in such a short time -- a model of efficiency. It connotes handsomeness à la Keeping Up Appearances's famous vicar, yet retains the down-to-earth-ness that comes with "No, not Robert, thank you, just Bob."

The improbability of his last name, why, it hints at the origin of the Semitic good looks that led him to later play a rabbi on one of Dick Wolf's endless shows about law and/or order.

And if you've only seen Bob in his mature years, you might not know that he was, as a younger man, rather good-looking. Sort of a poor man's Robert Redford, if you like, with a dash of Bob Geldof.

However, unlike the haughty likes of Redford, he's not too good-looking -- just good-looking enough. A dish, but not a high-priced entrée you can't afford. A modestly hot guy, to get you through the hard times, you know the kind. Not a throb, just Bob.

So Bob Dishy -- can I call you Bob, Mr. Dishy? -- has the lead role, you see, in this film, I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now?. How promising that it opens with an animated sequence involving gendered eyes and shoes! How intriguing that it has Angelo Rossitto, and Pat Morita "as Heshy Yamamoto": a seal of approval twice over!

And how unusual that the opening scenes show him at the grand piano, playing Chopin -- of all things! -- and quite well at that.

Except his character, Jordan Oliver, is no concert pianist, and isn't even playing. Instead, he's engaged in a bizarre pantomime while a little person -- yep, Angelo Rossitto -- is supposedly the one really playing. On a toy piano.

And now we begin to detect the first hint that I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? will not, as we might hope, be a tale of knives into unsuspecting backs; of sweaty foreheads lit by streetlights coming through windows at night; of soft, panicked men running futilely from the pitiless, implacable hand of justice.

No, I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? is a comedy. Or more correctly: an attempt at comedy. Or even more correctly: a really, really shitty attempt at comedy.

Take, for example, the last line of the first scene. Jordan tells his tiny pianist: "Come in through the doggie door! And watch out for the doggie doo!"

We are, one imagines, meant to laugh at this. But there is nothing to inspire laughter in the line's content, context, or delivery. Whose Line Is It Anyway? regularly improvises better material. For this, people bought a ticket?

So Peter Sellers was originally supposed to be the lead in this thing. Certainly, he would have had no trouble playing an incorrigible rogue who, faced with financial ruin, decides to kill his estranged wife for the insurance payout. (This is the plot of I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now?, more or less. But mostly less.)

But, Sellers became uninsurable after his heart attack. So they got Bob Dishy instead.

Do you remember that comedian who went to see Phantom of the Opera, and got Robert Guillaume instead of an ill Michael Crawford? Do you remember how he compared it to going to a Madonna concert, and having Tina Yothers come out on stage instead? The Umbrellahead Review remembers.

But how could we blame Bob Dishy for this? Say his name aloud and you'll find that you can't either. You'll see.

He tries gamely, throwing in bad accents and impressions (like Robin Williams on a bad day), strange tics and facial expressions (like Jim Carrey on a bad day), and himself through a window (like your local dive bar most days). None of this hits the mark, but is it really his fault?

No, the real problem is that the material is horrific. We've seen a few reviews claiming I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? as a fine example of zany Woody Allen-esque comedy. Such a claim kicks Woody Allen in the shins, which he might well deserve, but not for this.

I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? thinks having an art dealer walk on his knees is automatically funny. Because we mistook him for a little person, you see: silly us.

Or a Chinese restaurant with a Mexican waiter. Har-de-har-har, how incongruous.

Or a Japanese doctor (no points for guessing the actor) who "lost his contact rens". Yes.

Or a turban-wearing "Indian" conductor in bronzeface who waves a flute instead of a baton, buys lip gloss in bulk at garage sales, and says things like "Ahd you see-di-ous?"

Or an incompetent hit man who wears two different shoes.

Or an elderly barmaid draped in cobwebs, who plays a record of a loud party to deceive patrons into thinking the bar is lively.

Or "Dr. Binay's Fat Farm", run by a walking, talking Béla Lugosi impression -- Jack DeLeon in whiteface -- who transplants old women's brains into young bodies, and whips his cross-dressing assistant.

Or a cross-dressing spy who acts out the Monty Python lumberjack sketch, but as a bricklayer.

I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? believes these things are zany, absurdist humor. It thinks it has a memorable cast of characters that get up to endearing shenanigans. It imagines reviews that say things like "Uproarious!" and "A laugh riot!" 

It is, in short, a giant, relentless schmear of tiresome schtick, crude stereotypes, and recycled gags. It's humor, as written by a committee of people who aren't funny. It's a parade of Z-listers and Catskills has-beens who, even in their prime, only got laughs from drunk yentas and alter kakers.

It has maybe one gag that hits the mark, and that one's not even in English ("Come si dice dove in italiano?" "Dove!"). It rips off Wile E. Coyote, for God's sake, and yet it still botches the punchline.

I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? is, in short -- let's be clear about this -- a worthless piece of shit of a movie. It makes you want to see the people who wrote and directed it punished. Or at least made to shine Mel Brooks's shoes and clean his bathtub, daily, in perpetuity.

But at least it's got Bob Dishy.

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Savage Weekend (1976, released 1979)

Grade: B-

If Savage Weekend is basically a slasher film -- and it is -- it's also the kind of movie that benefits from multiple viewings. That's not because its plot is especially complicated, but because it takes a while to understand the relationship between its characters. In the order we meet them, there's:

• Marie (Marilyn Hamlin), an aloof divorcée with a young son.

• Shirley (Caitlin O'Heaney), her hot-to-trot sister, and
• Nicky (Christopher Allport), Shirley's gay best friend, who's very out.

• Greg (Jeff Pomerantz), Marie's ex-husband, recently hospitalized after losing his job in a political scandal, with a massive chip on his shoulder about everyone and everything.

• Robert (Jim Doerr), Marie's new boyfriend, a middle-aged stockbroker whose kindness may be a liability.

• and Jay (Devin Goldenberg), a friend of Robert's, who just split with his wife and seeks fresh furrows in which to plant his seed. He's also a boatwright, and Robert bought a boat that needs wrighting.

Minus Greg (who has the kid this weekend), the remaining five pile into a station wagon and head for a rural getaway -- upstate New York in both reality and fiction, though all the banjos on the soundtrack subtly encourage us to assume it's somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line. Either way it's redneck country.

Along the way -- in a sequence guaranteed to come up in any review of this film -- Nicky deliberately provokes a bar fight with the local yokels, only to hand them their asses: "I wasn't brought up in the South Bronx for nothin'," he notes.

Playing against stereotypes is a recurring theme throughout Savage Weekend. Are the locals conspiring against our city slickers? It sure seems like something is brewing when the local Marlboro Man archetype, Mac Macauley (David Gale), has an exchange with one of his employees:

Employee: "Me and Ryan's got plans for that bunch."

Mac: "You ain't gonna do nothing 'til you hear from me."

Employee: "Hell we ain't."

Mac: (strikes employee in stomach) "You watch your mouth with me, you hear?"

Is Mac the incarnation of the land itself, a Deliverance-like force seeking to punish urban trespassers foolish enough to disrespect his place and his people?

For disrespect they do, talking smack about dimwitted Otis Crump (William Sanderson, later of Newhart) within his earshot, despite Mac's warning that Otis is more dangerous than he appears: "Now there's a weird one."

Otis sure spends a lot of time looking through binoculars and disapproving. What's his deal, we wonder?

Well, Mac describes Otis's revenge on a cousin he fancied, but who fancied the local lads more. When Otis found her at "that tavern they got down there on Route 22" -- aka Oasis, the very place Nicky had his bar fight (continuity!) -- mayhem and maiming ensued:

Mac: "'Whore! Whore!' he kept yellin', and branded an H right in the middle of her chest."

Robert: "Why an H?"

Mac: "For 'whore'. Otis ain't none too bright. Clear forgot the word began with a W."

Robert: (cracks up laughing)

Another recurring theme in Savage Weekend: the interaction between metal and flesh. Brands branding? Fishhooks penetrating feet? Saws cutting through limbs? Nails pounded through a bat? One character intentionally grabbing barbed wire while he watches two others have sex? It's got all these and more!

There are subtle touches to Savage Weekend that are not just easy to miss, but just about impossible not to miss on first viewing. For example, when we first meet Nicky he acts and sounds like a fairly ordinary straight man, yet in every other subsequent scene he's as out as a broken streetlight.

Now, he's helping to care for his best friend's nephew, so it makes perfect sense that he'd keep things under wraps. If anything he butches it up à la Charles Nelson Reilly, saying things like "C'mon, bustah, let's get it into geah!" and "C'mon, tiger, let's finish up".

But only in retrospect does this become clear: we don't know Nicky yet, so how can we appreciate the significance of his restraint?

In another scene, Jay and Shirley -- who have already had coitus al fresco once on the trip -- head off into the weeds for another assignation, whereupon Jay rips off Shirley's top and makes the following proposition to his bare-breasted companion:

"Listen, why don't we do somethin', uh...filthy? I mean something really...dirty and revolting?"

Then in their next scene together, they have this exchange:

Shirley: "I'm doing my nails."

Jay: "C'mon, you know you loved it."

Shirley: "Leave me alone."

Jay: "What'd I do? C'mon, tell me what I did!"

Shirley: "You're a real pig! I'm not surprised your wife left you."

Jay: "What's the matter with you all of a sudden?"

Shirley: "I'm surprised she stuck with you for three years. I'll tell you what's the matter. When you came to me in the woods, I thought, wow. Here's a man with some ima-a-agination. Later I realized you were just a silly jerk who gets all his ideas from girlie magazines." (storms off)

Jay: "Is that so?"

Let's analyze this: Jay proposes a sexual act he describes as "filthy" and "dirty". He does so spontaneously, while outdoors, and therefore without any...supplemental resources. And afterward, Shirley is repulsed by him, either because things didn't go well or because she can't believe what she did.

To paraphrase John Davidson on Hollywood Squares, "It must be...some part of the body. I wonder where it could be?"

Finally, there's the connection between the film's ending and its beginning. Start the movie over, and you immediately realize what was done and what's being said, or implied -- but watching it straight through, we lacked the context to make sense of it.

Does it reflect badly on us that this clever finesse went over our heads? Maybe, but it also underscores the chief flaw in Savage Weekend: the editing. It's competent, but a better editor might have ensured that certain key elements of plot and characterization were emphasized.

Or that we understood who the hell all the characters were.

Then again, speaking of editing, it's always possible something is missing from Mill Creek's copy, which runs about 86 minutes vs. IMDb's listed running time of 88 minutes. The sex all seems to be present -- just about every female character bares her breasts at some point, including a cow that very nearly becomes a prop in a sex scene. (No, we're not joking.)

However, one or two of the more violent sequences seem like they could be cut short. And who knows, the saga of Jay and Shirley might be clarified in an unedited copy. (There's a Blu-Ray out there, maybe we'll see it sometime.)

On the other hand Mill Creek's copy adds something, namely a whole lot of boom mic thanks to incorrectly matted shots. No way the makers of Savage Weekend intended these to be seen, as it's too pervasive.

Savage Weekend doesn't quite live up to its ambitions, and probably crosses the line from "leaving some things implied" to "not bothering to fill in important details". Its denouement isn't really satisfying, and it squanders its best character, Nicky, by not giving us enough to understand his psyche. Is he in love with Shirley? Attracted to Jay? Vice versa? Both?

We're left to wonder, and his long campy dance sequence with Shirley does nothing to clarify matters.

Still, Savage Weekend also crosses the line from "routine genre exercise" to "distinctive film well worth seeing". It has enough psychological insight to give bite to its observations, and avoids the trap of giving us warmed-over Deliverance or, especially, Straw Dogs (perhaps the film's real ancestor).

If ultimately the locals are hardly less opaque than the city slickers in their motivations, at least the soundtrack attempts to do right by them:

You can't blame upstate folks from getting crazy in the mind

You buy some land, you scratch the earth 'til midnight, moonlight makes you blind

You miss one payment on the farm, you watch the bank foreclose

You sell it to some city guy who needs help to blow his nose

An upstate man got ain't much for his time in this life

Little pride, little property, sometimes a little wife

To keep that little, he fights a lot of temptation and strife

And the pride's more important to him than life

A bit on the nose -- especially since we hear it twice -- but it ensures we get the point.