RAPE SQUAD (1974)

[Update 01/11/2022: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

Four years before Michael Myers put on the coveralls in HALLOWEEN and eight years before Jason wore the hockey mask (remember he didn't do it until PART III) the rapist dude from RAPE SQUAD was wearing them both and raping and killing the shit out of women.

One night while out feeding a horse Linda is kicked in the face and then raped by a psychopath who makes her sing "Jingle Bells" while he gettin busy. She goes to the police afterward, but those lousy douchebags ain't no help. One scumbag cop even goes so far as to say "I wish that'd happen to me...I'd just lay back and enjoy it." Soon another woman is raped by the same dude. A few days later Linda goes to the police station for a line up and she meets four other women that have been violated by the rapist. They talk and decide the police are useless and form their own Rape Squad with the intention of not only catching the guy who raped them but also stopping other males from raping women or sexually harassing women.

They hand out flyers and take karate lessons and soon they're going undercover at a club where the owner is a known womanizer. He confirms the rumors when he tries to rape Linda!  So the Rape Squad bust in, kick him in the balls and trash his crib. There's a few other small adventures like this, but they still haven't stopped Jingle Bell. Even worse, he's now added murder to his list of crimes.

One evening Jingle Bell is just about to assault a broad when in pops the Rape Squad to cockblock him. He gets good and pissed and devises a evil plan to rape all five of the Rape Squad members at once!!! Well, maybe not "at once" since he only has one penis, he's not some kind of UROTSUKIDOJI-style tentacle monster, although that would have given this flaccid half boner the added excitement it needed to get fully aroused and really make some sweet fuck to the audience whether we wanted it or not. As it stands I didn't even have to use my rape whistle once.

The film starts alright with a kinda gritty rape scene, but there wasn't much nudity and it never really made the audience feel dirty and in need of a shower, plus it was too short. Finally it's time for the female revenge and they're a bunch of pussies! Jennifer, from I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, would cut these chick's dicks off in the bathtub while Thana, from MS .45, would have bludgeoned them to death with an iron then dismembered them in her bathtub! If you're going to make a movie called RAPE SQUAD you need to go all out and have chicks beating the shit out of rapists and then brutalizing the fuck out of them! Curling irons up the ass, chopping dicks off with modified blenders, forced to watch Will Smith movies...you know, extremely sadistic stuff! As it stands RS is a watchable film with some pretty funny one-liners like "Show me your wang!", but I really thought that it was going to be much nastier than it was with more revenge and less sniveling.

If you've already seen all the better female revenge movies then it's worth watching once.

I CORRUPT ALL COPS (2009)

The title is kinda funny when you think about it.

I guess HK back in the day was a really shitty place to live, hell it might still be today what the fuck do I know? Anyway we're told in an opening montage that back in the 60's and 70's over 90% of HK law enforcement was on the bribe payroll and that a huge mafia-style gang controlled everything. It even regulated how many whorehouses, gambling joints and drug dens each street could have to stop turf wars.

At the top of the ladder was police chief Lak. He controlled everything. He had a money man, Gold, who ran all the collections and dealt out the bribe payroll. Then you have Gale who is Lak's right hand man and even had a collection of 9 wives that are actually the other mafia dudes mistresses or ex-mistresses. The first half of the movie (and the best part) shows how the police run everything, then during the second half the British government creates the ICAC who's goal is to put an end to the police corruption.

The subject matter is very interesting (I would love to read a book about it), but director/writer Jing Wong (who has directed nearly a hundred movies in the last 30 years!!!) would not be my first choice to make a movie with such a rich and complex story. He does a good job, but I never felt like the film had any real soul. Another problem I had was the film never had any closure, it just ended.

Worth watching if your into Asian crime dramas, but it's nothing to get overly excited about. Great cast and performances by all, but I'd still love to see this story remade with a different director and a better script.

DEAR AMERICA: LETTERS HOME FROM VIETNAM (1987)

The premise of this film is simple: letters written by Vietnam War soldiers to their families and loved ones back home read over real life footage taken during the Vietnam War. The narrative is told from the beginning of the war until the end and helped along with various news footage and on camera interviews with soldiers in the field. It's very emotional and sickening to think about all the people killed for I'm not even sure what.

It starts out really powerful (and features some great music), but it started losing me a little over halfway through. I don't know why, but it seemed like it was losing steam. Still it's a good film and definitely worth watching, but it could have used a little more structure and a narrator.

The most powerful and saddest letter was the one left at the Vietnam Memorial written by a mother to her son who died 15 years earlier. It's hard to listen to without tearing up.

THE YOUNG GRADUATES (1971)

[Update 03/02/2022: Need to revisit this film and rewrite the review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

I didn't expect from much this movie, but I ended up really digging it.

Today is Mindy's 18th birthday and her square boyfriend, instead of nailing the shit out of her, goes to the drag races. But that's not going to slow down the spunky Mindy. Ohhh no! Instead of being sad she goes over to her teacher's house and talks him into taking her out to the river to take some pictures. Once there they run into some skinny dippers, eat drug-laced birthday cake and gently screw. Each other, not the cake.

A few months go by and they continue their secret relationship until one day Mindy becomes scared she might be pregnant. She takes something called the rabbit test. Then for some reason Mindy just drives off in her bf's dune buggy. She takes a girlfriend along with her and they pick up a young gay hitchhiker named Pan. Eventually they run out of gas and instead of going to the nearest gas station they start thumbin' it! They get picked up by some hippies in a painted van, then a gang of bikers that beat the shit out of Pan, drug the girlfriend and try to gang rape Mindy. Mindy and the girlfriend escape and after spending the night in a barn they steal a motorcycle. The girlfriend is sick as hell and trippin' balls, but when she says she wants to go home the eternally happy Mindy tells her no and chirps "I've got wheels and I'm going to Big Sur!" Hahahaha!!! What the hell? So they go to the beach and immediately get caught up with a Charlie Manson-type hippie cult!!! This entire time the teacher and Mindy's boyfriend are driving up and down the California coast looking for Mindy.

This movie is truly weird, but it's so upbeat I couldn't help but just sit back and laugh. One time the girls eat at a diner and since they have no money they sneak out the backdoor, two hillbillies start chasing them and Mindy just says "Looks like we have company!" and laughs. Haha life is a gas! We just stole some food and we're being chased on our stolen motorcycle by rapist rednecks that are hanging out their windows screaming at us! Hahahaha! Woopeeee!!!

At the beginning of the movie I was kinda sad cause the chick who plays Mindy wasn't very cute, but she soon grew on me with her upbeat attitude and constant smile...but she never got totally naked! Boooo! There was only one topless scene in the entire movie and it was just some random unattractive chicks taking a shower at the high school.

When it was all said and done I ended up really enjoying THE YOUNG GRADUATES with its trippy clothes, bizarre slang and wacky script, but it definitely could've used a heavier dose of nudity. If you're into this sort of cinema then it's worth watching for sure. Not only is it entertaining, but it's like a time capsule to a place that I find endlessly fascinating: late 60's/early 70's America. What a truly bizarre world that must have been.