Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Junesploitation 2022 Day 7: Shannon Tweed!

41 comments:

  1. 'SHANNON TWEED'S DOUBLE-D(OSE OF MOVIE GOODNESS) RACK!'

    NO CONTEST (1995, Roku, 98 min.)
    for the first time.

    If I was a betting man I'd wager a day's pay this will be the most reviewed Shannon Tweed movie on her Junesploitation! day. Who can resist the pull of a Canuxsplitation "Die Hard in a Beauty Pageant" (the 25th annual 'Ms. Galaxy' contest) with Tweed as McClain (starting with the seduction of a moron 2nd-in-command around 42 min. in), Robert Davi as a gimp Al Powell, Andrew Dice Clay as Hans Gruber, Roddy Piper as Karl and James Purcell as a police captain that combines Paul Gleason's Robinson AND Hart Bochner's Ellis? Yep, you too will want to grab uber-douchebag Henrick's neck and squeeze it hard! What "No Contest" lacks in nudity and sex appeal (there is none) it compensates for by having one foot firmly planted in reality (Clay's masterplan kind-of has an end game) and the other in fantasyland (an automatic machinegun that doubles as a high-score videogame), with a whole lot of dumb fun in-between. Besides, how many "Die Hard" clones can claim they were made at the same hotel (the Embassy Suite at Ontario) where the cast and crew also stayed during the shoot? :-D 3.25 HENCHMEN NAMED 'ICE' KNOCKED UNCONSCIOUS BY A BAG FULL OF ICE (out of 5).

    CODE NAME: VENGEANCE (1987, YouTube, 96 min.) for the first time.

    The wife and kid of an African head-of-state are kidnapped by bloodthirsty terrorist Tabrak (James Ryan), and for some reason the U.S. government (who want to keep a military thing going in that region) think only Monroe Bieler (Robert 'The Exterminator' Ginty) can pull off a rescue. After escaping from the hell hole where the U.S. dumped him a decade prior, Monroe is seduced and bedded by Sam (Shannon Tweed, giving us everything but the full frontal during an intense, early love-making scene) who turns out to be a covert agent trying to asses whether Monroe is fit for duty. Somehow Cameron Mitchell is recruited by Ginty as his sidekick for the mission, which feels like second-rate "Commando" filmed by second-rate filmmakers who used "Commando" ripoffs as their inspiration. One moment we're on safari with lions eating prey (2nd unit footage?), the next we're in Southern California-as-Africa hills with extras dressed as African soldiers. So yes, Shannon is treated as a sex object in a Robert Ginty movie where jailers/prisoners spend the first 15 minutes kicking the crap out of him... and both of those are fine with me. :-) 2.5 RUNAWAY MINE CARTS (out of 5).

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    1. Thanks JM! my FAV thing about Junesploitation is finding new off-my-radar flicks from folks like you. i have NO idea how ive never heard of No Contest but boy howdy will i view it soon!! (hopefully today!).

      Tweed, Davi, Dice Clay, AND Piper?!? Oh My!

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    2. Just spreading Lord Bromley's good word to all those who would listen. :-P

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  2. Hard Vice, Joey Travolta, 1994

    Despite that nothing Sam J. Jones said made any sense - Hard Vice charmed me. Tweed is more of part of an ensemble, but she's solid. Plus it's got a great Junesploitation cast: Tweed, Jones (talking about something) James Gammon, Branscombe Richmond (my second sighting this month) and James Fridley (nice to know he had a career as a Vice Cop before being killed by Jason in Friday the 13th part 6).

    There is a lot of goofiness and sex workers jumping out of windows, there is a procedural element that I was not expecting.

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  3. The Firing Line (1988, dir. Jim Goldman)

    There's a real dearth of Shannon Tweed movies available to stream or rent in Finland, and this one was included on a Mill Creek 50-movie boxset I already owned, so it became kind of my default pick for today.

    Reb Brown is an American military advisor working for an unnamed Latin American country. Shannon Tweed is... a hot woman. That's pretty much the extent of her character here. When Reb learns of the government's corruption, he rebels and is arrested and tortured. When he manages to escape, he takes Shannon with him and they join the rebels fighting against the corrupt government.

    Reb Brown is the hero here and no one else gets a character to play, including Shannon Tweed. She's just there to stand around looking pretty and because every hero needs a love interest. And to take her clothes off, obviously.

    Huge portions of the movie consist of just soldiers running around in the jungle and firing their guns, and when that isn't happening, there's a lot of characters just standing around looking at each other and dialogue that feels like placeholder text they forgot to replace with actual lines.

    I'm not that familiar with her, but I feel like I played the game wrong when I picked this one for Shannon Tweed day.

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  4. Power Play, Chris Baugh, 1999

    Well that was not what I expected. The synopsis says A Con Women who also knows Kung Fu kills men for their money. And then the movie goes in another direction. Which was a nice surprised. Kinda wish Tweed did more Kung Fu though.

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  5. Hard Vice (1994)
    Well...I liked it when they talked about baseball!

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  6. Assault on Devil's Island (1997, dir. Jon Cassar)

    Direct to Video action movie starring Shannon Tweed, Hulk Hogan, Carl Weathers, and Martin Kove. In a just world this would have been theatrically released and made $100M. So good! Hulk must lead his team of elite mercenaries into a fortified island to rescue some civilians. Tweed, Weathers and Kove are great. Hulk is downplaying to create a very serious character (maybe too serious for this movie), which is fine. The action is above average for a DTV movie. A sequel was made 2 years later, can't wait to track that down! Highly recommended.

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    1. Tweed, Hogan AND Weathers!? man today is a goldmine!

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    2. Your lucky day, Mashke. If you can't get to these Tweed joints today, get to them for Free Space! ;-)

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  7. Of Unknown Origin
    I can see why Peter Weller was cast as robocop... Here, just like in that role, when he's not screaming in pain he's utterly emotionless. I would have much preferred to see Tweed battling a giant(ish) rat, but we play the cards we're dealt. The best scene in the movie unfortunately turns out to be a dream sequence fake out (actually, so do a lot of the great scenes in this movie) which is a shame because it could have beat the Antichrist opening to the punch. Still, thoroughly entertaining... Along with Deadly Eyes and Graveyard Shift this is firmly in the middle in the pantheon of killer rat movies.

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  8. Naked Lies (1998 – Ralph E. Portillo)
    Naked Lies – a pretty generic title for a film that worked better for me than I’ve expected. I cannot put my finger on it – why does this (mostly) work for me? Well, okay, one point is surely Shannon Tweed herself, who gives a solid performance as the self-determined and confident DEA-officer. But beside that? 4:3 ratio, Fernando Allende as a Latin Richard Gere bad guy (okay, he’s good, too), the low budget setting (nah, liked that, too), cheap and unsexy sex scenes that serve little to less purpose than to have some boobs on the screen, an idiotic finale, idiotic and incompetent police. It’s a wild mix of things that are simply bad – and things that worked better for me than they should. Not a 100 % recommendation, but maybe something to look into if you really like Shannon Tweed.

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  9. Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death (1989)

    I think I've found my discovery of the month.
    The US supply of avocados runs dangerously low, which obviously puts national security at risk. The only viable source of the critical resource is a strip of uncharted jungle smack dab in the middle of California, inhabited by a savage tribe of radical, militant feminists who eat the flesh of men and call themselves Piranha Women. The military enlists dr Hunt (Tweed), college professor, ethnographer and "middle-of-the-road feminist", to venture to the heart of the dangerous jungle, Apocalypse Now-style, and try to reason with those luscious cannibals.

    The movie starts out very strong with a ZAZ-style setup, delivered completely with a straight face, and then just runs with it, going from joke to joke to another shameless joke. It loses some steam halfway through but never stops being super entertaining, in a goofy, inappropriate and totally self-aware way. The busy and often hilarious script pokes fun at everyone in equal measure (feminists, male chauvinists, academia, the military, David Letterman) without ever feeling mean-spirited. Bill Maher who joins the expedition as dr. Tweed's ex-lover (in all fairness, it was just a drunken one night stand) can be a bit much, but both he and their ditzy companion Bunny (who on a whim decides to change her major from home economics to feminist studies) are consistently funny and gamely deliver the level of silliness that is required from them. Adrienne Barbeau properly hams it up as the colonel Kurtz of the story (and she's literally named Kurtz). As for Shannon Tweed, she is fantastic as the deadpan academic type who desperately tries to keep her composure amid all the chaos and in result becomes the inadvertent center of the comedy herself (again, it brought to my mind all those amazing Leslie Nielsen performances). And she looks incredible in glasses. If I seem really excited about this ridiculous little comedy, that's because I am.

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    1. I saw this years ago and remember very little, but what I do remember is I thought the funniest joke in the whole movie was that the college dean's name was Stockwell.

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    2. I have watched this many times, most recently a couple of years ago. CANNIBAL WOMEN is a worthy film to be excited about. With a title like that, it is easy to expect a dumb movie, but the script winks at its silliness in a cute way. The cast knows exactly how to push the humor of the material without going too far over-the-top.

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  10. Dead By Dawn (1998)

    First time viewing. This is just a good, straight forward, story about two couples and some wife swapping. This movie could have actually gone on longer than it does. And, Shannon Tweed is great in this! Has Patrick reviewed this one for his Need For Tweed column yet? If not, I would recommend it!

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  11. Code Name: Vengeance (1987)

    The promotional material led me to believe there'd be a lot more Tweed in this than there was. I remember when the F This Movie podcast used to run ads for the Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers podcast, and one of the audio clips in it was one of the hosts saying that Tom Atkins proves that any man is leading man material. Robert Ginty is the counter-argument to that.

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  12. INDECENT BEHAVIOR 3 (1995)
    Shannon Tweed plays a sex therapist who consults with the LAPD on sex-related crimes. Except there's little to no sexiness on screen, leaving us with the most generic of suspense/thrillers. Except there's little to no suspense or thrills, either. Brion James plays one of the villains, and he and Tweed have a great scene together. But other than that, this movie's just going through the motions. Calling it boilerplate is too much of a compliment. This is tepid-plate.

    Bonus Lloyd Kaufman-sploitation, day 7: THE FIRST TURN ON (1983)
    A series of barely-related skits based around the last day of summer camp. It's all very porn-y, and feels like the same couple of jokes over and over. I suppose the point is to show that the sex act is actually weird and gross if you stop and think about it, but a 90-minute comedy just to make that point is stretching it. I'm ready to start watching the good Troma movies now.

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  13. Last Call (1991)

    Oddly plotted snoozer. About 70% of the movie is ADR'd with Tweed way to close to the microphone and William Katt not participating in the dubbing process. A couple unintentionally funny moments, but not high level Tweed.

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  14. In the Cold of the Night (1989) dir. Nico Mastorakis

    what I’m about to tell you is one hell of an important thing… it’s not conjecture, it’s not a promise, it just is what it is

    Hallucinatory late 80’s capital T-H thriller built around Scott, a troubled west-hollywood himbo photographer that may or may not be a riff on Thomas from Blow-Up by way of De Palma’s Blow-out. What we definitely know about Scott is that he only eats pizza (preferably with pineapple), and that he’s recently started having clips from SOV horror movies in place of his typical dreams. This lives and dies by the abundance of vibe, since the dialogue seems written by someone whose managed to avoid talking to any actual humans prior to imitating them (pretty par for the course with this sort of thing I think). It’s a mess for sure, but depending on your taste, a pretty entertaining one. Quite the introduction to both the Shannon Tweed and the Nico Mastorakis canons.

    See y’all down on the blacktop tomorrow!

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  15. Scorned (1993, dir. Andrew Stevens)

    Hiring Shannon Tweed as your 17 year old son's live in tutor, what could possibly go wrong.

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  16. "Code Name Vengeance" (1987)

    First-Time Watch

    Shannon Tweed is hardly in the Flick. Whoops... Lots of Guns, Lots of Shooting Guns, and a Whole Buch of Explosions. Robert Ginty (The Exterminator) stars in this Rambo/Delta-Force Rip-Off. Basic Low Low Budget Action '80s Flick. Cameron Mitchell seems to be having fun though.

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  17. I posted a review but it's completely absent. A couple days ago I posted a couple replies that failed to show up too. Disheartening. I'll try again in an hour.

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    1. I tried again but no bueno. This not-review post somehow works :(

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    2. I had an issue with a post on Sunday, Paul. I tried posting the review later and it stayed on. J.M. experienced an problem a few days ago. It seems to be the software.

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    3. I'll try again tomorrow. In brief, I wanted to say I enjoyed Cannibal Women.

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  19. Happened to me today also. Posted a review for Hard Vice and it ain't here now. So I guess it's a good thing that I'm posting my watches on Twitter also.

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  20. Hot Dog... The Movie (1984)

    This movie has... skiing, boobs... that covers about 95% of it.

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  21. Victim Of Desire (1994) dir. Jim Wynorski

    This movie is a mess but damnitt if I didn't like it. Tweed is joined by Marc Singer, Wings Hauser and Julie fucking Strain as she gets herself caught up in an insurance fraud scheme that unfortunately turns her into a VICTIM OF DESIRE!


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  22. Back to Junesploitation! I really was not in a slasher mood yesterday; maybe I will get to one later in the month. October is the time of year when I tend to watch those.

    MODEL BY DAY (1993) – J.M. watched this for Vigilante Day last year, and his description left me intrigued. Seeing it in the list of Shannon Tweed’s films and finding a version on Youtube, I knew this had to be the choice for the day. Though Shannon does not play a big part in the story, her role is important. The “model by day” is Lex, played by an actress named Famke Janssen. Lex’s pastime is being a vigilante, going after the criminals who prowl the streets of New York at night. Interspersed between the not very convincing fights with criminals is several fashion shoots and a runway show. Fast-paced, colorful, and ridiculous, Model By Day is fun late-nite cable exploitation. Definitely a film I would not have gotten to without Juneploitation.

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    1. Anyone looking for a cheesy film for lethal ladies day could do much worse than Model By Day.

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    2. I'll be honest, I don't remember watching/reviewing "Model By Day" at all. You know you've watched too many flicks when you've forgotten more movies than most people remember seeing. :-P

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    3. I checked the vigilante comments from last year, J.M., and it was someone else who talked about Model By Day. I was probably thinking of Miss Meadows, which is definitely not the same movie.

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    4. Phew, thanks. I knew I wasn't that far gone that I would forget a Shannon Tweed pic from a year ago. :-)

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  23. Illicit Dreams (1994) dir. Andrew Stevens

    This is the real shit. The romantic, pseudo sci- fi, fantasy, softcore throw it all in a softly diffused blender shit.

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  24. Avocado Jungle of Death

    My favourite bit was the laughably tame sword fight between Tweed and Barbeau at the end. They're just lightly tapping their swords together while conversing. Bunny with her obliviousness was pretty funny too, and my favourite character. Tweed is pretty great too with her staunch-fast feminism, and she plays it wonderfully deadpan.

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    1. Well, after repeated attempts to post this, I removed half the movie's title, and half of my review, and it somehow worked.

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  25. Power Play (1999)

    Not enough Tweed, but at least she gets to do some martial arts. Haven't seen that in a movie before.

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