Jills of Jack Hill Part 2: BIG DOLL HOUSE, COFFY, SWINGING CHEERLEADERS, SORCERESS, BIG BIRD CAGE, FOXY BROWN

THE BIG DOLL HOUSE
 (1971) ***

(1972) **1/2

(1973) - ***1/2

Pros: In the end, though, none of that shit matters, because that score by Roy Ayers is so damned funky, so tight, so on point, and sounds so full and badass in the Blu-ray digital that if you watch this with the stereo connected, you'll be blown clear of all tawdry visuals. And despite the bad wig factor, the actors are sublime: Grier, especially, is in a class by herself. And, more tellingly, the tawdry atmosphere works to make all the junky longing for release perfectly understandable. Hill can't convey the way an arm full of opiates can make a heaven of ghetto hell, but he sure has a handle on the look and feel of withdrawal. The whole COFFY mise-en-scene seems as if its an aesthetic reflection of a crucifixion cruise, i.e. the endless slog through pain and despair that is hustling on the street, so desperate without opiates in your system you'll sell your soul for a moment's respite.

And there's a badass catfight between Coffy and another girl at one of King George's cocktail parties, where we learn Coffy keeps razor blades up there in her weave.

courtesy Art of the Title

Pros: A great lengthy rattletrap scene of Foxy shaking down a junky lesbian, who's afraid her dyke girlfriend is going to come home from work and find her with another woman, a clear influence on "The Bonnie Situation" in PULP FICTION (which had Grier in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo as Bonnie); the insane afros and gorgeous-slick outfits Grier wears throughout; a badass lesbian bar brawl; the crazily colored opening credits, which feature Grier boogying down in all sorts of super-sexy outfits to the Willie Hutch theme. Best of all, of course that Hutch funk score. As with Roy Ayers score on COFFY, worth the price of admission all by itself.

Cons: Unrelenting urban blight, sexual abuse, and aesthetic degradation. Foxy seems to think turning tricks, getting shot up, raped, harassed, shot at, and leaving the people who help her to be tortured or killed, is small price to pay for --what, does she get anything for her troubles? SPOILER ALERT: She doesn't even kill the evil Loder at the end, as if her endless ugly egotistical sadism--which by then has grown as soul-crushingly wearisome as that of Alan Ormsby in CHILDREN SHOUDLDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGs or Michael Gambon's Peter Grant-ish thug in THE COOK, THE THIEF, THE WIFE AND HER LOVER--death wouldn't be enough. This was Hill's last in the subgenre anyway. Urgh! It's been almost 20 years, and I'm still mad. Maybe I should see it again. But life is short and even more sensitive now than I was. Can you tell?


He'd break out from Corman's wing a bit next to form Centaur Releasing with John Prizer and two quick punchy films in the female ensemble vein, one would rake in a small fortune, the next would lose it. After a lengthy hiatus he went back to Corman (eight years later) for one more film, would fight a bit with him on it, and then that would be it. Well, how else do you graduate from the Corman school unless it's to fight with him about some creative issue and off you trundle, most likely into the abyss? Sadly, times changing and Hill's disinclination to work in direct-to-video or TV led to him doing just zero more films after that. He's still around though! Never say never.

Following the tried-true three girls at work-and-play ensemble formula, this brings Hill's cunning mix of sexy feminism, cathartic violence, deadpan wit and covert liberal politics to bear in a sexy comedy-drama form. Radical journalism major Kate (Jo Johnston) goes undercover to expose outdated mores and institutionalized sexism within the college's football cheerleading team, but instead she finds she these girls are cool, and it's her wild-eyed radical underground newspaper editor boyfriend Ross (Ric Carrott) who's the rapey dick. Besides, the handsome quarterback Buck is played by Ron Hajek, his teeth white and straight enough he's worth stealing from the bitchy, manipulative cheerleader squad captain Mary Ann (Colleen Camp). Sulky Ross takes out his anger by publishing Kate's expose (after she tried to scrap it - realizing, as do most of us viewers ready to trash this film as a puerile snickering douche fest, that looks can be deceiving), thus turning the team against her, and then later inviting his sicko friends over to "break in" the virgin cheerleader (the doe-eyed Rainbeaux Smith). Mary Ann's dad, the dean of the school, is meanwhile embroiled in a plot to "fix" the big game, along with the coach, and a black professor (Jason Sommers) who is having an affair with another cheerleader (Rosanne Keaton, one of Playboy's first black centerfolds).

Pros: Hill keeps the action flowing in surprising ways. I'll confess I have a low skeeve threshold when rapey jocks start snickering and egging each other on like so many dickweeds needing their graves spit on even in supposedly benign sex comedies (like the odious misogyny benchmark PORKY'S). So I like that here the jocks are sensitive and serious and the radical underground journalist is the rapey swine. (Hill reports that a Texas audience one burst out of the seats applauding when the jock beats up Ross- so did I!)

Cons: I liked it the first time I saw it, and kind of fell for Johnston in those shorts. Now, a decade or so later, she just terrifies me--those eyes seem wild and unhinged, the mouth grinding as if from a line of badly-cut coke snorted fifteen years ago but still lodged behind her eyeballs. And I should know, I've been there. Am I just talking about myself? I guess that's what they call 'maturity.' I know it goes without mentioning in a more enlightened era, but what sticks out now isn't that there's a black main character --there were more than a few at the time (as in 1970s'BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS) but that it's a reminder of the miscegenation taboo: that no black woman and white man or vice versa can ever be attracted to each other in these movies, so if you're black woman at a predominately white school, there will be one or two black men showing up, and you'll be bound to have an affair with one or both. As a kid in the 70s I wondered if that was just some instinctual thing. Now of course I know the truth --racist southern distribution mores. Nowadays, though it actually seems conspicuous: there are three black people in the cast, one is a homewrecker, one a no-good dual-level cheater, and the other a knife-wielding maniac and they're all, so to speak, in bed together.

The main thing I can't stand about it all though, is the Scott Joplin rag underscoring the big climactic brawl at the warehouse. It's aged... not well, and hangs anachronistically around all through New World nurse and AIP's beach party catalogues so I'm sorry Hill had to lug it with him.



Pros: The black professor has a ferocious tough-as-shit black wife (Mae Mercer), who drops in on our terrified cheerleader in the film's most surprising powerful scene--if you've ever been verbally threatened by your lovers' spouse--either by knife-point or just over the phone--then you too will get a queasy pit of your stomach thrill. I've been on all sides of that equation and let me tell you, Hill gets it right, and that actress wife is a powerhouse - never losing our sympathy even as we're terrified to the point of shitting our pants. Rainbeaux Smith was pregnant at the time (as we learn in the Arrow Blu-ray's generous extras) but you'd never know it, except that she's awesomely stacked and glows with a mix of doll innocence and angel sublime grace. like how Hill doesn't even bother with the big climactic game at the end, nor even deign to mask the terrible emulsion damage and faded color on his stock footage (is there even a single football?)


SPIDER BABY's my favorite Hill but this is the second, a complex but highly re-watchable tale of feminism and short-shorts. Doll-faced, sweet voiced, crazy-eyed Robbie Lee, is Lace, leader of the gang, the 'Dagger Debs.' New girl in town Maggie (Joanne Nail) is the newcomer, and not adverse to whipping her chain belt and/or grabbing a switchblade to defend herself at the burger place. Lace's one-eyed Iago, Patch (Monica Gale), sees the writing on the wall re: her beta status. Lace just thinks Patch is jealous of Maggie's cool gutsy charm, but ole Patch is right; the sparks between Lace's boyfriend, the Daggers' leader, Dom (Ashner Brauner, doing a great Ralph Meeker impression), and Maggie are real enough, even breaking into her room to rape her can't change that, nor Lace getting pregnant, to which he snorts and tosses her cash for an abortion.

Pros: a big roller rink massacre; an attack coordinated with a feminist black militant coalition, with machine guns and a badass armored Cadillac, the heavenly blonde Daryl Hannah jawline of Janice Karman as Bunny; the badass 70s funk score, great hair.  --Hill gives us all that and more. See it when you're super furious at the world or just strung out with the shakes because your dealer never showed, and bask in the cathartic powers of the fabulous legs of Joanne Nail, the way Robbie Lee's eyes widen and dilate, then contract into a glowing glaze when she talks. And savor Nail's final rant to the fat cop, her face streaked with blood, eyes wide and maniacal, it's a shocking Cagney-by-way-of Lorre raving mad closing monologue (maybe my favorite ending in all schlock cinema). Joanne Nail would be back all right... in the fascinating 70s all-purpose drive-in capstone, THE VISITOR! (1979) Not much else, alas. (Fuller review here).



Wild-eyed sorcerer Traigon (Roberto "the Mexican Martin Holden Wiener" Ballesteros) needs to sacrifice his firstborn child to his crazy Reptile goddess to keep his magic strong, but his hot young wife has twin girls and won't tell him which one came first. If he gets the order wrong, he's screwed. A wild-haired noble wizard strides forth to zap Traigon into a 20 year-long period of oblivion, but too late to save the mom from Traigon's swordy pique. Naturally, the wizard brings the twin girls to a farmer off in the wild to raise in secret (disguised as boys), imbues them with latent magical abilities and drops back in, Merlin-style, twenty years later. By then the girls have grown into beautiful Playboy playmate twins, Lynette and Leigh Harris, who don't even know how hot they are or that they're girls. Traigon comes back too, of course, and resumes the hunt. His guards scour the land, and assault and murder the farmer family while the twins are out fishing or duck hunting or something. Vengeance is sworn with the help of a hearty viking Baldar (Bruno 'the Mexican shorter John Goodman' Rey) and his horny satyr (who baas like a sheep). During a remarkably large scale market town square scene they meet up with Roberto (The Mexican taller Roger Daltrey) Nelson as lusty roustabout Erlick and the four of them launch a market wide donnybrook against a mob of angry cheated gamblers after Erlick and angry guards after the twins, who do a pretty good job as a kind of tag team bo staff whirligig. Ensuing are hair raising escapes, magical spells, god-wars, apes with druggy fruits (if you'll forgive the expression), twin-connection remote orgasms, and undead warriors culled from their crypts.

Long unavailable in any format, SORCERESS has just enough of Hill's dry Hawksian wit to stand apart from other sword and sorcery "epics" of the 'shot in Mexico or Argentina' New World post-CONAN era. The script is serviceable, the monsters are hilarious. The injury slight, the humor always well inside the boundary between dry deadpan wit (ala Big Trouble in Little China) and self-aware camp (ala Not of this Earth).

Pros: One of the lead guards has a crazy helmet that seems lifted from the 1936 FLASH GORDON. There's also a genuinely spooky crypt scene where the vertical dead in rows of alcoves slowly shamble to life out of the darkness. Baldar's a great wingman ("that's Erlick all right" he says watching the other twin writhe by the fire). The Scorpion Blu-ray that just came out and is gorgeous. The girls is hot and the grimoire stocked. What can go wrong? Can you do less?

Cons: It's sad to learn this was Hill's last movie, mainly because he got in an "enough is enough" spat with Corman over the editing. Why couldn't Hill have just let Corman cut the movie up? Corman's judgement has always been--to my mind--pretty solid. Why did he have to raise a ruckus which caused a falling out resulting in Hill needing to look elsewhere to make his movies and resulting in..... no more movies? To all out detriment and loss.

But I understand, I ain't the same anymore either. Age and experience brings wisdom at the expense of exuberance. And ET was coming along to make decadent deadpan larks like this -- too dirty and weird for the young kids and too cheap for the adults-- left to lurch along with the 16-20 year-old males at the video rental store and even they could be confused. There were many more films in this style for New World to come, and a good number of them are pretty great, I think (like the first two Deathstalker movies), full of the wondrously paradoxical Corman mix of feminist empowerment and bared breasts, knowing wit and thunderous idiocy we crave when relaxing in a late Saturday afternoon or early-early Sunday morning stupor. Sorceress's release year 1982 was a high point for A-list sci-fi and horror/adventure and amidst that year's B-list, SORCERESS is-- finally, thanks to Scorpion's gorgeous Blu-ray (replete with detailed extras)--made eternal. The twins are real (in all senses); the little ape monster masks have facial movements; the satyr leads a charge of real sheep at the climax; and the effects are all of the charming 'painted on the celluloid' variety. CGI was still ten years away; the tactile earthy effort of it all--its solid mythic arc and florid array of weridness--floats past its limits