HARDBODIES (1984) (Retro-VHS Look Blu-ray Edition)

HARDBODIES (1984)

Retro-VHS Look Edition 

Label: Mill Creek Entertainment 
Region Code: A 
Rating: R
Duration: 87 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Stereo 2.0 
Video: 1080P HD Widescreen (1.78:1) 
Director: Mark Griffiths 
Cast: Grant Cramer, Teal Roberts, Gary Wood, Michael Rappaport, Roberta Collins

Hardbodies always seemed to me to be the flagship boner-jam movie, with a sort of creepy set-up of three middle-aged, divorced men who enlist the help of teen surfer dude Scotty Palmer, who helps them pick-up young ladies on the beach in Southern California. Scotty is played by Grant Cramer of Killer Klowns from Outer Space fame, and the movie paints him as a sort of teen con man with a way with the young ladies, which the three divorced men exploit to their advantage. However, when Scotty begins to develop real feelings for a new girl in his life he tries to change his ways, but in a movie loaded with ample breasts and tanned buns it won't prove to be easy. 

The movie co-stars one Courtney Gains of Children of the Corn and The 'Burbs fame as Scotty's best mate Rags, a righteous '80s dude and one goofy looking sumbitch. Watching it again the movie has not aged well, but does well as a tawdry piece of '80s trash cinema, with an endless parade of topless young women, which is sort of what this film is all about - to that end it does not disappoint. 

Audio/Video: Hardbodies (1981) was previously issues by Mill Creek Entertainment as part of their Sun, Sand & Sweat 4-Movie Collection (1983-1985) Blu-ray, so it's nice to have it on a stand alone release, as part of the Retro-VHS Look series of releases. Presented in 1080p HD and framed 1.78:1 widescreen. Grain is present throughout, the image can be a tad bit soft with some minor dirt and print blemishes throughout, but overall thsi is a solid looking release. Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo, the tunes from girl-group Vixen sound pretty good, no subtitles are offered, and there are no extras whatsoever.

In the absence of extras what this has going for it is the packaging, the single disc release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with one sided sleeve of artwork featuring the original one sheet for the film, which does a pretty good job of getting across what this movie has to offer. This release is part of the Retro-VHS Look collection from Mill Creek and features a slipcover that looks like a vintage VHS release that is very appealing to me, especially since I was a VHS kid, always renting tapes from the local rental place. The disc also features an excerpt of the same key art as the slip and wrap, one side of the spine looks like a VHS release, the other looks like the label from the VHS tape, very cool. 

Hardbodies (1984) is a fun slice of R-rated 80's naughtiness, a light film that offers lots of SoCal 80's ladies without their tops and a bunch of horny guys doing typically dumb stuff.  I love these Retro-VHS Blu-ray releases, they're fun and look great on the shelf.  

SUN, SAND AND SWEAT (1983-1985) 4-MOVIE COLLECTION (Blu-ray Review)

SUN, SAND AND SWEAT (1983-1985) 

4-MOVIE COLLECTION

Label: Mill Creek Entertainment
Region Code: A
Duration: 391 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Dgital Stereo 2.0 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen 
Directors: James Bridges , George Bowers, Mark Griffiths, Sean S. Cunningham
Cast: Johnny Depp, Rob Morrow, John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis, David Knell, Perry King, Grant Cramer, Teal Roberts

Mill Creek Entertainment have put together a four-film collection of classic '80s boner-jams guaranteed to please anyone who was a horny teen or adolescent in the '80s. This one brings together three juggernauts of heavy petting from the post-Porky's era and adds in the John Travolta - Jamie Lee Curtis aerobic drama Perfect (1985), which features some '80s hard bodies but falls short of the boner-popping awesomeness of Spring Break (1983), Hardbodies (1984) and Private Resort (1985). The '80s were a very special time, a decade oozing with cheesy comedies, among them were an arousing sub genre of cinema I fondly refer to as boner-jams, movies that often dealt with teens on spring break and were loaded with copious amounts of nudity.  Late night cable was overstuffed with these back in the day, and I loved them. If I was cruising cable channels after hours and Hardbodies was airing I would watch in teen-ecstasy with no small amount of pant-swelling anticipation. In an age before the Internet and 24 hour porn these teen sex-comedies were my only source for spank-bank masturbation fuel.

PRIVATE RESORT (1985) 

Rating: R
Duration: 82 Minutes 
Audio: English Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 
Video: 1080P HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: George Bowers 
Cast: Johnny Depp, Ron Morrow, Emily Longstreth

Synopsis: Jack and Ben check in at a posh Florida resort, planning to spend every hour in hot pursuit of babes. But their plans hit a major detour when they try to bed the wife of a conniving jewel thief. They'll have to outsmart him, a nasty security guard and an obnoxious jock if they're ever going to get a moment alone with the girl of their dreams!

Private Resort stars Johnny Depp and Rob Morrow as teen dudes who prowl a local resort looking for sex, a movie littered with scene after scene of topless women. It was everything a teen could hope for from an '80s boner-comedy, plus it mixed in a goody subplot involving a inept jewel thief called The Maestro, played by Hector Elizondo, and a near nude scene from Leslie Easterbrook from Police Academy, which might be worth the price of admission alone. I am sure Johnny Depp is ashamed of this one, coming right on the heels of A Nightmare on Elm Street and a few years before his star-making turn in Oliver Stone's Platoon. Private resort is a standard teen sex comedy, perfectly throwaway and delightfully cheesy. 

HARDBODIES (1984)

Rating: R
Duration:87 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 
Video: 1080P HD Widescreen (1.78:1) 
Director: Mark Griffiths 
Cast: Grant Cramer, Teal Roberts, Gary Wood, Michael Rappaport, Roberta Collins

Synopsis: When three middle-aged geezers move into a swinging beach house, they hire a young stud to teach them how to score with the local beauties.'80s band Vixen and hundreds of Southern California's hottest swimsuit models co-star in the legendary cult comedy.

Hardbodies always seemed to me to be the flagship boner-jam movie, with a sort of creepy set-up of three middle-aged divorced men who enlist teen surfer dude Scotty Palmer who helps them pick-up young ladies on the beach in California. Scotty is played by Grant Cramer of Killer Klowns from Outer Space fame, and the movie paints him as a sort of con man with a way with the ladies, which the three divorced men exploit to their advantage. However, when Scotty begins to develop real feelings for a new girl in his life he tries to change his ways, but in a movie loaded with breasts and buns it will not be easy. 

The movie also co-stars one Courtney Gains of Children of the Corn and The 'Burbs fame as Scotty's best mate Rags, a righteous '80s dude and one goofy looking sumbitch. Watching it again the movie has not aged well, but does well as a tawdry piece of '80s trash cinema, with an endless parade of topless young women, which is sort of what this set is all about. 

SPRING BREAK (1983)

Rating: R
Duration: 102 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 
Video: 1080P HD Widescreen (1.78:1) 
Director: Sean S. Cunningham
Cast: David Knell, Perry Lang, Paul Land

Synopsis: Adam and Nelson are naive college students who have come to Fort Lauderdale to perform these rites of Spring Break. Due to a mix-up, the boys end up in the same room with a pair of experienced guys from New York who coach the boys on the finer points of seduction - with mixed results.

Spring Break (1983) comes by way of director Sean S. Cunningham who most will know brought us the Friday the 13th, this teen-sex comedy is sandwiched in-between Friday the 13th (1980) and the teen-thriller New Kids (1985), the movie is about a pair of teen-dweebs named Nelson (David Nell) and Adam (Perry Lang) who arrive in Fort Lauderale to reap the horny rewards of spring break. They find that they have to share their small hotel room with a pair of party-animals named Stu (Steve Bassette) and O.T. (Paul Land), two skilled pussy-hounds who take the nerds under their wings, learning them in the ways of bedding strange women.

Along the way the four find themselves involved in an effort to save the hotel from a buy-out scheme by the crooked brother-in-law of the owner, a plot involving the step-father of Nelson and a shady building inspector. This one is tame in the nudity department compared to Private resort and Hardbodies, dare I say even nuanced to a degree with a story with an an actual arc, it's not quite American Graffitti, but it is not too far removed from The Last American Virgin. It also features the best soundtrack of the set, with tunes from NRBQ, .38 Special and a bonafide theme song from Cheap Trick, which is not their best stuff. The movie is fun, there's a sweetness to it, a vibe that reminded me a bit of Caddyshack, with a sweet love interest, and of course the prerequisite amount of boobies.

PERFECT (1985)

Rating: R
Duration: 120 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 
Video: 1080P HD Widescreen (1.78:1) 
Director: James Bridges 
Cast: John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis, Anne De Salvo, Marilu Henner, Laraine Newman

Synopsis: Based on a series of Rolling Stone articles by Aaron Latham, this romance was set in the world of L.A.'s hip fitness scene. Rolling Stone reporter Adam Lawrence (John Travolta) comes to L.A. to write a story about a prominent businessman who's been arrested for drug dealing (shades of the John DeLorean scandal). He's also decided to research a piece on the exercise fad and how health clubs have become the "singles bars of the '80s." His boss (real-life Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner as himself) OK's the project. At a club called The Sports Connection, an incognito Adam meets the regulars, including promiscuous Linda (Laraine Newman), airhead Sally (Marilu Henner) and aerobics instructor Jessie (Jamie Lee Curtis), a former Olympic swimmer. Adam and Jessie begin a romance, but it ends when she discovers that he's there to trash her and the club in print. Conflicted, Adam wrestles with publishing the story, but the final decision isn't his.

Perfect is based on true-life story about a Rolling Stone journalist (John Tavolta) who is writing an article on how 80's L.A. fitness clubs are the new singles spot, when he falls for a aerobic instructor played by Jaime Lee Curtis (John Carpenter's Halloween). There is no nudity and no horny teens anywhere to be found, but I will say that the short-coiffed Curtis rocked the spandex and has some nice moves, with both her and Travolta turning is decent performances, but the movie just did nothing for me - this was the dud of the bunch, and it did not belong on this teen-lust collection. 

The Sun, Sand and Sweat 4-movie collection from Mill Creek is a ton of boner-jam fun, three of the four movies are loaded with copious amounts of horny teen fantasies, and as a child of the '80s these were my cumming-of-age movies, and they look pretty good in HD. I wish they would have excised Perfect in favor of another trashy slice of '80s boner-comedy but the other three are top-notch '80s cheese. This can be picked-up for about $10, which is cheaper than what you can buy the now out-of-print Spring Break DVD for on Amazon or eBay. 3/5 

NEW YEAR'S EVIL (1980)

NEW YEAR'S EVIL (1980) 

Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Duration: 90 Minutes
Rating: R
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo
Video: HD widescreen (1.78:1)
Director: Emmett Alston
Cast: Chris Wallace, Roz Kelly, Kip Niven, Grant Cramer, Louisa Moritz

On New Year's Eve in 1980 L.A. TV host Diane "Blaze" Sullivan is hosting the televised punk rock rock music show the Hollywood Hotline when she receives a creepy telephone call from someone calling himself Evil, who disguises his voice with a weird vocal effect. The creep tells her of his plan to commit murder at midnight in each of the US time zones beginning with Eastern Standard Time. Unnerved by the call she alerts the police who do not take the threat seriously until Evil's first victim is found at a local asylum, the body count rises with each passing hour leading up to midnight in L.A.. 

New Year's Evil is an early slasher entry and one has quite a cult following despite not being easy to come by for a few years until now with a brand new Blu-ray release from Scream Factory. Most '80s slashers I had the benefit of viewing at a young age and with the baggage of nostalgia usually increasing my level of enjoyment, this one however I did not view until the early 2000s, which might hurt it a little bit, but not much because I do seriously enjoy this weird little slasher. 

As the film begins we are treated to scenes of stereotypical '80s movie punk rockers cruising down Sunset Strip in a convertible on their way to the Hollywood Hotline New Year's Eve shows, these fierce leader of the group is armed with the one of those dreaded switchblade combs, so you better watch out! At the club they come up against a wooden security officer who demands yo see their tickets... tickets...  tickets...  it's just one of many weird little scene peppered throughout this mostly goreless whodunit that make it such a charmer. 

The hostess of the Hollywood Hotline is an oddly aging punk rock hostess named Blaze played by Roz Kelly who some of the older readers might know as Pinky Tuscadero, Fonzie's girlfriend from the TV show Happy Days. She's not the most convincing punk rocker we've seen committed to celluloid, more along the lines of Rhonda Shear from USA' Network's Up All Night after a week long bender, not a pretty sight. The entire punk schtick is about as convincing as that infamous punk episode of TV's Quincy. Not that it matters because the punk element is not carried through in any meaningful way, it's just a backdrop to the happenings in the film. Blaze takes music requests live on air as numerous punk and new wave bands performs songs, including the irresistible tune "New Year's Evil" performed by the band Shadow, who appear no less than three times throughout the film, the music performances and montages of punkers dancing is yet another feather in the cap of what at it's core is not a great slasher film. 

While the murders may not be blood soaked or bountiful at least you don't have to wait long for the first one, it happens almost at the start and has a nice creepy set-up in the bathroom. We don't see the identity of the killer during this first scene but, against slasher type, we do see the face of the culprit for the duration of the film. while we know what he looks like we do not know how he figures into the larger story or what his motivations are, until the finale. I thought it was pretty obvious who the who was in this whodunit which dampens the impact of the revelation at the end, but it didn't ruin it for me, the murderer (Kip Neven) is pretty great, loved his performance and how over-the-top he could be at times, at once a charmer and a nut.

Obvious though I thought the identity of the killer was the film does attempt to throw us off the scent, but since we have seen the face of the killer there can be no suspense, and when it is revealed how petty his motives are it is laughable. Enter Blaze's oddball son Derek (Grant Cramer), a sad, frustrated, pill-popping weirdo who enjoys wearing mom's nylons over his face and acting strange. It's no wonder why the kid is a demented attention starved but,  his mom is a self-obsessed bitch with little concern for anyone other than herself. In any other slasher film she would have been murdered and we would cheered afterward!

Looking back at the year this was made the slasher formula had not quite been perfected, and maybe that may be why the film is sorely lacking in the gore department. Many of the deaths happen just of screen but at least the set-up for each of the murders are quite a bit of fun. We are denied the tradition of a masked killer for most of the film, preferring to stalk his prey in various guises then pouncing on them. At one point disguising himself as an orderly at an asylum where he hooks up with sweet dim witted honey (Taafe O'Connell from Galaxy of Terror) in record time before slashing her throat while making out, recording the sounds of her death on a boombox and replaying the murder live on-air, which he does again and again following each of the following murderers. 

He further goes on to disguise himself as a Hollywood business manager at a bar where the charmer again picks up a lonely lady (Louisa Moritz from The Last American Virgin) and her annoyed friend whom it is revealed is suffering from nervous diarrhea (WTF!) before they end up as victims of his murderous new year's resolution.  

My biggest beef with the film is that there's a serious lack of blood and little to no suspense, but on the positive side there's plenty of '80s goofiness on display and the killer is a pretty interesting  who does don a mask for the free-wheeling finale. Each of the set ups for each death are pretty good, but the payoff is disappointing, so just now that going into this one. 

Blu-ray: New Year's Evil debuts ob Blu-ray from shout! Factory horror imprint Scream Factory with an AVC encode and framed in 1080p high-definition widescreen (1.78:1) from a decent source, the print used for the master is very clean with only the occasional instance of vertical lines and print damage. The film grain is managed nicely and we have a decent amount of depth and clarity, colors are crisp and the shadow detail is much better than expected. 

The DTS-HD Master Audio Mono 2.0 does a serviceable exporting the audio, dialogue, score and effects are nicely balanced and the various punk and new wave performances sound great, the band shadow's tune "New Year's Evil" has never sounded better than on this disc. Optional English subtitles are provided. 

Onto the extras we have a 37-minute making of featurette with interviews from  actors Kip Niven, Grant Cramer and Taaffe O'Connell and director of photography Thomas Ackerman which is quite good, especially from actor Kip Neven who portrayed the killer in the film, he fondly recalls landing what was his first lead role. Also interviewed is actress Taafe O'Connell who was the second murder victim in the film, the blond nurse at the asylum, and she seems like a fun nut of a woman, and offers an unintentional PSA about disastrous lip augmentation, holy cow. Chris Wallace who portrayed the lunatic son in the film recounts the memorable audition process and how his method acting wowed the producers of the film and they cast him right there and then. 

There's also an audio Commentary with director Emmett Alston moderated by Bill Olsen of Code Red DVD. While I love Code red DVD I find that Olsen's nutty antics often overshadow his efforts as a cult movie film distributor. The guy offers up a barrage of rants on his Facebook page that are truly entertaining, less entertaining is the way he opens and closes his online store like a hot dog vendor with out a corner to sell from, one day it's open and then it's closed, the guy just makes it damn hard to buy his stuff, and then complains that sales are low only to turn around and bitch some more when he has too many orders to deal with, love ya Bill! The commentary is not great, Bill goes off on tangents and Alston seems a bit lost and flustered by questions that seem out of his purview as a cinematographer on the film, but Bill sounds like he's having a blast. The last extra on the disc is a theatrical trailer for the film. There's also a sleeve of reversible artwork 

Special Features
- Audio Commentary with director Emmett Alston moderated by Bill Olsen of Code Red DVD
- The Making of New Year's Evil featuring new interviews with actors Kip Niven, Grant Cramer and Taaffe O'Connell and director of photography Thomas Ackerman (37 Mins) 
- Theatrical Trailer (2 Mins) 

Verdict: Okay, I admit that this is not a great slasher film but I do find New Year's Evil to be a fun entry with a goofy charm about it. There are the makings of an awesome movie here but the elements just never come together just right. It must be doing something right though because I never fail to ring in the New Year without a viewing of this film, a goofy slasher entry and I am quite pleased to have it on Blu-ray and widely available for the horror loving masses.