Streetgames (1987)
Night Trackers (1987)
Race to Midnight (1985)
Note: List is believed to be incomplete.
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Every Six Minutes: The Story of Emmeritus
For a short time in the 1980s, Emmeritus was CanCult's
king—not in quality, but in sheer quantity.
Like Meridian, Cinépix, and Quadrant before it, the largely
invisible Hamilton-based Emmeritus Productions was a resolutely
independent venture dedicated to crafting unique genre films that
eschewed the homegrown film
industry as a whole. Following a grueling schedule that excreted out a
new made-for-TV movie every two months for seven years, Emmeritus
specialized in aggressively bad, amateurish B-films that made company
head Lionel Shenken easily one of the most prolific Canadian producers
of the decade.
A horticulturalist by trade, Shenken got his
start in
showbiz as the
host of Man around the House, an early 1960s
gardening show on Toronto station CFTO. After producing a series of TV
commercials, Shenken began creating music programming for
upstart Hamilton station CHCH, which would soon become home to exemplary Canadian television series
like The Hilarious House of Frightenstein and Smith
and Smith's Comedy Mill. After a poor critical reception to
his inital local talent-based dramatic anthology program, Niagara
Repertory Theatre, Shenken began to look for a change of
pace, something that could tap into the voracious appetites of the
cable networks and home video market of the early 1980s. With a
relatively inexpensive U-Matic camera in hand, he pitched a
series of micro-budgeted action-adventure films to his bosses at CHCH,
embarking on a journey of schlock that would keep him busy throughout
most of the decade.
According to Shenken, each of the more than 30
films
eventually
produced under the Emmeritus banner was pre-sold to several foreign
markets and then cranked out for roughly $375,000 (although the actual
number probably figures much lower—$30,000 each according to one source). Not only were the films broadcast on
CHCH in Canada, but they also appeared on the cable channel USA
Network, the home to the infamous schlock showcase Up All
Night. Completed on a strict schedule of 25 days, Shenken boasted that he had
cultivated a precise, cost-saving formula for each of his films. Shot
on video using completely unknown actors and non-union crews, he claimed that no scene
in his productions was allowed to be longer than two minutes, and an action scene was
required every six minutes, ensuring that even if the plot didn't make
much sense, that at least the films would clip along at a steady pace.
With an eye to overseas sales, he also wanted at least one lead
character had to be a visible minority, a sometimes awkward requirement
that saw many Emmeritus films boasting two protagonists.
While not every Emmeritus film follows these rules, most of the
fims fall sqaurely within the action-adventure category—buddy cop mysteries, buddy
smuggling plots, buddy mafia takedowns and buddy Vietnam revenge films, Shenken did
tackle horror, science fiction, and in one case, a historical epic. No matter what various genre
requirements each film fulfilled, however, there is one thing that all
the Emmeritus titles have in common: they're uniformly terrible. In
many cases, these films were a crash course in filmmaking for the
inexperienced actors and directors, a ramshackle
motion picture assembly line where any industrious young film hopeful
could get his or her foot in Shenken's door, and come out a
month or two later with an internationally available movie under their
belt. Still, Shenken did manage to cultivate a small group of loyalists
to his low-budget vision, with many of the same actors appearing
throughout the Emmeritus oeuvre. The enterprising producer even gave a
first break to Charlie Wiener, who would go on to helm Canuxploitation
classics Dragon Hunt and Fireballs
and Allan Levine, who later found work as a line producer on several of
Jerry Ciccoritti's B-movies. Ghostkeeper director
Jim Makichuk also made a few films for Shenken during this time, the
only previously employed filmmaker to do so.
Despite their often mind-boggling faults, what is most
surprising about
the Emmeritus films is that all of his films are set precisely where
they are shot—in Canada. Often struggling to tie their wildly
illogical plotlines back to their native land, the films are not only
proud to feature Mounties and red and white maple leaf flags waving in
the distance, but to incorporate the Canadian setting directly into the
story, whether it's as a haven for Vietnam escapees, a port for
smugglers, or just a convenient backdrop for a murder mystery.
Besides brief runs on North American television, many
of the
Emmeritus titles made their way to the booming VHS market in the
1980s, where crudely drawn covers and embellished plot synopses
attempted to entice curious video store patrons into a regrettable
rental. These tapes, now floating around used bins and internet auction
sites, are the sole remaining signpost to the strange legacy of
Emmeritus—some of the rarest, and undeniably most patriotic
contributions to Canuxploitation.
For more details about Emmeritus, see Canuxploitation's interview with director J.A. Gaudet.
This short promotional reel appears before some Emmeritus VHS tapes and features in-house trailers for Deadly Prey and The Edge.
Body Count
1985, Starring Jonathan Potts, James Knapp and James Lukie. Directed by Lionel Shenken.
Hamilton, Ontario is the proud setting for the serial killer shocker Body Count. A shot on 3/4 inch Umatic video production from super-producer Lionel Shenken and his prolific Emmeritus productions, the film is a serial killer story about a cab driver falsely accused of murdering a young couple. Slickly produced, earnestly written, and well acted, Body Count really grabs you from the beginning. with Jonathan Potts stealing the show as the troubled young man with a shocking past. Not surprisingly, he would go on to a long acting career in both Canadian films and horror genre flicks, one of the few Shenken players to do so. Featuring Ontario license plates, Canadian currency and local accents, this is a serial killer movie that is refreshingly Canadian. (Reviewed by David DeCoteau)
The Bounty Hunters
1985, Starring Ian McPhail, Jon Austin, Robin Atha. Directed by Bruno Pischiutta.Although this 60-minute film contains no opening or closing credits, 1985's The Bounty Hunters was directed by Bruno Pischiutta, an Italian director who had recently arrived in Canada. The plot is extremely straight-forward: a pair of Vietnam vets are hired to kidnap a wanted killer from his Toronto hideout and transport him across the border into the hands of the FBI. The fugitive is a fey photographer who recruits girls from an aerobics class to star in S&M snapshots and attend his vaguely satanic parties, where they are eventually tortured and murdered. With the help of an undercover female associate, the bounty hunters raid the photographer's party with smoke bombs, grab their hostage and head for the Niagara Falls border. Riddled with contrivances, including a phony newscast at the very end that unsatisfactory ties up all the loose ends, The Bounty Hunters is a blatantly amateurish production that features a surprising amount of nudity and obvious Hamilton-area locations, including one scene looking out over Niagara Falls.
Deadly Pursuit
(AKA Commando Games) 1985, Starring Doug Stone, Russel Ferrier and Laura Centeno. Directed by J.A. Gaudet.
While Emmeritus' U-Matic videotape opuses are always unbelievably cheesy, their unrealistic aspirations are hitched to a unique and, sometimes, compelling aesthetic. Such is the case with Deadly Pursuit, in which a crazed Vietnam vet avenges his platoon’s friendly fire death at a fun-filled paintball weekend. Consistency is not director J.A. Gaudet’s thing, as this film clearly shows; a relatively impressive war sequence, achieved by shooting at night with virtually no lights, is followed by a shockingly interminable ten minutes of nothing but cars driving around. And while the acting is also not very good, it’s at least endearingly casual, including the paintball lodge manager who is clearly played by a paintball lodge manager, a doofus vet duo named R & R, and a silly dork who meets an (intentionally) hilarious demise. And while it's notable that Emmeritus productions are just about the only Canadian films that consistently cast Caribbean Canadians in pivotal roles, here they outdo themselves by bringing in Phillipino actress Laura Centeno as May Lee. As one veteran’s Vietnamese wife, she not only goes out of her way to remind us that the war inflicted tragedies far beyond soldiers' psyches, but she ultimately proves herself the most able and heroic character of the lot. Is there another ‘Nam film that provides such an emphatic voice for the "other" side? Racism is even addressed via two catty white-skinned wives who are portrayed as total airhead bitches. It’s still not a very good movie, but Gaudet is doing something more than just filling the running time here. The assassin’s lengthy hyperbolic tirade directly into the camera is another distinguishing high point — nobody else in Canada makes movies quite like Emmeritus. (Reviewed by Jonathan Culp)
Death in Hollywood
1985, Starring Phil Rash and Elizabeth Leslie. Directed by Larry Pall.
It would appear that trial and error was used to arrive at Emmeritus’ ostensible formula of “no scene longer than two minutes, and an action scene every six minutes", because Death in Hollywood flies tediously in the face of both directives. The hook here is movie-mania, the fulcrum the comeback ambitions of a faded but still overbearing director whose every exchange is saturated with endless movie buff trivia. Inevitably, the story meanders into a nonsensical murder mystery, and not one bullshit convolution is checked for motivation, logic or sanity. Nothing new about that for an Emmeritus film; what distinguishes Death in Hollywood is that — with the exception of a single quick interlude in the most hideous luxury suite imaginable — the entire movie takes place on a single, static set. An actor comes in, talks and leaves; another actor comes in, talks and leaves, and on it goes, with barely a pistol shot to wake you up. Appalling, witless and deadly, even the film freaks who are Death in Hollywood’s only possible target audience will be aghast at the poor quality of its movie in-jokes. (Reviewed by Jonathan Culp)
The Edge
(AKA Doomsday Plot) 1985, Starring Jan Taylor, Simon Henri and Robert Reece. Directed by Allan Levine.
After an opening shootout scene, in which an alleyway in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood doubles for Moscow, little happens in The Edge's next 75 minutes, except for scenes of RCMP employees sitting in a dark office talking about activities that might possibly be exciting if director Allan Levin would actually bother to show them. These people just will not shut up! The scenario involves Commie agents choreographing a hijack of a plane with a "dirty" bomb stewarded by a neurotic screw-up. The whole plot revolves around how the Commies knew the steward would screw up in just the way he does, a script nuance worthy of a Jon-Mikl Thor film. Since this bomb would merely blow up a "small city," they take it down to Ontario Place amusement park to disarm it! But, of course, they talk about it a lot first. The film also features lots of 1980s hair styles, stupid repartee for days, a denouement involving a discussion of where to go for dinner and two priceless seconds of a couple guys watching the monitor at the far end of the set. (Reviewed by Jonathan Culp)
Fly With the Hawk
1985, Starring Peter Ferri, Peter Snook and Shelley Lynne Speigel. Directed by Robert Tanos.
Viewers would be better off actually getting lost in the woods than watching this effort— it couldn't possibly be this boring in real life. After extensive debriefing by a friendly trapper dude, a bullied city kid (Peter Snook) walks, camps and lights a fire, then walks, camps and lights a fire again for an entire winter with nothing so much as an incident to show for it. When something finally does happen at the very end, though, the production tips its hand—all the woodland survival skills and gratuitously appropriated Indian iconography was just a means to a normative end in which the kid could trot back to civilization, redeemed by new self-reliance and spared from the reform school bullies and pigheaded administrators he ran from in the first place. This is bad ideology and bad dramatics, bereft of conflict, let alone insight; all life's problems are washed away by alternating beauty shots of trees and birds — exactly the kind of rampant longeuers that separate the wheat from the chaff in Emmeritus' cockeyed universe. And just when you think they can't betray your trust an inch further, along comes the stupid twist ending. (Reviewed by Jonathan Culp)
Greedy Terror
(AKA Deadly Pursuit, Shock Chamber) 1985, Starring Doug Stone, Jacqueline Samuda and Russell Ferrier. Directed by Steve DiMarco.
While Emmeritus' attempt at an anthology thriller falls on the earnest side of their sensibility, it can't help but tap into Lionel Shenken’s usual brand of campy underachievement. "A Symbol of Victory" is the classic nebbish-slips-babe-the-love-potion story with a gangster twist, and it achieves a degree of pathos even though the characters are remote and the storyline is preposterous. "Country Hospitality," the middle episode, is a murderous hick thriller with a dash of frustrated waitress. Of the three stories, this one has the most energy, a plot that comes close to making sense, and an inspired twist ending even though the villain is a one-dimensional putz. The end piece, "The Injection," deals with two down-at-the-heels dudes who set out to cheat an insurance claim, with unpredictably tragic results. Pretty dumb, but there's something compelling about the hopeless losers at its centre, and the production values are so low that it lends the skid-row setting an authenticity that can't be bought. The jaded sex-worker dialogue in the diner is a true highlight that has nothing to do with camp. Greedy Terror's framing device has a mother telling a reporter the stories of her three sons (all played by Stone) in a church, but weren't the protagonists of "The Injection" brothers themselves? (Reviewed by Jonathan Culp)
The Highroller
(AKA Las Vegas Hit, The Borrower) 1984, Starring Jeff Holec, George T. Cunningham and Jan Taylor. Directed by Peter McCubbin.
If you can cut through the chintz, this familiar tale of an immature shlub (Jeff Holec) that bilks the bank he works for is pretty watchable, with more considered camera placement than usual and even a few reasonably elegant dolly moves. But, as is usual with Emmeritus Productions, the film's relative success relates to character and theme rather than style; we get to know Holec through scenes of his daily routine, while his genuinely painful intrusion into a yacht party sets up a pervasive class-consciousness. Though typically dull and ugly with something missing at its centre, The Highroller’s tight and smart script almost nudges it into the upper tier of Emmeritus' output—at least until the preposterous climax, a twist that comes out of absolutely nowhere, undermines everything the film had going for it up to that point, and suddenly transforms the whole thing into a camp masterpiece. It's dumb, it's audacious, it's trashy, and it works better if you don't see it coming, so please forget you read this review! (Reviewed by Jonathan Culp)
The Hijacking of Studio Four
1985, Starring Jack Zimmerman, Bill Boyle, Tom Nursall, Karen Cannata, Russell Ferrier. Directed by J.A. Gaudet.
Not a bad little film—at least by Emmeritus standards—The Hijacking of Studio Four represents the very essence of Shenken's concept of budget-minded entertainment. The film has an aging father (Jack Zimmerman) trying to free his daughter after she is unfairly arrested on Kanzaal, a Caribbean island run by a corrupt Prime Minister (Hadley Sandiford). When the Kanzaal PM comes to Hamilton to be interviewed about his controversial reputation for a local TV show, dear old dad shows up with a homemade bomb and plans to hold everyone hostage until he sees TV footage of his daughter arriving back safely in Canada. Like most Emmeritus productions, The Hijacking of Studio Four is talky and padded with boring scenes, but it does build a little bit of suspense and remains impressive in its shoestring conception—besides a few establishing shots done in St. Kitts, it was filmed almost entirely at the CHCH TV station, with the bulk of the plot taking place in an empty studio. There's the usual mix of (far too many) inexperienced actors struggling through their parts, but keep an eye out for Lionel Shenken himself, who appears briefly as the cold-hearted station owner.
The King's Regiment
(AKA The Chronicle of 1812, 1812) 1984, Starring Simon Henri, Craig Williams and Simon Clery. Directed by Allan Levine.
With zero production values, incredibly blunt disregard for historical fact and outrageously inaccurate Scottish, English and Yankee accents, this tall tale of 1812 is a glorious farce, maybe even a self-aware one. By all rights it should have been a turgid disaster, with smart- and dumb-asses prancing around the Bruce Trail in tall hats and epaulets, but in fact it's as close as Emmeritus ever came to Cormanesque lightness and verve. The villains bug out their eyes and stamp their feet, the good guys wisecrack, riff and twinkle, and everyone radiates such bounding enthusiasm that it transcends nitpicking questions of artistry. The narrative makes no sense whatsoever — how did the King of Spain get mixed up in this? What kind of moron would fall for the film's document-switcheroo scheme anyway? — but that only adds to the fun. The real giveaway is when one of the gratuitous "arr-arr" pirates lapses into a word-for-word Captain Highliner tribute! What a hoot. (Reviewed by Jonathan Culp)
Lady Bear
(AKA Assignment KGB) 1985, Starring Carol Poirier, Claudette Roach. Directed by Peter McCubbin.
One suspects that he knew that his espionage plot made no sense, so writer/director Peter McCubbin attempted to distract viewers by piling on twist endings like Jenga blocks — the boss knew it all along, the dad isn't dead after all, the shrink is a spy, the librarian is a spy, and so on. This is doubly disorienting because, while all this is going on, other plot elements implode uselessly, such as when the British guy that Lady Bear is supposed to be spying on heads home unannounced after one brief scene, never to be seen again. Lady Bear’s clownish RCMP boyfriend never does figure out what the hell's going on, even after much firsthand observation and hearty exposition. And anyway, he was gauche enough to put the moves on the female spy immediately after she announced she was the Commie's mistress, and she was flaky enough to bite. What planet are we on here? The planet Emmeritus, of course, where women have nightmares about KGB karate class and men film infidelities with Bolexes in the heating ducts of unlit bedrooms. Lady Bear is so low energy, sober-sided, and incomprehensible that it takes on a certain fascination in spite of itself. (Reviewed by Jonathan Culp)
Marked for Death
1987, Starring David Sisak, Roger Montgomery and Karen Cannata. Directed by David Nisbet.
Businessman witnesses gangland hit from his subway window. Reports the killing to a cop. Cop is corrupt. Cop and gangsters conspire to rub out witness while he's out jogging. Sounds simple? Not when you're dealing with possibly the dumbest and pokiest gangsters ever to appear on screen. Instead of just grabbing the guy and throwing him off a bridge, they tail him until they run into parked cars, they stake him out and get parking tickets, they wait in the park but get caught up reading the paper, they wait in the park but a little girl wants to chat, they wait in the park, they wait in the park. And if they seem stupid, get a load of the homicide cops, who have their own tail on the bad guys every step of the way, yet somehow never manage to figure out that their man's in on it even as he shiftily misplaces witness reports and invites guys in trenchcoats over to his place for Chinese food. Good thing for them that when Bad Cop finally does corner the jogger, he considerately takes the time to spell out every last detail of his scheme, because they never would have figured it out by themselves. It's remotely possible that the comedy is intentional, but Marked For Death's contempt for basic logic still boggles the mind. Not as horrendously ragged as The Bounty Hunters, but almost as oafish. (Reviewed by Jonathan Culp)
Mark of the Beast
1986, Starring James Gordon, Carolyn Guillet and David Smukler. Directed by Robert Stewart.
In the opening scene, a couple of Mohawk College TV production students are quietly invited to videotape a secret political rally on the lawn of City Hall, immediately raising several questions for viewers, such as what the hell is a "secret" political rally? And why do the eight working men who comprise the audience still have their hard hats on? This scene sets the tone for one of the tackiest and breeziest of all Emmeritus productions, for which you are virtually obliged to check your brain at the opening credits. The kids end up taping a political assassination, and the trail leads to a cult of cowled masterminds of world government — some kind of Mr. Dressup Freemasons, a snapshot out of David Icke's nightmares. The beastly cabal's disciples reveal themselves in ever greater numbers, identified by tattoos of a dollar sign with a coiled snake for the "S" on their wrists. While the filmmakers do go for suspense and malevolence, there's no They Live-style social commentary here; it's sci-fi/horror puff, pure showmanship. This jives exceptionally well with the comic shtick of the leads — goofball cinematographer James Gordon and hottie nurse Carolyn Guillet (who comes with even hotter nurse sidekick Charlene Richards at no extra charge). Gordon's wise-cracking lunkhead is an absolutely perfect Emmeritus character; from his megaphone shtick in the outrageous film-within-a-film flashbacks to his rat-a-tat repartee with Guillet in his broken down car, the comedy is way livelier than you expect. Mark of the Beast's lighter tone overwhelms the heavy stuff and redefines the movie as pure wicked fun.
Niagra Strip
1987, Starring Ron Byrd, Paul De La Rosa and April Johnson. Directed by Jim Makichuk.
Emmeritus goes to the Falls for this heroin-smuggling procedural set in a tiny town where everyone knows everyone else except the "punks" (who look like A Flock of Seagulls pretending to be W.A.S.P.). The federal cop, the local cop, and the shady businessman are all old football buddies, and the offed drug runner's widow went to the same school. While Niagara Strip is as visually tacky and dramatically overdrawn as Emmeritus' other films, it actually does manage to capture a mood — wistful, melancholic, unfulfilled. Essential to this is Paul De La Rosa as the small town cop with pictures of Hollywood cops on his walls — emotionally stunted and agonizingly immature, his character spells the themes with uncommon precision, so lost that he's tragic. There's also something about April Johnson's pretty, uncomplicated widow that makes you get what these guys see in her. Even its zero-budget tawdriness captures its time and place, with a nice eye for detail. (Reviewed by Jonathan Culp)
The Porn Murders
1985, Starring Jamie Spears, Terry Logan, Peter Brikmanis, Stephanie Sulik, Henry Malabranche. Directed by Charles Wiener.
Before serving up great Canadian sleaze with classic fare like Fireballs
and Dragon Hunt, camera-for-hire Charlie Wiener
made his debut with this cheap, convoluted thriller about a
bloodthirsty anti-porn crusader. When a zealot in a cheap plastic clown
mask starts killing off all the local pornographers and hookers, crime
beat reporter Dan Blake (Jamie Spears) teams up with Police Lieutenant
Rossey (Terry Logan) to break the case wide open. The mysterious
murderer, who frequently calls Blake and demands that he clean up the
streets, takes the pair on a bizarre and increasingly nonsensical
journey as he slaughters his prey and leaves behind replicas of his
mask. After what seems like forever, they eventually finger the nebbish
Kenneth Markham (John Woodhill) as the culprit, but Blake and Rossey
believe that he's simply the pawn of a much more sinister mind. Even
though there are dozens of characters in the film, many involved in
seemingly unimportant subplots, the killer is easily identified within
the first five minutes of the film, making the rest of the tedious
running time an exercise in audience frustration. Belying the title of
the film, there's little blood and absolutely no sex in the
film—instead, the sole value of The Porn Murders
lies in its fascinating Toronto location work, that takes the viewer to
scummy T.O. landmarks like the Brunswick House and, shockingly, the
Metro Theatre, Toronto's last standing adult motion picture house.
Price of Vengeance
1985, Starring Edmund James. Directed by Alistair Brown.
A narrative of the Hamilton mafia: an upwardly mobile businessman is called back to his sleazy roots when his hockey-player-gone-bad brother is murdered. As he pieces together clues, the businessman finds himself on a collision course with some Italian gangsters he's known since childhood. Bizarrely, the Don is actually one of the most sympathetic characters in the piece, certainly more so than the protagonist — the more appalling details of his brother's conduct emerge, the more single-minded the businessman becomes about avenging him. It's self-consciously gloomy and almost "existential," which is never a good idea for shot-on-video productions, since the lacklustre surface automatically negates all atmospheric tension. As usual, illogic is rampant — the hero recovers awful fast from a beating, and the still-camera-in-the-fish-finder routine is unredeemed by its procedural detail. In addition, lead actor Edmund James does not convey the moral complexities that the director seems to be tilting at. At least there's some nice use of Hamilton Harbour, a climactic shootout on the Skyway and, most impressively, a sidekick who's a black hockey player. (Reviewed by Jonathan Culp)
Survival Earth
(AKA Survival 1990) 1985, Starring Nancy Cser, Jeff Holec and Craig Williams. Directed by Peter McCubbin.
The best Lionel Shenken productions overwhelm their own cheap, shallow essence with pacing, wit or energy. So, a post-apocalyptic drama is not likely to catch them at their best. Apocalypse movies inevitably use their setup as a peg for philosophic hand-wringing, and the only novelty here is the utter vague aimlessness of the discourse. The "hero" here is bent on re-establishing nuclear family domesticity in his old stone foundation, which inspires not the slightest hint of critique — on the contrary, the gender politics here are candidly boneheaded — and ensures that Survival Earth is hopelessly rooted to the ground in its deadly verdant setting. The opening newsreel montage features a nuclear explosion, but in contrast the dialogue refers only to some kind of market meltdown, which would explain why the air and water in their park refuge are still so lovely and clean. Loincloth babe Nancy Cser's "mutant" and Jeff Holec's mysterious lurking clone are total dead-end diversions, and the outbursts of witty repartee are unbelievably stupid and wrong — check out the uproarious improv-to-fade at the end. (Reviewed by Jonathan Culp)
The Tower
1985, Starring Ray Paisley, Kenner Ames and Paul Miklas. Directed by Jim Makichuk.
It's a long way from Vancouver — where Makichuk was Philip Borsos' production partner in a previous life — to this bizarro Hamilton of the mind, where a computerized office tower sucks people's life energy through the light sockets. Makichuk's first contribution to the Emmeritus canon comes with a very peculiar agenda: the office tower is clearly supposed to be some kind of commentary on the tyranny of the energy conservation movement! Silly and interminable, yet the kind of movie you want to watch again and tell your friends about, The Tower is endearing in a very stupid way. The bickering crew of mismatched fugitives-from-death are quite amusing, and the film's sub-HAL computer, with its 1980s digital-animation readout, is a nice way to break things up. While it wouldn't be fair to award The Tower bonus points for being so stuck-in-the 1980s, Jennifer Cornish's bird's nest-forward perm really is mesmerizing. And if you're going to be bad, you might as well repeat the same walking shot three times within one five-minute stretch for maximum entertainment value. (Reviewed by Jonathan Culp)
Virgin Paradise
1987, Starring Charlene Richards, Zuzana Marlow and Gloria Gifford. Directed by Ron Standen.
Directed by the brother of Robert Standen, who made the inspired Mark of the Beast for Emmeritus a year earlier, Virgin Paradise is a disappointment that centres on three newly-graduated hotties—a rich kid, a boy toy, and a drag—who hop down to Tortola on Daddy's dime (and yacht), only to become ensnared in a highly improbable gem-smuggling plot. The girls are charming (except for the drag), and the Toronto-based double-cross is amusingly preposterous. But, except for Ron Byrd's shticking henchman, the cops, criminals and gangsters are all strictly rote and dull as dishwater. Of course it doesn't make sense—what Emmeritus movie ever does?—but Virgin Paradise's interminable sunbathing sessions and telephone conferences provide too much time to ponder the illogical storyline. The best thing about the movie is a transparent afterthought—in the linking narration scenes, Zuzana Marlow is fully out of character, surrounded by teddy bears and talking in an absurdly flirtatious little-girl voice. This stuff really is tawdry enough to be entertaining, at least until the script tells the same joke for the 10th, or 15th, time. (Reviewed by Jonathan Culp)