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Tinseltown dreams, making of Machete Maidens of Mora Tau. The ingénue from Indiana strolls down the Walk of Fame and nearly gets her blouse ripped off, thus Candice Rialson the grindhouse Carole Lombard. Her first taste of the industry is behind the wheel in a robbery getaway, everybody's seamy agent (Dick Miller) gets her a proper start as a stuntwoman for Miracle Pictures, "if it's a good picture, it's a miracle." Paul Bartel with megaphone and riding crop introduces the thespians to the Filipino shoot: "Now your motivation—very important—is to massacre 300 Asiatic soldiers." Ophüls' Die Verliebte Firma transposed to the Corman school, just the cinephile jamboree to excite a pair of freewheelers like Joe Dante and Allan Arkush. Starlets with machine-guns in the jungle, a single real bullet takes one of them out, the mystery unfolds while the cinéaste contemplates the line between reality and art. The drive-in diva (Mary Woronov) makes do with a futuristic scenario so that Death Race 2000 footage can be recycled, another actress ventures into a fog-drenched set and suddenly there's your horror mise en scène. Rubber monsters and roller derbies, a hose for the hopefuls in tank tops courtesy of the lecherous producer and the eye-patched cameraman. "This is not a film about the human condition, it's a film about tits and ass!" Plentiful jokes raunchy and sweet, Rialson enjoys a roll on the hill with the put-upon screenwriter (Jeffrey Kramer) and Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen are there to serenade them. Marin's The Death Kiss, Butler's It's a Great Feeling, a muse to schmooze with Godzilla and Robby the Robot. "Well, if the part demands it..." With Tara Strohmeier, Rita George, Richard Doran, John Kramer, Jonathan Kaplan, and Joseph McBride.
--- Fernando F. Croce |