Superchick/Hustler Squad
The double feature SUPERCHICK/HUSTLER SQUAD is one of the "Welcome to the Grindhouse'" series that was released in the wake of the Tarantino-Rodriguez GRINDHOUSE. Even the packaging is virtually identical and the features come with several trailers for other films in the series. But if you're just looking for something similar to GRINDHOUSE, you'll be very disappointed. You really gotta have the stomach for this type of flick, they're not made for the "ironic appreciation" crowd. One look at the SUPERCHICK poster and you'd probably be expecting an action flick of some kind. It has a chick fighting some guys with the tag line "A Super-charged Girl! Always ready for action of any kind!" Well, not exactly. The flick follows the exploits of stewardess Tara B True ( Joyce Jillson) as she travels from New York City to Miami and Los Angeles. For some reason, she wears a brunette wig when she is working, slipping Clark Kent style into phone booths to change. Maybe that's part of the superchick title. Tara has a different boyfriend in each city, none of which know anything about the other. The New York man is a rich germophobe, Miami guy lives on a houseboat and has some kind of mob connection, while the LA guy is a pop star Bobby Sherman type. The sex scenes and comedy are all very silly, like an r-rated "Love American Style" . Candy Samples makes a quick appearence and Uschi Digard has a couple of scenes as Mayday, a lesbian porn actress. There's some goofy swinging seventies pot party bits with a supercool soul brother. We see her at a karate lesson for some reason where Jillson is body doubled by what looks like a dude in a not very good Joyce Jillson wig. We even get a John Carradine cameo as he plays retired horror actor Igor Smith, a masochist who tricks Tara into coming to his house with the promise of a new life experience. The plot sort of comes together as Tara stops a hijacking attempt by Miami guy's utterly incompetent mob acquaintances. There the sorta mob guys you'd see in a episode of Gomer Pyle. If you're in it for the sex, don't bother . It's all very weak and with very little nudity. The most interesting thing thing about the film would be Joyce Jillson herself or rather what she became. Jillson became a tv astrologer in L.A. and down the road became Ronald and Nancy Reagan's personal seer, reportedly offering advice on many matters, including the selection of George H.W. Bush as Reagan's running mate. So, Superchick became an advisor to the most powerful man in the world. Nobody saw that coming in 1973. Who knows, if she had read Reagan's chart a little different he might might've bombed the U.S.S.R. or picked a different running mate. And by that reasoning we might not have George W. Bush if his dad hadn't been vice president. But we do and Joyce Jillson is dead.
The co-feature is HUSTLER SQUAD from the Philipines courtesy of producer Cirio Santaigo, who made a bunch of these drive in flicks. Like with SUPERCHICK, you have to have these things in your blood somewhere to appreciate them but they have their charms for lovers of drive in fodder. Directed by Cesar Gallardo, it's essentially a low budget sex-upped THE DIRTY DOZEN, Filipino style. John Ericson plays Major "Stony" Stonewall, a army guy who plays fast and loose with the rules but gets it done. His mission is to attack some high ranking Jap officers at a brothel island resort during WWII. He is assisted by Filipino rebel hero Paco, the sole survivor of a previous attack on the brothel. Stony decides to recruit some women to go undercover as hookers to assassinate some Japanese brass. And that's about it. The group he picks include a couple of sassy man- hungry whores, a Filipino girl who witnessed her family's murder by the Japanese ( she's the slightly crazy one) and lastly, a good girl missionary with a terminal disease( she's got nothing to lose). We get the training montage and Sony's head butting with the brass, who think a undercover whore commando raid is not the army way. Once we get to the actual mission, it goes pretty much as you would guess. The two whores are actual looking forward to fucking the Japanese guys but quickly dispatch of their targets when they are done. The sex is pretty mild and fairly creepy in a Japanese guy wearing dress socks humping on a broad kinda way.The shit hits the fan and the American and Filipino forces attack the brothel which would seem to make the whole stealth whore attack completely needless, but what the hell? The slightly crazy girl goes more crazy with flashbacks to her parents murder and the terminal girl doesn't really do anything. She had hooked up with the Jap general who didn't care for the whoring and was kind to terminal girl as he realized she was a gentle soul like he, thrust into this war but doing he best to keep his humanity. I guess that was the message maybe. The general is quickly killed so maybe it was the wrong message. The violence is pretty much guys clutching their chest when shot and falling down stuff, except for a couple of crude beheadings. It ends on a downbeat note, leaving us to ponder the question of what does it all mean when we resort to secret whore soldiers to win a war? Only men like Stony can answer that. Or maybe Paco.