Michelle Bauer Movies

In mid-1978, the cult fantasy guru and comic book illustrator Bill Richert -- after months directing Jeff Bridges and Belinda Bauer in the scattergun carnival of a political satire, Winter Kills -- faced a real head-scratcher. With Winter yet to be completed, Richert's backer, Avco-Embassy, lopped off all funding and suspended production indefinitely. Projectless, Richert spun around, picked up an unproduced feature script by drive-in director Larry Cohen (Q, It's Alive!), and somehow found the cash to churn out a second piece of eccentricity with Bridges and Bauer in the leads, this one for Columbia Pictures -- hoping he could use the latter's earnings to polish off Winter. Thus began a very shaky history over the next 30 years for a little film originally called The American Success Company. This ghost of a picture bombed at the box office in 1979, was later reedited twice by Richert under distinct titles (first as American Success in 1981 and then as Success in 1983), and received limited theatrical distribution. It has since fallen through the cracks of movie history, never receiving official distribution on home video but popping up in bootleg versions under the titles Good as Gold and The Ringer. The movie tells the story of Harry Flowers (Bridges), a Milquetoast employee of a Munich-based credit card company, AmSucCo (did AmEx raise any eyebrows at that?), married to the daughter (Bauer) of his slightly tyrannical boss (Ned Beatty). Flowers allows himself to be shoved around and coddled by everyone, until he suddenly decides to slip into an assumed identity -- that of a gruff, bull-by-the-horns modern-day prince, determined to "rescue himself" from wimpdom by learning sexual aggression from a prostitute (Bianca Jagger) and ultimately wresting millions from the hand that feeds him. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Tanya (D.D. Winters), a drop-dead-gorgeous model, lives with violently mercurial artist Lobo (Richard Sargent -- not to be confused with Dick Sargent from Bewitched). Subjected to Lobo's constant abuse, Tanya dreams of escaping to a desert island. Her imagination seemingly knows no bound; once she's reached her fantasy island, Tanya is befriended by a blue-eyed ape. It gets better -- Lobo, making a guest appearance in Tanya's dream, locks the poor girl in a cage, then begins behaving like an ape himself. How could you have missed this one? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This low-budget martial arts fantasy adventure is set in LA after WW III and chronicles the battle between the wheelchair-bound peacenik nun Mother Speed and the wicked Dr. Saticoy. It seems that Mother possesses a special crystal (used in their worship of a big yellow "have a nice day," smiley face). The bad doctor and his skate-boarding goons are desperate to get it. Unfortunately, she is protected by her roller-blading beauties and he must send in a decoy in order to get it. Yes, it is as campy as it sounds. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Fred Olen Ray always manages to attract major names to his bargain-basement actioners, and Armed Response is no exception. The scene is Chinatown, where Yakuza boss Mako yearns to get his hands on a stolen jade statue. David Goss, son of retired cop Lee van Cleef and the brother of Vietnam veterans David Carradine and Brent Huff, is hired by Mako to deliver half a million dollars to the crooks who've got the statue. Things go awry, ending in a shootout. Mortally wounded, Goss brings the statue home, at which point a vengeful Carradine picks up the storyline. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A softcore, low-budget film with no pretentions to a viable plot or character development, Reform School Girls just proceeds along the foul-mouthed, suggestive lines of its genre without anything new to add. Charlie (Wendy O. Williams, who committed suicide in April of 1998, at the age of 48) runs a reform school along with fat Edna (Pat Ast) and the tough warden Sutter (Sybil Danning) whose quotes from the Bible have little effect on her co-workers. As new inmates are intimidated into sexual acts and everybody generally wanders around in as little as possible, it does not take a genius to figure out that sex is the main protagonist in this blue film. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Phantom Empire pokes fun and pays a sly tribute to the sci-fi serials that made Saturday afternoon at the movies such a treat. Featuring plenty of in-jokes, the story centers on the hunt for a lost stash of diamonds that leads the hero into a fabulous subterranean world ruled by a mysterious beauty and scads of scary mutants. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Moronic teens vacationing in Demonwood Forest are terrorized by a shambling Neanderthal -- not the director, but a big goon in a fuzzy ape suit who attacks George Kennedy and hauls his daughter off into the woods to a fate worse than death... perhaps to a screening of this movie. As it turns out, the rampaging beastie (which looks like a soiled feather-duster on legs) is not the local monster of mountain legend but merely a front for the subterranean activities of a cult of devil-worshipping aliens (they could have just called the tabloids if they needed better PR), who pass the time turning the locals into zombies... not a difficult task, especially with this brain-dead bunch. Cheap sets, dime-store costumes and Dinner Theater thesping lend a certain chintzy Ed Wood charm to the proceedings, but even this level of absurdity can't cover up the fact that the film's investors -- to say nothing of the audience -- probably felt profoundly rooked. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

After watching her partner get murdered, a policewoman packs it in and hits the road. She ends up near the Mexican border, where she is unjustly picked up with several other women and charged with white slavery. She must fight to protect herself from physical and sexual assault behind bars. ~ All Movie Guide

One of the few sleaze-horror movies that actually delivers on the lurid promise of its title (and what a title!), this trashy treasure from the irrepressible Fred Olen Ray also sports a classic exploitation cast, toplined by "Scream Queen" Linnea Quigley. Quigley plays a cute young runaway whose desperate dive into the Hollywood prostitution racket lands her smack in the middle of a demonic chainsaw death-cult, presided over by none other than Texas Chainsaw Massacre's "Leatherface," Gunnar Hansen. This deliberately over-the-top item makes no pretense about its primary mission -- the display of female nudity and severed body parts -- and comes through with flying colors, so to speak. Highlights include a decidedly un-subtle cross-dressing hooker, an Elvis-loving cultist who covers her movie posters with plastic before chainsawing her next john, a victim's-eye view of a chainsaw attack, and a body-painted Quigley performing the "Virgin Dance of the Double Chainsaws!" ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

This comical, erotic sci-fi adventure is every nerd's fantasy come true as it tells the story of ultra-geeky Wesley Littlejohn who readily volunteers to participate in his voluptuous substitute biology professor Ms. Xenophia's (an alien from outer space) extra credit research experiment. Once in her lab, Drax, her faithful assistant jabs him with a needle and suddenly wimpy Wesley becomes the campus stud-muffin and finds himself surrounded by cooing crowds of scantily clad coeds. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

"B"-sleaze auteur Fred Olen Ray pounded out this vampire parody, which stars career nerd Eddie Deezen as an affable dork and wannabe Hollywood hot-shot who discovers that a high-market bordello -- overseen by slinky Madam Cassandra (Britt Ekland) -- is actually a den of lascivious vampire bimbos from hell. Though his companions are easily lured by the ladies' deadly charms, Deezen takes a definite liking to his self-proclaimed title of Vampire Hunter, even going as far as to sew a crucifix into his skivvies. Laughing yet? This is actually one of Ray's more witty efforts -- with a manic pace, some clever in-jokes, copious amounts of skin, and a throwaway attitude that makes the relentless silliness a bit more palatable... although Deezen's hyperkinetic mugging may be more than some viewers can endure. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

It's Nerds vs. Frats (again) when the Nerds use a wing-ding party as a recruiting tactic. The jocks are out to spoil the party and harass the nerds. This is a video-only release. ~ All Movie Guide