Susan Stokey Movies
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
- Starring:
- David Carradine, Lee Van Cleef, (more)
- 1986
This low-budget, supernatural, tongue-in-cheek story is about an ancient Egyptian princess out to maintain her immortality. Nefratis (Michelle Bauer) has two problems: her tomb has been desecrated, and she needs some special amulets (now in California) that are used in the rituals of human sacrifice to keep herself alive. After she kills the professor responsible for the sacrilege committed against her tomb, the professor's son David Manners (Richard Alan Hench) and his friend Helen (Susan Stokey) set out to solve the mystery behind the murder. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cameron Mitchell, John Carradine, (more)
- 1984
In this stock, low-budget occult horror film, a tiny 2-inch-high Aztecan idol is stolen from a professor and ends up in the experimental hands of three high-school students who use it in some creative attempts to get in touch with the spirit world. Things start to go wrong when a cemetery worker dies during one of these spirit sessions, and everything goes wrong after the Aztecan god possesses the body of a young man who steals the idol for his own purposes. Special effects create the appropriate flying objects and body bulges where needed, and makeup is grotesque enough by anyone's standards, but these pluses cannot erase the lack of interesting characters or situations or the uninspired acting. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Susan Stokey, Warren Lincoln, (more)
Gorgeous space traveller Taura (Sandy Brooke) is captured on the planet Arous (as in "The Brain From..."?) Taura is accused of a murder she didn't commit by Bantor (Ross Hagen) , chief flunkey of the all-powerful Inquisitor (Aldo Ray). She is incarcerated in an intergalactic prison ship, populated by beautiful, barely dressed woman. Thus does science fiction segue into "babes behind bars",complete with a sadistic female guard named Muffy (Dawn Wildsmith). Don't worry: you're not supposed to take this one seriously. John Carradine costars in this lively R-rated cheapie, which was also released as Star Slammer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ross Hagen, Sandy Brooke, (more)
- 1987
- R
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
- Starring:
- Ross Hagen, Jeffrey Combs, (more)
- 1987
- R
A surprisingly slick flick from Emperor of Exploitation Fred Olen Ray, the story (which Ray co-wrote with T.L. Lankford, borrowing heavily from the director's earlier Biohazard) begins when a satellite carrying top-secret bio-engineered mutants plummets to Earth and disgorges its slavering contents in a scrap-yard outside Los Angeles. Hot on the beast's slimy trail are a pair of L.A. cops (Russ Meyer-veteran Charles Napier and the miscast Ann Turkel), who butt heads with their chief (Bo Svenson), the military, and the scientists who bred the monster -- until the inevitable confrontation, which features a no-holds-barred grudge match between the toothy slime-demon and a chainsaw-wielding Napier. Campy, fun performances by the talented leads (especially Julie Newmar as a psychic who assists the investigation) elevate this material far beyond the limitations of its hoary premise and Alien-esque monster. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Napier, Ann Turkel, (more)
