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Released by: Scorpion Releasing
Released on: January 28, 2014
Directed by: Irvin Berwick/Cesar Gallardo
Cast: Jill Lansing, Tammy Taylor, John Ericson, Crystin Sinclaire
Year: 1979/1976
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Scorpion Releasing's Dangerous Beauties Collection showcases two films from Crown International Pictures that each star deadly hookers who kill for money and pleasure.
Malibu High
The movie begins with a nude scene that pretty much sets the tone of the film from the get-go, as high school girl Kim (Jill Lansing) wakes up for school in the buff and lights up a smoke. She's supposed to be a young, fresh-faced seventeen year old but she already looks like her body's seen some bad road. Her tits tell us everything we need to know about the movie: Malibu High is a cheap and sleazy drive-in flick with lots of sad-looking bosoms that aren't going to win any beauty contests, but it doesn't mind showing them off. We soon learn that Kim's boyfriend dumped her for a rich girl (Tammy Taylor), and her grades are so bad that she's about to flunk out of high school. After buying some pot from Tony (Alex Mann), a small-time dealer and pimp, Kim comes up a foolproof plan to save her grades and prove to her ex-boyfriend that she has what it takes to be a rich girl: she'll start sleeping with her teachers, and hooking out of Tony's van. Brilliant!
Everything goes according to plan: Kim starts making a wad of cash, and she quickly becomes every male teacher's pet. Kim demands Tony give her a bigger cut, and he slaps her around, but when a well-dressed man tells Kim she could be making more if she started hooking for the mob and offers her a job, she jumps at the opportunity. The only catch is, she has to kill for them too. As it turns out, this suits Kim pretty well, since she's a completely amoral, awful person with no respect for anyone. Pretty soon, Kim becomes a cokehead, a part-time hooker, and a full-time killer.
Alternately titled Death in Denim, High School Hit Girl, and Lovely But Deadly, Malibu High is like an after-school special on crack. It's essentially a cautionary tale of a “good girl gone bad,†only Kim was never good to begin with and her downward spiral is so hilarious and over-the-top that it loses all didactic purpose. This is Grade-A seventies drive-in exploitation at its most inept and entertaining. The movie keeps upping the ante and Kim is so aggressively unlikeable and sociopathic that she becomes a cartoonish anti-hero. Jill Lansing mangles every line that comes out of her mouth and chews up every scene she's in. In other words, she's the perfect star for this kind of low-rent film.
There is a lot of unintentional humor in the movie, and much of the fun comes from watching Kim be such a mean bitch to everyone for no reason. None of the sex scenes in the film are explicit, and it's not really accurate to call them sex scenes either. When Kim is hooking all she and her Johns seem to do is roll around topless together. None of the women or men are very attractive. The men especially are of the pale and greasy variety. Jill Lansing is supposed to be eighteen in the film, but looks well over thirty, and Tammy Taylor looks barely legal.
Irvin Berwick directed a few drive-in movies, starting with The Monster of Piedras Blancas in 1959. Malibu High was his last film as a director, and it's a wild kind of high note. There's never a dull moment, and it's a trashy treat that fans of drive-in movies and cheapo sexploitation will really get a kick out of.
Hustler Squad
The film begins as a group of Filipino rebels launch an assault on a Japanese military base in WWII. At least, it's supposed to be the 1940s, but the rebels are dressed like it's the 70s. So much for historicity. The rebels are slaughtered by the Japanese, and the action then cuts to somewhere in Australia, at what is supposed to be Allied Headquarters. Allied Intelligence has learned that the Japanese Military Command will going to a Filipino brothel, and they call in Major “Stoney†Stonewall (John Ericson) to plan an attack, along with his good buddy and leader of the Filipino rebels, Paco Rodriguez (Ramon Ravilla). Stoney and Paco decide that the best way to ambush the Japanese officials is in the bedroom. They enlist four women on a secret mission to seduce and destroy the Japanese military officials: a terminally ill Swiss women, a nymphomaniac serving prison time for killing her lover, a Filipino rape victim whose family was murdered by the Japanese military, and a hooker on the run from the Aussie criminal underground.
Hustler Squad aka The Dirty Half Dozen has all the ingredients for a trashy “women on a mission†film shot in the Philippines, but the pacing drags throughout and it just doesn't get down and dirty like it should. There's one nip-slip early on in the movie, but it takes over an hour for another peek at some skin, and when the girls finally get undressed and ready to kill it's completely tame and not worth the wait. The best moments are at the climax of the film, when the hustler squad put their moves on the Japanese officials, but everything good about these scenes is included in the trailer. Hustler Squad doesn't work as an exploitation film, or as a war movie. The action scenes are sloppy and poorly shot. There's no sense of choreography or rhythm to the combat. It's all a directionless mess.
As a period film, Hustler Squad doesn't even try to pretend it takes place during the 1940s. The fashions, the technology, the vehicles: it's all out of the 1970s. You'll need to remind yourself while watching that it takes place during WWII, because it looks identical to every other low-budget war or women-in-prison film made by Crown International Pictures in the Philippines during the seventies. Most of the cast were in their share of Filipino genre films throughout the seventies. For example, Crystin Sinclaire was in Caged Heat and Eaten Alive, and Filipino exploitation veteran Vic Diaz (The Big Bird Cage, Vampire Hookers) makes a brief uncredited appearance as a Japanese soldier. Overall, Hustler Squad has very little to recommend it.
Audio/Video/Extras
Scorpion Releasing presents Malibu High and Hustler Squad on an all-region DVD. The films are selectable from a main menu, and each is accompanied by its own set of extra. Malibu High is presented in 1.78:1 with an impressive new HD master that highlights every greasy, grimy detail in the film without losing its classic drive-in flavor. Colours in the film are bright, vibrant and natural looking. The Dolby Digital 2.0 audio track delivers a full sound despite using only 2 channels. Dialogue is somewhat scratchy, but it's safe to assume that Malibu High sounds as good as it possibly can here. Special features for Malibu High include Fun Facts and Trivia with Katarina Leigh Waters of Scorpion's “Kat Scratch Theatre,†an interview with Tammy Taylor, and a trailer for the film. There are some fun behind-the-scenes facts in the Trivia opening and closing trivia segments, and the interview with Taylor is especially revealing. She has no problem taking unsubtle digs at her former cast mates, and regrets taking her top off in the movie and during the casting session, even if it did get her a start in Hollywood.
Hustler Squad is also presented in 1.78:1, and despite coming from a new anamorphic master, the print looks considerably worse than Malibu High. The picture quality is dark, colors are dull and washed out, and there is plenty of scratches and dirt on the print. It can be difficult to make out what's going on during some of the nighttime action scenes. The Dolby Digital 2.0 track doesn't fare much better than the picture quality. Sound in the film is flat and lifeless. Dialogue is more distorted, but not to the point where it's inaudible or difficult to understand. If Hustler Squad has appeared on DVD elsewhere on a Mill Creek boxset or something, I'm sure it has looked worse, but it's still not any good. The only extra available for Hustler Squad is the trailer, which condenses the entire film into about two and a half minutes.
The Final Word
Malibu High is a minor league trash classic that deserves to have a cult following. The new HD transfer on this disc makes it look and sound better than it has any right to. Fans of seventies drive-in exploitation will want to pick up this release for Malibu High alone, and consider Hustler Squad a bonus feature and nothing more.
