Really Awful Movies

Four years before Iranian director Amir Shervan pinched out the delightful turd known as Samurai Cop, he was already beginning to circle the drain with Hollywood Cop. While not as astoundingly awful as its notorious successor, Hollywood Cop is nonetheless craptacularly entertaining in its own right.

The film begins at the home of a crime boss named Feliciano. Feliciano, who at no point breaks into a rendition of Feliz Navidad, is played by James Mitchum, the son of Hollywood legend Robert Mitchum. Let’s just say the apple fell as far away from the tree as anyone could possibly throw it. While Mitchum Sr. appeared in dozens of great films including the stone-cold noir classic Night of the Hunter, Mitchum Jr. acts as if he’s starring in an in-house training video for Arby’s.

A bunch of goons with names such as Russian, Animal and Spaghetti are partying around Feliciano’s pool with a bevy of beauties when the boss orders everyone to quit their shenanigans and get serious. Seems someone in the organization absconded with $6 million and they are to kidnap the lout’s son and hold him ransom in order to get the money back. Problem is no one knows where the guy is, and the son lives with his ex-wife who had zilch to do with the theft and doesn’t have anywhere near that type of moolah.

Cut to a farm just outside of Hollywood (!) where a kid dressed as a live-action version of Dennis the Menace is playing with a goat! This pastoral scene is broken suddenly when the thugs invade the farm, sock the mother in the jaw and take the kid, but for some odd reason, leave the goat. We would have taken the goat too.

Mom is understandably distraught and heads to Hollywood to seek help getting her kid back. She’s sobbing at a hot dog stand when a strapping drink of water sporting a truly impressive permed blonde mullet and poured into a pair of tight-ass Levi’s comes sauntering by to get his daily sustenance. Unfortunately, before he can enjoy his delicious treat, he’s alerted to a kidnapping in progress at a hotel directly across the street. This leads to this inspired exchange between Mom and Hot Dog Lady:

Mom (Rebecca): Who’s that?

Hot Dog Lady: Turk? He’s a cop!

Rebecca: He is?

Hot Dog Lady: He is! A god cop, really!

Rebecca: I wonder if he’ll be able to help me.

Hot Dog Lady: I’m sure he can!

And that’s when we checked IMDb to see if David Mamet ghost-wrote this stinker.

The attempted kidnapping rescue turns ugly and the next scene is the requisite Turk and his partner getting read the riot act by their cantankerous chief on the verge of a coronary played by Cameron Mitchell (Deadly Prey) who bellows “You’re a fucking maniac, Turkey!” After the umpteenth admonition of Turkey, we realized that Turk is actually short for Turkey. Yes, our hero’s name is Turkey…and his black partner’s name is Jaguar. And no, we’re not making this up!

Outside the station is the same hot dog stand from the earlier scene. Either this meat tube vender is stalking Turkey throughout Hollywood, or he likes her wares so much he pays her to follow him around. Both options are incredibly bizarre and creepy. They find Rebecca again sobbing by the cart (apparently she really likes the hot dogs too) and ask her what’s wrong. She recounts the kidnapping and Turkey and Jaguar agree to help her out. Turkey even offers to let her crash at his place (and we all know where that will lead!)

The rest of the film deals with the trio trying to track Rebecca’s shit of an ex to get the money to pay off Feliciano in order to rescue the kid. Of course, things don’t go quite so linearly and we’re treated to a riotous scene of the kid channeling the spirit of Dr. Doolittle by convincing a rabid Doberman to help him unlock a latch so he could escape. We also learn that the ex stole the money and ran off because he’s dying from “blood cancer” . We also have Turkey losing his badge, being called no “Clint Westwood” by Mitchell plus more insanity than you’d find at your average Wal-Mart on Black Friday.

All in all, Hollywood Cop is the type of low-budget lunacy we love at Really Awful Movies. Shervan’s best (worst?)was yet to come, but just as before there was Goodfellas there was Mean Streets, before we were given Joe and Frank, we had the dynamic duo of Turkey and Jaguar. Well worth a watch.

***1/2 (out of five)

“We’re going to Murder U.!”

A dynamite theme song launches Murder University, a film that passes the horror sniff test even if it’s not quite grad school-bound.

The tone is set nicely, as Greensboro College’s lurid history is explained while co-eds explore a creepy house. We learn that the institution’s founder was a mass murderer and that this tradition has carried on to the present day (actually, 1983). We learn this before our tour guides are murdered by cult killers wielding axes and wearing Japanese noh masks.

The film’s set in the 80s, during the height of the slasher era (there’s even a yearbook montage straight out of Prom Night, even if the director concedes most colleges don’t have yearbooks). This is a great conceit because they can get away with spirited classroom debate and having damn-the-torpedoes professors, both now largely absent in collegiate “cocoons of self-indulgence” with their “safe space” concerns.

There are no safe spaces at this Murder U., as the student body become bodies. All the while, it’s business as usual on campus, with Juicy K Thunder, the campus DJ, throwing “empowering” wet shirt contests at the student dive.

Our hero Josh Green (a terrific Jamie Dufault), a nebbish paired up with a gregarious would-be pornographer roommate in the dorm, is soon stabbed (in a quite hilarious scene we find out that “they missed all of his vital organs!”).

He quickly recovers and meets up with Meg, the daughter of a local detective Forrester, who has a hunch that the “killers are in some way affiliated with the school.” Meg and Josh do some investigating, checking out the local Greek scene, attending a frat party and becoming physically close despite hard-ass dad’s stern rant (“You college kids are all alike, listening to Jethro Tull and wanting to f*ck my daughter!”)

Greek might be the theme here: frats and a victim who looks like Oedipus post eye-gouge.

There are beheadings aplenty, a super gory scalping and some great one-liners (“I’ve been stabbed before and it didn’t take”) as Josh, Meg and Detective Forrester get the inside scoop on a strange Skull & Bones-type society.

Murder University takes a strange tonal shift toward the end and doesn’t really have a genuine period aesthetic but it’s a solid horror comedy that’s well worth a look.

*** (out of 5)