The Great Texas Dynamite Chase (1976)

This brainless Roger Corman production delivers the exploitation-flick goods, because leading ladies Claudia Jennings and Jocelyn Jones spend a great deal of their screen time naked; furthermore, the promise of the film’s title is fulfilled, because the movie has Texan locations, dynamite explosions, and chase scenes. (As to whether any of these things are “great,” as the title suggests, that’s another matter.) Unfortunately, the movie is dull as hell, which is quite an accomplishment given the amount of action and skin that appears onscreen. Everything that happens in The Great Texas Dynamite Chaseis predictable and trite, with cardboard characters pursuing silly motivations as one lifeless scene blurs into another. Even the usual rebellious irreverence that permeates Corman’s innumerable redecks-on-the-run movies isn’t enough to give this one much energy. It’s all been done before, and better. Jennings, the sensual strawberry blonde who gained fame as a Playboy model, plays Candy, an escaped convict who returns to her small town with a bag full of dynamite she stole from a prison demolition crew. Lighting the TNT as a threat, she struts into a bank and robs the place, aided by recently fired teller Ellie-Jo (Jones). Then, after Candy gives her family the stolen loot so they can pay the mortgage on the family farm, Candy teams up with Ellie-Jo for a string of robberies, plus occasional sexcapades with men they meet along the way. It’s all very lighthearted, with the crime spree treated like a giddy adventure, but the film somehow manages to drag—though it’s only 90 minutes, it feels much longer. Aren’t exploitation flicks supposed to be entertaining?

The Great Texas Dynamite Chase: LAME

Deathsport (1978)

The saving grace of Roger Corman’s cheapo productions is usually a sense of humor, and the importance of jokes to low-budget crap is obvious when watching the Corman turkey Deathsport, which is monotonously grim. A sci-fi thriller set in the same sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland seen in a gazillion other movies—gladiator contests organized by an authoritarian regime, radioactive mutants, and so on—Deathsportis so close to self-parody that it would have been easy to tip the thing into full-on satire. Instead, Deathsportis played straight, even though it’s filled with cartoonish costumes, over-the-top violence, and ridiculous dialogue. (In the finale, the hero announces, “Now we will have our duel,” and the villain replies, “I agree.”) David Carradine, seemingly unaware that he’s appearing in a piece of shit, lays on the gravitas to portray Kaz, a quasi-mystical warrior who roams the wasteland protecting common folk from overlords. He gets captured by bad guys who force Kaz and other warriors, including Deneer (Claudia Jennings), to participate in “Deathsport,” an open-field battle between warriors on foot and soldiers on motorcycles. During the game, Kaz and Deneer mount a rebellion/escape because they need to rescue a little girl from mutants. All of this is set to a chintzy synthesizer score that sounds as if it’s being played by a keyboardist whose day job is pounding away at a roller-rink pipe organ. Co-written and co-directed by Nicholas Niciphor (Corman and Allan Arkush also helped direct the picture), Deathsportis dull, grungy, and unpleasant, featuring not one but two scenes of nude women getting tortured in an electroshock chamber. Still, B-movie fans may enjoy the absurdly somber performances of Carradine and main villain Richard Lynch (a genre-flick favorite memorable for his badly scarred face). Furthermore, leading lady Jennings, a former Playboy model, is easy on the eyes whether dressed or (as if often the case here) not.

Deathsport: LAME