Red-Barracuda

Familiarity of the original Flash Gordon serials would probably help in fully understanding this one as a spoof. All that being said, the humour in this superhero sex comedy is so basic, I daresay it doesn't really matter very much. After all, this one features one-eyed creatures known as Penisaurauses, rapist robots, a planet called Porno, characters called Dr Flexi Jerkoff and Emperor Wang, an Amazonian lesbian cult, power pasties and a spaceship shaped like a penis. Sophisticated humour this clearly is not. The story has Earth is being bombarded with sex rays from the planet Porno - Flesh Gordon travels there to save the day.

Seemingly there were several hardcore sex scenes shot for this which were removed just before release, which I think we can be thankful for as that would have been sure to have made this daft film worse. In the event its a film which provides enough dumb humour to ensure its simultaneously moronic and quite charming, its chock full of bad acting and, despite copious nudity, is entirely unerotic. It does have to be said though, that there are a couple of stop-motion sequences which were actually rather well done, which indicate that there was a half-decent budget invested in this one. Its overall quite good fun.

This is a pretty solid overview of Jimi Hendrix, which details his life, music and impact. A selection of famous and semi-famous folks give their opinions on the great man along the way. It also states early on that this is going to be narrated by Slash but oddly I can't recall any narration!

Like a lot of people from the classic rock era, it is pretty amazing to think that their time in the spotlight was so brief, given their massive ongoing impact. In Hendrix's case it was a mere four years - I mean from the point-of-view of today, that just takes us back to the pandemic! Things moved so much faster back in the years when rock music was still in its infancy and new musical ideas were being born every other week. Hendrix was clearly a giant in the realm of guitar playing, specifically rock guitar playing and this doc tries its best to illustrate this. There's a bit more of a focus on technical matters than you might normally expect in a music-doc but obviously, given Hendrix's guitar god like status, I guess it makes sense in this case. This stuff can be a bit dry for the more casual viewer such as myself but its more than compensated for by the music clips and details about his life. Worth a watch for those interested in the 60's music scene.

This one is a dry run from the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team who a few short years later would give us the all-time comedy classic Airplane! It takes the form of sketch comedy, which you don't really see in movies anymore. Like others in this genre, it's definitely an uneven viewing experience and unsurprisingly given the parodic nature of the thing, a number of the jokes have trouble landing now, given that the material which they are based on is off-its-time and buried in the era. Nevertheless, its very format is one of its chief strengths, given that if one sketch isn't working so well, then another is soon to replace it, ensuring that the pace is good. On that note, I would have to ay that the main weakness with this one for me for sure, was the 'Fistful of Yen' segment, which seems to have a following but, in my view, at 40mins this Bruce Lee parody seriously over-stayed its welcome, especially given that its material was not very strong. The length of this whole section creates an imbalance in the film overall, with every other segment seeming to clock in at no more that 3mins or so.

What you get here is a taste of the absurd and bad taste gags that would make up so much of the likes of Airplane! And The Naked Gun! Series. As I say, its definitely hit and miss but on occasion it can hit a home run, for example the advert for the boardgame Scot Free, which hilariously mines the JFK conspiracies. There are also fun movie parodies of the likes of Cleopatra Jones and Earthquake. Overall, this is certainly a fun, if scattershot bit of comedy.