Scorchy (1976)

disgusting, overrated, pointless

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

I remember seeing this movie when it first came out. I got in free because the friend I went with knew the manager of the theater. At least I didn't waste any money. This movie was bad. I remember at least three nude scenes with Connie Stevens. There was the shower scene while her date waited on her. Then her swimming in the canal behind her home. She dove in, looked around and when no one was around, she takes off her bikini. Then her making love with the date. I also remember her being extremely foul mouthed in this one. The only reason I can think of for her making this movie was to try to change her image from a squeaky clean beach girl to someone who she really was not. I think after Scorchy, she made some movies but most of them were teen oriented movies with little objectionable material. I think Scorchy backfired on her and sunk her career. She has made many movies that were way better than this thing and that is not saying much.

Connie Stevens is a pert, buxom Hollywood B-grade starlet, custom built for the exploitation genre, but even this film is beneath her talents. She plays a 'Police Woman' type undercover agent trying to crack a narcotics ring operating between Rome and California. Known for her promiscuous behaviour and unconventional tactics, she's highly effective although often castigated for her entrapments. Embedded, she's recruited by a drug dealer's wife to act as courier for a cartel, but things go awry. She's on her way to solving the mystery when she seduces the drug dealer's young brother-in-law for information - alas, he expires before he can 'give it to her'. And so begins a sordid path of lurid seduction and retributions.Director Avedis had made a few mild exploitation attempts ("The Specialist", "The Teacher"), prior to this effort, but his level of skill hasn't improved. Stevens is vivacious and professional while dependable Smith makes a particularly nasty villain - in one scene, he knocks a motorcyclist from his mount, backtracks on the stolen bike, kicks the stricken rider in the head, then shoots him point blank for his troubles. Crooner Evigan in his film debut is out of his depth in this genre (and as evidenced by his future filmography), while Burton is solid as a stereotypical police chief passively reigning in his star performer's excesses.Notwithstanding the banal dialogue, amateurish cinematography and laboured narrative, "Scorchy" has all the hallmarks of a bona fide sexploitation picture, and therefore, should've been far more entertaining fare. Unfortunately, the low T&A quotient limits that appeal, which in a film titled "Scorchy" is a major liability. Scorchy is clearly a misnomer - it's just laboriously tepid.

That gives you an idea of this textbook American International Picture with a lot of heroin in valuable objets d'art and many vehicle chases,as well as some on foot, with some very good, some inept beyond belief.Bill Smith in his 'Falconetti' period is the main reason to watch this: when he runs criminally away, darting here, darting there, it's so gracefully tigerlike it looks like surfing or serious dance.There is some wonderful footage of Seattle cityscapes in a long chase in which Connie changes from a taxi to a hot rod and Bill gets off the train to get in a beautiful orange Pontiac Bonneville, and later--aided by one of those conveniently passing trains--manages to get a motorbike whose owner he kills in that just-for-the-hell-of-it way that started happening in the early 70's; and so we get a little nice nostalgia for his fabulous biker flicks. This he takes right on into Puget Sound, but Connie just pulls up--then, inexplicably, jumps into the water as if to catch him now by swimming--with all of her clothes, including a full-length coat, still on. As the scene dissolves, she hadn't swam very far, and momentarily is back in her apartment, holding far less of the wet clothes she had been wearing, but still wearing the coat (which looks dry by now) and an orange scarf over her head, whose hair looks dry by now.And to think that all these garments, but part of all she owned in the film, came from Pleasure Dome Boutique of Hollywood...This cannot have been synonymous with Frederick's, already an established name, although perhaps Marlene Schmidt had some of those kinds of items when she was primping in her soft-porn-style apartment...Connie also sometimes screams like a real street feline, the kind that has fights in alleys, a most remarkable horrible snarling sound.She'd played the Marilyn Monroe character in 'The Sex Symbol'. She would do better to portray Mary Hart of "Entertainment Tonight," even if she is older than the subject, as she is temperamentally suited for this role (not yet projected, alas.)There is a far too explicit-looking scene of Connie making love with her boyfriend who is then shot in the back by Smith through the window with a spear.This was a pioneering moment in the new coitus interruptus styles: Having made a clean break with the past, we were on our way to a most thoroughly unbrave new world.

This bizarre crime drama stars Connie Stevens as undercover narc Jackie Parker, out to bust the junk smuggling ring commanded by Cesare Danova. There's tons of action: shoot 'em ups, outrageous chase sequences, Connie taking a shower...but the best part of the movie is watching Connie chase the bad guys in what appear to be her pajamas. Add in the fact that the film bears no relation to its odd title, and you have a late night classic.