ZGRADE

1973 {aka: FIVE MINUTES TO FREEDOM}
This is some piece of work. This rare slice of schlock cow-pie is best left for the heartiest of ROSS HAGEN fans... and most cult film fans barely know who he is anyway. The setting is modern times, but concerns a gang of washed-up crooks that get busted while attempting a bank robbery dressed as nuns. After getting locked-up and put on a chain-gang, they eventually plot an escape, get sprung by some of their other buddies, and prepare for their next big score. The hapless crew pulls off their next heist successfully, and they head out into the desert on dirt bikes... runnin' from the law. They wind up in Mexico at a whorehouse and play with the naughty wimmin (hmmm...sound familiar yet?), and then eventually are holed up and surrounded by the cops in a beat-up shack. Cue the slo-mo SAM PECKINPAH cinematography and audio... as all the miscreants bite the dust one at a time, all the while joking and singing a drunken bar tune.

1976 {aka: THE HOUSE BY THE LAKE}
This is a lesser-known entry into the backwoods brutality genre of films started by the classic BRENDA VACCARO) accompanies her playboy swinger dentist friend Harry (CHUCK SHAMATA) to his country house to join several others for a weekend-long party. On the way, he allows her to take the wheel of his souped-up Corvette sports car and she engages a gang of hillbilly hoodlums in a dangerous road chase, which ends with the four miscreants crashing their hot rod Camaro off the road and into a creek bed, and the Vette speeding away.