American Rickshaw

Scott Edwards (Gaylord) is a college student who ferries tourists around via rickshaw through the streets of Miami (lately a favored locale for Italian Z-moviemakers). Scott was born 6/6/66--a day of maximum power, comments an astrology-minded cop--and thus is fated to combat low-budget evil in the personage of TV evangelist Reverend Morton (Donald Pleasence), who covets a magic stone guarded by elderly Chinese sorceress Madame Luna (Michi Kobi). Morton uses prostitute Joanna Simpson (Victoria Prouty) to frame Scott for murder, then sends his assassin after the fugitive rickshaw-puller for the key that will unlock the stone's cabinet. Helping the hero is housebound Madame Luna, who psychically watches all from afar and periodically teleports a fire, cat or snake Scott's way to get him out of jams. (It looks really ridiculous, as though Scott and Madame Luna dwell in separate movies and keep passing stuff to each other through the frame. Benny Hill and Ernie Kovacs did sketches like that.)

Gaylord may be playing a good guy, but Scott's behavior makes him an acutely dislikable character, from his eager submission to the whore's haggard charms to a later scene in which he threatens to jab Joanna with an AIDS-infected syringe unless she hides him from the police. Subsequently, Joanna joins Scott in the shower. "I thought you hated me," he says. "I do," she says, as they start having sex. While every other movie paints hookers as seductive covergirls, rail-thin Victoria Prouty seems authentically street-worn and predatory. But of course she's got the proverbial heart o' gold and strolls off arm-in-arm with Scott at the end. Morton, on the other hand, mutates into a boar during his TV broadcast, which is a light penalty for Donald Pleasence's attempt at a Southern accent. The good news for Mitch Gaylord is that from a picture like this the only way to go is up. (Violence, profanity, sexual situations, nudity.) leave a comment