wilburscott

The master of the icy stare that could freeze your blood, dumpy actor Robert Lansing made a lot of movies watchable, including "The 4-D Man" and many others. Such is the case with SCALPEL, a slice of southern sleaze from Georgia. When he's not busy chewing the scenery, casually talking about plastic surgery, or yelling "Go get her, GOD DAMN IT!" to a hired killer, he is just rolling in the part of Dr. Reynolds, your friendly neighborhood psychotic plastic surgeon. The rest of the fortunately small cast seems uninterested in what's going on, mainly there to collect a paycheck to buy some more of those gaudy 1970's outfits, although Arlen Dean Snyder is good in his role as the suspicious Uncle Bradley. Without Lansing, this film would have probably been long forgotten. We still need the DVD though! Get this thing a widescreen transfer!

Fans of goremeister Herschell Gordon Lewis should look elsewhere if they are picking up this film for his usual buckets of blood being sloshed about, for there is precious little in the way of bloodletting in this film. Instead, Lewis decides to try and tell the bizarre story, relying on bargain-basement special effects on a budget which could have probably been doubled if the cast had turned out their pockets for change one day. Oddly enough, while cheap and very poorly acted (especially by McCabe as Mitchell), the total outlandishness of the plot keeps attention throughout. Imagine what this film could have been like with a decent budget! Overall, it strains for champagne tastes on a beer budget.

For a 'sexploitation' picture, THE NOTORIOUS CLEOPATRA doesn't really work as one. The little bits of comedy we do see are pretty inane asides to the camera in the style of "Laugh-In", which thankfully are pretty much relegated to the first third of the picture. The sex scenes don't work too well either, dragging on for 5-10 minutes at a stretch and featuring some uglies who should have been paid to stay clothed. The film would have probably worked better as a straight period piece, since surprisingly most of the cast are fairly decent in their roles. Rocco, although wooden as the Trojan Horse with his facial expressions, does the best among all the cast as Marc Antony. The film actually gets less comical as it rolls on, turning dead serious in the last 10 minutes! And most shocking of all, it actually seems to work better that way.