The Gauntlet (1977) is directed by and stars Clint Eastwood as a Phoenix detective sent to Las Vegas to escort Gas Mally back to testify. First surprise, Gus is a woman (Sondra Locke). Second surprise, there is a betting line, and the odds are over 100 to 1 that she will not live to testify. Eastwood realizes that he was picked because the police commissioner never thought he could do the job. The two of them battle the mob, the police, and a biker gang, and eventually run a Phoenix police gauntlet of in a bus.

Eastwood's character is none too bright, closer to the end than the beginning of his police career, and has a drinking problem. Locke is bright and street wise, and not initially impressed by Eastwood. About half way through, she finds things to admire about Clint, and saves his life by seducing some bikers into raping her rather than beating on Clint. All we see are her breasts in this scene. She also shows breasts from the side getting ready for a bath in a hotel room. Scoring this one is not easy. Maltin says 2 /12 stars, IMDB readers say 5.9/10. These reflect the overall quality of the movie. Using our "crossover appeal" letter grade, it is a C, a solid genre effort. However, I thoroughly enjoyed the film as great escapism with some suspense.

Locke lived with Eastwood from 1977 to 1990, and co-starred with him in six films.

Be sure to pay Graphic Response a visit at his website. www.graphic-barry.com.

That's pretty much it.

The story itself is not a sequel. I'd say it's either an alternate version, or a prequel. Robert Patrick rounds up a gang of thugs to rob a bank in Mexico. Naturally this particular bank happens to be the branch near the Titty Twister, the strip club home of our Vampires (where the girls are not naked by the way).

The lead thug ends up running into some vamps, gets attacked, fires a few hundred rounds of ammo, and ends up becoming a vamp himself before meeting up with Robert Patrick and the gang.

Without any planning, they head off to the bank (at least they do mention this). Slowly while cracking the safe, all of the other thugs are turned into vampires, except for Patrick. Next thing ya know, 8,000 of Mexico's finest and some Texas Rangers show up, and more bullets start to fly.

Since the bullets don't kill vampires, they of course go outside after emptying the vault (yes, the bank robbery was at night) and start a feeding frenzy. All of the sudden, the world's fastest sunrise takes place! What's that you say...the end?

Hardly!

Just when you thought all of the vampire cliches were all used up they threw us a curve! Yup, you guessed it...immediately after the world's fastest sunrise, is the world's longest total solar eclipse! I kid you not. How long you ask? Well, if the story timeline were consistent, it was over 2 hours long. In actual minutes on the DVD clock...about 15. For the purpose of the plot...long enough for the vamps to kill 8,000 Federales, and long enough for the two human survivors (Robert Patrick and the head Texas Ranger) to kill the vamps.

Written and directed by Scott Spiegel, who is probably best known for writing "Evil Dead II" (1987). He's also associated with several other Sam Raimi projects, and that would explain much of the camera work in this film (and the cameo by B movie hero, Bruce Campbell). Unfortunately where Raimi's eye offers a unique look at the action in a scene. This guy just has a point of view shot on almost everything. It's like late talk shows during the mid 90's on crack!

Everything has a POV cam. Including:

And so on. There are of course multiple other obscure and annoying angles too. Basically they said "Hey let's put the camera like this! Now let's put it like this!", etc. Further proving the point: "just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should".

In addition to the annoying camera angles, Spiegel rips off the shower scene from "Psycho", except the attack is by a killer bat, not by Bates. Paying homage to Hitchcock is one thing, but this was ridiculous. Spiegel also made a failed attempt to copy Tarentino. There is one scene that had some funny dialogue...The thugs engage in some Tarentino-esque witty banter about porno-movies that was rather entertaining. Let me clarify that....it was entertaining the first time, but not the other 2-3 times.

But enough of that....let's get to the goods!

The nudity is from former bunny Maria Checa who plays the much too hot for a bordertown no-tell-motel prostitute. For a former pin up babe in a very long nude scene, there were hardly any goodies. This of course defies one of the Scoopian Unities of film making...if you show violence or have language that will give you an R rating already...then the tits are free! Show 'em! Show a lot of 'em! It can only make the movie better! Especially if you're going straight-to-video!

Maria does show some excellent rear views getting out of bed. During the shower scene, eventually there is a breast peak or two. (Some better than others, and getting both breasts in focus in the same frame was just about impossible.)

The DVD transfer is quite nice, and this was a well photographed movie. So today's quality...much better than my usual! However, the white background of the web browser will drown out the images a tad.

Enjoy!