(1972)
Overall: MEH
Admittingly inspired by Daniel Mann's surprise hit Willard from the previous year, Stanley was William Grefé's Florida attempt at a story about a social outcast who is more comfortable with a type of animal that universally creeps everyone else out. Shot in the Everglades as well as Miami, Grefé and screenwriter Gary Crutcher give the title character a noble reason for living on the swampy outskirts. He is a Native American, (played by a Caucasian with a tan of course), his father was murdered by Alex Rocco's sleazy businessman who also likes to grope his own teenage daughter, and most of the other people that we meet are unwholesome at best, so why not hold up out in the middle of nowhere while giving your pet reptiles human names and talking to them as if they understand English? In the title role, Chris Robinson is too aloof, and lacks the charisma needed to keep his eventual revenge escapades engaging, but at least the character that he plays is insane enough on paper to hinge a movie on. There is a theme song that is terrible, an over-the-hill stripper with a scuzzy husband that convinces her to murder some snakes on stage with her teeth, two hired goons who try to kill Robinson, another guy that tries to kill Robinson, and then Rocco's daughter inexplicably shacks up with our not friendly antihero until his shack burns down.
(1974)
Overall: MEH
Staying in Florida though switching settings from the Everglades to the swanky suburbs, D-rent director William Grefé's Impulse randomly snagged William Shatner of all people after Grefé allegedly bumped into him at an airport. Whatever the specifics were, the actor's curious presence in something that should have never even got past his agent let alone scored him in the lead serves as an interesting footnote as he is aggressively against type here. A brief black and white flashback gives us a bare-bones explanation for the psychopathic tendencies that he exhibits as an adult, and most of the movie is spent watching his unhinged conman struggle with trauma-induced emotions and violent outbursts. Along the way, he meets an attractive widow and her bratty daughter while running over a dog, killing an older sugar mama, killing Harold Sakata from Goldfinger fame, and then killing his new love interest's gossipy best friend. Shatner still has effortless charisma and sex appeal even if he is specifically vile and unsympathetic under these circumstances, plus he does a better job than the material deserves. Grefé of course could not make a decent movie even if he was Orson Welles, but the results here are unintentionally amusing enough with Shatner giving it his all.
(1976)
Overall: WOOF
Even going so far as to put the word "Jaws" in the title, Mako: The Jaws of Death came early in the stream of movies to shamelessly cash-in on Stephen Spielberg's massive nature horror hit. This one comes from none other than Cannon Films and Florida-based exploitation hack William Grefé, who does a quasi-remake of his 1970 film Stanley, just replacing the snakes with sharks. Richard Jaeckel portrays a mopey, stupid, and mentally unhinged man that takes it upon himself to murder anyone who disrespects his water-dwelling friends. He came to such a fate after running into a shark shaman, (yes that is a thing in this movie), some years earlier, who gave him a necklace that not only affords protection from the ocean beasts, but also allows him to telepathically communicate and control them if need be. The only other thing left to such a story is that everyone else who Jaeckel meets is some kind of shady scumbag, trying to get their hands on the sharks for nothing but nefarious purposes. This would make Jaeckel an animal-defending hero, but the fact that his character is such a miserable and unlikable schmuck gives the film a lousy protagonist to say the least, not to mention an antagonist who readily murders people. Horrendously paced, there is no enjoyment to be found either intentionally or otherwise.
(1977)
Overall: WOOF
If you hate actors loudly fake laughing in movies except done up hillbilly style, be warned. Some uninspired backwoods redneck crap, Whiskey Mountain was the last full-length from trash filmmaker William Grefé, (unless one counts The Psychotic Priest which was filmed in 1971 yet not released until 2001, at which point Grefé was so embarrassed by it that he asked to go uncredited). As one could guess, this is a Deliverance knock-off except with Roberta Collins and TV actor Christopher George providing all of the star power since Ned Beatty, Jon Voight, and Burt Reynolds were too busy being in real movies. There is gang rape, cackling lunatic country bumpkins, banjo music playing over dirt bike transition scenes, and a shitbag group of drug dealers hiding out in caves near the mountain of the title. Things go boring, then they keep going boring, then they go boring for a whole lot longer, before finally things go bad about fifty-odd minutes in, which is when the rape starts. A waste of celluloid in every respect, it takes a special kind of terrible movie to be dull, ugly, and obnoxious in equally insufferable measures. By the time that the greedy and idiotic "good" guys go back for gun-toting revenge, anyone watching has already checked out.
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