Flareup ** (1969, Raquel Welch, James Stacy, Luke Askew, Ron Rifkin) – Classic Movie Review 9575

Director James Neilson’s 1969 exciting but dodgy exploiter thriller Flareup stars Raquel Welch, who flashes her lovely thighs (presumably on the principle that if you’ve got it, flaunt it) as dancer Michele while dancing at the Pussy-a-Go-Go club in Las Vegas, and has the most terrible time with a crazed psycho killer (Luke Askew), her ex-husband Alan, who stalks her, and murders her two co-dancers, a drug addict (Ron Rifkin) and a kerb crawler.

[Spoiler alert] It’s enough to make a woman pour petrol on the bad guy and set fire to him, which is exactly what she does.

The result is a really unpleasant, disreputable melodrama, throwing political correctness to the winds. But Welch is an impressive presence, while the zesty film is taken at a good lick and it is atmospherically filmed in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. The writer is Mark Rodgers.

With Raquel Welch in the cast are James Stacy, Luke Askew, Don Chastain, Ron Rifkin, Jean Byron, Kay Peters, Pat Delaney, Sandra Giles, Joe Billings, Mary Wilcox, Carl Byrd, Steve Conte, Tom Fadden, Michael Rougas and David Moses.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9575

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com