"Fake Out" or as a DVD release, "Nevada Heat", really is a frustrating film. First, Pia Zadora is her usual cute as a button, perky self, and Telly Savalas is his usual sarcastic self. These two play off each other throughout the movie, but the film really goes nowhere. Sure there is a steamy nude shower scene, and Pia takes a bubble bath, but the simplistic story of a mobster's girlfriend's allegiance or lack thereof comes across more like a series of skits showcasing the Riviera Hotel. One interminable scene at a blackjack table plays like an instructional gambling primer. Attempts at humor mostly fall flat, and the cartoon-like car chases in and around the hotel only further weaken an already weak film. - MERK
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merklekranz22 December 2012
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PeterMitchell-506-56436421 February 2013Okay, this isn't the best flick in the world, but Pia Zadora, and the Vegas scenery, in and out, help jazz it up. Zadora, plays Bobbi, a nightclub singer (again, is she acting here?), the girlfriend of a mobster she won't testify against. She's thrown in the clink. A near sexual experience with a tough hottie in a shower, forces her into a plea, as Zadora's not that sort of girl. She's taken under protection by Nevada cops, Savalas, perfect, minus a lollipop, and younger cop, Desi Arnez Jnr-yes "I love Lucy/Here's Lucy", who she develops an attraction for. Arnez Jnr is a kind of an uptight youngie who Zadora loosens up, especially in the motel room. She even plays a couple of the machines down in the lobby, a tradition in Vegas, where if you hold back on ever playing a machine here, you have amazing self control, something our beauty doesn't have, although she is a hot watch. The mob of course are getting restless and paranoid so you know, they're out to put a hit on our hottie, who does try to escape the clutches of her protector, who's so nicey nice, it's becomes slightly irritating. Unlike him, hardened detective Savalas sees right through her. Fake Out is somewhat strangely entertaining, that could of had better detail to story, but we have action, glittering lights, a little sex, and Pia's acting that is a good laugh. Her no acting is like watching Marilyn Chambers. What we do have in a fun performance is Larry Storch as a bumbling mob guy, who makes himself popular, by knocking the wheel of his car, against a machine while it's side up. And the machine rewards this certain player in spades. Not something you see everyday in movie. Love Pia's performed song at the start. Yeah... really loved it?
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caspian19783 January 2022If you are expecting to Gone with the Wind, you will be disappointed. If you are expecting a watch a Pia Zadora movie, you will be pleasantly surprised. I say this because outside of watching Zadora shake, rattle and roll across the screen, Fake-Out offers a fun ride in and around 80's Las Vegas. Among witnessing Zadora in the flesh, we get to see the Lake/Great Telly Savalas. Every time he is on screen, it is worth the price of admission. The cast also includes multiple guest appearances along with strong supporting leads with Desi Arnaz Jr., Larry Storch and Tim Rossovich at their very best. Worth the watch and worth watching to the very end.
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Pia Zadora has done some strange things in movies...most of them bizarre, like her role in Butterfly, with the incestuous theme.
This film, though, is way bizarre. It's soft-core porn, really. The nudity and the strange lesbian kiss from actress Connie Hair, now a political PR flack for several conservative organizations, make it a film most will not enjoy. I doubt that Ms. Hair would enjoy references to this film these days.
I don't like the "women in prison" genre anyhow, but this one is pretty egregious.
That said, Pia Zadora is always as cute as a bunny, and I wouldn't miss any of her films, no matter what. Love ya, Pia! -
Welcome to Remake Hell (and you thought that was just happening today!).
Face it, Remake Hell is eternal. It's been going on for decades and hasn't just been happening in the past 10 or so years. This time in 1982's FAKE-OUT, director Matt Cimber reshoots (almost scene for scene) his own prior fiasco from 1975, LADY COCOA (see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073259 for details about this turgid 1975 mess). This time, Pia Zadora takes on the lead role (originally portrayed by Miss Lola Falana in LADY COCOA), and the results are NO noticeably better. Both films suck, and FAKE-OUT's addition of more noteworthy supporting stars (like Telly Savalas and Desi Arnaz, Jr.) doesn't help matters any. It wasn't a bad plot to begin with, but Cimber doesn't elevate the story or improve the writing since his 1975 outing with the same material. It's a wonder he hasn't remade this film four or five MORE times over with other Vegas headliners like Taylor Dayne or Mariah Carey!
That said, this is still great fun for Zadora fans (or hecklers). But if you've seen LADY COCOA you may become easily bored by the grade-Z script, cut-rate production values (the Riviera casino looks pretty shoddy, actually), and the predictability of it all.
There is one apparently notorious (and charming) shower scene early on in the film where we learn that Pia's acting skills have a definite ceiling. As she's made to cooperate sexually with some fellow inmates, she turns on this blank stare that we all know (and love) from moments such as these in THE LONELY LADY. It's like a trademark for Pia. Kinda like that strange, Kabuki stare that Faye Dunaway would occasionally give off after a tirade in MOMMIE DEAREST. Strange stuff, but compelling for its utter badness.
I have to say I was really disappointed in this Matt Cimber extravaganza. It started out OK but as soon as I figured out this was a remake of an earlier, abysmal project, I found myself checking my watch to see how much longer it would run. That was at about the 15 minute mark.
Pia's opening "number" (the only one in the flick) over which the titles are displayed is pretty fun stuff -- in a thoroughly cheezy way, of course. Freeze-frame moments of Pia shaking her booty, complete with added optical effects are perfect. Too bad FAKE-OUT didn't contain more of these types of scenes. -
Leofwine_draca14 May 2022Another inept and cheaply-made US crime thriller. This one stars the diminutive Pia Zadora, caught up in a plot where she's wrongly sent to prison and at the mercy of a cruel ex-boyfriend. A lot of it is padded out with extremely dull romance, and the attempts at comedy fall flat time and time again. Watch out for Telly Savalas in support.
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hollywoodshack9 January 2016Most of this was filmed in the Riviera which was owned by Zadora's husband at the time. The script really doesn't develop much of a story about the gangster our night club singer is in love with. She is being held under protective custody at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas when she agrees to testify against him after being gang raped in prison. Some plot lines defy logic, i.e. the snipers are always aiming rifles at her hotel room window. Doesn't she ever close the drapes? I rarely ever leave my curtains open in a room. Some scenes pad out too long like where she's playing poker and tells her opponent all her strategy each time she draws a card. The car chase scene is hilarious also, but why would a girl be an expert shot leaning halfway out a car window? The real villain was one of the good guys, but he remained unpunished for trying to rub his own witness out.
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BandSAboutMovies3 September 2022Did Matt Cimber make this movie just for me?
First off, Cimber has led a crazy life. He went from doing plays in Vermont to Broadway, where he directed the revival of Bus Stop and met his future wife, Jayne Mansfield, who he made Single Room Furnished with. Under the names Gary Harper and Rinehart Segway he directed Man and Wife, Sex and Astrology and The Sexually Liberated Female then made The Black Six, Lady Cocoa, The Candy Tangerine Man and The Witch Who Came from the Sea.
Cimber also teamed with actress Laurene Landon to make Hundra and Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold. He also was one of the co-creators behind the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, serving as executive producer and director of the syndicated television program - Mark Maron played him on the Netflix series - and his career is often a mix of exploitation and female empowerment, but it can get kind of murky. Seventies murky, you know? It has to be sexy, but women are still dangerous but yet need to be naked a lot of the time.
Another actor that Cimber teamed with twice was Pia Zadora. Have I not revealed how much I love Ms. Zadora in these digital pages? Well, Cimber made Butterfly and this movie with her. Financed by Pia's then-husband Meshulam Riklis - he also paid for The Lonely Lady and perhaps her Golden Globe Award as New Star of the Year - it's the tale Bobbie Warren (Zadora), a gangster's moll who everyone thinks is going to snitch, so they plan her demise.
Written by John F. Goff (Drive-In Massacre, C. B. Hustlers, The Capture of Bigfoot) and Cimber, this movie was also called Nevada Heat and places Pia into the Lola Falana role from Cimber's Lady Cocoa. She's been arrested and doesn't want to deal with jail - I mean, she does teach an aerobics class but then she has to deal with a sapphic shower assault - so she turns state's evidence and is protected by a cop named Clint Morgan (Desi Arnaz, Jr., who once teamed with four of horror's greatest stars in Cannon's House of Long Shadows) and Lt. Thurston (Telly Savalas), a boss officer with a gambling habit and the need to end every sentence with the word baby.
I honestly believe that Telly is playing himself.
My favorite Telly story: He lived for twenty years in the Sheraton-Universal Hotel and would just come down to the hotel bar - which was renamed Telly's - in his slippers and watch games and shoot pool with normal non-celebrity folk. One of his friends said, "He could be eating a sandwich, you know, putting something in his mouth and someone would come over and slap him on the back and say, "How ya doin?" He'd say, "Delightful.""
Delightful.
Man, I love Telly. I love that he's in this movie.
This whole thing is set at the Riveria Hotel in Vegas, which Riklis owned at the time and one imagines that he forgave Telly's debts if he just showed up for a few minutes in his wife's movie. It even ends with an ad for the casino, saying "The production is indebted to the Riviera Hotel for its many considerations and extends you a cordial invitation to visit and enjoy its newly remodeled facilities."
How's the movie? Pia once said, "I threatened to commit suicide if Fake-Out was released."
But it's not horrible as long as you're the kind of person who loves to see Larry Storch and George "Buck" Flower - who made Takin' It Off Out West with screenwriter Goff, Taylor St. Clair and Julie Strain - show up in films.
You will also love it if you're also like me and give Pia a pass no matter what she does. You can also enjoy her work in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Voyage of the Rock Aliens, Hairspray, Troop Beverly Hills, Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult and of course Butterfly and The Lonely Lady. -
videorama-759-8593912 May 2022This well made film, is a bit of a weird one. A tight comedy drama, a film which stands alone, if too as an obscure one, to which I admire it more. None too many people, would know about Fake Out, but should, this humble actioner. Pia Zadora, who like Marilyn Chambers, shows such a fakeness to her acting, does still have a great sexual presence. Better in Butterfly, where she really oozed eroticism heavily, for which she must be commended, here she puts on the same act. Playing a nightclub singer, she refuses to testify against a mobster boyfriend, so she's sent to prison, where we have a similar Chained Heat, shower scene going on. And you should see her upscale prison cell. She even runs an aerobics class in the prison. Finally cracking, she agrees to testify (ulterior motives here, of course) and is put under police protection, by lollipop icon Savalas, and hunky nice guy, cop, Arnez junior, and it's a likeable performance and character, someone you really wanna root for. But keeping Zadora, under lock and broken key, becomes a full time job, and you guessed, a romance blooms. I liked the other characters too. 'F Troop' Storch is a hoot, as a shady showbiz agent, who has his new sexy protege. There are some surprises in Fake Out, but it's just a real fun entertainer, definitely a live one, and we are in Vegas, don't forget. It also has one of the worst sniper hitmen, ever seen on film.
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gavcrimson27 September 2020Pia Zadora stars in a torturous, feature length advert for Pia Zadora and her husband's Las Vegas hotel ("The production is indebted to the Riviera Hotel for its many considerations and extends you a cordial invitation to visit and enjoy its newly remodelled facilities."). At least Telly got a paycheck and a trip to the Riviera out of it, brother 'Demosthenes' tagged along too, let's hope they enjoyed its newly remodelled facilities.
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Woodyanders26 September 2006Sweet and naive, yet sassy and sexy Las Vegas casino lounge singer Bobbie Warren (the adorably diminutive and dynamic Pia Zadora) gets incarcerated at a brutal women's penitentiary after refusing to testify in court against her mobster boyfriend. The little songbird quickly changes her tune after she's assaulted in the shower by several vicious predatory lesbians. Bobbie is put in the protective custody of cranky senior cop Lt. Thurston (a marvelously sardonic Telly Savalas) and his cute eager beaver younger partner Clint Morgan (an engaging performance by Desi Arnaz Jr.). Meanwhile, two assassins try to bump Bobbie off.
Directed with considerable go-for-it flair by Matt ("The Witch Who Came from the Sea") Cimber (who also plays one of the hit-men), with a sprightly, jazzy score by Arthur B. Rubenstein, several thrilling action scenes (a wild stunt involving a car racing through the lobby of a packed casino is the definite exciting highlight), garish, gleaming, lively cinematography by Eddy van der Emden, a snappy pace that rarely lets up, and enthusiastic acting from a bang-up cast, "Fake-Out" really delivers the infectiously silly and entertaining goods. Popping up in nifty supporting parts are Larry Storch as an obnoxiously slick sleazeball talent agent, George "Buck" Flower as an undercover policeman posing as a drunken cowboy gambler, and co-screenwriter John Goff in a funny bit as a gay man who hits on Savalas. Best of all, Pia Zadora positively lights up the screen with her endearingly perky and radiant presence: Whether she's heartily belting out a catchy song on stage during the opening credits or leading the tough lady prison inmates in a hilariously bawdy Jane Fonda-style work-out aerobic exercise session, the divine Ms. Z brings a charm, energy and bubbly good nature to her juicy starring role that's an absolute joy to watch.