The Intended (2002)

A poor couple from the north of England arrives at a Malay jungle station in 1924, he to engineer a road through the jungle, she (co-author Janet McTeer) to accompany him. She is significantly older than her partner, and they seem to be running away from some uncomfortable situation back home, but their history is not explicitly presented. The newcomers realize that it is not just they who have come to the jungle to escape. The white people who live at the post, headed by the penurious widow who runs the operation, are a close-knit collection of bizarre and eccentric characters, and they do not make it especially comfortable for the outsiders to get adjusted.

Living and working conditions at the jungle outpost are quite different from what the newcomers had expected. Their salary is not to be paid until their assignment has been completed, in contradiction to what they were told in England. Their living quarters are infested with insects and their putative bedroom is an open area separated by a flimsy curtain from the priest's room. It would be difficult enough for the couple to have a sex life with a priest a few feet away, but they have other problems of their own. She seems to be sexually frigid, and has never had an orgasm in her life. As if the entire situation were not comfortable enough, she is required to sit around the station for months at a time with nothing to do whilst he makes his road-building excursions into the jungle.

Given that she is the only sexually desirable woman in the camp, her presence, coupled with her fiancé's absence, triggers various passions among the local menfolk, particularly the station manager's odd son, who is 40ish but still has a unusually close relationship with his elderly nanny. I mean really close. I mean that the nanny gives him regular sexual relief. This is quite a sight to see, given that he's a fat guy with rotting teeth, and the nanny is Olympia Dukakis. As you might well imagine, a guy who has been stuck in the jungle with his domineering mother, and whose only sexual outlet is Olympia Dukakis, finds himself very interested when Janet McTeer is walking around the camp with her DDD chest barely covered. Mischief ensues.

The script takes a page from the classic French film Going Places in that the formerly frigid woman manages to get her rocks off when manipulated into sex with the fat, ugly guy! This is an experience which confuses and shames her. The fat guy, however, is delighted to find that sex can be better than a hand-job from Olympia Dukakis.

You'd think all of that would be enough of a premise to carry a movie, as it was (more or less) for The Night of the Iguana. You might think that, but in this case, you would be wrong. The movie sets all of that up, then moves its focus elsewhere - to a noir sub-plot about a greedy struggle between the powerful widow, her nephew, her son, and even the priest, all of whom are maneuvering to get enough of the ivory money to get the hell out of hell and back to civilization. The weepy melodrama eventually leads to so much greed, murder, suicide, deceit and torture that you'd think their company must be Halliburton and their jungle must actually be Dick Cheney's undisclosed location.

Notes on the DVD:

It's not that good a script to begin with. Add to that the fact that the cinematography is lackluster, shot on DV and harshly lit. Then top off those two negatives with a terrible DVD transfer - not only poorly done, but censored!! First of all, it presents a perfunctory pan-n-scan full screen version of the film, with faces and other important information cut off at the sides. (There is also a trailer on the disc, which is presented in a widescreen aspect ratio, and which looks much better. Even the flesh tones are better on the trailer than in the film proper, which is too yellow.)

Not only is the film butchered in terms of photographic composition, but the DVD has been heavily censored. The original film is a treasure-trove of Janet McTeer nudity, every frame of which has been snipped for the DVD! (Although male nudity has been retained.)

That is a shame, because the disk also includes about an hour's worth of in-depth interviews with the cast and the director, all of which is wasted because of the butchered and censored transfer of the film they are discussing so earnestly.

These caps are not from the DVD, which has no female nudity at all! One of our readers was kind enough to make these captures from a broadcast on Canadian TV.

Janet McTeer

Other Crap:

Movie Reviews:

Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format. Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)

This is the legendary Russ Meyer film written by Roger Ebert -  the one accomplishment he would most like to forget.  It is not available on Region 1 DVD, but I located a Belgian copy.

Yes, it is every bit as bad as it is purported to be. The photography is technically sound, demonstrating Meyer's beginnings as an army photographer, but there are major problems elsewhere. For one thing, the dialogue is the most flowery, stilted and unnatural I have ever heard. The other main problem is the plot - every silly minute of it. The story starts out conventionally. A three-girl rock band and their manager come to Hollywood to "make it big." They meet the right people, and land a big recording contract, but then run into sex, drugs and sleazebags. This version of Hollywood is populated by a collection of misfits, mostly bisexual, who seem to do nothing but have sex and take drugs. In the last third of the film, the plot finally starts moving, with the strangest series of events ever strung together on celluloid. These plot twists, as well as much of Ebert's dialogue, made me laugh out loud.

The film does have a very high nipple count, as you would expect from Meyer, who was the epitome of the "tit man," but that count might have been much higher. The film was after an R rating, but got saddled with an X, probably because Russ Meyer directed it.  According to Roger Ebert, there was a good deal of harder X footage that Meyer wanted to include after the MPAA gave them the X anyway, but the studio didn't want any further delays before getting it into the theaters.

The film now has a cult following, and deservedly so. This is one of the most entertaining bad movies ever made!

C+ on our scale. (Bad movie genre.) IMDb readers say 5.5.

The nudity includes breasts from Angel Ray as a girl in a hot tub, Dolly Read as the main character, Marcia McBroom as another girl in the band, Susan Reed as a fashion model, and several uncredited women.

Angel Ray

Dolly Read

Marcia McBroom

Susan Reed

Unknowns

Carol Levy

Hollywood Sins (2000) is the illegitimate child of an episode of Knots Landing or Dallas or Dynasty (especially Dynasty) and any of 500 hundred erotic dramas that occupy the airwaves of cable television. In its 90 minutes are about 52 minutes of plot and intrigue and betrayal so overwrought it is comical. Just like Knots Landing or Dallas or Dynasty.  The other 38 minutes...or so it seemed...are taken up with muff diving and sport humping.  So much skin is exposed in this movie you'd think it would get sorta boring but the director and the director of photography and editor knew what they were doing; and the result is more than a little entertaining.  I have wasted lots to time watching some lousy movies but for most of the 90 minutes spent watching Hollywood Sins I was amused. 

In the past couple of days we have seen Mia Zottoli, Kim Dawson, Dee Summers and Tess Broussard all give up major goodies.  The last two gals to strip and mingle are former pornstar Tracy Smith (aka Tracy Ryan, whose nom de porn was Avalon) and a very interesting redhead, Victoria Karina.  Tracy has two scenes with the same guy, one dressed partially and briefly as a bride in white.  The idea of a former pornstar dressed for a white wedding was too ironic to pass up, so I capped the daylights out of that scene.  Plus, Tracy is one beautiful, wholesome-looking woman, despite her chosen profession.  So the pleasure was all mine in putting together nine collages of stuff.

Victoria plays a mythical creature--a pretty lesbian with a heart of gold who likes men and doesn't mind it when they come onto her.  Yep, mythical, but oft-seen in movies of one sort.  Like this one.  She is two scenes.  In one she baths real good, especially in and around the nether regions.  And in the other she and Dee Summers take turns diving for the elusive muff. Victoria's body is slim and rock hard.  Terrific posterior on that gal but unfortunately the hooters
are not carbon-based life forms.  At least they are not rectangular, like Tess Broussard's. 

So okay what you have here is a soft-core that exposes acres of flesh in the context of a story with a TV-quality plot and better than expected performances at each of the skill positions (acting directing and editing).  Well worth a look-see, if ever you get the chance. 

Tracy Smith

Victoria Karina

For some reason, the Bush administration wants Anna Nicole Smith to be rich.  Bush solicitor general Paul Clement has asked for 10 minutes to speak on Smith's behalf during oral arguments of her Supreme Court appeal to get part of her late elderly husband's estate.  Her lawyers said, "It can't help but give credibility to our position."

*  It's the next best thing to having a Supreme Court full of elderly men!  Which we just about do! 

* Seven of the nine Justices are men: let Anna Nicole handle the oral portion, and she'll win. 



A Manhattan federal judge sided with Sylvester Stallone in a trademark lawsuit, allowing him to keep the name "Sly" for his mature men's fitness magazine, even though it was already being used by a foot-fetish magazine. Unfortunately, Stallone's magazine, whose motto was "Life begins at 40," is already going out of publication after just four issues.


*  The judge gave the foot fetish magazine publisher the boot...and he LIKED it!




Buckingham Palace announced that Tom Jones will
receive a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth

* It's in recognition of him being the greatest swordsman in all of Britain.