The Chumscrubber (2005)

There's no nudity, but Tuna did Carrie-Anne Moss today, and Carrie-Anne looks great in this film in her bikini, and she does a brief "topless" scene, albeit out of focus and sans nipple, so ...

When you line up Glenn Close and Ralph Fiennes for your leads, you convey that you plan to offer serious and important themes, and there is some of that in The Chumscrubber, but it is delivered with a dark comic "indie" eccentricity. Actually, it's not really a dark comedy, but a dark dramedy with a bit of magical realism, as if American Beauty had been spiced with a heavy dash of Donnie Darko and just a soupcon of Like Water for Chocolate. In other words, this is quite an odd movie.

A teen (Dean) discovers that his best friend has hanged himself, but he doesn't bother telling any of the parents gathered for a party at the best friend's house. Why not? Each of the suburban adults is obsessively following some narrow solipsistic path to happiness: self-help books, New Age mysticism, the perfect wedding, drugs, vitamins, video games, whatever. Dean felt that they just wouldn't want to hear about a dead kid at their party. Dean's dad is a pop psychologist who finds his son's behavior odd, but also sees in it some possible inspiration for his next book. Dean has worse problems than his dad. The dead best friend was the school drug dealer, and since he's dead, the local thuggies want the stash, and Dean has to get it for them since Dean can walk in and out of the dead guy's house without attracting any suspicion. Dean refuses to co-operate, so the thugs devise a plan to force Dean to retrieve the drug motherlode. They kidnap Dean's brother - except they get the wrong kid. And the kidnapped kid's real mother is too busy planning her home wedding to notice that her son is missing. Meanwhile, the dead guy's mother lives next door to the bride-to-be, and is planning a memorial for him in her own house, in direct conflict with her neighbor's wedding. Not only does this force their neighbors to choose which event to attend (and which wardrobe to wear), but it also creates a suburban parking crisis.

The real (and surreal) action is played out against an undercurrent of a fictional character called The Chumscrubber. In the movie's alternate universe, the Chumscrubber seems to be the most famous fictional character - he's everywhere - in books, posters, comics, video games, movies, etc. He's an icon with the ubiquitous status of Vito Corleone or Rocky, but he's one odd duck. He lives in a post-apocalyptic landscape and his head is not attached to his shoulders, so he carries it around. Presumably the Chumscrubber cartoons have some metaphorical connection to the live action, but frankly I'm not too sure what the hell it is.

This film had some good word-of-mouth coming off the festival circuit, and still has its ardent defenders. Its three most common scores at IMDb are 10, 8, and 9, in that order, indicated that it found a cult audience. One or two critics hailed it as a masterpiece. The Christian Science Monitor said, "Acutely intelligent, and strikingly tough-minded, this pitch-dark dramatic comedy recalls David Lynch and "Donnie Darko" while remaining fresh and original to its core. A stunning directorial debut."

It turned out, however, to be one of those films made for festival audiences, with no mass-market faction to support it. Critics generally found it insufferably smug and self-conscious (33% positive reviews), and one summed it up as, "A movie that wants to be daring but ends up feeling prefabricated." Distributors had no confidence in it, and it maxed out at 28 theaters. Audiences didn't care for it much either. It even did poorly in those 28 theaters, pulling in about $1000 per screen on opening weekend. (That's about ten people per screening.)

I guess I'm one of the few that enjoyed it. I like it when these young filmmakers just go for it and grasp for the stars. Donny Darko ... Magnolia ... Chumscrubber ... let it all hang out: giant rabbits, frog rain, mystical dolphins ... whatever! If it doesn't always make sense, and if it doesn't always get the expected reaction from the audience, at least it tried to scale the ladder to heaven instead of walking safely under it. For my money, this film had some misses, but it had more hits.

 

Carrie-Anne Moss

BloodRayne (2006)

This movie may suck, but I have to admit this scene is kinda hot when you see it in motion. (Zipped .wmv) Coulda used a few light bulbs, however.

Other Crap:

Movie Reviews:

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

Reform School Girl (1994)

Reform School Girl (1994) is one of a series of cable remakes of WIP films from the 50s. As a genre lover, I appreciate their effort. It is a usual story. An innocent girl is sent to reform school, and learns to survive there. She also learns that the system sucks, with falls right in with my 60s hatred of the establishment. Aimee Graham is a passenger in a stolen car when the punk driving it hits a pedestrian. He runs, she is busted, and won't reveal his identity. In truth, she is not that unhappy to escape home, and the advances from her lecherous uncle. She becomes worried that the uncle will simply start on her much younger sister.

She makes friends inside, and, when the warden discovers she can run, is paced on the track team, the warden's pet project. She also has a lesbian relationship with the meanest of all the girls. In the end, she must decide between self-respect, and doing what the warden wants to gain an early release.

Aimee Graham shows breasts in a pretty hot lesbian scene. An unidentified girl shows breasts in a car, and several unidentified women show breasts, buns and/or bush in the requisite shower scene.

IMDb readers say 4.1. Remaking WIP films, especially ones so old that they shied away from violence and nudity, is a great idea for my money. The execution here was seriously flawed, as the film came across more like an afternoon special designed to encourage kids to have self respect. It completely lacked edge. This is a C-, and only barely. Even as a genre lover, I only found it marginally tolerable. The early scenes did a very nice job of recreating the 1950s look and feel, and there were some bright spots, such as the reform school commie hating home economics teacher conducting duck and cover drills, but, for the most part, simply was not compelling.

 

Aimee Graham

Unknowns

 

The Soft Kill (1994)

The Soft Kill (1994) is a mystery. A former police detective turned private eye, also a big ladies man, leaves a woman's bed when her husband comes home. A few minutes later, she is dead, and he is a prime suspect for everyone except his former partner. Not only that, but she was married to an asshole DA. Along the way, the body count rises, and it is only his ex-partner who keeps him out of jail. Unfortunately, it is not difficult to guess who is behind it all.

The film, as released, contains 3 Bs from Kim Morgan Greene as the first murder victim and breasts from Carrie-Anne Moss as her sister, and eventual love interest in the film. The DVD includes a hard-core sex scene between the main character and someone credited as Judith Zeihn, This scene, designed to show him as a sexaholic, is shot from a distance, and is a little dark, but appears to be the real deal, and is headboard-banging, all-out sex.

IMDb readers say 4.4.

I thought the story had promise, but was clumsily handled. The ingredients were all there for a good whodunnit, but they telegraphed the ending with a very clumsy scene where the partner has a place in his apartment that is off limits, and red herring clues, such as a cigarette lighter, just weren't presented well enough to cause the intended misdirection, especially as we knew from the beginning that he main character was not the murderer. All of this may have been the fault of editing, although I suspect not. This is a C-, but could have ended up a much better mystery.

 

 

Carrie-Anne Moss

Judith Ziehn

Kim Morgan Greene

 

First thing for today is a cleaned-up scan, taken from a UK tabloid.  It shows a gal named Donatella
Panaytoyiou, who according to the text of the article does something on the telly.  Okay, that's for public
consumption.

It would not be a day in the Funhouse without a picture or two of Nell McAndrew nekkid.  I vaguely recall she did something once upon a time but whatever it was I am just sure it was worth it.  My feeling is that so long as she is willing to run around in her birthday suit it would be rude, just rude, to ignore her. 

And then there are a couple of gals that Tuna did such a great job with I couldn't help playing with the
images.  One is the uber-cutie, Alexis Dziena in Broken Flowers ...

... and the other is former Hefmate Jennifer Walcott in Band Camp.  Not gonna say a word about the tragic nature of her boob job.  Nope, not a single word.