Blind Date (1984) is a Horror Thriller about a serial killer written and directed by Nico Mastorakis, who also wrote the original story. A serial killer is butchering women with a scalpel. Meanwhile, ad exec Joseph Bottoms thinks he spots an old girlfriend who was kept away from him after she was abducted and abused while on a date with him. He ends up losing his eyesight, but is still obsessed with the old girl friend, Lana Clarkson. Following her, he gets leads about the killer. He is given an implant of a new sonic device that lets him see outlines of objects, but is still essentially blind, and trying to catch this serial killer.

His girlfriend, Kirstie Alley, shows breasts in an open front blouse, and then again in bed with him. Clarkson shows breasts rolling over in bed. She also has a flash of bush in a very dark two frames getting into bed. I would guess there is more explicit footage of her on a cutting room floor somewhere, or there would have been no need to have her completely naked slipping into bed. Three victims also show breasts, Antigone Amanitis, Kathy Hill, and the big news of the day, Marina Sirtis, who shows off her breasts in a lengthy scene in good light, playing the part of a hooker.

IMDB readers have this at 5.0 of 10. They showed first person POV of the blind man a lot, which I suppose was nifty FX for the period, but I found it very distracting. Also, they seldom built any suspense. Other than the nudity, there was not much of interest for me. On the other hand, how can you argue with someone who got Marina Sirtis and Kirstie Alley out of their clothes and on film. C-.

Movies:

IMDb review:

World Premiere at Sundance

NUDITY: Topless nudity from Holly Hunter. She also does a brief frontal in the screening version (4:3), which may disappear in a theatrical release or a widescreen DVD.

One of the audience members at the Sundance premiere asked Holly Hunter why she agreed to do this low budget project. Her answer was that the script had an "authenticity" which attracted her.

She's a fine actress and not a bad film critic either. The film really takes a major step toward fusing valid, commercially-viable dramatic structure with cinema verite. It is the story of a 13 year old girl, as written by a 13 year old girl and an auteur. It is, I am certain, not purely autobiographical. The girl took bits and pieces out of her own life and other lives around her to try to tell the world what it is like to be a 13 year old girl and face the inherent peer pressure. The adult co-author brought in some cohesive storylines, and a pretty good film was born. Voila! Neo-realism. It's all true, in a sense, and as Ms Hunter noted, "authentic", yet it is a film which can be watched by mainstream audiences who are consciously in need of a plot and conflict/resolution.

It shares a sense of immediacy with the works of Dogme or cinema verite auteurs, but it is much more polished than implied by that statement. Although the young girl provided the details of the characters, music, and atmosphere, the director and cinematographer used some polished suggestive techniques to shape and reinforce the storyline, moving to a richer saturation, a full pallette, and softer focus when the young girl is first accepted by the cool crowd, then desaturating, moving to harsher lighting and a cooler pallette when it all goes sour.

A good first movie from Catherine Hardwicke, doing precisely what independent films probably should do - personalizing, experimenting, trying to get inside of real characters.

In fact, Ms Hardwicke and Miss Reed (the co-authors) originally thought they might come up with a teen comedy, but the reality they uncovered wrote itself as a slice-of-life psychological drama. A good 7th grade girl wants to be accepted by the cool crowd. Her quest for acceptance leads to a dangerous, reckless friendship with the "hottest chick in her school", which leads to experimentation with sex, drugs, lies, shoplifting, and attitude. Her dysfunctional family struggles to get past their own problems long enough to see her crisis and (maybe)rescue her.

Bravo for neo-realism. Whoda thunk that someone making a movie about a 13 year old girl would ask a 13 year old girl to be her co-author? Not Hollywood.

The film will probably be rated R without requiring any major cuts. There is teen experimentation with drugs and sex, but no nudity from the teens. The adults also engage in some drug use and violence. There are some graphic scenes of piercing and self-mutilation. Holly Hunter does a fairly long topless scene, and the camera follows her down into a crouch, revealing a brief frontal. When and if the film is presented in a theatrical aspect ratio, the frontal shot will probably disappear until a full screen version is available on home media.

The Singing Detective

Impressive performances in surrealist entertainment

IMDb review

NUDITY: Sorry, none. The film features Carla Gugino, Katie Holmes, and Robin Wright Penn, and they all look great, but never go beyond the underwear stage. (There is very brief male nudity, if you'd like to see the top half of Jeremy Northam's butt)

World Premiere at Sundance

The film has an excellent provenance: the late Dennis Potter's TV miniseries was highly acclaimed back in 1986, and Potter himself wrote the screenplay for this feature adaptation, transposing part of the locale from 1940's Britain to 1950's America, and personally choosing most of the new songs. (One of the ones he wanted was, according to the director, "too costly", but the other selections conformed to Potter's script.) The premise is as follows: an author of grade-b detective stories is in the hospital with a severe case of psoriasis, which is probably stress-induced. His lesions, pustules, scales, and peeling are so bad that people can barely stand to look at him, and he is almost totally immobile.

His psychiatrist (Mel Gibson, playing against type in thick glasses, a bald head, too-short pants, and the walk of an 80- year old man) tries to get to the heart of the author's psyche by making him look at his stories, his childhood, his life, and his disease as interrelated elements - "clues" - in a bigger detective mystery.

The author also winds all of these elements together in his subconscious, as relected in dreams, fantasies, and the mental creation of a new story while he is trapped in his bed. Because one of his old detective stories was an oddity about a singing detective, the singing dick becomes his subconscious alter-ego, and his fantasies often turn into musical comedy numbers.

It's surrealism of course, but of an engaging and entertaining variety that never steers the audience too far from the real point. It's a pretty funny movie, and a pretty darned good psychological mystery yarn as well. It features a great cast, glued together by the always-engaging Robert Downey Jr as the author/patient struggling to cure himself or resist curing himself.

Although the 50's songs are the original artists's versions, lip-synched by the actors, Downey Jr does sing his own version of one of the oldies over the closing credits. The man is a tremendous talent. I've always thought he was one of the best actors in the world, and he can sing as well.

I got a special kick out of Adrien Brody and Jon Polito as a couple of fictional Rosenkrantz-and-Guildenstern mobsters in the author's fantasy/dreams who seem to have no purpose, and resent the author for that very reason! (You expect them to break into "Brush up your Shakespeare" at any moment, but it never happens). Enjoy Brody the minor character while you can. The Pianist will probably turn him into the star-or-nothing category. It feels strange to see him in a tiny role with a few lines of dialogue in this film, after having watched him on camera for almost the entire 3 hour duration of The Pianist.

Nice job all around on this offbeat film.

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Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

• The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
• If there is a white asterisk, it means that there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Lawdog or Junior or C2000 or Realist or ICMS or Mick Locke, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

• Alexis Amore
• Tera Patrick
• Kira Kenner
• Charmane
• Lacey
• Sasha
• Asia Carrera

Back, back, back in the time machine once again to 1972 once again and another look at legendary skin flick starlet Rene Bond in "The Adult Version of Jekyll & Hide".

We see the luscious Rene as she makes it with the good Dr.Jekyll. Then it's on to more lovemaking with the Doctor. The final five caps shoe this amorous pair in the shower, which gives us a look at every inch of Rene's beautiful body in full frontal scenes of both male and female nudity.

This one's so chock full of nudity, we will be paying a return visit to this little gem of producer David Freidman's very soon.

• Rene Bond, topless and full frontal nudity. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

Tiffany Limos

'Caps and comments by Dann:

Another of the Massacre Collection, you gotta admire a movie that has nudity within the first 15 seconds, and a locker room shower scene within the first 7 minutes.

Plotwise, a teen left alone for the weekend holds a slumber party for her basketball teammates, and you can pretty much guess the rest.

OFFICE THERMOSTATS JUST A SHAM
Degrees Of Dishonesty - The Wall Street Journal spoke to air conditioning experts and found that many office thermometers aren't connected to anything. The people who own the buildings get tired of tenants complaining about it being too hot or cold, so they install dummy thermostats for them to set. It shuts up office workers by giving them a false feeling of control.