Cisco Pike (1972)

This is a joint Tuna/Scoopy project. I just couldn't see any sense in duplicating Tuna's caps of Karen Black, so I just grabbed the tiny bit of nudity from Joy Bang and wrote a counter-point. Sorta. We really don't disagree about the merit of this mediocre film. The disagreement was related to our own expectations. He was expecting to like it a lot, and found it disappointingly average. I was expecting to despise it, and found it gratifyingly average!

Tuna's comments:

Cisco Pike (Kris Kristofferson) was a rock star who lost everything due to drugs. Pike is hoping to make a comeback in the music industry with his estranged partner Jessie (Harry Dean Stanton), but all of that is on hold as he awaits trial on a second drug dealing charge. Out of nowhere, the narc who busted him twice (Gene Hackman) coerces him into dealing more drugs! The narc gives Cisco gets 100 bricks of high quality evidence pot, which Cisco must turn into at least $10,000 to be given to the narc after one long weekend. In return, the narc will make Cisco's current drug charges go away and will allow him to keep anything he can raise in excess of the $10,000. (The theoretical street value is at least $20,000, at the minimum price of $200 per kilo.) Of course, things do not go smoothly as we watch him trying to unload all of the pot.

IMDb lists the film as a drama. I would say more drama/comedy. It rather accurately depicts the "hippie generation" nearing the end of the 60s, when many were in legal trouble, and many had fallen from fame to poverty. The narc is also very believable. I, for instance, knew of one police detective who was the biggest fence in Southern California.

This 1972 film marked the acting debut of Kris Kristofferson, and the sound track was a real treat for me. It featured four Kristofferson songs, and a theme written and recorded by the blues harp master, Sonny Terry. It is also a film set in a period and an area I am well acquainted with, the early 70's (read 60s) in Venice, California. That's three reasons why I should adore this film. Add a topless performance from Karen Black as his old lady, and Gene Hackman as corrupt cop/villain, and it sounds like it was custom-made for me. However ... I found the film terribly dated, and not that enjoyable. It didn't offer any insight into the times, and seemed like yesterday's news.

Scoop's notes:

My overall appraisal of this film tops out near the same level as Tuna's, but I reached a radically different conclusion about how the film got to that point. When I saw this movie in 1972 (yes, I was the one) I thought it was just another rambling drug-addled cinema verite movie with a deliberately casual hand-held aesthetic which attempted to cash in on the Easy Rider phenomenon.

Let's see. Pretty cool drug dealer with a conscience wanders around making deals, but really hoping to get out of dealing. He's not really a "hero" but a classic late-60s/early-70s antihero. He spends a lot of time driving around wordlessly while complete songs play on the soundtrack, creating trite "mood footage." He has a buddy who is not as cool and, in fact, is kind of wasted and pathetic. They meander from place to place, pick up two hot chicks and have drug-distorted adventures. Karen Black is on hand. Cops are mean pigs. Along the way, the dealer loses one of his companions to 70s Death Syndrome, a disease which had two variants, either OD or KBR (killed by rednecks). The whole thing leads up to a wildly melodramatic climax.

Now which movie was I just writing about, Easy Rider or Cisco Pike?

When it came out, Cisco Pike was just a bunch of stock 1972 characters running around doing the usual stuff they did in counter-culture movies. It didn't provide any insight because you could walk down the city streets yourself for 48 hours and experience the same sorts of characters and disconnected events. Hell, in 1972 you'd never really notice a lava-lamp on a guy's desk. It was just part of the background. Today, lava lamps are iconic 70s symbols, and they draw immediate attention to their presence. They always make me smile, as the one in this film did.

Well, this entire movie is a cinematic lava-lamp. You'd look at it in 1972 and ask "What's the point?", but I think time has been kind to it because it now provides a look into a culture long gone, and a snapshot of times and attitudes generally forgotten. You look at it today and realize that it pictures the era as it saw itself, and also gives us an intimate glimpse at Hollywood's 1972 theories about marketing to the counter-culture. You can't duplicate that by watching a 2005 film about 1972.

When this film came out it was a complete failure. The critics raped it, audiences stayed away, and I hated it as well, after watching it in an empty theater, even though it was part of a double feature. That's right - the studio was so convinced of its total lack of drawing power that they packaged it as part of a double bill (a rarity in 1972) with some dubbed and incoherent four-year-old "Spaghetti gangster" film called Machine Gun McCain, a film which held a certain fascination for me because Jim Morrison of the Doors had a small acting role.

Tuna called Cisco Pike dated, and I have to agree, but to me that's what makes it so interesting. Cisco Pike is really a magnificent time capsule.

Karen Black Joy Bang

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

I'm already sick of this movie and I haven't even watched it yet! Anyway, here is the next generation of caps, a substantial improvement in quality over the ones from yesterday, and here are two pretty sweet film clips (zipped .avis) from another capper.

Anne Hathaway Anne Hathaway (zipped avi) Michelle Williams Michelle Williams zipped avi)

 

 

Updates:

• Charlie's French Cinema Nudity site is updated

 

Other Crap:

Movie Reviews:

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

"Fairy Tales"

Fairy Tales (1979) is a musical sex farce, much in the tradition of the well-known Alice in Wonderland. A prince, on his 21st birthday, will inherit the kingdom, if he can show the ability to produce an heir. Unfortunately, he is rather effeminate, fixated on Sleeping Beauty, who is missing, and doesn't respond to his birthday present of a naked Idy Tripoldi. He is sent to "Fairyland" to solve his problem. There he encounters a host of fairy tail characters. many of them in the bawdy house run by the Old Woman in a Shoe and all more than willing to sport hump. Sleeping Beauty is there, the only virgin, and is being saved for the right customer. Problem is, Old King Cole has suddenly decided he wants a virgin as well.

We have full frontal and rear nudity from Idy Tripoldi, Angela Aames as Little Bo Peep, Ann Gaybis as Snow White, Lindsay Freeman as Jill (of Jack and Jill), Marwin Roberts as the naked elevator girl, and 4 women who do an S&M scene. Nai Bonet shows buns as Scheherazade, and Linnea Quigley shows breasts as Sleeping Beauty. Sherry Bragg does full frontal as the image in the mirror.

100 voters at IMDb say 5.1. This is one of a very small genre, musical sex films, that includes Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, Fairy Tales, The First Nudie Musical, and probably a few others. It is as good as any in the genre. I like that the women are not plastic surgeon beautiful, and all have characters. The song and dance numbers are inspired, and the entire cast obviously had a ball making this. It is an easy C+, as a superior genre effort. Yes, it is silly, but that was, and is, the entire point.

Angela Aames Anne Gaybis Idy Tripoldi Lindsay Freeman Linea Quigley Mariwan Roberts Nai Bonet Sherry Bragg Unknowns

After a brief interlude, allow me to get back to Limousine Confidential and the women who ride in comfort. So what's the up side of this disk? Nekkid wimmin. Lots of them. Not merely nekkid but most sincerely nekkid. Then what could be the down side? Well, the guy who plays the chauffeur thinks he is funny. He is the only one who thinks so but he's the one making the damn thing so we are forced to sit and listen to him yammer on about some horseshit; and we are forced to watch him mug for the camera. Hilarious stuff, all of it, so long as you think your brother-in-law's bad immitation of John Candy is the funniest thing ever conceived by the mind of man. Still, not too steep a price to pay for what you get in return.

In today's batch we have two gals who play the parts of a blonde pop singer and a Latina rival, sitting and squabbling in the back of the limo...until they get all nicey-nicey together. The pair is played by Sandee Westgate and the single-named Breanne. Sandee is why I got the disk in the first place. She used to be a popular Hefmag model until she got her own website and whipped out the gynocam (she brought it along for her performance here). Word on the street is that she has gone porno, but that's just what I hear. Breanne is a porn gal but from the titles of her movies she seems to do only other gals.

Sandee's bod is Pamela-esque. She sports a pair of robo-hooters with straight lines to them. No one's hooters are supposed to have straight lines. We call that bad. Breanne, on the other hand, has a terrific all-natural form.

Third gal in this batch is Mason Marconi, former Penthouse Pet. Seriously robotized form. Her caps came from previews of another Peach DVD, the title of which I cannot remember.

Sandee Westgate

Breanne

Mason Marconi

PARIS HILTON INSANITY DEFENSE?
"Douglapoulous?" - Paris Hilton gave a lulu of a deposition in a $10 million defamation lawsuit against her for claiming her ex-fiance's ex-girlfriend attacked her in a club. When asked to name her companion that night, she said, "It is like a weird Greek name. Like Douglas," adding that she doesn't even know the names of some of her friends. Asked if the story ran in the U.K., she said, "No...There is stuff in London." Told that London is in the U.K., she said, "Right, U.K. Whatever." She claimed her e-mails to her publicist ordering him to plant the story meant nothing, "It's just words I write." She also said she was scared of the woman because she believes in voodoo; and at one point, she suddenly blurted out, "I'm so hungry!"

* Isn't she always hungry?
* She needs assistance eating, so she doesn't forget and stick the fork in her eye.
* She finally made one truthful, intelligent statement: that her words mean nothing.
* She may already be under a voodoo stupidity curse.
* Too bad she had to give up her ferret: it was obviously the brains of the outfit.

CELEBRITY URINE NEWS
And you thought taxis smelled bad before! - The National Enquirer reports that a Hawaiian cab driver claims Paris Hilton drunkenly urinated in the back of his cab, and he was so angry at having to mop it up, he saved the towel to use her DNA against her in a legal claim.

* That's Plan B, since it brought nothing on eBay.
* Fine, but please, please, for the love of God, don't use it to clone her!
* Once again, Paris gives new meaning to the term, "Pee-brain."

REDFORD SLAMS MOVIE REMAKES
Not Butch Enough - Robert Redford said the rumor that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were remaking "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" is "depressing," saying, "There is no shortage of good, original ideas, and there's just no point to remakes. Why do they have to mess with things that were perfect the first time around?"

* Uh...because they ran OUT of good original ideas around 1983?
* Because the only way to improve that movie is to have Matt Damon and Ben Affleck jump off the cliff.