Sadomania (1981), the legendary Jess Franco sleaze feste has finally been released on DVD. This marks the first time the Uncut version has been available in the United States. If it gives you any idea, IMDB has it X Rated with a running time of 67 minutes. The actual runtime of the full version is 102 minutes. There is not a single scene in the film without at least breast exposure, and precious few frames without nudity. Franco hired 50 naked female extras for the film. The idea came about as an Ilsa the wicked warden type film, but with black transexual Ajita Wilson as the warden.

Uta Koepke and her husband are on their honeymoon, and pull off the road for a quickie. They are arrested, and Wilson keeps Koepke, but releases the husband. He swears to get her out. The prison serves as slave labor, entertainment for the governor and his bisexual wife, and Wilson's pleasure. The prison costume is cut off jeans, period. Way too many images for one night, so tonight we have Nadine Pascal as a prisoner that refuses to sleep with the governor, and so is turned loose in the swamp to be hunted. She shows everything. Wilson also shows everything, and, if I hadn't known she was a transexual, I wouldn't have guessed. Koepke also shows everything. I also included as many of the 50 naked extras and groups shots tonight as I could spot.

Tomorrow night, the other images, and the remainder of the review.

Flesh & Blood (1985)

Paul Verhoeven's career can be neatly divided into two parts, except for this movie.

Before Flesh & Blood, he made some brilliant films in Dutch, both serious dramas and genre films, in which he established himself as one of the world's foremost directing talents, and made international stars out of many in his Dutch repertory cast, especially Rutger Hauer.

After Flesh and Blood, he made big budget, commercial Hollywood films. Good entertainment pictures. Robocop. Total Recall. Basic Instinct.

I like most of the films in both periods, although for lots of different reasons. Verhoeven is a talented guy, and he was easily able to make the transition from low-budget artistic films to glitzy Hollywood blockbusters.

Here's the complete picture:

Hollywood

• Hollow Man (2000)
• Starship Troopers (1997)
• Showgirls (1995)
• Basic Instinct (1992)
• Total Recall (1990)
• RoboCop (1987)

In between

• Flesh & Blood (1985)

Netherlands

• Vierde man, De (1983)
• Spetters (1980)
• Soldaat van Oranje (1977)
• Keetje Tippel (1975)
• Turks fruit (1973)
• Wat zien ik? (1971)

Except for Showgirls, that is a solid list. In a way, I even like Showgirls, Verhoeven's only major flop. While that movie would be a complete waste of time without the nudity, sort of like an alternate version of Coyote Ugly, it does have that nudity, and it is spectacular in quantity, quality and presentation.

Flesh & Blood was Verhoeven's "tweener", fitting into neither category, but possessing characteristics of each. It still featured Rutger Hauer, and Verhoeven's usual co-writer (Gerard Soeteman), and it was filmed in Europe, but it was performed entirely in English, and also featured some Hollywood faces like Jennifer Jason Leigh of Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

It is a medieval anti-romance. Although it takes place in no particular country, and features no identifiable historical facts except a date and continent (1501, Europe), it is anything but a romanticized "once upon a time" tale of knightly valor. Verhoeven pictures the middle ages as having consisted entirely of rain, poverty, filth, poor sanitation, suffering, festering wounds, festering plague boils, contaminated food, war, and rape. I suppose that is probably a reasonable pictorialization of how they actually lived in 1501, true at least to the spirit of the times, if not faithful to the letter of history.

The plot:

A nobleman leads a mercenary army against a city that expelled him. When he refuses to make good on his promises to the mercenaries, the plot to get revenge on him, starting by capturing his future daughter-in-law. This scenario establishes a battle for the damsel in distress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) between the nobleman's university-educated son and the leader of the brigands (Rutger Hauer). To complicate matters, said damsel falls in love with both of them, and keeps switching her allegiance, or pretending to.

It's a crazy over-the-top, no holds barred film, available uncut for the first time in America on the DVD. The title, "Flesh and Blood", was just a different way of saying "sex and violence". That combination perfectly describes the raison d'etre of the film. It can be cheesy, but the characters are remarkably complex. Neither Hauer nor the young prince was all good or all bad, and the princess actually had to think things through to make a decision, finally going with one of the men, but demonstrating plenty of love for the other as well. Similar ambiguity and dimension was seen in the captain of the prince's army, and several of Hauer's cohorts.

It's not for everyone, and it requires a strong stomach, but it's a good film, and Verhoeven is a major talent. I never lost interest, and I was never able to read the results in advance.

• Jennifer Jason Leigh (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26)

• Blanca Marsillach

• Susan Tyrrell

• Marina Saura

• Nancy Cartwright

• somebody else

The film also featured frontal nudity from Bruno Kirby. Kirby also whipped it out in the uncensored version of The Harrad Experiment, so he's really Mr Screen Studmuffin.

Updates

• Lots of updated Encyclopedia volumes - more than 20. Check out all the names highlighted in yellow in the B, C, and D volumes.

OTHER CRAP:

• Shocking Revelations in the Vanity Fair report on Michael Jackson. Turns out that he's a black guy!
• New penis grown on boy's arm: "Doctors have grown a new penis on a Russian boy's arm after he lost his old one in a bizarre accident."
• Escape! How long can you dodge the blocks?
• Intercepted chatter that the Central Intelligence Agency thought was about Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was actually about hairstyling wizard Vidal Sassoon. David Kay told his Senate inquisitors, "Once you realize that they are talking about a hair-salon pioneer and not a Middle Eastern madman, it really changes everything."
• Casting now complete for Hitchhiker's guide.
• So ... Beyonce will NOT be Lois Lane, after all. Maybe.
• Some scientists think all the energy we need for the next millennium can be found on the moon. I hope these aren't the same scientists who think their parrot has a sense of humor.
• Very amusing trailer for Good bye, Lenin!, an offbeat German film about an East German man who can't let his mother know that Communism fell (she was in a coma when it happened). Nominated for many awards.
• Great trailer now online for Taking Lives, a new Warner thriller with Jolie, Kiefer and Ethan Hawke.
• U.S. military 'sure' of catching bin Laden this year. They're going to catch him with their new faster-than-light technology, their perpetual motion machines, and their newly discovered methods to turn lead into gold.
• Tightly controlled Singapore was to allow the controversial French film 'Irreversible' to open on Thursday without censors' cuts.. Irreversible has a brutal ten minute anal rape filmed in real time. In past years, the censors in Singapore cut the innocent nude scene from Titanic!
• The Daily Show looks at the New Hampshire results in detail.
• ieSpell - Spell Checker add-on for Internet Explorer
• Pudge, Tigers reportedly close to agreement. Pudge, genuinely one of the greatest catchers in history, hopes to finish his career with a steady stream of shameful last place finishes.
• How big is Pixar? Big enough to dump Disney. That's pretty goddamned big.
• The trailer is online for Confidences Trop Intimes: "Because she picked the wrong door, Anna ends up confessing her marriage problems to a financial adviser named William Faber. Touched by her distress, somewhat excited as well, Faber does not have the courage to tell her that he is not a psychiatrist. From appointment to appointment, a strange ritual is created between them. William is moved by the young woman and fascinated to hear the secrets that no man ever heard."
• Trailers ar enow online for The Code (La Mentale) - . Drama about guy who comes back from prison and tries to go straight, but is forced back into the criminal life as a matter of honor. Not to be confused with Carlito's Way.
• Belichick backs foe: owns Carolina season tickets.
• NapkinNights - Las Vegas Nightlife Pictures
• Masturbate for Peace - Super Sunday Masturbation Party Planner. If masturbation could end war, Bill Maher would get the Nobel Peace Prize every year.
• This guy is the Rembrandt of Etch-a-sketch, and seems to be another guy who rarely managed to make it until noon with his lunch money. On the average, he spends 60-70 hours making an etch-a-sketch drawing.
• Quiz for the day - Programming Language Inventors or Serial Killers? How many can you guess?
• Great beer commercial from Australia.
• Lopez discusses split - maybe. The Star ran a long interview. Lopez says she never gave an interview. (???)
• Dean goes bust. He's out of money, and his campaign manager is gone.
• Two reviews of the screenplay for Mike Judge's "3001".
• Surfin' Slang for you hodads
• Actress Robin Givens struck and critically injured an 89-year-old pedestrian in a crosswalk, police said Thursday.
• Man evicted for playing Bing Crosby records. Who could blame the landlord?
• Mariah Carey to shun skimpy attire for Indonesian concert
• Here are four more free movies from SPICE UNCENSORED!, the videos they couldn't put on Spice TV.
• Here are four more free movies from Spice TV
• 'Vanity Fair' weighs in on Michael Jackson: "Michael Jackson, who is charged with child molestation, allegedly seduced boys by giving them Coke cans filled with white wine he called 'Jesus juice' and red wine he nicknamed 'Jesus blood,' according to an article in the March issue of Vanity Fair. "
• Anyone That Funny Is Entitled to Cry. A tribute to the unique Jack Paar, written by Dick Cavett.
• Bush campaign shifts gears to oppose Kerry
• President Bush, stand-up comedian. (Middle section - "he's a regular cutup")
• Scientist says South Pole Warmer Than his North Dakota home
• A good collection of internet favorites in the audio and video department
• Pam Anderson's breasts to become national landmark(s). Curvy Pamela Anderson's spectacular 36DD breasts could soon be joining the company of Mount Rushmore, Old Faithful and the Alamo. A foundation has formally asked the Interior Department to designate her huge, perky hooters as a national landmark!
• The longtime editor of Weekly World News is dead at 56 , having been killed by Elvis's ghost and then anally probed by space aliens looking for Krispy Kremes.
• TRIVIA: who is the number one female downloaded as a screensaver at screensavers.com? Would you believe Larissa Meek? Trivia question number two: who the hell is Larissa Meek?
• Oprah really rules the book scene. Online bookseller Amazon.com reports that immediately after Winfrey's Book Club selection, Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude jumped from No. 3,116 to No. 1. Amazing! This is an obscure, highly literary book written two decades ago in Spanish, which has never cracked the top 150 since its publication.
• President Bush will seek a big increase in the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts. Yup, more spending on inessential projects. That's what we need while we run a mammoth deficit. I thought the Prez was supposed to be an arch-conservative. All of a sudden he's George McGovern?
• Bettany, Connelly Experience 'Pastoral' Life: The duo, along with 'thirteen' actress Evan Rachel Wood, are in discussions to star in 'American Pastoral' for director Phillip Noyce.
• Some interesting and amusing stuff. Screencap City: Episode 1 - The Phantom Screencaps
• JoBlo's movie review of The Big Bounce. Bad news. He says it sucks not because it is incompetent, but because it is safe and boring.
• After Tuesday's Oscar nominations were announced, much chatter has been about whether those types demonstrated their loathing of Miramax Films' Harvey Weinstein in the most painful, noticeable way: by ignoring the studio's Cold Mountain in the best picture category Or it could be that Cold Mountain sucks. Nah, that didn't stop them from nominating The Cider House Rules. This is an extraordinary demonstration of Hollywood's cluelessness - they have to come up with paranoid explanations for why sucky, artificial films were not nominated, because well, suckiness and artificiality should be nominated, dammit!
• The single best tourism video EVER! I have my ticket to Toronto in hand! The Dutch are kind of embarrassed over legalized drugs, but the Canadians take pride in their weed.
• If you are into little symbolic computer icons for your desktop or web sites, you are about to go to icon heaven.
• Weirdness. A nude gallery of the "alive or dead" surrogate woman thingies
• Studios sue Sprague and Caridi in screener case.
• Mike Judge comedy to star Luke Wilson. The premise is similar to Woody Allen's Sleeper, although what Wilson finds in the future will be quite different from Woody's experiences.
• Scarlett Johansson will star in The Black Dahlia, opposite Josh Hartnett and Mark Wahlberg for director Brian De Palma
• BBC chairman Gavyn Davies has resigned in the wake of Lord Hutton's criticisms of the corporation's reports. In his resignation, Davies assured the public that all of BBC's blatant lies and misrpresentation were all made in the cause of jolly fun and well-founded partisanship, and that people should not have assumed that BBC is a legitimate news operation. Lord Hutton also "deplored" the leak of some his papers to the Sun newspaper, most particularly the pictures of topless chicks typing his final draft.
• David Hasselhoff has complained to museum curators after finding his photo absent in a collection of memorabilia about the fall of the Berlin Wall. "In Germany children have brought me thousands of flowers", many of them non-poisonous.
• This is some strange stuff from SomethingAwful.com"

Other Crap archives. May also include newer material than the ones above, since it's sorta in real time.

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MOVIE REVIEWS:

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 Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

More Canadian stuff...

"Starship Invasions" (1977)
Really bad bad Canadian 1970s sci-fi with 1950s production values. Some of the cast were recycled and used again in High-Ballin' (1978).

• Helen Shaver: tight sweater pokies.
• Sherri Ross: arms over boobs as alien seducing farmer.
• Victoria Johnson: sci-fi bikini.
• Linda Rennhofer: underwear as abductee subjected to various body probes.

"Class of 1984" (1982)
Videonasty starring a young Michael J. Fox but saved by an over-the-top performance by Timothy Van Patten as a juvenile delinquent who declares war on a music teacher (Perry King) because he didn't get the piano playing gig in the school band. Supposed to be based on a true story but really is a remake of of various teenagers-gone-bad movies from the 1950s. Some cuts have the rape scene of the teacher's wife (Merrie Lynn Ross) removed.

• Merrie Lynn Ross: partial breast, then getting raped.
• Lisa Langlois: sexy only. Giving Michael J. Fox his first screen kiss.
• Erin Flannery: getting felt up by Lisa Langlois who appears to be a lesbian.
• Linda Sorenson: downblouse as Timothy's mother.
• Helena Quinton: excellent full frontal and dorsal.
• Unknown: flashing her boobs at punk concert.

"The Morrison Murders" (1996) (TV)
TV movie of the week. Male nudity only but Tanya Allen was almost falling out of her tube top during the first five minutes.

• Maya McLaughlin: tight t-shirt/sweater.
• Tanya Allen: mega cleavage.

"Immortal: Forest for the Trees"
Episode from the Lorenzo Lamas tv series about some half-naked wood nymphs living in the forest. No nudity as they're wearing a coat of leaves with skimpy outfits underneath.

• Crystal Buble: cleavage as nymphomaniac nymph.
• Gabrielle Miller: cleavage as witch.
• Julie Patzwald: mega cleavage.
• Chiara Zanni: cleavage.

"Gas Corner" tv series
New Canadian tv series. The pilot episode was about the waitress (Gabrielle Miller) wearing a push-up brassiere. I think in the next episode she participates in a wet t-shirt contest.

• Gabrielle Miller: cleavage.

Various:

• Jacklyn Francis: leg, partial upskirt and cleavage on a last week's episode of "Train 48".
• Jacklyn Francis: braless pokies in "Falling Fire" (1998).
• Hélène Bourgeois-Leclerc: brassiere in last week's episode of "Les Bougon".

"Cabin Fever"
Blood and gore with a brain, and a taste of Deliverance thrown in for good measure. A better than average horror flick with some nice plot twists.

As a mysterious flesh-eating virus starts killing off people in a remote wilderness area, they turn on one another thinking it's being passed by contact. All the cliched characters are present, hot naked chick, hot won't-get-naked chick, dumb jock, cool guy, dorky guy, redneck backwoods guy, etc., but they don't detract from the movie, they make it.

By the time anyone figures out what's really spreading the virus, there aren't many survivors, but how they get there makes for a really cool horror flick.

• Cerina Vincent, topless.
• Jordan Ladd, lookinh great in a bikini.

Meg Ryan
(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35)

Kari Wuhrer
(1, 2, 3, 4)

MICHAEL JACKSON'S CANNED WINE
Jesus! - Vanity Fair magazine claims to have explained the charge that Michael Jackson gave an "intoxicating agent" to a minor. They say he allegedly gave the boy wine concealed in a Coke can on a flight from Florida. The magazine says the boy told police that Jackson usually drinks wine out of Coke cans so people won't know he's drinking, he calls white wine "Jesus juice" and red wine "Jesus blood," and he told the boy and his siblings that "Jesus drank it, so it must be good." Michael's ex-business manager confirmed that only his inner circle know his code names for wine, so this tells you the boy spent "quality time" with Michael.