Sadomania (1981) day two. There are some pretty extreme plot elements in this film, even by 1981 standards. Consider prisoner Andrea Guzon, who gets into a fight to the death with guard Patricia Quow. When she wins, she is given to the governor, who chains her to a chair and has his German shepherd ravage her, which finally gives him enough of an erection to screw his wife, Gina Janssen. She is then sold to a slave trader who rapes her, then sold again to a whore house. Ursula Buchfellner doesn't get the canine treatment, and doesn't arouse the governor. The governor's wife seduces her, then sells her to the whore house, where she dies from VD and an infection caused when a customer took a big bite out of her right breast.

According to the interview with Franco, the knife fight between Guzon and Quow are the only case in his films where actresses were in any real danger, as they insisted on using real weapons. All of the women mentioned today show everything. Jess Franco liked this film very much, and even played the part of the whore house owner, who was gay, and was shown being sodomized in one scene.

I will not bother quoting other reviews, as I don't think anyone has reviewed the Uncut version of this film. The transfer is top-notch, but the English dubbing is second rate. The included interview with Jess Franco makes this DVD a good value. LIke many Jess Franco efforts, the plot is not all that important here, but for amount of nudity and kinkiness, this ranks as one fo the top WIP films of all time. C.

Strip 'n' Run (1998)

This film is also known as The Thief and the Stripper.

Director John Sjogren is has kind of an interesting story behind him, although I don't know any details. He's been making movies for ten years. Not the kind of movies that win Oscars, nor even the kind that appear on theatrical screens. Nobody seems to have seen them. Of the ten films listed in his IMDb page, six of them are not assigned a numerical rank because they still have not received the minimal five votes required for a score. This is one of the four films that does have a score, but it is based on the minimal five of votes, and the score is a deplorable 2.9/10. The other three have more votes (20, 69, and 88), but score just as poorly (2.3, 2.9, 3.3).

So they aren't very good movies, and nobody sees them, and yet he continues to make a living churning them out, and he seems to inspire complete loyalty from his team. Like some more famous directors, he has a repertory company of players who seem to be in all of his films: Todd Bridges, Michael Madsen, Roxana Zal, Joe Estevez. Several other actors appear in multiple Sjogren films: Chad McQueen, Corey Feldman, Robert Z'Dar, Julie Strain, Jan-Michael Vincent, L.P. Brown. This particular film uses many of those people, and also adds some dependable and familiar character actors like Martin Kove and Brion James. Even if you don't know the names, trust me, you know these guys.

I don't know how you can make so many poor films and continue to make them for so many years, but Sjogren has discovered the secret, I guess.

• This is is almost incomprehensible, and is usually illogical. It's a crime story about a down-and-out private eye who stumbles on a suitcase full of money and valuable computer disks, and ends up being tailed by various rival criminal groups, and various law enforcement people. There must be 25 main characters in the plot, and some of them just appear out of nowhere, leaving the viewer in "who is this guy again?" mode throughout the film.

• The plot just makes no sen se at all, and is filled with things that simply can't happen. For example, on the spur of the moment in the middle of the night, the private eye flees to the glitzy offices of a former client, which are housed in a high-rent building where he happens to know the security guard. OK, that could be. But within minutes, everyone else shows up there. How could that be? When the private eye gets away from the surviving bad guys (they kill each other liberally throughout the film), one of the baddies says "quick, he's headed to the airport". Huh? The private eye didn't even know he was going to the airport yet. How could the baddies know? In fact, wherever he goes in the vast city of Los Angeles, the baddies are always there instantly, often finding him by accident. He ducks into a strip club, and some baddies looking for him just happen to stop in that same club. Fortunately, the leave their car running, so he runs out the back door and drives off in their car. No problem for them, however. He gets home, and they are there five minutes later.

• Scene transitions are abrupt and sometimes confusing. The editing could be much smoother.

It's just that kind of incoherent, irritating, confusing movie.

Are there any good points? Sort of. Michael Madsen lends a certain credibility to the cast. Roxana Zal is quite beautiful. There is a substantial amount of toplessness from Miss Zal and at least a half dozen strippers, although most of it is in funky strip club lighting. It's not really a film I'd recommend, but if you get stuck watching it, it isn't completely terrible. D+.

The DVD has about 20 minutes of deleted footage, outtakes, and bloopers, including lots of the raw footage they used to create the love scenes. It's not lively, funny stuff, but you may be interested to see how much footage they need to produce a 30 second love scene. (About 8 minutes worth). The transfer is mediocre quality at best, in a 4:3 aspect ratio, with quite a bit of interlacing accompanying the motion.

• Roxana Zal (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

• A bazillion other chicks (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)

Updates

• Updated volumes for Jennifer Jason Leigh, Meg Ryan, Charlotte Rampling, Christina Ricci, Theresa Russell, and Regina Russell.

OTHER CRAP:

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• Town near Syracuse NY has had 70 inches of snow in two days.
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• Marvel sues SONY yet again. This time it's about Men in Black, and the fact that Sony claims it does not have to pay royalties to Marvel because the film lost money, despite grossing nearly $500 million worldwide.
• Kerry camp angered by Botox questions, and won't even acknowledge the presence of reporters who ask about the penis enlargement surgery, since "a large, manly penis has never been essential to the performance of American Presidents, although it might have helped Jimmy Carter"
• Turns out Kerry only got 5% of the vote in New Hampshire. In the REPUBLICAN primary!
• Gilligan resigns. "I made mistakes in the story because I was hit upon the head by a coconut. As soon as another coconut hit my head, my memory was restored fully."
• Vice President Dick Cheney has a birthday today, and is celebrating by blowing out an undisclosed number of candles. I wonder if Cheney ever hangs out with the masked wrestlers there at Parts Unknown. Rocker Marty Balin, former lead singer of the Jefferson Airplane, is precisely one year younger than Cheney. So you KNOW that astrology stuff works. You want to feel old? Comedian Dick Martin (Laugh-In) is 82 today.
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• Kind of a fun putting game that is much harder than it looks.
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• History of Giving The Finger
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• Colin Farrell's a Rising Boozy Star... Here are the all-time Top 10 celebrity party animals. Colin is #1 among the living animals. Colin is good, but he's not ready to take on Oliver Reed yet.
• Georgia considers banning the word 'evolution'. Well, at least we know what happened to Linda Tripp, who is now Georgia's State Superintendent of Schools (pic with article).
• Marx Brothers out on DVD. Warner has released a set including seven films on five disks with digital clean-up and a gazillion features. Sadly, the first five Marx movies (Duck Soup, for example) are not included. Universal owns the early films, and has no DVD plans at this time.
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• Satan better check to see if that ancient heating system still works, because it's a cold day in hell. Rush Limbaugh is kicking some ass - and it's President Bush's!
• Six years after going corporate, the Dodgers are back to being family owned.
• R. Kelly's Attorneys want evidence banned. Boy, that's a bad sign. The true last refuge of a scoundrel - "yes, I did everything I'm accused of, but you obtained the proof illegally, or I had immunity. Nannie-nannie-boo-boo.". Or, as we like to calll it in technical legal terms, The Oliver North Defense.
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• Super Bowl Halftime Honor Roll. Pay special attention to the roster of entertainment from Super Bowl XXVII.

  
   

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.

Coldfire (1990) is about drugs, 'mkay. The movie tells us that drugs are bad, 'mkay. Especially a drug called... aptly enough... coldfire. You get a bunch of cops chasing a bunch of bad guys selling drugs. And all you need to know about the quality of the acting and of the production values is two little words. Wings Hauser. He plays the big cop and he produced this little ol' movie all by his little lonesome. Wings Hauser. Fly away little starling. Fly, fly, fly.

Three women give up the goodies. Two play strippers. One of them is Lisa Axelrod and the other is the ever-popular, never to be forgotten uncredited blonde stripper. Hooters only from each.

Third woman is Darcy De Moss, quite an active B movie babe in her time. Darcy shows us a little bum in bed and some boobs in the bath. Not much left to say.

• Darcy De Moss (1, 2)
• Lisa Axelrod
• Unknown

Other stuff...some known unknowns

Thursday's Funhouse had some kickass caps of women billed as unknowns in three slasher movies. Good news is that they are known, afterall.

"Torremolinos 73" (2003)
The wacky world of 1970s porn makes another appearance here, in a story that begins in a shabby Madrid suburb, where Alfredo (Javier Camara, from Talk to Her) is an encyclopaedia salesman, trudging from door to door and offering his wares to uncaring housewives, offering busts of General Franco as free-gift inducements. But business is slack, so Alfredo's enterprising boss offers him and his dowdy wife Carmen (Candela Pena) a new start: making educative sex films for the foreign market, shot in their flat in Super-8. Carmen, longing for a baby, accepts the offer, because they need the money. But Alfredo's Boss is really selling the tapes as porn films in North Europe, and are an instant hit, because of Carmen, who becomes a huge start there. Later on Carmen finds out that Alfredo can't have babies, but Alfredo think it's her who has the problem. His Boss offers him his first full length movie, with foreign actors, but he doesn't know he wants Carmen in a scene having sex with the main actor, but she takes the offer from Alfredo's Boss, so Alfredo can make his film and she can have the baby.

Candela shows all in this Comedy with some Drama in it.

• Candela Peña (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

Jordan Ladd
(1, 2)

Sabrina Seyvecou

MOON NEWS: UNLIMITED MOON POWER, FED-EX TO THE MOON
To The Moon, Alice! - A nuclear engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison says the moon's surface is full of a substance called helium-3, and if we could send someone there, load up a cargo hold with canisters of it and bring it back, it could supply the entire electrical power needs of the U.S. for a full year. He said all you have to do is dig up a little surface moon dirt, remove the helium-3 gas, dump the sand back and smooth out the divots.