Junior is traveling, and will be back tomorrow, so I am your compère for the evening's vaudeville.

Birth Rite (2003)

The film begins as two witch-hunters raid a mystical ceremony. The coven gathers around the altar, on which a little girl is lying. By the end of the incident, only three people remain alive. The little girl is rescued, one of the witch hunters survives, and one of the warlocks escapes in the hustle and bustle.

Fast forward 12 years. The witch hunter adopted the little girl and raised her with his own children. She turns 18. The warlock comes back for her. Well it turns out that she's the Grand Poobah of the Order of Witches, Local 33, and he was betrothed to her from the time she was born. When she turned 18, he came to claim her. It's good to know that those with satanic powers respect the age of majority at 18.

You don't need to know any more, do you?

This movie is pretty much what you'd expect, which is to say "drive-in quality", except that the woman who plays the lead, Natalie Sutherland, is actually a good actress, so the film is not as unnatural as some of these Grade-B project can be. In fact, she does a remarkable job considering that she appears to be a 30ish sitcom actress from Scotland playing an 18 year old American high school student.

Too bad she didn't write the script, because at one point the all-powerful warlock, who can travel through time, become invisible, and relocate instantaneously, is defeated by a high school student with a passing knowledge of the martial arts. And then the end of the film is one of those "superman turns back time by flying backwards" things. Yuck!

B-movie divas Brinke Stevens and Julie Strain appear in fully dressed cameos. Stevens is in a post-sexual phase of her acting career, but Strain looks hot - as good as I've seen her look in years.

It is rated a dismal 3.2 at IMDb. While agree that it is a poor film,  I guess it is a C-. A very low-end genre film which genre addicts may find barely adequate.

• Natalie Sutherland (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

The Believer (2001)

The Believer is basically another version of American History X. Very serious movie, with the central theme being that bigotry is essentially self-loathing.

The official plot summary: "A young Jewish man develops a fiercely anti-Semitic worldview. Based on the true story of an American Nazi Party leader in the 1960s who was revealed to be Jewish." Use the link above for details.

• Summer Phoenix (1, 2, 3)

Other crap:

• one airline runs controversial commercials featuring Iraqi Info Guy as a spokesman for their competitor.
• If the price is right, John Tesh will wish you a happy anything
• if you missed it, here's the international trailer for T-3, with nudity
• Following sexual harassment allegations against an Ohio University professor who took nude or partially nude photographs of student models, OU may forbid such activities in the future.
• OJ says, contrary to previous reports, he will NOT be in a reality show
• Constant 'Joke' Calls From White House Putting Further Strain On Relations Between US And UN
• A prominent Republican fund-raiser who once said former President Bill Clinton was "a terrible example to our nation's young people" pleaded guilty yesterday in Baltimore Circuit Court to production of child pornography. Hey, I don't know why people are so upset about this. He was just establishing his credentials as an expert on the topic of our nation's youth. By the way, he was sentenced to probation, although he had sex with, and took naughty pictures of, minors.
• odd stuff, proving that just about anything can be found on the web The Stewardess Uniform Collection
• Chloe Sevigny to do explicit hardcore oral sex scene? Page Six says so
• Sinead O'Connor retiring from the music business. Wow! She was in the music business? Who could have guessed?
• you are not going to believe this. Naomi Campbell says she has a personal network of intelligence agents across the globe, and it turns out that she knows where bin Laden is. As far as I can tell, unlikely though it seems, the article is not kidding.
• Senator Santorum is being spun mercilessly from both directions. Here are Rick Santorum's actual, unedited words, transcribed from a tape of the interview. The following are quoted verbatim.
  • "if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does." Again, as I pointed out with the Naomi Campbell article, it does not appear that he was kidding. It seems that he actually believes that the right to consensual sex with other adults within your home undermines the very fabric of society.
  • "I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts." (Personally, I have no problem with bagpipes, but I hate bagpipe music. If I were dictator, you would be allowed to own all the bagpipes you like, but don't let me catch you playin' them sumbitches.)

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.

Werewolf Woman (1976) is an Italian production that tries to merge pseudo-science and Lycanthropism. A young woman is clearly mentally disturbed, and when she discovers a family legend and a picture of one of her ancestors who was a werewolf that looks just like her, she begins to imagine herself a werewolf. She has been disturbed since she was raped at 13. Her first victim is her sister's husband, after she watches them have sex. She then escapes from a mental hospital, and kills several more, then meets a "nice guy," starts an affair with him, and seems to be getting better. A gang rape, and the gang's murder of her boyfriend sends her over the edge completely.

Annik Borel as the werewolf shows everything even before the opening credits, and several other times in the film. The beautiful Dagmar Lassandar shows everything as well as her sister. An unknown peasant woman also shows everything before Borel kills her. Another unknown shows a doctor a breast in the mental hospital.

IMDB readers have this at 3.4 of 10. From my viewpoint, the pseudo science required way too much exposition, causing the film to be way too talky. The DVD is a wide screen transfer, and has an interview with the director, but the transfer quality shows the age of the original material. This is a C-.

Tuna is the Cal Ripken of celebrity imaging: MVP performances season after season, shows up for work every day come what may, delivers in the clutch. And he's the one got me into this DVD capping game.  So when I had the time to take a good look at some of Tuna's caps I figured I'd run home to mama and make a few seamless collages out them, just like the good old days.  In alphabetical order:

Alex Meneses in Auto Focus, with the kind of sneak-a-peak exposure that teenage boys dream of.

Andrea Thompson, former CNN correspondent (har, fucking har) with the kind of exposure grown men dream of in A Gun, A Car, A Blonde.  I'm pretty sure she didn't play either the Gun or the Car.

Arielle Dombasle, topless descending stairs, in Pauline At the Beach.

Barbara Leigh of exquisite face and form, in Student Nurses.

B movie actress and sometime pornstar, Barbara Peckinpaugh, topless before a mirror in Shadows Run Black (of course they frigging run black.  Only white shadow I ever heard of was a crummy TV show about a basketball coach).

Britt Nikols, unknown but cute as a button and topless and almost full-frontal, all in Une Vierge...

Carmen Chaplin in one-third of a welder's outfit in Snapshots.

Chantal Contouri showing one nicely proportioned hootie in Thirst.

Two collages of little known but well built and topless Charity Rahmer (2) in Cheerleader Massacre.  Can you name one movie with Massacre in its title that doesn't have a topless shower scene?

Corinne Clery (1, 2) in The Story of O.  Nothing else need be said.

Diana Espen, aka pornstar April Flowers or April Summers or just plain Apil, in Cheerleader Massacre.  And yep, you guessed it... this is a shower scene.

Diane Keen revealing one breast in Sweeney.

Three collages of Dixie Lee Peabody (1, 2, 3) in Night Call Nurses.  Topless in all three.

Inid Som as a fully nekkid abducted babe in The Abductors.

Joan Severance in a see-thru outfit in See No Evil (nope, sure don't.  No
evil to be seen there.)

The late and luscious Lana Clarkson in Barbarian Queen 2, showing why those who capped her movies thought she was one of the greatest creations on the planet.

Laura Albert (1, 2), uncredited but topless as a stripper in Road House.

Marian Aguilera, fully frontally nekkid in La Ciudid de los Prodigios.

Maria Rojo forcibly topless in Candy Stripe Nurses.

Marina Sirtis in Blind Date, a scene capped at least fifty times before, but Tuna flat-out nailed Counselor Trois' best topless exposure.

Richmond Baier, cute little brunette running throught the woods in The Groove Tube.  A famous performance by someone never heard from again.

Romy Windsor in The Thief of Hearts.

Sharon Hart Cleary, as seen in a mirror in The Attic Expeditions.

And one of the most famous scenes in movie history, Sharon Stone (1, 2) opens up to a police interrogation in Basic Instinct.  A topless scene with Mr. Zeta-Jones is thrown in for good measure.

Former Pet Shauna O'Brien showing off her augmented mammoplasts in Scandal: The Big Turn-On.

Suzanna Hamilton (1, 2) , fully frontally nekkid in 1984.  This has to be the winner of Greatest Exposure in An Otherwise Serious Movie award.

Four collages of Tamie Sheffield (1, 2, 3, 4) in Cheerleader Massacre, marvo-hooter exposure in the first three, some bum in 4.  Now, why four collages?  Cuz Tamie is sorta, kinda famous.  Not just another B movie babe is she, no siree.  Seems she was also a Fear Factor contestant in the March 3rd episode.  IMDB says she won that puppy, too.  Had to eat cheese crawling with maggots.  So what's so damned fear-provoking about that?  Disgusting, repulsive, terminally stupid?  Yah, you betcha.  But fearsome?  Not so far as I can see.  About the only thing I'd be afraid of is getting puke all over my clothes.

Tanya Roberts in a kick-ass, boob-exposing scene from the PG-rated Beastmaster.

Teri Geary, in a triple-B performance in Auto Focus.

And last up, appropriately so, is the goddess among nekkid famous babes, Uschi Digard in The Godson.  Topless in a bath tub.

So alls I gotta say is, waytago Tuna, attaboy and may you continue to cap until movies go truly 3-D.

Hey, we made a lot of mistakes in that decade. Two words: disco ball.

Marjoe plays a psychotic drug dealer who holds a bunch of people in a diner so he can terrorize them. Many people would say "so he can expose the hypocrisy of American society", but those people are in serious need of psychological counseling. It plays out kinda like Blue Velvet for rednecks. Marjoe had been working steadily before this movie, but it would be many years before he would be offered another film role after this bizarre performance.

• When it came to nudity in the late 70s, Candy Clark (1, 2, 3, 4) was money. If she was in the cast, you could expect a look at her naughty bits. Then the eighties arrived, she put her clothes on, and kept them on. Now 55, she is still working. I saw her not too long ago in a youthploitation thing called Cherry Falls.
• Lee Grant. No face. Could be anyone.

Here are a couple more of Ms Paradis. (1, 2) No real nudity in these fashion magazine shots, but they are sexy.

Since Brainscan's pics reminded me of her, here're a couple of beautiful images of Arielle Dombasle. The first shows the bottom of her boobs, the second just her magnificent, flawless, seemingly ageless face. (1, 2)

Cheryl Shepard in an episode of "In aller Freundschaft"

Full-frontal nudity from Anneke Kim Sarnau in "Juls Freundin"

The Dixie Chicks will appear nude on the cover of next week's "Entertainment Weekly," with epithets such as "Saddam's Angels" and "Big Mouth" written on their bodies.  Martie McGuire said they're not trying to be provocative but to show the absurdity of the criticism of their anti-war stance, adding, "It's not about the nakedness, it's that the clothes got in the way of the labels."

*  In this picture, they're not even wearing clothing labels.

*  Actually, they look more like Uday's Angels.

*  At least in this picture, nobody will notice their big mouths.

*  The important thing is that nobody should mistake this for a cheap ploy to boost record sales.

 

University of Wisconsin police charged student Anthony Scholfield, 22, with burglary for pulling off perhaps the biggest panty raid of all time.  They say they found 854 pairs of women's underwear that were stolen from women's apartments in Menomenee hidden in his home,
stuffed in containers in his closet and filling his dresser drawers.  They say he swiped only small or extra-small.

*  So they would fit him.

*  They were mostly thongs, so even the large ones are extra small.

*  He did this after drinking a lot of tiny bottles of stolen liquor.

*  His parents DID tell him to go to college and accomplish great things...

*  Wait'll he has to tell his cellmate he's the first man to get prison time for a panty raid.

The Boston Athletic Association apologized to residents for some of the runners in Monday's Boston Marathon.  Homeowners say the runners, both male and female, urinated and defecated in their yards, the women dropped used tampons, and the men pulled down their shorts to rub Vaseline on their privates to reduce chafing.  A spokeswoman said 460 portable toilets were brought in, but there are always some people who don't adhere to the info in their runner's package.

*  They were too busy rubbing Vaseline on their runner's package.

*  If they did that in my yard, they'd BETTER be able to run damn fast!

*  The Boston Marathon may have to be banned in Boston.

*  The runners are now demanding a $10,000 settlement for infringing on their right to pee in people's yards.
 

A 23-year-old California woman named Michel set up a website called giveboobs.com to solicit donations to pay for implants to enlarge her 34A breasts.  Her target was $4500, and one donor pledged $500 to put her over the top.  She said, "My boobs would like to thank everyone who sent support and contributions."  She promised to put new pictures on the site after the surgery.

*  But now, it'll cost you $24.95 a month to see them.

*  Actually, her target was boobs, and plenty of them donated.

*  After the surgery, she'll need even more support.

*  Thank God donors didn't throw away their money by giving it to the March of Dimes website or something!