"The Rowdy Girls", from
Johnny Web
There is always a
difficult tightrope to walk with these soft-core
films. Spend too much time on sex scenes, and
they lose all integrity as films. Spend too
little time on sex scenes and they don't address
the core reason why people watch them in the
first place. So I have to split up the review
here and say that this little grade-b from Troma
is not a bad film in the genre of comedy-drama
Westerns narrated by a singer, otherwise known as
the Cat Ballou school of Westerns. It has pretty
interesting and fairly complex characterizations,
enough plot so that you keep watching, and the
acting ain't bad for a bunch of former Pets and
Playindividuals, except for the inexperienced
Deanna Brooks.
The problem is the sex
scenes: they are very inexplicit (basically boobs
only), have too many boob close-ups with missing
faces, are in poor light, and are completely
unimaginative. Plus, there's just too little
nudity for a movie of this nature. The Julie
Strain topless scenes are almost a waste of time
and are barely worth a look. Shannon Tweed has no
sex scenes, but takes a nice bath, and the Tweed
bath (first Tweed collage) is definitely the
visual highlight of the film. She is still
beautiful and the lighting was adequate. The
scene with Deanna Brooks is not bad, and those
collages are worth a look. She certainly has the
fresh looks to make up for her dubious delivery
of her lines. The other woman had a cameo.
In a rather strange
twist, Julie Strain even got topless in the her
intro to the film (the other woman is India
Allen, who produced.) As it turns out, that
picture of Big Jewel is better than the ones in
the film.
Julie Strain (1,
2)
Deanna Brooks (1,
2)
Shannon Tweed (1,
2)
Julie Strain in the intro Sita Thompson
"Creator",
from Tuna
I'm glad Tuna got to
this one. It was calling out for comprehensive
coverage. Peter O'Toole played the part of Peter
O'Toole, a charming, boozy, eccentric,
rubber-legged, and sentimental actor who seems to
carry in his eyes the secret that he has seen
everything, enjoyed most of it, and forgives
everyone along the way, including himself ... oh,
wait a minute ... the character did have a
different name and was supposed to be a
scientist, but he plays the same part he has
always played in the past 25 years.
It's a really
sentimental romantic comedy with several more
romances in the sub-plots. In the main plot,
O'Toole is trying to clone his dead wife, and of
course he has to do this in secret away from the
eyes of his colleagues. In addition to the
near-presence of his late wife, O'Toole is shot
into further sentimental remniscences by watching
his young assistant fall in love in stages which
parallel O'Toole's own youthful courtship of his
true love
OK, it's corny. Like you
were expecting anything else in a Peter O'Toole
comedy? It's painless and gentle of spirit. That
ain't all bad. Like chicken soup, it won't hurt
you any, and you can even watch it with the kids
if they can tolerate a little harmless nudity.
Mariel does her famous flash in #1. Madsen takes
a shower, with her face and chest both in the
frames, and that alone has to be worth a couple
of stars, doesn't it?
Thumbnails, part 1 Thumbnails, part 2 Virginia Madsen (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17) Mariel Hemingway (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10, 11, 12, 13)
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