The Kovak Box

A middle-aged sci-fi writer goes to the Mediterranean island of Mallorca to speak at an conference. While he's there, he proposes to his long-time partner, who had accompanied him there for a working vacation. They obviously have a great relationship, and head off to their bedroom to celebrate their engagement. While she's getting into her sexy finery, he decides to walk into the second room of their suite in order to check out a CD that somebody left in the room for him. It turns out to be creepy. One or two minutes later, he walks back into the bedroom. His new fiancée has leapt from the balcony to her death. It is inconceivable that she could have committed suicide under the known circumstances, but two witnesses saw her jump. The only clue to the mystery is her cell phone, which she seems to have been holding just before she jumped, but dropped before she took the plunge.

As he prepares to leave the island in grief, he's accosted at the airport by another woman who narrowly averted death by suicide. She jumped from her balcony after receiving a call on her cell phone. She didn't want to commit suicide. She doesn't know why she jumped. As they discuss the circumstances of both suicide attempts, it seems that both of the women's cell phones, coupled with the survivor's recollections, show that the final message received, just before the suicide leap, was a recording of a Billie Holliday song called "Gloomy Sunday." The same thing seems to have happened to six other people on the island as well.

There is one more delicious element to the mystery. When this middle aged writer was a young man just out of the university, he wrote a sci-fi book about a future society in which the state plants microchips inside of everyone at birth. If anyone becomes a unruly dissenter, they are prompted to commit suicide when their implanted microchip is activated by an external stimulus. In such a way does the state get rid of dissenters while continuing to appear benign. The specific stimulus used? I'll bet you've guessed. The suicides happened right after the jumpers heard the song "Gloomy Sunday."

So how could a fiftyish man be living inside the plot of a book he wrote some twenty five years earlier, when he freely admits that he basically cribbed it from other sources (like The Manchurian Candidate) in the first place? Good question. If you're hooked on that mystery, you'll want to see this film.

It's a Hitchcockian mystery which incorporates, in addition to the elements described above, some spectacular settings on the Isle of Mallorca and a classic evil mastermind, James Bond style. The effectiveness of those elements is amplified by a director who loves Hitchcock, wrote his own script, and was actually born and raised on the same island of Mallorca, and is thus intimately familiar with all its most exotic charms. He was also fortunate enough to land Timothy Hutton as his lead, and Hutton seemed absolutely perfect for the role.

The Kovak Box is just one of those obscure treasures that will absolutely make your day if it's your kind of movie. The director put a lot of thought into every element of this film from the opening credits forward, so that everything ties together. Like any really good sci-fi oriented mystery, it has something to say about society, but it keeps the social commentary in the background and lets the mystery take center stage.

It so happens that this is my kind of movie. I'm one of those guys who would like to bring Rod Serling and Hitchcock back to life, so I couldn't believe that I was getting such a big kick out of an unheralded film from a Spanish director I never heard of. I loved the sets, the atmosphere, and the plot. My only quibble was that the film has a very unsatisfying ending. It just sort of drifts away, and the two main characters move on to separate lives. The writer is torn between doing what he knows he must do and reluctance to do it because he also realizes that he's been programmed to do just that! So he sits on the plane and thinks and ... scribbles a bit in longhand and ... the credits roll. Frustrating. I felt like I experienced really passionate foreplay without an orgasm. While that kind of sex is still great fun, it's even better with a climax.

Solid C. Not without flaws, but well worth your time if you, like me, appreciate Serling and Hitchcock, and wish that people still made that kind of movie.

Lucia Jimenez (the film clip is nearly three minutes long and includes the part done by her stunt double,  who is also stark naked)

Lucia's stunt double

Porky's Revenge

Porky's Revenge has never been available on DVD until now. It is included in a set titled "Porky's: The Ultimate Collection," which includes the original, still my favorite raunchy teen comedy of all time, Porky's II: The Next Day and Porky's Revenge. The three-film set is affordable, making it a real entertainment bargain, due for release May 22nd.

First, a word about the original Porky's, with some insight from the feature length commentary and special features from writer/director Bob Clark. He wrote the script over a period of 15 years, based on his own High School and College experiences, legends at his High School, and a few stunts that others told him about. He encountered nothing but resistance in getting it made. Even after Fox greenlighted it, they pulled funding. Clark didn't give up, and convinced them to go ahead. Fox balked at releasing the finished film, but agreed to a test screening. When that was a huge success, they still didn't believe it, and held several other test screenings. The results were not merely encouraging. Audiences were rolling in the aisles. They finally had to accept that, raunch and all, they had a huge hit on their hands. Over half the funding was Canadian, and the film remains the all-time leader among Canadian films at the international box office. I was gratified to hear Bob Clark say that the scene in the principal's office was the best comedy scene ever shot. I have contended that since the first time I saw it. It is one continuous 4.5 minute shot, was brilliantly written and perfectly acted.

Clark did Porky's II: The Next Day, but it was a much lesser film, and much of the raunch was cut. In his 15 years of development, Bob Clark had loaded the original with all his best material, and was at the bottom of the well.

Porky's Revenge, the third and last in the Porky's franchise, used much of the original cast, but Bob Clark had nothing to do with the project. This time, the coach is into Porky for serious gambling debts, and the the team is on the way to the state championships. They decide to help the coach, but plans, as Robert Burns said "gang aft agley." They end up promising to throw the game, Meat meets a girl with a great figure and a face that would stop a truck, who turns out to be Porky's daughter, and a Biology teacher tries to make Meat ineligible to play due to grades.

The new team got it partly right. They set it at Angel Beach High with many of the same characters, and pitted them against Porky. They also continued the theme of making the girls the smart ones, and having the boys the brunt of most of the gags. Unfortunately they put entirely too much plot into it, and didn't leave enough room for the humor. Further, the cast was getting a little long in the tooth. Only Kaki Hunter still looked believable as a high schooler.

Objectively this one is probably a D  on its own merits, but fans of the franchise will probably enjoy spending a little more time with Wendy, Meat, Schwartz, Mrs Ballbricker, and the rest of the Angel Beach pussies.

IMDb readers say 3.7. It should be noted that trashing Porky's (any of them) was a popular sport at one time, and this is a poor stepchild to the original.

Kaki Hunter

Kim Evenson

Rose McVeigh

Wendy Feign

unknown

 

¿Podrías con cinco chicas a la vez?

This is a rare Spanish Erotic-Comedy from 1979.

Andrés, a medical student, has the hots for "cinco chicas"

• a girlfriend whose mother doesn't approve of their relationship
• a female cousin who just came back to town with her new girlfriend
• his boss's wife
• and a nurse who chases him around all the time.

Of course, since it is an erotic movie, he has sex with all of them and it's not always fully consensual, although the women always end up happy with him. Therefore, it is so politically incorrect by today's standards that nobody could ever do a movie like this again.

The girls show everything or almost everything, and you have your full-haired bushes from the 70's to enjoy here!