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"Paroxismus", aka
"Venus in Furs", from Johnny Web
Warning: Spoilers
When Frodo sent me this,
I mistakenly thought it was a Laura Antonelli
movie called Venus in Furs. If I had known what
it was, I'd have watched it immediately! It's the
Jess Franco classic "Paroxismus", which
he called Black Angel in English, but the
distributors preferred Venus in Furs. (Very
confusing because both of the "Venus in
Furs" movies were released in 1969!)
The premise of this
movie is actually pretty good for a Jess Franco
movie. It's a Twilight Zone episode with some
tits. A jazz musician walks along the beach. He's
looking for the spot where he buried his horn. He
finds it, starts playing it along the beach, when
he spots a body washing ashore. He retrieves the
body and realizes that it is a woman whose murder
he actually witnessed in a seedy part of
Istanbul. He realizes there must be some weird
connection between him and the woman.
He knows he has to get
out of Istanbul, so he takes a gig in Rio. As he
wails away in a club during Carnival, the
mysterious dead woman walks into the club, and
she appears to be very much alive. As the movie
progresses, he starts to have an affair with her,
drawn by that same mysterious feeling of
connection.
In time, they both
realize they have to return to Istanbul, but by
now the police are searching for her as the
suspected murderer of several people. She knows
that the victims are the people who murdered her,
but she doesn't really realize why she is alive,
or even who she is.
Well, skipping all the
detail, the ending is pretty cool. The movie kind
of starts over. The musician is walking along the
shore again, playing his horn, he sees a body
wash up on shore, and ----- this time it is his
own body. Of course. That explains the mysterious
connection. He was also dead.
OK, pretty tight Rod
Serling premise, right? Now here's how it got
Francofied.
First, the jazz musician
is washed-up cornball TV actor-singer James
Darren ("The Time Tunnel"), the guy who
played Moondoggy in the Gidget movies. He must
have been really desperate after "Time
Tunnel" was cancelled (he later made a
comeback, if you can call it that, in "TJ
Hooker"), because movies like this pay
nothing. Well, Darren is a bebop hepcat knockin'
down some riffs in the key of sad, if you can dig
my groove, daddy-o, and he must have the worst
dialogue ever. How did the MST3K people miss this
film? He narrates the entire movie in overvoice.
It starts out semi-poetic, when he says
"don't ask me why I buried my horn or why I
dug it up. I just had to have it again. Musicians
will understand, because a musician without his
horn is like a man without words", But the
rest of it is like a bad impression of Sammy
Davis, Jr. (Darren was a friend of Frank Sinatra
and his family - sort of a little mouse in the
Rat Pack)
"Wanda and I let
Carnival swallow us up, like there was no
tomorrow, and there was no yesterday"
"She was on some crazy, drugged-out trip.
But, hey, if that was her bag, then I was cool
with it"
Anyway, Darren's big
challenge in the movie comes from his girlfriend,
played by the American singer/actress Barbara
McNair (once a great beauty, but here looking
washed out and probably as desperate for work as
Darren). McNair is understandably upset that
Darren prefers the company of a dead woman. Of
course, if she had seen the movie's ending, it
wouldn't have bothered her that much, since she
herself was sleeping with a dead man.
There is also some weird
sub-plot with Klaus Kinski as an ancient caliph
who tortures his slave girl until she gains the
upper hand and tortures him. And then they keep
coming back to life and torturing each other for
generations. Well, as luck would have it, the
dead woman on the beach is the slave girl, and
the guy who killed her is Kinski. Then, when she
comes back to life, sleeps with Darren, and goes
after Kinski for revenge, the cycle continues.
Except they also didn't see the ending, because
if Darren is also dead, then she's hasn't come
back to life ....... Or maybe she is, and just
had to hear Darren sing "Goodbye, Cruel
World" one last time.
Dead Woman walks around
the entire time in her underpants and a mink
coat. (Venus in Furs, get it?) Nobody thinks this
is suspicious, even in Rio in the height of the
Brazilian summer.
When Darren walks along
the beach, he plays the haunting "Venus in
Furs" theme. When Barbara McNair sings in
the nightclub, she sings ..... (have you already
guessed) ... "Venus in Furs". Actually,
it's cliched, but it isn't as bad as in most
Franco movies. Jazz great Manfred Mann actually
wrote some of the score.
If you, like me, are
nostalgic for the 1968-1974 period, and love
everything about the sloppy excesses of that
time, you'll probably get a big kick out of this
movie. You know the term "high camp"?
Well this puppy is higher than high. This is
celestial camp.
Here is an exceptionally good
and thoughtful review of this movie. I don't
agree with him, but it's an excellent read!
Surprisingly,
considering Franco's career output, only minimal
nudity!! Maria Rohm (1,
2,
3,
4)
"The
Faculty", from Tuna
The latest incarnation
of "invasion of the body snatchers". I
have talked about it previously, somewhere in the
back issues.
thumbnails Laura Harris (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6)
"The
Muse", from Tuna
Tuna's comments: The
Muse has a good premise. A screenwriter has
"lost his edge" and nobody will produce
his scripts. He is put in contact with a
"muse" (Sharon Stone) who will help him
become creative again if he supports her and
waits on her hand and foot. Sharon also motivates
the screenwriters wife (Andie Macdowell) to
become "Mrs. Fields" by opening a
cookie business. The plot provides ample room for
comedy, but it just doesn't happen. The
"great script" that The Muse inspires
involves someone who inherits an aquarium, has
trouble with sick fish, then hits oil digging for
a new fish tank, becomes rich and "frees all
the Willys." That script sounds at least as
bad as the script for The Muse. I found myself
nodding off while I waited for the "brief
nudity" from Sharon Stone.Near the end, we
see Sharon facing away from the camera and
slipping into bed. Yawn.
Anyway, we have one
pretty good pokey of Macdowell, one cleavage shot
of Stone, and six great shots of a butt without a
face. The movie may have some message about
creativity, and where it comes from, but it
eluded me completely. Acting, good, casting,
good, photography, good, screenplay, terrible.
Enjoy the images and rent something else.
thumbnails Sharon Stone (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6)
Andie MacDowell
Three images
of Connie Selleca, photographed by David Schoen
I didn't know that
Selleca had ever appeared topless, so I asked my
most expert source to take a look at these shots
from www.davidschoen.com. (Check the site out,
lots of good glam). Here is his reply:
"Scoopster:
David Schoen is a very well known, very
respected name in the industry. He shot mostly
for Penthouse, some for Playboy. I would
therefore say, after viewing the pix, that they
ARE definitely Connie Selleca. It is definitely
her face, and what her body WOULD look like...and
he's not the type to start placing heads on nude
torsos. So you can feel comfortable including it
in the Fun House.
P.S. At the same hotel in Honolulu where I met
Michelle Pfeiffer in the pool {along with Tina
Hobley from England's "Eastenders," I
was told by the lifeguard that--next to wicked
Whitney Houston {"The only guest we've
permanently banned from the hotel in over 40
years of operation!"} -- the most obnoxious
celeb they'd encountered was Connie Selleca. The
guy--who's worked there for 38 years--told me
that John Tesh was a very nice guy {albeit an
atrocious musician}, while Connie complained
about everything. She even wanted the hotel
swimming pool made COLDER...but when they
explained to her that the pool is heated, not
cooled, she stormed out--John tagging dutifully
behind--and checked into another hotel. And she
wasn't even "Flying High" back
then."
topless
topless
face
only
New from GR
Lysette
Anthony in "The Advocate" Lysette
Anthony (single image) Sophie
Dix in "The Advocate" Sophie
Dix (single image) Paulina
Porizkova in "Thursday"
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