Wednesday

If They Tell You I Fell ...

(aka Aventis; 1989)

Aventis are stories told by youths in Barcelona to amuse each other. They can be considered an oral version of our Pulp Fiction in that they combine important historical figures, familiar neighborhood characters, superheroes, fantasy, lurid sex and violence, and so forth. At least that's what it says on the DVD box. This film is about some kids who experienced sensational events in the Spanish Civil War and made them even more sensational by turning them into aventis.

Much of the film takes place in the 1930s, but the framing story takes place around 1970, when two corpses turn up in the city morgue and the coroner and his head nurse remember the two people from their own childhood days. Those recollections primarily take the form of long, lascivious, and colorful yarns narrated by the hard-drinking doctor.

In other words, the action seen by the audience represents a middle-aged man telling an aventi about the aventis he used to tell as a boy. The narration is rendered even more unreliable by the fact that the doctor seems to be emotionally unstable, drunk, and more than a little cuckoo. It is thus impossible to tell how much of his story is historical, how much simply represents the misunderstandings or fabrications of his youth, how much is legend or misremembered legend, and how much the doctor is ad libbing in order to shock the old nun for his own depraved amusement. To make matters worse, three of the women pictured in his recollections are played by the same actress, Victoria Abril. That casting decision leaves the audience baffled throughout most of the film. Are they supposed to be the same woman using different identities to hide from the fascists? Are they really three different women? If the latter, what is the symbolic point made by casting the same actress in all three parts? Is it to show how our memories tend to run everything together? Is it to show how the average woman and the prostitute are really similar people placed in different situations?

Frankly, I have no idea what the correct answers might be for those questions. I don't even know if those are the right questions, because this is one of the more opaque movies I've ever watched. It's possible to understand what's happening in certain scenes, but even when that happens it's not possible to know whether the action being portrayed is merely a fictional story concocted by the boys in the 1930s, or perhaps a fictional story made up in extemporaneous recollection by the coroner. Beyond that, it is virtually impossible to determine how the scenes are supposed to fit together, and even if one contemplates that at length and gets a fairly good handle on it, it is even more difficult to determine what it is all supposed to mean and why the film was made in the first place. Variety's reviewer hit the nail right on the head when he wrote, "Those with the patience to see this film two or three times, or read the novel by Juan Marsé upon which it is based, may understand its convoluted plot. Ordinary film goers will be hard-pressed to make any sense out of out what they see on the screen."

The film concludes in Barcelona in 1989, with two of the minor characters making a reunion in which they speculate about Marcos (a young Antonio Banderas), a legendary anarchist who supposedly hid from the authorities for years. The old comrades finally conclude that Marcos died long ago, but a final shot in the city square shows an old couple of street beggars, and they seem to be Marcos and his lover (one of the many Victoria Abrils).

The film received seven Goya nominations, but that meant little in 1989, when the modern Spanish film industry was still inchoate. Despite the lack of competition, this film was not nominated for Best Picture, and received a generally cold response from critics and audiences, even from the more discriminating and adventurous viewers on the film festival circuit.

The sex is quite explicit, as you will see in the clips, especially the first scene between Jorge Sanz and a pregnant Victoria Abril, in which they perform in a brothel for the amusement of a rich voyeur. Sanz sodomizes Abril, pisses on her, and so forth. The pregnancy was not faked with prosthetics. Abril really was six months along when the scenes were filmed. 90% of the female nudity is from Abril, but there are a few other naked women pictured briefly when the police raid a brothel. Here's the whole magilla. (260 meg)

 

 

  • * Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe).

  • * White asterisk: expanded format.

  • * Blue asterisk: not mine.

  • No asterisk: it probably sucks.

OTHER CRAP:

Catch the deluxe version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles, here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teeth

(2007)

Teeth is a comedy/horror film starring Jess Weixler as a high school virgin who is a dedicated member of an abstinence club. When the boy of her dreams moves into her school she discovers lust, but is still firm in her resolve to stay pure. However, when he forcibly deflowers her, she discovers her curse/gift, vagina dentata. Her vagina has teeth that bite off everything inserted against her will. Her gynecologist discovers her problem the hard way when he tries to insert four fingers into her. Several other men learn about her the hard way, including her step-brother.

It is a watchable black comedy, with good performances.

 

Jess Weixler shows breasts admiring herself in the mirror.

 

 

 


First up today the fabulous boobs of Mimi Rogers in The Rapture (1991).

 

Then a little trip down memory lane with Angelique Pettyjohn.


In 1968 she did the "Mad Doctor of Blood Island" and showed us just a little tit and some leg. This one was just prior to her role on "Star Trek."


 

By 1982 she was doing hardcore porn, revealing it all, and doing it all in Titillation. Watch Angelique as she sucks it up.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes and collages

Friday the 13th, part 2

1981

Kristen Baker

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Striking Point

(1995)

Actress playing the stripper is Tracy Spaulding. Quite the looker as she struts around.

Rest of this movie is just god-awful. Seriously - the worst acting by an entire cast...ever. Sixteen voters on IMDb give it a mean of 5.8 but that score is gerrymandered by six people who gave it a 10. Anyone who thinks this one of the best movies of all time - a frickin' 10 - should forfeit his right to vote...not only on IMDb but anywhere on the planet. A 10. Sheesh. Those voters had to have been the writer-director, his mom, three brothers and a pet weasel. Even the five voters who gave it a 1 were exceedingly generous.

BTW, the writer-director was Thomas H. Fenton, whose only prior work in films was as a grip - I am not making this up - and who wrote not another damn thing until Saw IV, for which he was credited for "story." I rest my case.



Movie clip here, collage below.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Signal

(2008)

Sometimes, even when I think the collage won't be all that good, I like to do a movie to let people know how good the movie was. That's the case with the 2007 Indy Sci-Fi horror, The Signal. Unique and extremely well done, it has elements of other films, to be sure, but it has a style all it's own.

The film tells its story from three perspectives, which they call "transmissions". Each transmission had it's own director/writer, and while each one had a different style, the three well-written pieces blend flawlessly. The acting is also outstanding, something not always true in an independent production.

A mysterious transmission invades every cell phone, radio and TV. It affects viewers or listeners, turning them into mindless killers. Although the affected can "snap back" if they're away from the transmission, no one can snap back from being killed.

The movie focuses on a woman, her lover, and her husband, and the various characters they encounter while trying to avoid being victims, or themselves turning into murderers. Each transmission shows the characters from a different point of view, focusing on a different character.

This is terrific Sci-Fi, and while it's necessarily gory, that doesn't detract from the excellent story or the great way they tell it.
 

Anessa Ramsey

 

 

 

 

 

Pics

Helena Christensen. This is a much higher quality version of one we have seen before.

 

China Chow, hanging out topless on the Riviera with Keanu

 

 

 

 

Film Clips