Don't Sleep Alone (1997) is an erotic thriller that uses the ever popular multiple personality disorder to fool the audience. It is rated 1.8 at IMDb. Note that this is real the same plot device as the surprise evil identical twin. Star Lisa Welti and three strippers show the usual breasts and buns. It is not the plot device that sunk this film, but bad dialogue, poor acting, and weak story telling. That should be all the warning you need to avoid this film.

This is a great time, however, to explode the myths about Multiple Personality Disorder. The condition was first documented in France in the late 1800s, where it was thought to be a rare form of epilepsy. It became a very popular clinical diagnosis in the US after several popular films, beginning with The Three Faces of Eve (1957), created an awareness of the condition. It was later discovered that annalists were actually creating these so-called personalities in therapy. People like to please authority figures, and if an annalist tried hard enough, the patient would oblige. The myth exploders and urban legend folks will be quick to tell you there is no such thing as Multiple Personality Disorder. While that is technically correct, there is more to the story.

In Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994), the handbook of personality disorders, Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) was changed to Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). This was largely due to the official position of the British Psychiatric Association that each person has one, and only one personality. DID does, however, exist, and is a close cousin of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. The cause of DID is said to be severe physical, mental or sexual abuse in early childhood. As in Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, the mind uses the normal self-protection mechanism of suppressing things too terrible to dwell on, but to an extreme. Thus MPD was not debunked, it was simply renamed. I have seen estimates that between 2 and 10% of Americans suffer from some sort of Dissociative Disorder, however, there are many degrees of severity. Many mental health professionals still use the term "multiple" to describe this disorder, as it is far more descriptive than the official current name.

Almost nobody has seen this film, which is as it should be. As it is more or less technically competent, the proper score is E+.

Baadasssss! (2004)

Sometimes the right ingredients just come together.

When Mario van Peebles was 13 years old, he watched his father go through the painful experience of financing and creating the first major independent movie made by a black man for black audiences, Melvin van Peebles's Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song.

Son Mario played a couple of parts in the film, even doing a sex scene with a plump, older woman. Father Melvin produced, directed, starred, and wrote a lot of the music for the film. Later, he wrote a book about his fascinating experiences. Some thirty years later, a grown-up Mario has written and directed his own film about his father's film. He has combined his own memories and his father's book into Baadasssss, a movie in which he also stars as his father.

The father's film, truth be told, was not much of a film at all. (Review here) The film was shot in 19 days on a minimal budget with a non-union crew, family, friends, amateurs, and volunteers. As filmmaking, it is about on a par with Manos, the Hands of Fate. It was more of a social statement and an entrepreneurial success than an artistic achievement. The lead character, for example, is on screen for nearly the entire film and only has about six lines. The dominant action in the film - more than thirty minutes - consists solely of Melvin looking over his shoulder, jogging wordlessly through various urban and rural landscapes, accompanied by a jazzy, looping musical score. A good chunk of the rest of the film consists of explicit sex and nudity.

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song may not have been a very good film, but it was a cultural phenomenon. It turned out to be an enormous financial success which convinced the Hollywood suits that there was a large, untapped black market to pander to, just as Easy Rider had established the existence of a lucrative hippie market. Although Sweetback itself was not an exploitation picture, it identified the market for a solid decade of blaxploitation to follow, and the story behind it made a helluva story for the son's film, Baadasssss.

Baadasssss is a helluva movie, not so much because it is executed well as because it just had such a ripping yarn to start with.

• Melvin couldn't sell his story to the Hollywood suits. They had no interest in a story about a non-political black man radicalized into a police-beating rage when he witnesses corrupt police violence against another black man, especially since the black man is unrepentant and escapes scot-free at the end. With that avenue of cash blocked off, Melvin had to find some other route toward financing, and that process provides the film with some of its best laughs. Melvin's hopes are raised and dashed several times, the worst shock coming after he got a drug dealer to finance the film, only to get busted a few days later, when the shooting schedule had already been laid out.
• When the actual filming got started, the wild times really began. Melvin had to browbeat his crew. He had to outsmart the unions by pretending to shoot a porn film. (The unions didn't mess with porn, so Melvin needed to convince them it was a porno in order to avoid paying union wages.) He had to commandeer a hooker on short notice to play a role which his would-be star refused at the last minute. He had to use his son in a scene which would be considered kiddie porn today. He had to take an emergency $50,000 loan from Bill Cosby to finish the film. He even beat the crap out of his editor when the kid threatened to quit.
• When the film was completed, Melvin couldn't get anyone to distribute it. It opened on two screens: one in Detroit and one in Atlanta, and there was no money to advertise it to its target market. Somehow, against all odds, black people did eventually find out about the film, and took to it as the youth market had taken to Easy Rider. It ended up one of the top grossers of its year, possibly the biggest moneymaker, considering its shoestring budget.

With his script and his performance, Mario plays his father as a complex man, detestable and admirable all at once. Like many men with a definite goal who are obsessed with achieving through hard work, Melvin tolerated nothing that stood between him and his goal, and suffered nobody whose energy and dedication failed to match his own. There was no room for kindness, gentility or honesty unless those characteristics were necessary to get the film made. Mario saw that when he was a boy, still sees that, and does not shy away from telling it like it was.

Baadasssss is a must-see film for anyone who is really interested in the history of independent film. It may be the most interesting and candid film I've seen about the independent film process, and it may be the most honest movie ever made about making a movie of any kind. It also carries an important sub-text about the typical portrayal of black people in films made before Sweetback. More important than any of that to general audiences is the fact that Baadasssss is not a somber, dry, history lesson or a filmmaking lesson, because those things have very narrow appeal. It is also a well paced and entertaining experience with very little down time. It's funny, and it's touching. If the subject matter is at all interesting to you, I recommend it.

• (89% positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes)
• 76/100 at Metacritic
• The 6.5 score at IMDb is misleading. There are about 280 votes, and about a quarter of them gave the film a one out of ten, which is completely fucked up. This is one of the better films of the year so far, and received a long "standing o" at Sundance. The correct score should be about 7.5, give or take.

The nudity:

• Karimah Westbrook (1, 2)
• Other chicks (1, 2)
• zipped .wmv files. (1, 2, 3) The first is Westbook and the hippie check. The second is the set of a porno film where Melvin recruits his crew. The third is Westbrook re-creating a scene from the movie. In addition to the nudity, these are entertaining scenes. The sound's a bit out of synch, but they're watchable.

Notes on nothing special:

I went to see Baadassss today at a multiplex theater which is also showing Fahrenheit 911 on two screens. My showing was at 11:50, Moore's film was at 12:05 and 12:50. Both of Moore's showings were sold out, and people were outside on the apron scalping tickets as if it were the Super Bowl.

My theater, with hundreds of seats, had seven people in it including me. A real shame for a film many people would enjoy, if they only knew about its existence.

OTHER CRAP:

Other Crap archives. May also include newer material than the ones above, since it's sorta in real time.

Click here to submit a URL for Other Crap

MOVIE REVIEWS:

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 Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

Words from Scoop.

.avi's from Shiloh.

.wmv files made by Scoop from Shiloh's .avi's.

NOTE: because of a unique combination of circumstances with the Windows media player and some substantial bandwidth theft, we will have to do all of our movie files in zip format. Click on the files as you normally would to play them. When you get a choice, click on "save", and put it on your hard drive in the directory of your choice. UnZIP and play from there.

I know this is not especially convenient, but it allows the film clips to continue. I can protect .zip files from hot-linking in the same way I can protect still images. For some reason, if I protect .avis and .wmvs from hot-linking, they will not play in the Windows media player, and I can't get a satisfactory work-around. Perhaps I will find a better solution, but for now this new policy allows you to continue getting the movie clips you want to see, which is much preferable to my abandoning the clips altogether.

Here's one you've never seen

• Lost Horizon was made in 1937, and the DVD has a nude swimming scene with Jane Hyatt (who would later become the mom on Father Knows Best). Oh, sure, the actual nudity takes place very far from the camera, and some of the butt may not be Hyatt at all, but a body double, or it may be a body suit at that distance. But all that is beside the point.  The real reason why this is important is that there was virtually no nudity in mainstream American films from 1934-1966, the years controlled by the Hays Code and the Catholic Legion of Decency. The Hays Code was actually passed in 1930, but was not really enforced for a while, so you will see occasionally some nudity in 1930-33, but a nude scene from 1934 onward is a real rarity, even when so inexplicit as this one. (.avi - zip) (.wmv - zip)

Perhaps these tips will help if you have trouble with the codecs for these movies:

Shiloh says:

FYI when I hypercam vids to make the file size smaller I use DivX MPEG-4 Fast-Motion for the video compressor, then I use virtualdub to compress the audio. The properties for the vids says the video codec:  DivX Decoder Filter & audio codec:  Morgan Stream Switcher which I'm not familiar with. When I compress the audio with virtualdub I use MPEG Layer-3.  A friend of mine told me about compressing the audio about (6) mos. ago. Like I said previously, only been capping for a year & a half & I'm no expert. Hopefully this info will help members with the proper codecs for my vids.

 

When I cap big brother's I use hypercam mostly & sdp & asfrecorder if the set up allows me. I stopped using camtasia cause the file sizes were always too big, could never figure out the process, over my head lol, plus it cost too much to buy in my opinion.

A reader says:

You mentioned that some users were having trouble with the videos on your site. There is a tool designed to determine what codec is needed for a video. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ Hope this is useful to you or your users.

Scoop says:

I made the .wmv versions of each video. The codecs for these: Windows Video V8, Windows Audio 9. The upside of these is that you know the codecs, and they'll play in the Windows Media Player. The downside is that they are slightly larger, and slightly lower quality.

"Queer as Folk", season 3, episode 10
A long scene where Michelle Clunie goes down on Thea Gill and then gets out the dildo. Later Thea Gill gets the taste for the real thing and has loud hetero sex with a real guy.

• Thea Gill: nude, mostly breasts. (1, 2, 3)

"Show Me Yours": episode The Following Game
Another episode, another nude guest star, and Rachael Crawford still keeps her clothes on.

• Patrice Goodman: breasts in sex scene.
• Rachael Crawford: brassiere in sex fantasy.

"Naked Josh": episode Game, Set-up, Match
A porpoise humping moment for any erotic tv series is when they show alot of skin in the first episode and none in the following episode.

• Claudia Besso: slight cleavage in full slip.
• Millie Tressiera: tight t-shirt, upskirt.
• Sarah Smyth: pink brassiere having sex.

"11th Hour": episode Hard Seven
Another season 2 episode.

• Barbara Mamabolo: nice panty crotch shot.
• Inga Cadranel: tight t-shirt.

"Falling Over Backwards" (1990)
Light drama movie starring Saul Rubinek and Paul Soles (the original voice of Spiderman).

• Julie St. Pierre: braless pokies.
• Stripper: topless and buns.

Today the Ghost takes a look at "Blown Away", the 1992 direct-to-video flick starring not one, but BOTH of the Coreys.

Former "Charles in Charge" and "Baywatch" star Nicole Eggert shows breasts and bum views in several love scenes with Corey Haim.

• Nicole Eggert individual zipped .wmvs (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
• All Nicole Eggert .wmvs in one zip file

"Bad Santa"
Santa's down and dirty in this 2003 comedy about a thief who works a Santa gig every year so that he can rip off a mall at Christmas. He's a drunken, sex-crazy, foul mouthed jerk who hates kids but loves stealing. His accomplice is a black midget who hates everything including his partner, but also loves stealing.

Things go on the same way every year until an 8 year old kid "attaches himself" to Santa. Despite trying to drive the kid away, our non-hero starts to grow a heart.

This is an extremely funny movie, but be warned....the nudity is brief and the sex is mostly implied, but the language is some of the foulest I've seen in a movie. This guy can't say a sentence without the f word, and that's the tamer part of his vocabulary.

The unrated version on DVD is called Bad(Der) Santa, but I imagine even the R rated version is pretty rank, so if you don't like profanity, you might want to avoid this movie. Since I'm pretty warped anyway, I loved the flick.

• Lauren Graham
• The Women of "Bad Santa"

"I'm Watching You"
Plenty of everything showing in I'm Watching You, which is about an apartment block where everybody spies on everybody else. Jacqueline Lovell plays an artist's model and so spends most of the film starkers. LoriDawn Messuri is the 'innocent' girl but still likes hanging around naked, and Vanessa Blair is the randy wife. Nenna Quiroz is in the gratuitous nude scene.

• Jacqueline Lovell (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
• LoriDawn Messuri (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
• Vanessa Blair (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
• Nenna Quiroz (1, 2)

"Dynasty : The Reunion"
I never saw the original and, after seeing The Reunion, I realise I didn't miss much. However, Heather Locklear shows that she must shave the pubics (see collage 6) and also displays some nice pokies.

• Heather Locklear (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

"Murder in Greenwich"
It's a similar story in Murder in Greenwich where we have some very sexy bikini shots of Maggie Grace.

• Maggie Grace (1, 2, 3)

"Fast Food Fast Women"
Only a little nudity in Fast Food Fast Women by an anaemic-looking Anna Thomson, with some sexy caps of Valerie Geffner, Maggie Baisch and some unknowns.

• Anna Thomson (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
• Valerie Geffner (1, 2)
• Maggie Baisch
• Unknowns (1, 2)