"Walkabout"
Walkabout
(1971) is one of those movies that everyone who follows celebrity
nudity knows all about. This seemingly simple story of a young girl
(Jenny Agutter) and her kid brother, stranded in the bush by their
father's suicide, who were guided back safely by a young aborigine her
age on his "Walkabout," or coming of age ritual, could be a simple
love story, it could be about the unhappiness of city dwellers as
opposed to aborigines, or it could be about the problems caused by
lack of communication. It glancing three the reviews, everyone has a
different theory as to what the symbolism is, but everyone agrees that
it is a masterpiece, beautifully filmed, and everybody agrees that
Agutter looks very good in her numerous nude scenes.
This film has the
flavor of a doccudrama, but is rated 7.5 at IMDB and praised
by critics. This is a B-, as it appeals to some who would
normally not consider a pseudo-documentary.
Scoop's notes: the poetry quoted by the narrator at the end of the film is from A.E.
Housman's 'A Shropshire Lad':
Into my heart an air that
kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue
remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are
those?
That is the land of lost
content
I see it shining plain
The happy highways where I
went
And cannot come again.
The film was rated PG (or GP, as it was
then called) by the MPAA, despite extensive full frontal male and
female nudity. It was originally rated R, but the board changed its
mind upon appeal.
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Updates:
Updated volumes: Tilda Swinton, Laura Gemser, Heather Graham,
Ariadna Gil, Marie Gillain, Gina Gershon, Monique Gabrielle, Maria
Ford
Stripteaser 2 (1997):
This is a terrible movie. I watched
it only because Maria Ford is supposed to be in it as an uncredited
dancer. After watching the entire mess, I still didn't know where
the hell she was, so I started going through her volume in the
Encyclopedia. Well, guess what? The mystery was solved when I saw
UC99's caps from an earlier film. The director of Stripteaser 2 just
re-used some footage from two scenes in Showgirl Murders. It didn't
seem too much out of place because the character had no lines in
Stripteaser 2, and did not interact with any other members of the
cast. It was just an anonymous dancer working a special room with
anonymous clients. Just atmosphere.
I assume it was all done with the
proper permissions.
They had to have been desperate for
content, because the entire film runs only 78 minutes, even with the
padding from Showgirl Murders. The opening credits run exactly 5:22,
Ford's two unrelated scenes run a couple of minutes, and there are
two other strip scenes and a montage which are unrelated to the movie
or the rest of the cast (see unknowns below), and those must run
another two or three more minutes.
There is also a five minute car
chase, and not a bad one, with two vehicles destroyed in dramatic
crashes. I assume that is also footage from another film, because
(1) it begins with an obviously looped-in voice saying "Hey, he's
driving off with one of our girls", even though the guy doing the
actual driving is the only person in the scene, he is outside the
club, and nobody came out after him! So whose voice is it? (2) two
guys from the strip club die chasing our hero, but when he returns
the next night, nobody mentions anything about it (3) a cop also
died in that chase, but the police chief shows no interest the next
night.
Between the five unrelated nudity
scenes, the opening credits, and the car chase, there must be 15
minutes of extraneous footage. Figure another 2-3 minutes for the
closing credits, and we have only a 60 minute film. I suppose at
least 35 minutes of that consists of actual wordless strip acts
performed by the women in the cast. There is also a sex scene which
probably lasts about five minutes, so the time spent on plot and
character development is approximately 20 minutes.
You have to love a film with
essentially no content. This is close to my dream of a film with
opening credits, which then go directly to the closing credits. And
they both can be very short. We won't have any music or visuals
during the credits, just word screens shown in silence, and
therefore the only credit needed is the "credit guy" (assuming he
does his own editing).
Oh, well, at least Stripteaser 2 has
plenty of nudity, but even that is disappointing. The strippers
never remove their bottoms, so the only brief flash of pubic hair
comes when Kim Dawson has a sex scene. Some of the topless footage
is also badly interlaced, but some of it is OK.
- Kim Dawson (1,
2,
3)
- Stacey Leigh Mobley (1,
2,
3,
4,
5)
- Maria Ford (1,
2)
- Maria Ford in the same two
scenes in Showgirl Murders, for comparison. (1,
2)
- Taylor St Clair (1,
2,
3,
4,
5)
-
Kiva
- Lisa Ann Brown (1,
2,
3,
4,
5)
-
Kimberly Blair
- unknown 1 (1,
2)
- unknown 2 (1,
2)
-
unknown 3
By the way, the film (surprisingly)
has quite a good musical score. The songs are alternative rock, and
the incidental original music is sad, wailing, progressive jazz
which would make a great score for a detective noir, and reminded me
of the love theme from Blade Runner.
Rating:
- As a skin-flick C-. Almost
nothing below the waist, and some footage is damaged by
interlacing.
- As a drama: E-. There is only
about 20 minutes of material. It isn't quite bad enough
technically to be an F, but some scenes are F's, so an E- overall.
Mailbox:
You know of course that Melina Mercouri, so
brilliant in Never on Sunday (thanks to Tuna for the caps today!),
went on to become Minister of Culture in Greece? At the start of the
pedestrian road up to Acropolis there is a great marble bust of her
(complete with that small lopsided smile) and she is buried among
the greats (Schliemann, Papandreou etc) in the First Cemetery of
Athens. There are always flowers on her grave.
T
Scoop's reply:
Has there ever been one
person so intimately associated with the film industry of a country
as Melina Mercouri with Greece? Perhaps Romy Schneider's association
with
Austria could be a contender, but I think Mercouri must have it.
The only other contender I
can think of would be the great pride that Liechtenstein has for Hugh
Grant. Of course, Grant is not from there, and doesn't even know
where it is, but that does not deter the determined Liechtensteiners
from their loyalty. They conduct tours of the childhood home that
they wish Hugh had lived in, they have a statue of Grant at both
entrances to their country, and in all three public buildings. Their main castle even has a tapestry
which pictures Grant getting arrested for that blowjob in Los Angeles. Except for
the Liechtensteiner Polka, Hugh is about the biggest thing that ever
happened to them.
OTHER CRAP:
Other crap
archives. May also include newer material than the ones above,
since it's sorta in real time.
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 Lawdog or Junior or C2000 or Realist or ICMS or Mick
Locke, or somebody else besides me)
- If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too
ashamed to admit it.
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