Uncle Scoopy's Fun House

Mailbox

"You had expressed curiosity about the identity of the naked woman behind the desk at a convenience store in the "Dull Life of a City Stockbroker" sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus. It is emphatically NOT Carol Cleveland. Her identity, but not name, is revealed in the coffee table autobiography "The Pythons". She is referred to as "The Stripper from Bradford." She was apparently picked up during a filming trip by Ian McNaughton for a scene where she strips for an indifferent group of Pythons, and used for the ambient nude later.

So now you know!

More interestingly, Graham Chapman was evidently drunk for most of the filming of the Flying Circus shows."

J

Scoop's note: Chapman was apparently drunk during most of the interviews I have watched as well. Every time you see them on an old talk show, the other guys are all charm and silliness and Chapman is surly and incoherent.

* 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.

Daddy, Darling

(1970)

Daddy, Darling is an early Joe Sarno softcore, a "coming of age" story starring Helli Louise. She is 19, never been touched, and lives with her attractive father. She has considerably more than daughterly feelings towards dad, which are not alleviated when dad marryies a new woman. She makes friends with a lesbian artist, and ends up making love with her girlfriend, and also with her own best friend's boyfriend. She finally decides the best thing for her to do is move away from home and set out on her own.

This is an early Sarno film and is light on nudity and sex by his standards, but has a strong story, good acting, and slick cinematography. The DP was Michael Salamon, who went on to a huge mainstream career including two Oscar nominations and an assortment of prestige projects like The Abyss, Band of Brothers and Backdraft. Unfortunately, the only available master of Daddy Darling was badly scratched, so this is not one of the sharper Seduction Cinema transfers and does not display Salamon's work to best advantage.

The DVD does include an interview with writer/director Joe Sarno and producer Kenn Collins.

NUDITY: Helli Louise and Jeanette Swenson both show breasts and buns.

Louise

Swenson

Death on Demand

(2008)

The prologue takes place in the past. A mountain climber gets altitude sickness and kills most of his party, then slaughters his family on Thanksgiving Day.

Cut to the present day, when a college student is arranging and promoting a podcast from the climber's supposedly haunted house, where 6 students will try to survive the night and solve a serious of clues. The filmmaker wisely includes a porn star in the group of six, and sweetens the action by promising her extra cash for each of the others she can seduce on camera.

The evening starts with a seance which (needless to say) brings the mountain climber back from the dead, and he starts slashing his way through the contestants.

You can well afford to miss this one. The set-up is the same old same old, and the plot becomes predictable and tedious. That could have been redeemed by guilty genre-based pleasures, but the gore is not especially well done, and the nudity is nothing special.

Nudity: Krista Grotte and Anne McDaniels show breasts.

Grotte

McDaniels

Confessions of a Driving Instructor

1976

Once again the Time Machine is back to the seventies for the unbeatable combination of cheap gas, unshaved coochies, and natural breasts.

The male lead Robin Askwith gets lucky with four different ladies who all show boobs and bush. Nothing like the good old days.

Suzy Mandel

Chrissy Iddon

Sally Faulkner

Maxine Casson

Notes and collages

Man of La Mancha

1972

Sophia Loren

Scoop's note: if you think about the casting for this film, it should have been a great success. Can you imagine anyone better suited to play Don Quijote than Peter O'Toole? How about Sophia Loren as Aldonza? James Coco as Sancho?

Sounded good on paper. Might have been good in reality if it had not been a musical.

Aye, there's the rub.

That pesky singing.

It's one of the more disappointing films ever made. I love the play. (I acted in it once, in summer stock, as the innkeeper, the part played by Harry Andrews in the film.) O'Toole and Loren are two of my favorites. How could it fail me?

But it did.

Alexander - Revisited

2004

Scoop's note: this is the only version worth watching. If you are interested in this film, skip the uninvolving theatrical cut and the ill-advised director's cut and go directly to this one. It's too long at 214 minutes, but it includes just about everything Stone shot, so you get the complete picture.

It's interesting to see what the used DVDs are selling for now. The theatrical version is going for four bits (that's 50 cents for you furriners), the director's cut is running $1.95, and the "revisited" cut is $5.48 (or ten bucks NEW!)

Aesthete did two HQ vids. Today, the second film clip. (First clip and collages yesterday.)