Montenegro (1981), AKA Montenegro or Pigs and Pearls, is a Swedish comedy that scores very highly on what Reel.com used to call "off beat energy." In other words, it is just plain strange. For some, including me, that is a good thing. IMDb readers have it at 6.4 of 10. While the IMDb summary is sort of correct, is does not really give you an idea about the film. Marilyn Jordan (Susan Aspach), an American, is married to a rich Swede who prefers making more riches to doing anything with his wife and two kids. She is feeling neglected, and that she is coming apart. If only she had trusted those feelings and done something about it. One night when he refuses sex, she lights the bed sheets on fire. She makes schnitzel for breakfast, then eats all of it before the family can get to it. Later, she pours poison into their new dog's milk dish, and then lets to dog decide whether or not to drink it. Clearly, she has more than one screw lose. Her father in law, a man in a wheel chair who fancies himself Buffalo Bill and is advertising for a new wife, lives with them. Her husband brings in a shrink.

Her husband is scheduled to leave on yet another business trip, and she decides to go with him. She has trouble at airport security when they discover hedge clippers in her purse, and is detained and searched. While in security, she meets a young Yugoslav girl, Patricia Gelin, which gets her involved with a who community of Yugoslavs who run a still and a strip club. To call them eccentric would be a massive understatement. That is enough setup. If this appeals to you and you haven't seen it, it is well worth a rental. There is lots of nudity. Anspach shows full frontal in a long shot taking a shower, and breasts in a sex scene. Gelin shows everything performing at the strip club with a vibrator mounted on a radio controlled tank, Lisbeth Zachrisson shows bush in an after sex scene, and Marina Lindahl shows one breast.

The film claims to be based on a true story. Maybe, but much of the film is rather improbable. Then again, West Side Story is based on Romeo and Juliette, but the two are not all that much alike. It is in English, and has a passable transfer, the original trailer, and a few cast bios. This film is certainly not for everyone, but if you like the offbeat, this has it. And the ending is worth the watch alone. By defining the genre as quirky dark comedy, the proper score is C+. For those who like the truly wacky, this delivers. Others will find nothing of interest.

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

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MOVIE REVIEWS:

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. Left click on the files as you normally would to view a picture. 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.

Albamania and more

• Shiloh was the man today. Somebody asked for the scene in Entourage with Jessica Alba hosting a party, and Shiloh delivered the goods. She is fully dressed, but poking through her top, sucking a lollipop, and hey, she's Jessica Alba, dammit. Unedited footage. ( .avi- zip) (.wmv - zip)

• Elodie Bouchez, naked as usual in CQ ( .avi- zip) (.wmv - zip). This movie was directed by Roman Coppola, Sophie's brother, Francis Ford's son. He did a good job. The movie is not consistently good, mostly because it treads on the well-worn path of films about filmmaking, but it has some brilliant  moments. In my opinion, it is worth sitting through the bad bits just to see Billy Zane's hilarious portrayal of a Che Guevara from outer space.

A few more .wmv conversions from Scoop's corner

• Nastassja Kinski, 18 or 19 years old, way back in 1978,  in Cosi come sei (AKA-  Stay as You Are)  (.wmv - zip)

• Raquel Welch in L'Animal. She is torrid in this see-through top. (AKA-  Stay as You Are)  (.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.

Spaz had a twenty-word review the past weekend of a girls-in-prison-movie. Most useful twenty words I've read in a long time. Went something like this: it's not an exploitation flick so there is no communal shower scene, no abusive female guards, no male rapist guards, no lesbian contact between inmates.

Now the mirror image of such a movie is Lust for Freedom (1987). All I need to say is that it IS an exploitation girls-in-prison movie. So there is a communal shower scene, an abusive female guard who has an inmate whipped, a male guard who forces himself on an inmate and a girl-meet-girl scene between inmates. That makes Lust a standard, run-of-the-mill girls behind bars movie. What makes Lust stand out is all the above occurs in a five-minute stretch. Three of the magic four are filmed as if they are going on simultaneously...in adjacent cells...as the wrongly imprisoned good girl looks on passively. And okay, she'd just gotten the shit kicked out of her by the bad inmates, but there is plenty to suggest the lack of emotion is SOP for the actress playing our protagonist (one Melanie Coll, whose career in Hollywood spanned this entire film).

Before and after the fabulous five minutes is bullshit. Pure, unrefined, in fact distilled to its very essence bullshit.

Gal is a cop, sees her betrothed blown away in a drug bust gone bad, moves to Georgia County... which is either in Arizona or West Texas, around El Paso somewhere, maybe Van Horn, who the fuck knows. Gets thrown into prison for no reason whatsoever after she picks up a gal, who just disappears and then is gunned down after a burly native American guy in a van runs down her 240Z. This is some ass-kicking van because later it runs down a GTO. Gals in prison are there because about 142 people, including all the guards, all the local cops, the warden, the judge, everyfuckingbody in their little Van Horn planet is blessed with no conscience at all. Not one little bit of an inner voice that says stuffing women into prison so you can drug them and film them in snuff movies is just not the right way to lead one's life.

That's the drama side...just the smelliest bullshit you have ever encountered. What about the action? Two little sequences sum up the quality of the action side.

1) Main gal gets jumped by another inmate but 'cuz she's a cop, you know, and a badass mofo-in' cop at that she flips the other gal over and adopts the most ridiculous martial arts posture you will ever see. Arms a-flaillin', hopping 'round like a toad, with all the grace of Chevy Chase doing a Gerald Ford impression. Never been done better, not even in the very best parody by the most gifted physical comedian. Hilarious stuff. Unintentional, but hilarious.

2) Then, towards the end when the cop-gal gets herself armed with a fully automatic weapon, almost a SAW but not quite so large, and she puts a couple o' rounds into a male guard, he starts to slump forward. I can see that. About a third of the way, down, however, he flings his shotgun onto the desk in front of him. Doesn't throw it, in some last act of defiance against the world that made then abandoned him. He just tosses it, in the most girlish act, as if he could hear Sister Mary walking down the hall and he knew, just knew, she was going to rap his knuckles with her ruler if she caught him dead with a shotgun in his hands. Silliest damn thing I have seen in any movie in my entire life, ever.

There are two ways to view all this. The writer could be a genius with a comedic irony streak running through him that would make Jon Stewart look like Bill O'Reilly. Or Dennis Miller. In that case it's all the director's fault. Every last bit of this monumental failure in style and substance could be placed at his feet.... in that case. But wait, the writer IS the director, one Eric Louzil. IMDb has the boy writing, directing or producing just about every movie with a score under 2.0 in the entire database. Sizzle Beach, Class of Nuke Em High Part 2, Wilding, every damn piece of flotsam and jetsam you could imagine.

So okay you get the message, this one of watch with all ten fingers on the fastforward button. What's the payoff?

Well, that would be eight gals topless or better.

One of them is Michelle Bauer, default B-movie babe of the 80's and 90's in all her full frontal glory.

• Michelle Bauer (1, 2, 3)

Another is Lisa Stagno, better known as 80's pornstar Crystal Breeze. She had a perfect body, BTW, and is the one who does the lesbo-lite routine with Michelle.

• Crystal Breeze (1, 2, 3)

And Pamela Gilbert, topless and drugged as the snuffette.

• Pamela Gilbert

Plus a scrawny redhead named Adrian Scott, who did this movie and had a bit part in The Doors. Full frontal from her, too.

• Adrian Scott (1, 2)

Minor characters also give up some goodies.

Mary Robinson flashes our Native American friend in his van... which is not a good idea in downtown Philadelphia, surrounded by cops but is criminally stupid on a lonely county road.

• Mary Robinson

Elizabeth Carroll plays an inmate. You see her face with her shirt on. You see soom hooters in a shirt that's been cut off. Problem here is that the cut up shirt is in shot that precedes the face shot with the intact shirt. Conclusion? Body double.

• Elizabeth Carroll

Last up you see a couple of fine looking gals in a shower. Unnamed fine looking gals.

• Unknowns

Let us finish by noting this is a Troma Productions film and that the transfer to DVD was done as if by a group of amateurs, neither terribly bright nor particularly intereted. Ah, dear reader, but I repeat myself.

Today the Ghost takes a look at the 1993 UK movie "The Advocate" aka "The Hour of the Pig". This well written, intellectual courtroom drama received high marks from both Scoop and Tuna (Click here for their full reviews). And it had some nice nudity too!

• Amina Annabi, the Tunisian born actress showing off some nice robo-breast views. (1, 2)
• Amina Annabi (.wmv zip)

• UK actress Lysette Anthony goes full frontal! (1, 2, 3)
• Lysette Anthony (.wmv-zip)

• Sophie Dix, all 3 B's as she strips, then gets it on. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
• Sophie Dix zipped .wmvs (1, 2)

ELVIS IMPERSONATOR LOVES CALL GIRLS
Are You Lonesome Tonight? - Tom Jones, a pensioner and Elvis impersonator from Oswestry, England, has been warned by housing authorities to stop hiring call girls so he can sing Elvis songs to them. Over the past three years, he's paid over $127,000 (US) to over 2,000 call girls. He says he can't have sex anymore due to a medical condition, so he just has dinner with them, talks and sings Elvis tunes. But neighbors complain that their kids are subjected to Elvis songs coming through the walls at all hours and miniskirted women in fishnets in the halls.