The Frightened Woman (Femina ridens 1969) is an offering from the murky underbelly of the indie world. Written and directed by noted Italian director Piero Schivazappa, this film explores the nature of dominant and submissive roles between men and women by focusing on a couple playing games over a weekend. There is some bondage, and mild S & M. There is also a surprise ending. One of the strong points of this film is that, while the ending was unexpected, it wasn't jarring; it was easy to accept the plot twist.

Set decoration was very avant guard, and there were some very interesting lighting, props and camera effects. Only 9 people rated it at IMDB, and gave it fairly high marks. I could find no detailed review anywhere on line. Noted actress Dagmar Lassander played the lead, and spent a lot of the film exposing her breasts. This was two years into her remarkable career which spanned 25 years in which she made 64 films.

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Dagmar Lassander (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

"The Beguiled" (1971)

The Beguiled is anything but typical Clint Eastwood fare. It is the story of a Union soldier who is wounded, and wanders into a southern finishing school for girls. The headmistress decides that they should dress his wounds before he is turned over to the Confederate army. The headmistress, teacher and the older students soon become far more impressed with Eastwood as male then Eastwood as enemy. Meanwhile, Clint is literally trying to save his life and get back to the North.

Soon, however, Clint starts thinking with the little head. He gives possibly the best performance of his career here, and Geraldine Page is amazing as the head of the school. Frankly, there was not a bad performance in the film. Jo Ann Harris played an older student who ends up in Clint's bed (and shows us breasts and buns). The film has a real noire ending. Despite a fairly low budget, this was a box office failure. Eastwood blames the marketing, which tried to sell it as a typical Eastwood shoot-em-up. In fact, Eastwood is bedridden or on crutches for the entire film. Some see this as a transitional role from squinting western gunfighter to Dirty Harry. Over the years, The Beguiled has gained the following it deserves.

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JoAnn Harris (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

I just watched this sucker about two days ago, and I've already forgotten what it was about. I think one of the Baldwins plays a cop who was in a deep undercover operation with his wife. They were both in way too deep, having become addicted to drugs in the course of maintaining their cover. The wife was killed in a bust, and when the evil drug dealer got out of prison only five years later, Baldwin conspired with one of his cop buddies to take the druglord out. But he, in turn, was being set up by various other parties.

Ludicrous, improbable film which ended up as a straight-to-vid.

Audra Lea Keener Just for info. If you haven't seen Lee Majors in a while, you may be a little surprised to see what he looks like now.

"Belly" (1998)

Here's the complete antithesis of Breaking the Waves. Brilliant visual and aural presentation of what is essentially a 90 minute rap video. Hype Williams may someday be a great director, because very few people have his eye and ear, but he isn't there yet. This story is disjointed, the acting is done by amateurs (some of whom are good, while others are not), some characters speak in such heavy dialect as to be incomprehensible, and the story would be impossible to follow except for a clumsy voice-over. In addition the moralizing at the end is virtually contradictory to the lurid glamorization of evil pervasive through the film. There are some outstanding sequences, especially one which is a black version of the climax in "Scarface", but it just doesn't add up to much. Two boyhood friends become successful criminals together, but are moving in separate directions. One wants to go straight and raise a family. The other wants to expand his criminal enterprises.

But I predict that some day this guy will have the right script, and he'll make a helluva powerful movie.

Minimal nudity. I'm not even sure whether there is any, except for some fleeting looks at strippers (not pictured here). T-Boz Taral. I like the way Hype Williams takes advantage of the high albedo of dark-hued skin. He produces some powerful lighting effects. See #2 as an example (1, 2, 3) La Vita Raynor

"Tango and Cash" (1989)

I'm not 100% sure, but I think reviewers missed the point on this movie. I don't think any movie could be this bad unless it tried to be, so I think it must have been some kind of an action-genre parody. I'll tell you what - if it isn't intentionally dumb, it is a strong contender for the worst script ever written.

Tango and Cash are superhero cops, played by Stallone and Kurt Russell, respectively. Tango is a Wall Street type, Cash is a trailer-park guy. Hilariously, the L.A. papers just refer to them as "Tango" and "Cash" - pretty impressive fame credentials for a couple of working stiff vice squad guys. Between them they are destroying the operation of a druglord, and he's getting mighty pissed. The druglord knows, with his druglord intuition, that if he can just get rid of these two guys, that he has nothing to worry about from the thousands of other cops in L.A., so he frames them for the murder of a federal agent. After their conviction, he hijacks the truck sending them to a minimum security prison, and sends them to a hardcore prison that he controls completely through bribery. It is not clear why he doesn't simply drive them off a cliff, or take them to his own headquarters, because the legit authorities have no idea where they have gone. Of course, with the odds against them hundreds to two, and with every prison official as corrupt and criminal as the prisoners (the druglord apparently has an office in the laundry room), Tango and Cash fight their way out without weapons.

Then they kick ass and do good and restore justice, and punish all the guys who lied against them at their trial, and some other stuff which I've already forgotten. I think Cash screws Tango's sister (Teri Hatcher), who works as a stripper and is quite happy and successful in this profession despite her upper class family and the fact that she doesn't take her clothes off. I'm not kidding here. The other girls at the club do strip, but I don't know who they are. Their pictures are below.

I think the entire thing ends in a gladitorial combat between a heavily armed RV and some large construction equipment. Again, I'm not kidding here. The baddies drive earthmovers. Tango and Cash were able to buy the RV on sale cheap because the television only gets Michael J. Pollard 24/7.

I rarely recommend movies on the basis that they are bad-good, but this is an exception. This may be worse than that movie with Mastroianni as General Custer. It will leave you throwing things at the screen when you hear the corny dialogue, become aware of the ludicrous plot twists, follow the prison escape, see Jack Palance as the druglord, and see the battle of the bulldozers. I give it a lot of stars. So bad it has to be seen to be believed. Never comes within a galaxy of reality. I don't blame Russell and Stallone. They didn't write this crap. Frankly, I still don't know if it is arch tongue-in-cheek parody or it is simply sophomoric. Either way, a lot of laughs.

Teri Hatcher as the non-naked stripper Other, more traditional, naked-type strippers. (1, 2, 3, 4)

"Night Moves" (1975), from Johnny Web and Tomcat

Other people have concentrated on the "sweater half off" scene where Melanie's breasts are dry and visible, but TomCat went after some more revealing frames in her swim. There are some great frames, but they are video quality and quite dark. This could turn out to be a treasure when it is released on DVD.

Griffith (1, 2, 3)