Deathsport (1978) is a low-budget post-apocalyptic fantasy, a
grade-Z version of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, as re-interpreted
by the Roger Corman Dancers.
(Here's Tuna's
review). Actually, this was made seven years before Gibson's
movie, and even a year before the original Mad Max, so I guess I
should say that Beyond Thunderdome was a big budget remake of
Deathsport, minus the breasts.
Those breasts are the best thing about the film, especially
since two of them belong to a sexy former Rabbit-Oriented
Recreational Friend of the Annum, Claudia Jennings, the POM in November of 1969,
and the POY in 1970. We were not to see much more of those primo
breasts because Claudia died in a car crash at age 29, only a year
after this film was released.
The Stratosphere Girl (2004) is a quirky story about white
chicks working as bar hostesses in Tokyo. The featured girl is a
comic book artist, and the film switches between live action and
animations of her drawings. I haven't watched it yet, but it got
some pretty decent reviews for a low-budget indie flick. (Filmcritic.com,
for example.)
I'll be looking at this in depth next week, but here's a nice
preview from a third party imager:
La Fiesta del Chivo (2005) is based on a respected novel
about a middle-aged American lawyer who grew up in the Dominican
Republic. The narrator looks back from her perspective as an adult
in 1992 to the events of 1961, when Trujillo was assassinated
after 30 brutal years in power. We wonder why she fled the
D.R., why she waited 30 years to return, and why she has such bitter feelings for her
sickly father, and we
eventually discover that her father was once responsible for
arranging a brutal sexual encounter between her and the
superannuated, power-crazed dictator. Her father's career had been roadblocked, so he offered his beautiful teenage daughter to the
70-year-old president in order to re-establish his own ambitions.
The girl, who was not even informed of the bargain, was taken to
Trujillo’s country hacienda, where she was sexually abused by the
old goat.
Although the father-daughter story is central to the personal
drama of the film, much of the running time is taken up with the
circumstances behind the assassination. The title of the
film means The Feast of the Goat.
Clarification: According
to proper Spanish dictionaries, the precise distinction between chivo and cabra is that a chivo
(or chiva) is a young goat,
equivalent to the English word "kid." In some Spanish-speaking
countries and localities, however, the words chivo and cabra are
not used so precisely. In the D.R., chivo is often used to mean
any goat, not just the pre-reproductive ones. If this film were
about a randy old asshole who happened to be the Mexican dictator, it
might be called "La Fiesta del Cabrón"
Isabella Rossellini plays the woman as she looks in 1992.
Stephanie Leónidas, shown here,
is playing Isabella Rossellini as a young woman in 1961.
The nudity here is excellent, as is the picture quality, but I have to warn you: this is a
long scene
(zipped
.avi, about four minutes), is not pleasant, and is entirely in
Spanish.
Mike was definitely part of America's cultural landscape. A very bland part. He was like the Kansas of our cultural terrain.
The best Mike Douglas joke I ever heard was from the scathing wit of the late "Mr. Mike" - Michael O'Donoghue - who once said that he belonged to a rare sect of Catholicism. At Communion, they not only received the Host, but also the Co-Host, which was the body and blood of Mike Douglas.
"Director and screenwriter, Fernando Leon de Aranoa, gives us a moving yet sobering tale of two young prostitutes in Madrid who develop a friendship based on their desire for a better life. Initially they meet when Zule, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, steals one of Caye's customers for a lower fee, but when she finds Zule badly beaten in her apartment, they quickly become each other's support system. The consequences and depressing reality of life on the street are explored, as we learn that Zule is selling herself to support her young son back home. She is even willing to put up with an abusive and manipulative boyfriend who promises to get her legal working papers, while Caye is trying to save up enough money for a breast lift to attract more customers. Even in their grim circumstances, they like to pretend they are princesses, to offer them a glimpse of hope, even though they work in an industry where they are objectified and abused by men."
Totally Surreal: First, Raquel Welch sings California Dreaming while wandering through Paris. Then, at about 2:50 she breaks into a robotic
bikini-clad disco dance through a sculpture park! Then back to the Paris streets for the finale.
Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format.
Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.
Revenge of the Living Dead Girls (1986)
Revenge of the Living Dead Girls (1986) is a French extreme zombie movie
being released for the first time in the US. It is a cautionary tale about the
evils of pollution. Women start dying in a small town after drinking the local
milk. This same milk company is disposing of toxic waste cheaply, and
pocketing the money saved. The waste is dumped in a local cemetery, and turns
the dead women into zombies bent on revenge. The film is known for a few
extreme scenes, including a woman being killed by sword in the vagina, a
spontaneous Cesarean birth in a shower, and someone killed by sharp objects
through the eyes into the brain.
The DVD includes an alternate ending, which I liked better than the
original, but which, unfortunately, conflicts with some scenes in the film.
The packaging proclaims it to be a special uncut edition, but there is at
least one scene with some nudity that isn't present. There is still
wall-to-wall nudity, but Katheryn Charly was the only actress I could
identify.
I enjoyed this more than the more typical zombie film because it has more
going on than just relentless slow motion monsters. That could also be why
genre lovers dislike it.
This is a C-, a film only for die-hard aficionados of European gorotica.
IMDb readers have this at 3.9 based on only a few votes.
Katheryn Charly
the five unknowns
Anthony's Desire (1993) is one weird-ass, bad mofo-ing movie. Or maybe it is
one bad-ass, weird mofo-ing movie. No matter. It is weird, it is bad and it is
mofo-ing. Here's what I can tell you about it.
Some surly dude - that would be Anthony - shows up at a hotel where no one does
a lick of work except the gals doing the entertaining on stage. I will get to
them in a minute. So the guy shows up, boffs one gal played by Mihaella Stoicov
two minutes after he spots her, boffs another gal after a lengthy angst-ridden
romance that reminded me of adolescence at its worst, and he boffs a third gal
(I think) on stage. Why on stage? Because the hotel offers as entertainment
six nekkid gals just sorta lolling about or playing string instruments or
boffing some guy who I think is the mysterious stranger. All of this is occurs
as a documentary crew works in the background....a crew whose director wrote,
produced and directed the movie we be watching. That guy, by the name of Tom
Boka, sported the worst mullet in the history of haircuts. Made the singer of
Ache-ee Break-ee Heart appear suave and sophisticated by comparison. Anyway,
Tom meant for us to view Passion and Desire and Want and Need in a whole new
light when he was done making this masterpiece; and he did such a terrific job
of it all he was asked never to write or direct or produce or edit or appear in
another movie ever again. Seems he was probably also asked never to watch
another movie or buy a movie ticket or sign up for Netflix, so resounding
was his success with Anthony's Desire.
Why watch it? Well, me buck-o's, the movie runs 81 minutes. And for almost 23
of those minutes there is at least one and as many as six nekkid babes on the
screen. Mihaella does Anthony in as many places and in as many ways as an
R-rated film can document (3 clips worth). In addition to Mihaella, who sported
a different name for each of the four movies she made, Gwen Somers gets nekkid
and stays nekkid for minutes on end. In fact I am willing to bet that, other
than Fionnula Flanagan's 20-minute-long scene in James Joyce's Women, Gwen has
the longest single-take nekkid-lying-about-and-yammering-about-nothing scene
ever filmed. I edited out a lengthy long-focus beginning and a lengthier
long-focus ending just to give you the good stuff, and still that puppy runs for
more than 2.5 minutes. And if that were not enough, Gwen has a second scene of
near-equal length when Anthony finally gets around to porking her.
When Mihaella and Gwen are not giving up triple B goodies, there are those six
gals on stage. The heavy hitters here are Raven (Anastassia) Alexander, Debra
Beatty and Ashlie Rhey. Ashlie's scene includes the dramatically over-inflated
Stephanie Champlin (here billed as Stephanie Sumers) engaged in some very light
lesbo action. The last scene has all six gals lying cheek-to-jowl, as it were.
Most prominently on display is former pornstar Kelly Jaye, a very pretty blonde
sporting the single worst boob job ever attempted by a blind man
That's really the only reason to watch this thing, but let me warn ya. Five
minutes of a gal lying around doing nothing but talking is not very exciting
even if she's starkers. It might be something of an event if it were Jessica
Alba doing the nekkid thing, but Gwen Somers? Nope. My suggestion? Forget the
review posted on IMDb and pay attention to the score. Even the 3.4 is, if
anything, a singular act of generosity. Take a look at the clips and understand
you have just seen most of the fun and all the enlightenment this film has to
offer.
There are nine .avis zipped into six separate downloads:
Those Rachel Ward pictures got me to wondering what
the former model/actress, once a stunning beauty, looks like now. Here's the deal,
if you are curious. For some reason, I always associate Rachel Ward with Kelly
Le Brock, so I looked Kelly up as well. Here's what she looks
like now
