The Girl Next Door (2004) was panned by Scoopy two nights ago, and this is not a film we disagree on. I found it derivative of Risky Business, Weird Science, and other good coming of age films. Even that would not have been bad, but this was really a sappy romantic comedy with some real mean moments to spoil the mood. I didn't have the same problems with the inner conflict of the girl next door (Elisha Cuthburt) as some reviewers did. Many plot elements were unexplained and unjustified. I have to feel that there was a story here, probably a romantic comedy, but the problem was in execution.

At any rate, with the dearth of new material lately, here are my version of the images from the film. This is very much my kind of film, and left me totally cold. This is a low C-.

SPOILERS:

This is an oddly constructed movie, basically consisting of two completely different movies featuring the same characters. In the first half, it's a gritty, realistic drama about three kids who gave up dead-end jobs in L.A. to pursue their dream of an independent new life in Alaska.

Once there, they found that they had miscalculated the opportunities and the risks attendant in such a venture.

In fact, they had even miscalculated the location of Alaska, finding it in the Port of Tacoma, Washington. (A close-up of the sign? C'mon, director, that's not even tryin'!! See the evidence on the movie review page.)

Anyway, they found themselves even more down-and-out in "Alaska" than they had been in California. They were homeless, down to their last pennies, and eating dog food.

So it's a gritty slice-of-life drama about the dark side of the American Dream, right? Steinbeck for the Seventies?

It might have been, except that realistic part of the movie came to an abrupt halt, and the entire script veered off into a fantasy world. Down on their luck and desperate, they decided to hold up a payroll office, took an employee for ransom, and demanded hundreds of thousands from the company they robbed. Soon they had become a modern Bonnie and Clyde and Clyde, darlings of all the television stations, running from an armada of cops, engaged in gunfights with good guys and bad, and speeding through the wilderness in wild car chases. In their spare time, while on the lam in the wilderness and hungry, they also managed to kill a bear at a long distance with a tiny handgun.

After the highs and lows of that chase, they appeared to be just as down and out as they were before the robbery. On what appeared to be their final night of life, two of them were sleeping in a inoperable car on a freezing Alaska night, while the third went on foot to try to get help.

So now it's a heartbreaking, gritty slice-of-life crime drama about loveable crooks getting their eventual comeuppance?

Well, not exactly.

Dawn broke on the two in the car. The boy was dead. The girl was shrieking for help.

Shrieking? Who could hear her in the wilderness?

The other guy, as it turns out.

He arrived in a van, from parts unknown, apparently having managed to win a vehicle from a masked wrestler in an Alaskan Cage Match. The script never did explain how he could have walked off into the Alaskan wilderness on foot on a freezing night, without cash, and then managed to return the next day with a van.

But the miracles did not end there.

He went over to his dead friend, slapped him a couple of dozen times, said "live, damn you", and sure enough, the friend turned out to be not dead, but merely stunned, much like the Norwegian Blue in the Polly sketch.

So the three of them hopped in their new vehicle and drove off to their new adventure. One of them said "Hawaii?", and the one who had recently frozen to death and been resurrected said, "Sure, I could use the sun!"

The End.

Odd stuff, eh? It isn't as bad as you might expect from the 3.9 rating at IMDb, but it is certainly a rambling, unfocused and ultimately pointless story which really couldn't decide whether it was a comedy, a crime caper, a gritty drama, a character study, or a buddy picture. It might have worked as a character study if the actors had been proficient enough to win the empathy of the audience, but they weren't, so it didn't.

The film is probably best remembered, if it is remembered at all, for three things:

1. Some gimmicky casting. All four of the main stars were the spawn of stars. Anne Lockhart is the daughter of June Lockhart, the mom on Lassie. Melanie Griffith is the daughter of Tippi Hedren, star of The Birds. Robert Carradine is John Carradine's son, and Desi Arnaz Jr is ... well, I reckon you can figure that one out. I suppose his birth was one of the most talked-about events in the post-modern world, since it occurred on the same night that his real-life mother (Lucille Ball) gave birth to her fictional son on America's most popular TV show, I Love Lucy.

The trick casting produced mixed results. Griffith and Carradine, who would go on to lengthy careers in the business, exhibited at least some minimal level of competence in their roles in Joyride, but the same cannot be said for Lockhart and Arnaz, who delivered their lines like minor characters in a high school Spring play. Lockhart went on to a career as a Hollywood fringe player, doing walk-ons and voice acting, while Arnaz disappeared from the radar completely after playing the part of Desi Arnaz, his real-life dad, in The Mambo Kings.

2. Some frequent undressing. Melanie Griffith was not as slim and toned as she would later become, but she was certainly not camera-shy, and took off her top in two love scenes, a shower scene, and a hot tub scene. June Lockhart's breasts also joined Melanie's in the hot tub, and reappeared in a sex scene.

3. The soundtrack. The music was done by ELO (Electric Light Orchestra), which was quite a popular group at the time.

 

• Melanie Griffith. She was 20. Looked 16. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

• Anne Lockhart (1, 2)

OTHER CRAP:

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

Click here to submit a URL for Other Crap

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.

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.

• Rachel Griffiths, the Aussie actress and star of the HBO series "Six Feet Under". Here she is doing full frontal and full dorsal nudity in 'caps from a rare DVD Chinese import version of the 1998 movie "Among Giants".

• French actress Isabelle Carré showing full frontal and full dorsal nudity in scenes from "La Femme défendue" (1997).

• UK actress Lena Headey, topless in scenes from her first movie 1992's "Waterland".

Be sure to pay Graphic Response a visit at his website. www.graphic-barry.com.

First up, here is the Ghost's conribution to what seems to have become our theme o' the week....French mega-babe Ludivine Sagnier!

Ludivine Sagnier, zipped .wmvs of several scenes from "Swimming Pool" (2003) Click here for Scoop's review.

Here's the breakdown:

• Ludivine in a bikini
• Ludivine bares breasts in a bubble bath
• Ludivine topless (a very nice and long scene shot outdoors with great light)
• Ludivine, breast views while riding a dude
• Ludivine topless in another scene
• Ludivine, still topless
• Once again, Ludivine topless
• All Ludivine Sagnier .wmvs in one zip file

Some other assorted stuff, this time from the 1990 movie "The Guardian", directed by William Friedkin ("French Connection", "The Exorcist").

• Carey Lowell, the former model/Bond Babe/"Law and Order" co-star and current Mrs. Richard Gere...topless in a love scene
• Here is a zipped .wmv of Carey Lowell in the same scene 'capped above.

• Jenny Seagrove, topless in the tub, but it's a non-sexy "mom moment". (1, 2)
• Jenny Seagrove, zipped .wmv

Scoops,
Here are some hardcore caps from three movies....

First up is a Golden Age video..."Every Woman Has a Fantasy 2".

• Kari Foxx (1, 2)
• Lois Ayres..#1 is a softcore pic (breasts only). #3 is far from softcore...in fact I think you can see her kidneys. (1, 2, 3, 4)
• Nina Hartley. 1 and 2 are tame, #3...not so much. (1, 2, 3)

The other two are much more recent and are worth paying attention to because Crissy Moran is in them. Crissy is famous as a web model but she also did the nasty in a few movies.

• Crissy Moran, breast views only in scenes from "Enchantment".
• Crissy Moran, hardcore 'caps from "Fantasy Suites". (1, 2)
• Zora Banks, also from "Fantasy Suites". Hardcore 'caps with money shot.

"Boa vs. Python"
I love monster movies. King Kong and Godzilla are my heros. Mutant spiders and giant snakes are the best. The movies are always crap, of course, but that's what makes them so good. Sometimes, you just want to watch total nonsense, and these movies usually fill the bill.

This 2004 movie, originally shown on the Sci-Fi Channel, is just what the doctor ordered. Even better, the version released on DVD has some nice nudity by Angel Boris that didn't make it on the tube.

Plot is fairly typical; when a big game hunter imports a giant python for a hunt, the thing escapes into the Philadelphia water system. Government agents inlist the help of a scientist who just happens to have a giant boa constrictor. The idea is to send the boa to find the python. "Boas will hunt", says the scientist.

Naturally, things don't go as planned, and all hell breaks loose. A surprisingly well done, better than expected monster flick.

• Angel Boris
• The Women of "Boa vs. Python"