La Femme aux Bottes Rouges (1974), or the Woman with Red Boots is directed by Juan Luis Buñuel, son of great Spanish director Luis Buñuel. It is listed at IMDB as a Comedy/Drama/Fantasy. I am not sure if I agree with any of those. Catherine Deneuve is an avant guard writer with one book under her belt. She seems to live with a painter, but said painter has a girlfriend (see the unknown, who exposes her breasts). She happens into a rich "art patron," Fernando Rey, who begins to manipulate her life and that of her male roommate, and a married magazine publisher. Rey is a little off, and plays people like pawns for his own amusement, and to further some sinister goal.

Deneuve is psychic, and can hallucinations in others at will. Rey, after getting the magazine publisher to shoot his wife in a hunting accident, brings Deneuve to his country house to write a book for him, and to play three dimensional chess with him. The first time Rey sees Deneuve, she flashes him for cash, but I don' think what we are seeing is really her. I think the real body parts are covered with fake ones under the transparent body suite she is wearing (See Deneuve 4 & 5). Later, she does show her right nipple in a very tame sex scene.

IMDB readers have this at 4.6 of 10, based on 26 votes. I have trouble imagining why anyone would watch this, except to see one of the world's truly beautiful women naked. The transfer is ok, and the DVD includes a trailer and a small photo gallery. It is dubbed in French, or English, and has subtitles. I suggest sticking with only one choice, and the two languages and the subtitles only loosely resemble each other. C-.

13th Child (?)

I deliberately omitted the date above so that we can play a game. I'll tell you the cast, you tell me the year.

Cliff Robertson, Lesley-Anne Down, Christopher Atkins, Robert Guillaume.

If you guessed 1980, you made a helluva guess. Here are their career primes:

• Robertson 1963-83
• Down 1973-1981
• Atkins 1980
• Guillaume 1977-1980

Yup, a helluva guess!

But wrong.

The film was made in 2002. That fact alone tells you most of what you need to know about 13th Child.

Cliff Robertson not only turned in a truly bizarre, Gazzara-like performance, but also co-wrote the script, a fact which should impel Hollywood to erase his star from the walk of fame and to rescind his Oscar for Charly, because 13th Child is a truly amateurish film.

The film is a very loose interpretation of the legend of the Jersey Devil, a local folk tale from South Jersey. It seems that back around Revolutionary War times, a certain Mrs. Leeds of Leeds Point, New Jersey had a 13th child, and locked the child into the cellar for several reasons: because 13 is a satanic number, because she just didn't want any more children, and because she cracked from the pressure of having a Point named after her. They say that she said "this child will be a devil" as she gave birth to it. Eventually, that child escaped the cellar and became the murderous and immortal Jersey Devil, living on even today as Geraldo Rivera.

There are many versions of the legend, with myriad variations on the creature's origin. Maybe it was Mrs Shroud of Leeds Point, or Mrs Leeds of Estelville. Maybe it was an attic rather than a cellar which confined the creature, or maybe the baby turned immediately into an ethereal being who knocked on the mother's door every night. Here is a web page dedicated to the whole phenomenon. I gather from the illustrations on that page that the beast looks like a cross between Satan himself and Lucky, the cereal-hoarding leprechaun.

The film has very little to do with that, but does feature a 13th child of an Indian Shaman, who escaped the gallows and became a murderous immortal being, as is the custom of all 13th children of Indian Shamans. It is said that 35% of the world's deaths each year are attributable to 13th children of Shamans, those nutty 13th kids just edging out starvation, disease, and drunken driving as the #1 killers in today's world.

I'm not sure if the film would have been better if it were made about the genuine folk legend of the Jersey Devil, but I'll tell ya this.

It couldn't have been much worse.

• Robyn Parsons (1, 2, 3)

Miscellaneous

Just so you know what to avoid, I went through two new releases called Leeches and Winter Break. No nudity. Leeches is an awful movie, another one of those "guys standing around in underpants" movies from David DeCoteau. Winter Break is mediocre - not espeecially sexy or funny, but kinda loveable. I also went through the first year of Ally McBeal, and I didn't find anything to cap except this:

• Calista in her bra

OTHER CRAP:

• The paparazzi catch Brooke Burns and Bruce Willis. Good story, but the bad news is Brooke wears a bikini and Willis is naked.

• :: MAXIM ONLINE :: KTLA/Channel 5 Los Angeles pointed out that the art department at Maxim, always known for flattering distortion, went overboard stretching out Mariah Carey's legs in their current issue One reader wrote in to say "picture linked from bottom right thumbnail is fucking hilarious -- she looks like the Attack of the 50 Foot Woman"

• can a woman's breasts be as big as volleyballsl? Scientific evidence.

• THE 20 WORST MOVIE TITLES IN HOLLYWOOD HISTORY.

• Triumph The Insult Comic Dog's Debut Album Due In October

• Yahoo! News - Banderas Film Gets Booed at Venice Festival. Banderas himself wisely stayed away.

• Talk about a slow week at the box office - - 'Jeepers Creepers 2' wins the week

• How Hugh Hefner converted his adolescent fantasies into reality.

• The Globe says our favorite mouseketeer loves lesbian porn

• ESPN.com - Page2 - What's hot, what's not in the NFL

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 inclusion in Other Crap

Mailbox:

Scoop:

I just got back from a 10-day European vacation yesterday, and excuse me if some one else has already mentioned this, but while I was in London I went with my wife to see a play at the Lyric Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue called Hitchcock Blonde. Pretty good play, but I got an unexpected surprise when late in the play never-nude-on-film Bond babe Rosamund Pike walked full-frontal across the stage…in good light!!! As an added bonus Fiona Glascott also showed her breasts, and had a nice bikini scene. Definitely get seats on the left side of the stage because Rosamund walks from right to left…you could also easily video tape it if you were sitting in a balcony private box on the left side of the stage (I wasn’t)…boy did she look great….

Mr. Skin

PIRATE COUNTDOWN:

Link goes to (where else) TalkLikeAPirate.com - now with new English-to-Pirate instant translator

MOVIE REVIEWS:

Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

• The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
• If there is a white asterisk, it means that there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Lawdog or Junior or C2000 or Realist or ICMS or Mick Locke, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

Even though it stars Milla and Sam Jackson, it looks like this is either an indie film, or a movie so bad that it has been dumped onto the Euro-market before going straight-to-video in the US. IMDb doesn't offer much info other than the expected user comments of "Sam Jackson delivers a great performance".

• Milla Jovovich fully nude, showing breasts and bum. (1, 2)

Okay, so where was I?

The history of Pets in cinema is a bit easier to tell, although the details are a little fuzzy.

If you are talking mainstream movies, which means anything with a plot that's not overtly pornographic, something like forty Pets have been in films. In the real early days ('69-'75) Penthouse grabbed quite a few European stars of erotic movies and took pictures of them. Good plan.

And there was a while in late 70's up to '81 when Penthouse had more women do some sort of legit movie than did the Hefmag. Hell from '77 to '80 there were ten Pets o' the month who have entries in IMDB. Again, very good plan. The real break out came with Michelle Bauer, Miss July '81. Something like 120 films, most of them legit, many of them with reasonable speaking parts. She was a major B movie goddess.

Things went along nicely for a couple of years. Monique Gabrielle hit the scene in Dec '82 and a bunch of other lesser known B movie babes in '85 through '87 kept up the tradition of Pets moving into revealing roles on screen.

The peak, and quite a peak it was, occurred from June '91 to June '93. During that period, Julie Strain (June '91), Shauna O'Brien (Jan '92), Seana Ryan (Sept '92), Julie K. Smith (Feb '93) and Sam Phillips (June '93) were Pets of the Month. Together or separately, they have appeared in over 200 movies. In almost every appearance, they have run around nekkid.

I capped four of Julie's movies.

Her earliest appearance was in Carnal Crimes, where she had a long sport-humpin-in-a-public-restroom scene.

• Julie Strain in "Carnal Crimes" (1, 2, 3)

Much later, as Julie approached forty, came roles in Rowdy Girls and Sex Court, The Movie. Rowdy Girls was okay and Sex Court was a serious mess, even though Julie looked hot. She has a killer three-girl scene with Ava Lake and Inari Vachs, but something happened during the filming or the transfer, because the visual noise is an order of magnitude worse than anything I've ever encountered. Whoever is at fault should be forced to listen to George Dubya Bush speeches for at least a week. That would teach him. Anyway, I didn't bother trying to fix things. Just grabbed a bunch of small frames and stuck them together.

• Julie Strain in "Rowdy Girls" (1, 2, 3)

• Julie Strain in "Sex Court" (1, 2, 3)

One of Julie's latest entries is Bare Wench 3, which IMDB labels with one subheader, but the credits of the movie label "The Path of the Wicked."

This is a watershed movie of sorts, because it catches Julie Strain, Julie K. Smith, Shauna O'Brien and Seana Ryan in the twilight of their careers. All of them give up serious goodies. Julie Strain plays The Bare Wench (talk about a perfect feat of type-casting), whereas the other three and a couple other babes play the parts of film crew lost in the woods. When all else fails, the gals remove their clothes. I like the way they think.

Julie Strain has a triple-B performance, complete with gynocam view. Julie is what? Forty? And sure I know silicone doesn't age, but the stuff around it should and it just hasn't. The woman is a marvel.

Julie K Smith is naked the most. You get to see her jumbo-robo-hooters in the first two collages, and kinda sorta in the third, where a thin white t-shirt covers them. Then in collage 4 is treat for all the girls-gettin-friendly fans. Shauna O'Brien gives Julie mouth to hooter resuscitation. Julie finishes off things with a fully frontal view in collage 4 and her own contribution to the gynocam chronicles in collage 5. A tour de force performance.

• Julie Strain in "Bare Wench 3" (1, 2)

• Julie K. Smith in "Bare Wench 3" (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

So you're thinking Julie K's hoots look mighty inflated. Wonder what they looked like in the old days. Well, Bucko, lemme show you. As counterpoint to Bare Wench, here is Julie in Angel III, a movie made before she got all pumped up to become a Pet. Muchas gracias to Tuna for letting me play with his caps.

• Julie K. Smith in "Angel III" (1, 2, 3)

Okay, now it should tell you something that in 2002 producers of things like Bare Wench were using Pets from a decade ago. Some more contemporary Pets have done similar projects. Dann had caps of a real good example just a day or two ago. But that bucks the trend.

From 1995 to the present the majority of Penthouse Pets have either come from the porn industry or gone into it, leaving others to start their own websites, pose for other magazines or appear in videos where they pose seductively. Not that I'm complaining or anyting.

Two examples of this trend show up in the DVD, Luscious Liquids. Sam Phillips (Miss June '93) and Lydia Schone (Jan '95) take a bath together in the video. Sam has made a dozen or so mainstream movies, including one directed by Andy Sidaris, and also starred in one of Jr's favorite Skinemax series, "Hot Springs Hotel". Whereas Lydia seems content to make a living without acting. Both do the triple-B-gynocam boogie.

As an aside, these two are examples of what and what not to do when choosing a plastic and reconstructive surgeon. Lydia's knew what he/she was doing... deserves an award from the AMA. Sam's should be given the Braveheart treatment.

• Sam Phillips (1, 2, 3, 4)

• Lydia Schone (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Two good examples of Pets who have migrated into adult films are Lynn (Linn) Thomas and Victoria Zdrok. Both started out as Hefmates (Lynn in May '97, Victoria in Oct '94) and each became Pets (Lynn Oct 2000, Victoria June 2002). And yeah sure, Lynn's done a direct-to-video erotic thriller or two and both have done videos where they stand around and pose AND Victoria's come real close before to doing the nasty on screen in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Sex. Their latest, done together, is entitled Temptation. I sent in some caps of Victoria doing an extreme gynocam scene a while back. Here are some more of that scene from Victoria and a mild girl-on-girl kissy-kissy scene with both Linn and Victoria. Things get steamier a bit later in the film but I haven't capped those scenes yet. Got busy, you know. Something to look forward to. Patience is a virtue.

• Victoria Zdrok (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

I'm back after a nasty worm attack, and my first offering is a trip back in the time machine to 1984 and "Hot Dog The Movie" with one of my favorites a very young Shannon Tweed showing off her bare boobs.

• Shannon Tweed (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

MADONNA-BRITNEY KISS HUBBUB
The Mouths Of Babes - Monday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution apologized to readers for running a front page photo of Madonna giving a sloppy, open-mouth kiss to Britney Spears during a performance of "Like A Virgin" with Christina Aguilera at the MTV Video Awards. The editor said they've run controversial pictures before, but they were war pictures and that was news, while this wasn't. The picture was only the size of a postage stamp, but it prompted a flood of complaints.