Uncle Scoopy's Fun House

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Tuesday

Today

Did you read about the stories that the KGB planted with conspiracy theorists to link the CIA to the Kennedy assassination? I've always said the CIA could not have been involved in the JFK assassination since Kennedy actually ended up dead. As I recall, the CIA plotted and schemed for years to assassinate Castro, a guy who at that time walked through the streets of Havana without a bodyguard. You can tell they were in on that one. Castro is still alive.

I've always said that you should solve all murders with the same investigatory procedures, and when you look at the Kennedy murder objectively, you can only reach one conclusion. Who had the most to gain from Kennedy's assassination? Whose turf did it take place on? Who was wearing six guns, and blazing away at JFK from the other car?

I don't know what this means, but a survey of PPV customers found that among customers of paid wrestling matches, Republicans outnumber Democrats about 4 to 1. In the general population, those who admit to party affiliation are about evenly balanced between the two.

And you thought Dan Quayle was dumb? Fortean Times magazine reports that Radovan Karadzic scraped up six million dollars in 1996 to buy a "red mercury" neutron bomb from Russia to wipe out his country's Muslim population. Oops. Seems like these Russians didn't represent Russia, and there is no such thing as a "red mercury bomb". When he opened up the container, he found that he'd spent six million dollars to buy a crate full of red jelly. You'd think he would have been alerted by the Smucker's logo on the bomb.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot

I'm not sure if this is the movie that the guy wanted, but here is the scene with the hog-tied lovers. I've seen so many movies in my life that I couldn't recall whether I had seen this one or not, but I enjoyed it. It's one of those pictures about "mismatched outlaw buddies", filled with the 70's prerequisites: a team caper, unnecessary nudity, generational conflicts, sad unresolved endings ... Strange to look back and see the remarkable lack of violence as viewed with today's eyes. All the guards and bureaucrats who stand in the way of the baddies simply end up with a bad headache and rope burns. In today's context, all these bystanders would be slaughtered like cattle. The modern way is more realistic, of course. Desperate men on a seven minute mission, as they were here, don't have the time to knock people out and tie them up. But cultural standards dictate these sorts of things, don't they? Plus you couldn't have Eastwood and Burgess slaughtering innocents. Here's the scene with the two kids.

This movie was the directorial debut of Michael Cimino. (Eastwood hired him. This is a Malpaso Films production. Cimino had previously written the script for Eastwood's "Magnum Force"). Cimino is a legend in Hollywood for many reasons. Immediately after Thunderbolt, he made an successful film which was also an acknowledged masterpiece, "The Deer Hunter". This took him to superstar status, and he was given the freedom and money to dictate his next project. That project turned out to be a notorious fiasco entitled "Heaven's Gate". Cimino never recovered from the critical and media attacks on the movie, and virtually quit the industry. The movie came in late, over budget, and generated a gross of only $1.5 million dollars to offset $44 million in costs, largely because it was pulled from distribution after about three days. The public hated it just as much as the critics, and the industry investment people hated it most of all. It is credited with destroying United Artists, and forever ending the days when directors were given a free hand to make the pictures they wanted to make. To this day, people are divided on the merits of the movie. Many love the arty "feel" of the movie, the sound track, and the impressive cinematography, while others can't see past the irregular editing, the meandering action, and an especially lifeless performance from Kris Kristofferson. It is a movie with great strengths and great weaknesses, and it elicits the same kind of debate as "Breaking the Waves". 20 years later, Cimino is still considered a risk, and is still trying to rehabilitate himself. I have an old business acquaintance who is a semi-famous movie producer. I met him when I was doing the national promotions for 7-Eleven. If you know anything about movies you'd recognize his name. His latest project is to be directed by Cimino, and he asked me to help him find some investors through my old business contacts. That they would be seeking investors from such non-traditional sources shows you how much of an outsider Cimino became and pretty much still is. All of that aside, this movie, "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" is a watchable film. This is an actress named June Fairchild who came in for a quickie with Eastwood. Jeff Burgess brought home Daisy Duke for himself, but she didn't show the goods. (Darn!)

Here's a random woman who exposed herself to Burgess while he was doing some yard work. Behind a glass plate, reflections, woeful quality.

This isn't a woman, but Jeff Bridges in drag. Bridges was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor award for this. He's really had an impressive and varied career.

Tuna

I think this concludes Tuna's tribute to the classic porn of yesteryear. Georgina Spelvin in "Seven Seductions"

Ginger Lynn in "A Coming of Angels - the sequel"

Ginger Lynn in "The Grafenberg Spot"

Seka in "Heavenly Desire"

Serena in "Heavenly Desire"

Diamondedge

As he promised, The Edge delivered Secrets of a Chambermaid. Start it off with Gladys Jimenez

Gladys Jimenez

Gladys Jimenez. Please note that there are no frames with face and privates shown together.

Anneliza Scott (no nudity)

Anneliza Scott

Anneliza Scott (no face)

Anneliza Scott

Nekkid Supermodels

What can you say? Six supermodels stark naked, facing the camera, in color and good light. Carolyn Murphy

Georgina Grenville

Holly Hanson

Emily Sandberg.

Frankie Rayder. Surprise, this one has breasts!

Annie Morton. Annie is a pretty girl, but I can't imagine why she decided to pose with a slouchy posture and a facial expression that seems to indicate the use of recreational substances.

Asian Lesson

This from my mailbox. Weird, but sort of interesting. "Scoopy-San. I thought you might be interested in some stories about the Japanese equivalent of your American b-movie subculture. These films have been consistently sheltered from Western eyes by our cultural overlords, but they are prolific and often quite imaginative. More to your interest, they are uniformly filled with sex and violence, flavored with our unique cultural spice.

Among the very worst (best?) of the grade-b directors is Koji Wakamatsu, a former second grade drop-out and convicted violent criminal who turned to moviemaking when he was released from prison. There is no equivalent to him in your culture. He combines the poetic and stylized violence of Sam Peckinpah with the sexual and breast obsessions of Russ Meyer, but he does so within a unique Japanese mindset and with a uniquely Japanese visual sense. In addition, the violence is much more graphic and real than in Peckinpah movies. Imagine Herschell Gordon Lewis impersonating Kurosawa. Twenty years later, Koji directed some respectable movies. It is not uncommon for distinguished Japanese directors to learn their craft doing sex and violence films. It is those early films from the 1960's that we discuss today.

To illustrate, I'll describe his masterpiece "Shojo geba geba". This has no translation. It is a slogan used by student revolutionaries - "geba" are the sticks they use in their encounters with police, shojo means "virgin" literally. The movie starts out with our hero Hochi tied naked to his girlfriend in a hostile desert landscape. It seems he made a rather poor career move for an aspiring Yakuza (our equivalent of the "goodfellows") by sleeping with the girlfriend of the Don, and now they both must die. The thugs force him to watch her being crucified before he escapes. By the time the movie ends, they have tricked him into shooting the crucified girl, he has killed all of them while they posed for pictures in front of the cross, he has raped all their girlfriends brutally, and killed all of them as well. The movie ends as he carries his girl's corpse into the horizon in a lightning storm, through a landscape punctuated with fires like some post-apocalyptic nightmare.

Good stuff, what? And that was his masterpiece. He also directed such treasures as "Go, go, second time virgin", which takes place entirely on the roof of a single building, and he produced the works of other aspiring directors, including that unforgettable romance, the Japanese version of "Sleepless in Seattle" called "The Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands".

This sado-cinema has quite a large cult following here in Japan. During a time when we had extensive censorship of body parts and sexual acts, the authorities always permitted extreme acts of violent sadism. Tender or passionate sex scenes might not escape the scissors, but violent sex scenes sail through uncut. I read about Europeans and Americans misunderstanding each other's censorship of violence and sex, respectively. Imagine our sado-film subculture as an exaggerated version of America, even more violent and even more puritanical about using sex for pleasure. Perhaps some of your Japanese readers could start to do video captures of some of these bizarre films.

Here's a couple of frames from Shojo geba geba. I don't know anything about Asian Cult cinema. If you guys have interesting material, send it in. Why not?

Helcrom

One or two of these have appeared here before, but in general this is a new set. Helcrom can now be found http://www.rodeodog.com/celebpics/helcrom/. The link is always there on the Artists' page. By the way, if you haven't looked at Helcrom's material lately, he's upgraded his system and it shows.

P.J. Soles in "Halloween"

Kelly Monaco in "Idle Hands"

more of L'il' Kim at the awards show.

Roxanne Hart in "Highlander"

Kimberly McArthur in "Easy Money"

Slarti

They must have some kick-ass digital TV signals in Germany, because Slarti and his Undernet colleagues at #germancelebs get these cable movies and TV shows looking better than many DVD caps. Check out these colorful captures of Marie Gillain in "La affinita eletive"

This is Diana Frank in "Fit for Fun". If that means anything to ya, I bet you'll like 'em.

Jennifer Connelly in "Heart of Justice" (non-nude, but Jennifer shows off a very tight bottom to go with her other better-known assets). Isn't it about time for her to get back to full-time movie acting? With our luck, she'll use her linguistic abilities and her Yale/Stanford education to become a director of arty Japanese or Italian cult films, and we'll never see those hooters again. "Waking the Dead" is slated for an R rating, but I don't know if that's a good sign or not. Her body looks great in these caps, but the director did not do a very good job of capturing the beauty of her face.