Slaughterhouse-Five is, of course, based on the Kurt Vonnegut Jr. novel of the same name. The title refers to the building that he is housed in in Dresden as a POW. It is considered to be one of the best adaptations of a Vonnegut novel, and succeeded for two reasons. First, the novel is one of the easiest of Vonnegut's to adapt for film, and second, they followed the book very closely in the adaptation. Like anything by Vonnegut, there are a million theories of themes and symbols -- it is an English teachers dream. It is clear that this autobiographical work relating his experience as a German POW who lived through the Allied bombing of Dresden is saying that war is bad. That was, of course, a very popular message in 1972. I hate sounding like a High School English teacher, but there is much more going on here.

The story is told with very non-linear time. We are warned of this in the opening scene, where the hero, Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) is typing a letter to a magazine, explaining that he has become "unstuck in time." He goes on to say that he is transported from one time to another without any warning. The main time periods include WW2 Germany, his youth, present day suburbia, and the planet "Tralfamadore." Even within each era, events are not told sequentially. This makes it very hard to follow, even after you catch on to what is happening. I think the real theme is summarized in a statement made by Billy to his daughter near the end of the film. "The world is just a collection of moments, all strung together in beautiful random order. And if we're going to survive, it's up to us to concentrate on the good moments, and ignore the bad." The exposure comes from Valerie Perrine, who is not given to taking her clothes off. She plays an actress/centerfold who ends up on Tralfamadore with Billy.

If any of you are Vonnegut experts, and know a lot about this work, I would appreciate further insight. It was a long watch, but I had the feeling when it ended that I had just watched something important. I was just not sure what it all meant, and I am still not sure if I liked it or not. The DVD quality is poor, with bad focus, lots of grain, low saturation, etc. There were no special features at all. IMDB viewers have it at 7.2/10, and Maltin gives it three stars.

Shadow Hours (2000)

The supporting players include Brad Dourif and the guy who plays Worf on Star Trek. Just your run-of-the-mill cast.

I guess you'd have to say it's a grade C-plus, since McClure is the Grade C Shannon Tweed, and Getty is the Grade C Charlie Sheen, but Weller uplifts it a bit by being the Grade B James Woods.

Getty is recovering from substance abuse, working the night shift at a 24 hour convenience store in a run-down urban neighborhood. The only ray of hope in his life is an angel who found him and helped him pull himself up from addiction - his angel is his sweet Memphis wife (Rebecca Gayheart), and she's pregnant with their first baby.

Into this scene comes Weller, who is a psycho or Satan or who knows what. Maybe he's also the guy who is mass- murdering women and twisting their heads 180 degrees. Some detectives seem to think so, like Worf and that guy who became evil when he put on Jim Carrey's mask.

Whatever he is, Weller has an infinite amount of money, an infinite taste for the demented side of the city, and an infinite interest in corrupting Getty, so he starts by offering the recovering alcoholic the best wine in the world, and proceeds to run him through every temptation L.A. has to offer - sex clubs, opium dens, Knott's Berry Farm, underground fight clubs, S&M, B&D, M&M's, and gambling dens where you can bet on Russian Roulette. Russian Roulette? What a bunch of pussies. In my family we played Polish Roulette, in which all six barrels are full. This is why we don't need a big hall for a family reunion. Usually a mop closet is plenty of room.

All these "temptations" are shown through montages with plenty of dissolves and fast cuts, cameras turned at odd angles, and Satanic heavy metal music. The newest-wave cinema cliche is to pick a song with a strong back beat for the sound track, then switch to a new film image on every beat or every second beat, in synch with the music. Of course, you have to choose the music correctly to suit the filmmaker's pace. Bergman would have to use "Volga Boatman". Spike Jonez could go for "Flight of the Bumblebee"

Well, ol' Getty survives somehow. Oh, sure, he picks up a few scars along the way, falls back off the wagon, and gets some serious knott's berry stains on his 7-Eleven uniform, but he survives.

Weller does as well. In a climactic shoot out with police, Weller kills a bunch of cops, takes a few bullets to the chest, then walks away into the shadows. He could kill one of the detectives on his way out, but he just holds a gun to the guy's head and says "see ya next time".

When Getty leaves town with his wife, Weller gets himself a new deluxe car and stars over again with another young man down on his luck.

Bring up Twilight Zone music and Rod Serling narration..

NUDITY: Quite a bit of seedy incidental nudity. The primary characters were TaneMcClure and Cheryl dent as two strippers who leave the club with Getty and Robocop.

The first two collages should not be viewed on a full stomach. They also demonstrate why naturism should only be practiced at night.

Marsha Mason
(1, 2)

Marsha Mason gave a brief flash in one of her bedroom scenes with George Segal.

Marya Henrique

Tisha Sterling

Actually, I had the pleasure of meeting Kobe back in January, she was incredibly nice, and much better looking in person. Plus, she was surprisingly small. Her IMDb bio says she's 5'3". I think she might be shorter than that. Plus, I doubt she weighs more that 100 pounds soaking wet.

Anyway, Michelle and her rock solid fake boobs from "Secret Pleasures".

Where should I start with this one? "Hard Bounty" is one of the worst of the worst. Mainly because once again, they take a skin flick (of sorts) and try to give it a plot. Actually, from the erotic late night perspective this could have been a good idea. Take an Old West Brothel, add lot's of drifters passing through town looking for a bath, a bottle, and a bed (old west cliche 006-B in the big book of movie cliches) and you have infinite reasons to film sex scenes. But nooooo...this time they get a B-rated actor doing a grade Z Clint Eastwood impression, and Kelly LeBrock not only not nekkid, but a little chunky and with obviously with her degree from the Shatner School (Kirk pause) for Acting.

The basics...LeBrock and sister are town whores. Sis is killed by Bad Guy because Bad Guy is enemies with LeBrock's boyfriend. LeBrock and surviving town whores get guns and kill Bad Guy and his posse. The end.

Also, for a story about 4 whores, only two of them get nekkid, and Rochelle got nekkid twice, and there really wasn't that much nudity. So...needless to say, NEVER RENT THIS MOVIE!

They have finally been released! For those not familiar with the Darwin Award, It's an annual honor given to the person who provided the universal human gene pool the biggest service by getting killed in the most extraordinarily stupid way. As always, competition this year has been keen. Some candidates appear to have trained their whole lives for this event!

CANDIDATES

1. In September in Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet of water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.

2. In October, a 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who "totally zoned when he ran," according to his wife, accidentally jogged off 100-foot-high cliff on his daily run.

3. Buxton, NC: A man died on a beach when an 8-foot-deep hole he had dug into the sand caved in as he sat inside it. Beach goers said Daniel Jones 21, dug the hole for fun, or protection from the wind, and had been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom Thursday afternoon when it collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of sand. People on the beach, on the outer banks, used their hands and shovels, trying to claw their way to Jones, a resident of Woodbridge, VA, but could not reach him. It took rescue workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free him while about 200 people looked on. Jones was pronounced dead at a hospital.

4. In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, CA, as he fell face-first through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was burglarizing. Death was caused when the long flashlight he had placed in his mouth (to keep his hands free) rammed into the base of his skull as he hit the floor.

5. According to police in Dahlonega, GA, ROTC cadet Nick Berrena, 20, was stabbed to death in January by fellow cadet Jeffrey Hoffman, 23, who was trying to prove that a knife could not penetrate the flack vest Berrena was wearing.

6. Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in February in Selbyville, DE, as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger.

7. In February, according to police in Windsor, Ontario, Daniel Kolta, 27, and Randy Taylor, 33, died in a head-on collision, thus earning a tie in the game of chicken they were playing with their snowmobiles.

8. Taos, NM - A woman went to a poison control center after eating three birth-control vaginal inserts. Her English was so bad she had to draw a picture describing how she believed she had poisoned herself. A translator arrived shortly thereafter and confirmed doctors' suspicions. Marie Valishnokov thought the inserts were some kind of candy or gum, being unable to read the foil wrappers. After the third one, she realized something was wrong when her throat and mouth began to fill with a sour-tasting foam. She ran for the Poison Control Center, only a few blocks away where doctors were able to flush the foam from her mouth, throat and stomach with no ill effects.

9. La Grange, GA - Attorney Antonio Mendoza was released from a trauma center after having a cell phone removed from his rectum. "My dog drags the thing all over the house," he said later. "He must have dragged it into the shower. I slipped on the tile, tripped against the dog and sat down right on the thing." The extraction took more than three hours due to the fact that the cover to Mr. Mendoza's phone had opened during insertion. "He was a real trooper during the entire episode," said Dr.Dennis Crobe. "Tony just cracked jokes and really seemed to be enjoying himself. Three times during the extraction his phone rang and each time, he made jokes about it that just had us rolling on the floor. By the time we finished, we really did expect to find an answering machine in there."

10. Bremererton, WA - Christopher Coulter and his wife, Emily, were engaging in bondage games when Christopher suggested spreading peanut butter on his genitals and letting Rudy, their Irish Setter, lick them clean. Sadly,Rudy lost control and began tearing at Christopher's penis and testicles. Rudy refused to obey commands and a panicked Emily threw a half-gallon bottle of perfume at the dog. The bottle broke, covering the dog and Christopher with perfume. Startled, Rudy leaped back, tearing away the penis. While trying to get her unconscious husband in the car to take him to the hospital, Emily fell twice, injuring her wrist and ankle. Christopher's penis was in a Styrofoam ice cooler. "Chris is just plain lucky," said the surgeon who spent eight hours reattaching the penis. "Believe it or not, the perfume turned out to be very fortuitous. The high alcohol content, which must have been excruciatingly painful, helped sterilize the wound. Also, aside from it being removed, the damage caused by the dog's teeth to the penis per se is minimal. It's really a very stringy piece of flesh. Mr Coulter stands an excellent chance of regaining the use of that limb because of this." Washington Animal Control has no plans to seize Rudy.

AND THE WINNER:

Paderborn, Germany - Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let fly and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of shit! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive-oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him like a dump truck full of mud. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground, where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him.