That Tender Touch

 (1969)

The style is melodrama, and the story is simple. Sue Bernard and Bee Tompkins were roommates and lovers. Sue met a man and married him. Bee could no longer live without her "tender touch," and came to visit, hoping to win her back over. The husband was not pleased, nor was the now hetero Sue.

Wolf, a production group which caters to the gay/lesbian crowd, has released at least two of these golden age lezploitation films as part of their "vintage collection." According to a mini press book which comes with the disc, the film was originally distributed by softcore legend Harry Novak. I gather that over the intervening years this film has developed a cult following in the gay community and has evidently been available for some time, but in very poor transfers until now. Even this particular transfer is full of scratch damage, but is otherwise not too bad.

I really have nothing to compare this to, as it is the first vintage lesbian exploitation film I have even seen. The erotica is minimal. There is nudity, but no sex. Sue Bernard, Bee Tompkins, and Dolly Reed as a maid show breasts and buns, but there are no girl/girl caresses, and only a couple of very dainty kisses.  In terms of erotica and production values, this film is comparable to other late 60s exploitation films, except with a lesbian overlay.

IMDb readers say 5.3 but with only 9 votes.

Sue Bernard

Bee Thompkins

Dolly Reed

 

Two film clips from Regarde la Mer: Marina de Van and Sasha Hails

Yesterday we had a low quality film clip of this. Today we have a HDTV (720p) clip of Janel Maloney in Brotherhood, s2, e4.

Why did I type that (720p)? In case you haven't gotten into the technology yet, there are two definitions of HD. Full HD, as found in some broadcasts and on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs, has 1080 lines of vertical information. In comparison, a regular DVD has 540 in NTSC, or 576 in PAL. The format used in this clip, 720, is better than DVD quality, less than HD-DVD. It is called HD, but is not the maximum available. If you want to buy a plasma or LCD TV, the 720s are now priced quite economically because 1080 is the replacement technology. I looked at about a dozen of each at Frye's, in all different sizes. You can't really tell the difference on a 30'' screen, but you can on the new giant-ass screen sizes. After much deliberation, I decided to wait until the 1080s come down in price.

Joanna Brodzik in a Polish film. Sample to right.

I think I've probably mentioned before that I'm one of those rare birds who cannot speak a single word of his own native language. In my baby book, which my mom kept dutifully (I was a first child), all my first words and phrases are in Polish. Not too many years ago I found the book and had to look my own words up to see what they meant. In the years since I was a toddler, I have learned the Polish alphabet and the corresponding phonetics so I can say the words correctly, more or less, but I probably don't recognize more than 20 Polish words, certainly fewer than 100!

My daughter is in exactly the same boat with a different language. She spoke nothing but Russian until she went to school. By the time she entered college, she didn't understand any more Russian than any of you. Unlike me, she at least took some university classes in her native tongue, so she now has some grasp of it again, but has not managed to recapture it as a working language.

La Viuda Valenciana

The young Leonarda (Cristina Marsillach) lives secluded in a castle with her very old husband. When he dies, she pretends to keep living secluded, but with the help of her servant she brings men to the castle to have a good time.

 

Cristina Marsillach

Capped this crazy movie entitled Space Thing a long time ago. Had this Hefmate named Mercy Rooney in it. Great looking gal. Lousy actress, though. And there was this other woman. Tiny brunette with a righteous body. No idea who she was so I didn't bother to put together many of her frames. Yet there among the credits (pseudonyms, all) was someone credited as "April Playmate." So, what the fuck, let's check on the Hefmates around the time this thing was made (1968). Lo and behold, April 1966 Hefmate. Tiny brunette with a righteous body. It's her...Carla Conway. So here's ya go. Lots of caps, a few clips, yummy gal.

Georgia Rule

"Three generations of women in conflict" has been done before, but that doesn't stop 2007's Georgia Rule from being a decent comedy/drama. I liked it, and you probably will too, but to do so, you'll have to look past a couple of major flaws.

Jane Fonda plays the grandmother who is asked to take care of her 17-year-old granddaughter when the girl's mother can no longer handle her. She did a good job with the role, but the character itself seemed weaker than I would have expected.

Felicity Huffman plays the mother whose daughter is totally out of control, and in desperation, she turns to her own mother for help even though the two of them are estranged. Yet even though she can't stand her mother, she looks to her for help in controlling her wild daughter, who has been involved in drugs, alcohol, promiscuous sex, and just about everything a 17-year-old might try to exhibit defiance. What she doesn't realize is that there's a chilling reason for her daughter's behavior. Felicity probably did the best acting job of anyone in the movie.

Lindsay Lohan plays the 17-year-old, and that's quite a stretch, because she just looks too weather-beaten and worldly to be 17, even a hell-raising 17. There's no doubt that her off-screen activities qualify her as an expert in raising hell, and her acting was fine, but she simply didn't fit the part.

Even with all this, it is still a good mother-daughter story with some nice and unexpected twists, and a good job by the cast. Perfect, no, but worth watching, yes. Incidentially, don't strain your eyes trying to see if you can see anything in the shot where she spreads her legs in the boat. When you blow it up with Photoshop, you see that they placed a nice black triangle there to make sure that nothing showed, making me think that perhaps she actually did the scene pantiless.

Felicity Huffman	Lindsay Lohan

The Comedy Wire

Last week, comic Stephen Colbert, who plays a parody of a right-wing blowhard talk show host, announced his joke candidacy for president.  A new Public Opinion Strategies poll of 1,000 likely voters showed he already has 2.3 percent support among Democrats, which puts him ahead of real candidates Richardson, Kucinich and Gravel.  Colbert draws less than one percent among Republicans, who aren't big Comedy Central viewers. 

*  But if they ever saw "The Colbert Report," they'd support him 100 percent. 

Last week in La Paz, Bolivia, residents protested outside the town's 32 bars and strip joints, denouncing them as a magnet for criminals and a bad influence on youth, until the city shut them down.  Monday, the other side struck back. About 50 of the town's estimated 500 prostitutes announced that they have gone on a hunger strike for their right to work.  And if the bars do not reopen, they threatened to march naked down the streets.

*  Good strategy!  Do the one thing that will make men want to keep the bars closed!

*  In fact, they went on the hunger strike so they'd look good naked.

*  This would mark the first time they've ever taken off their clothes because they WEREN'T being paid.

*  First, Hollywood movie and TV writers threaten to strike, now this. Whores are going on strike everywhere! 

News.com reports that Paris Hilton plans to live forever.  The site says she's invested a lot of money in the Cryonics Institute, the world's biggest suspended animation cemetery, so she and her Chihuahua Tinkerbell and Yorkie Cinderella can be frozen and brought back in the future when a cure is found.  Paris said, "It's so cool.  Almost all the cells in the body are still alive when death is pronounced.  And if you're immediately cooled, you can be perfectly preserved.  My life could be extended by hundreds and thousands of years."


*  We know that time travel is impossible or else people would have already come back from the future to stop this. 

Kevin Rudd, a leading candidate for Prime Minister of Australia, saw his campaign damaged by an embarrassing video on YouTube of him sitting in Parliament and listening to a speech, absentmindedly picking in his ear, then putting his finger in his mouth.

* It helps him to wax eloquent.

Adelfa Volpes, the 82-year-old Argentine woman who made news last month by marrying a 24-year-old man, has died of heart problems

* But it was worth it.