Bikini Summer (1991) is a mindless tittie flick made in Malibu Beach, California. A group of friends have the use of a beach house while the owner is away traveling, on the condition that they remodel it. Each has their own agenda. David Millbern wants to score with chicks by pretending to be a photographer. Kent Lipham wants to drink beer, eat munchies, snooze and belch. Kelli Konop hopes to get rich designing hot bikinis, Shelley Michelle wants to make a success out of her girl band and Melinda Armstrong wants to work on her tan and meet a decent hot guy.

Incidental cast includes a female district attorney (Rebekah Alfred) supporting a lecherous landlord who peeps on Michelle in the shower, and wants to build condos on the beach, a environmental crusader, a music composer/producer, two hopeless nerds, and lots of girls in bikinis. The confrontation between the kids and the DA builds, and everything suddenly figures out that the solution to everyone's problem is a bikini contest.

Armstrong has the most exposure, and shows everything first being surprised in the bathroom, then swimming nude in a pool. Michelle shows breasts, buns, and a hint of bush in the peeping tom shower scene. Alfred shows breasts trying on a bikini at the end of the film. Several unknowns also expose breasts and buns. IMDB readers have this at 3.6 of 10. Had the image quality not been so poor, I might have generously given a C-. After all, the bikini genre doesn't have very high standards. As released, however, this is a D.

Updates

New volumes (11): Florence Guerin, Nathalie Guerin, Sophie Guillemin, Jennifer Grey, Jesse St. James, Rachael Stirling, Taylor St. Claire, Suzanne Somers, Wendy Shumacher, Ally Sheedy, Angel Schijf

Updated volumes (17): Kim Yates, Sean Young, Liv Tyler, Marisa Tomei, Lea Thompson, Emma Thompson, Sita Thompson, Anna Thomson, Charlize Theron, Angel Tomkins, Jennifer Tilly, Leelee Sobieski, Sharon Stone, Madeleine Stowe, Lori Singer, Ludivine Sagnier, Stefania Sandrelli

Terminator 3 (2003)

I've talked about it before. Here's the link. I think I said that this movie is like the best-ever episode of Battlebots, if you're into that. I was disappointed in the DVD. It is so-so dark. I was expecting dark, but this was stygian.

• Kristanna Loken

The Safety of Objects (2001)

I've changed the message on my phone answering machine, just in case I'm out when the Lifetime Channel calls. If they're looking for their lost movie, I've found it.

The person who wrote the following comment at amazon.com meant it to be praise, but as you can see, it could not be a stronger warning if it came with a cow skull and crossbones:

"A gorgeous collage of human details, The Safety of Objects intertwines the stories of four families living as neighbors in a pleasant suburb, all of them grappling in various ways with the aftermath of a car accident that left a teenager in a coma."

That says it all. Three of the four key signs of imminent boredom:

• gorgeousness
• aftermath-grappling
• child dying or in a coma

The fourth sign was missing. The only way to make it worse is if the reviewer had said that the film was a "tone poem".

One of the families lost a promising son to an accident, and he lay in a coma. One of the ladies next door was having an affair with coma boy. Coma boy's mother continued to dedicate her life to him, causing her husband and daughter no end of grief over their neglect. The hippies next door worshipped coma boy as a god. The cute little girl next door wanted to use him as a sled.  And so forth.

I fabricated a lot of that, in case you are a DENSA member.

What really happened is that each of the families dealt with life in that special way used by stereotyped characters in family-centered melodramas, except that in this case they were forced to do so without the calm, reassuring, introspective presence of Kevin Kline. Kline is probably in court with these people, because his contract specifically requires him to be in this kind of movie. Maybe he had a conflict, and was courageously dying of cancer in another film.

It really needed Uma Thurman to show up and start slashing people with Samurai swords. Freakin' Tarantino seems to be ubiquitous, but where is he when you really need him?

Based on this description, this is a C-. I guess it can't be any lower than that because it had a reasonably good collection of reviews. I found it completely predictable, and sheer torture to watch. I had to drop it from a C to a C- because of the absence of either Kevin Kline or Tone Poetry.

• Jessica Campbell (1, 2)

OTHER CRAP:

• Sisters Darlene and Carol Barnaola, co-playmates January 2000. Playmate Gallery Courtesy of PlayboyPlus.com!

• Krystle wins the Page 3 Idol competition.

• Ms. No Swim Suit 2003

• Naked lesbian Twister en Espanol. The perfect site.

• Strip Snooker is a possible Olympic event. Well, it would be if I ran the Olympics.

• Together with rock band "The Trollops," director Gorman Bechard's video explores the art of female masturbation.

• Sushi in the raw: Restaurant's nude displays get women's group steamed.

• Opera-goers get a two-cheeked revue in Brazil. Angry director drops his pants, shows booing crowd the moon" I think he must regret casting Shatner and Yoko as Tristan and Isolde. He was arrested, by the way, for public indecency.

• Why you've heard of Jessica Lynch, not Zan Hornbuckle

• Gillette is spying on you. I thought I saw Sharpie the parrot flying behind me when I walked to 7-Eleven. And people said I was insane.

• Blue Jays Roy Halladay wins the AL Cy Young Award. He got 26 of the 28 votes. Loaiza got the other two votes and finished second.

• Nicole Kidman tells W magazine that she keeping her Kravitz romance private. I don't think telling W and ABC is a good way to start. If she really wanted it private, she'd tell W that she's dating me, then sneak out in disguise with Kravitz.

• Beloved actor Art Carney dead at 85

• A quick course in made-for-TV movies 101

• The Smoking Gun: has a clip of Dubya - apparently drunk as a skunk - in 1992. (Or maybe he is capable of doing this sober. He gave up drinking in 1986, or so they say.)

• Get your R. Lee Ermey action figure

• Hitchcock's cameo appearances in his movies. All 41 are listed, with screen caps from 37 of them.

• Joe Lieberman sings "Oklahoma". This ain't pretty.

• The Jessica Lynch book is not selling on its first day

• The Onion's Infograph on the objectionable scenes in the Reagan bio. My favorite: Reagan trading guns for hostages out of the trunk of his car.

• Actor Christian Slater's Wife beats the crap out of him. Life ain't like a movie, li'l fella. Slater's official bio continues to move his height somewhat closer to reality. Three years ago, IMDb said he was 5'11". If you look at him in 3000 Miles to Graceland, the top of his Elvis pompadour only comes up to Coster's eyes, and Costner is listed at 6'1". Slater's IMDb bio now says 5' 8.5".

• Studio Stills Photo- Slater and Costner

• The mugshot of Christian Slater's wife

• Florida teacher gives new meaning to the term "oral exams"

• Nostalgia for private-label novelty cereals I need a bowl of Donkey Kong Jr.

• Meet the Portland Trail Blazer Dancers

• Schwarzenegger to hire investigators to see if he groped anyone, but he may not make the results public, or turn them over to the Attorney General. Given that the info is just for him, and is just about him, he could save a lot of money and just use a little investigative technique I like to call "memory"

• Clouds of Consciousness - images we see in cloud shapes

• Keeping Watch for Interstellar Computer Viruses

• X-4 is already in planning, a Wolverine solo project

• Tony Danza to get his own talk show

• Pornmeister Larry Flynt said he's bought purported nude photos of Iraq war heroine Jessica Lynch. He first said he would publish them, then changed his mind.

• Frankly, my dear, I don't give edam - the cheesiest movie moments

• Want To See The List Of Best Guy Movies? Well, Do Ya Punk?

• Starbucks Introduces "Mormon Blend"

• Justin Timberlake is entering the restaurant business. Everything on the menu is flavored with saccharine.

• DANNIELLA WESTBROOK is having another boob job - as a 30th birthday gift from her hubby.

• Tigers likely will focus on less expensive player Good strategy. I think I could play right field for them next year, if they really want that loss record.

• I'll see your senator Dennis Miller and raise you a senator Al Franken. The senate oratory will have to be accompanied by rim shots. I'm still dreaming of Senator Top.

• The Wisdom of Jessica Simpson

• These Are Definitely Not Scully's Breasts. It's a Wired article about our old pal, The Fake Detective.

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

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.

• Juliane Köhler, topless in scenes from the Oscar winning "Nowhere in Africa" (Best Foreign Language Film of the Year, 2003).

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

"Speedway" (aka Last Road) was made in 1997, and I'll resist for the moment any temptation to say that it has two the biggest things going for it. You'll see why.

It is the story of drag racers and their molls. Which makes it unusual. Oh, there are lots of sports movies and even a few dozen race car movies (Le Mans, Days of Thunder) but I can think of only one other drag racing movie. It was Heart Like a Wheel, starring Bonnie Bedelia as Shirley Muldowney. A way better movie than Speedway, even though Bonnie kept her clothes on.

Julie Strain stars a drag-racer's widow. She's a first rate mechanic who has to put up with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, personified by an unscrupulous beast who wants nothing more than to break her late hubster's record of consecutive wins on the legit track. Then there is also backroad racing, in which the winner does take all... the loser's car, for example.

Former Hefmate Petra Verkaik (Dec '89) plays the new guy's main squeeze, while former Hefmate Suzi Simpson (Jan '92) plays someone else's object de lust.

The plot just sorta ambles along, like a 90 minute soap opera. There's angst and sport-humpin' and greed and anger and more sport-humpin'. Or at least there looks to be some sport-humpin' but I gotta tell you, what passes as foreplay and as copulatory activity by the racing set seems like just plain weirdness to these aged eyes. Check it out. One guy has Petra all to himself and what does he do? Drives a toy car all over her frontal surface. Dangerous curves, indeed, but not what I would call a good time had by all.

And a second guy has Julie all nekkid and in the water and just about begging for a roll in the hay, and there he stands with his jeans on. BTW, this guy who plays Julie's new love interest could not have looked more overcome with ennui had he been forced to watch The Anna Nicole Smith show. This was Julie in her prime and if a guy can't get up a little interest over that he belongs on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, playing the one with the eye.

So it was a stinker, to be sure, but tolerable because Julie has two nekkid scenes, one of them fully frontally so. Suzi Simpson has a topless scene and (here's the reason I got this puppy) Petra has two scenes showing off her breasts and bum.

If you don't know Petra, be advised that she is reportedly the most photographed woman in the pages of the Hefmag and not because she has such an enchanting smile and terrific personality. Nope, those would not be the two reasons.

• Julie Strain (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
• Suzi Simpson (1, 2, 3)
• Petra Verkaik (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)

Second movie for today is The Firing Line, starring the B-movie queen and former Hefmate, Shannon Tweed. So, okay, Speedway was a dogger of a movie, but it was Silence of the Lambs, Snatch, Dogma and Memento all rolled up into one compared with The Firing Line. The plot has Shannon Tweed running around the jungle in the company of a gov't-hired former Green Beret who is now training the indigenous rebel band for reasons that just don't fucking matter. Shannon takes a bath and has a sport-humpin' scene with Mr. Beret, but get this... she does not give up the goodies, except for a single frame shot from forty miles away.

WTF? Shannon had done a half-dozen really nekkid movies before this one and a couple dozen after, so why the modesty? And I do mean modesty. She goes out of her way to keep the goodies behind an arm or a rock or anything else that might be opaque. Movie had a R rating from use of the F word, so it could not be a ploy to pack in the teenboppers. No, the way I figure it, Shannon charged by the amount of flesh exposed: $50K with hooties hidden, $100K to let them out to play. Sadly, this and the screenwriter's salary were places the producers looked to cut costs.

• Shannon Tweed (1, 2)

Censors of the Realm...
re: the recently released straight-to-video "Slaves of the Realm" starring Rena Mero aka Sable and directed by Lloyd Simandl

There are various cuts floating around. The fullest version "Sins of the Realm" released in Japan kept all the lesbian sex and violence (princesses being whipped, flogged, strangled, branded with hot irons, etc.). The UK release "Chained Sinners: Medieval Fleshpots" has some of the violence cut out but kept the lesbian scenes. But the R-rated US version "Slaves of the Realm" has been sliced to ribbons. The violence has been left in but two extended group lesbian sex scenes have been cut out completely. The video is "Rated R for sexual content and some violence" which is MPAA doublespeak for "we objected to the sex but not the violence".

• Here are caps from the two missing lesbian scenes! (1, 2)

Invest in an all-codes international DVD player. Many Simandl videos are not being released at all in the US and the ones that do are very tame and trimmed down.

"Delta of Venus"
What you can always expect from a Zalman King movie is classy erotica, without the B-movie quality you've come to accept from most erotic films. This 1995 drama delivers.

In 1940 Paris, a young woman from America starts writing erotic fiction based on her own experiences. In the process, she falls in love.

Set against the backdrop of Hitler's approach to France, and loaded with sex and nudity, this one is hard not to like. :-)

• Audie England
• Eva Duchkova
• Markéta Hrubesová
• The Women of "Delta of Venus"

FLYNT BUYS LYNCH TOPLESS PHOTOS
Hustlers, Indeed - Matt Drudge reports that Larry Flynt claims he's obtained topless photos of rescued Iraq War veteran Jessica Lynch and plans to publish them in Hustler. MilitaryCorruption.com reports that the provocative shots were allegedly taken by comrades in a barracks before Lynch went to Iraq. Some former members of her unit reportedly tried to sell them to the Globe tabloid for $200,000 and were turned down flat because publishing them would be unpatriotic, low and despicable.