Blood Mania (1970) is supposedly a horror thriller. The plot itself is nearly enough to make a trashy thriller. A doctor is treating his boss, who is now bedridden. The boss's strange oldest daughter is out to nail the doctor. The doctor has a girlfriend, and a blackmailer, who has been keeping the secret of the doctor's little abortion clinic in med school. The strange daughter kills the father with amyl nitrate so she can inherit his fortune, bail out the doctor, and live happily ever after.

When the will is read, the money all goes to a younger sister, and things start getting really strange. Maria de Aragon, as the strange daughter, shows breasts about every five minutes. Reagan Wilson as the girlfriend shows breasts and buns, before she screws the blackmailer then disappears from the story never to return. Vicki Peters, as the good sister, shows breasts and buns.

Efilmcritic said the following, "If it seems weird to focus mainly on a film's nudity, it's important to remember that the Skin is the ONLY thing worth seeing in this movie. Were the nudity removed, Blood Mania would retain the entertainment value of a used tea bag."

IMDb readers have this at 2.3 of 10. The film suffers from some of the worst acting I have ever seen, poor direction and editing, and awful camera work. I did get a belly laugh watching de Aragon trying to work up a head of steam for her big dramatic moment. This is enough to make you wonder who decides what films will get the DVD treatment. This is either a low C- as a bad movie, or an E, as it is pretty much inept, and fails as both a thriller and as horror.

Raw Nerve (1999)

Tuna and I  reviewed this film some time ago. (It's actually not too bad for a STV cop flick.) I took another look at it because Nicollete Sheridan has now become an "it girl", starring in Desperate Housewives and the famous NFL commercial.

• Nicolette Sheridan (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Fate (2003)

Read this review at the Movie House, because the three pictures are the only interesting thing about the film..

The three stars are Lee Majors, Philip Michael Thomas, and Michael Pare.

I'm guessing Corbin Bernsen was busy.

• Heather Hogan in the film
• Heather Hogan in The Making Of (you can see how the filmed the scene above - she had tape over all her naughty bits)
• Tamara Chandler (1, 2)

Gypsy 83 (2001)

The typical coming-of-age film goes like this:

(Some outsiders) fear being stuck in (typical rust belt or bible belt town) forever, trapped among (jocks, in-crowders, cheerleaders) who don't recognize their inner beauty. They take their only refuge in each other, and in maintaining a sarcastic posture toward everyone in their world. Since they can't remain high-school outsiders for life, they use (football, music, brains) to escape their dreary life. Whew! They really need a road trip. They set out for (New York, California) on a journey of self-discovery with some fellow outsiders, chasing some (idealistic dream). They meet many colorful people along the way, including role models as well as people who laugh at them and use them. They lose their virginity in literal and figurative ways. After considerable hardship, they (become a star, overcome personal fears, get accepted at Harvard), and find an adult world in which they belong. They look forward to a new life outside of (typical rust belt or bible belt town), somehow wiser for their travails.

The tone of the film will be some mixture of self-pity, sophomoric humor, and sentimentality, mixed to the taste of the director.

This film follows the formula completely. In the underlined areas, please insert: "Goths", "Sandusky", "in-crowders", "music", "Stevie Nicks impersonating contest", and "overcome personal fears" (with a hint of "become a star"). In the tone department, it is heavy on self-pity, spiced with sentimentality. Not much humor.

Sara Rue, star of TV's "Less than Perfect" plays the Grand Goth Gypsy, whose obsession with Stevie Nicks is the second most dominating factor in her psyche, second only to the emptiness left when her mother abandoned her to "become a star." Although overweight, 25 years old, and paralyzed by stage fright, she is still harboring her adolescent dreams of a singing career of her own. She makes her peregrinations to find the true Stevie scene and to seek word of her mom. She is companied by her gay goth friend, and together they pass uncomfortably through Middle America on their way to the Big Apple and The Night of 1000 Stevies (which is a real annual event). Along the way, Gypsy manages to be exploited sexually by an Amish guy, which certainly sounds like I made it up to make fun of the film, but is in fact exactly what happened!

Although not an especially good film, neither is Gypsy 83 a very bad one. It has its charms but, unlike more mainstream coming-of-age sagas, its appeal is limited to a fairly small audience. This story reinforces my belief that no matter how obscure your sub-culture, somebody will eventually make a film that really seems to capture your awakening from adolescence. If you lived in Red State America and were part of the Goth scene, or if you had a sexual orientation that didn't fit into the mainstream small town values of the place where you grew up, than you may find this film affecting.

Unfortunately for those who invested in this film, that target audience is so small that the film was made in 2001, was released in one theater, then took three years to move to DVD. The high score at IMDb is probably an indication that the only people who have seen the movie are those who were predisposed to like it and made an effort to seek it out. 80% of the voters have scored it a seven or higher! If it were seen by a larger and more heterogeneous group, it would probably be in the mid 5s.

• Sara Rue. Jiminy! Now THAT is a set of hooters. (1, 2)

Yesterday's Mystery Woman:

Scoop:

You've probably already been inundated with e-mails on this subject, but the "mystery woman" from Tuesday's query is Fawna MacLaren, and the movie is LOVER'S LEAP. Here's her IMDB entry:

http://imdb.com/name/nm0533702/

B. is correct that she's a babe, and her bathtub masturbation scene is a classic among bathtub masturbations scenes (a specialized subgenre if ever there was one....).

K.

Scoop's note: you can find some caps from that film in the Encyclopedia.
 

Other Crap:

• Ae Fond Kiss - Movie Trailer and Official UK and Ireland Film Website
• The R-rated trailer for the Russian comedy, You I Love. On their first anniversary, Vera comes home to discover her boyfriend Tim in bed with another man.
• Letterman's Top Ten Signs that Tom Brokaw doesn't give a damn any more. 
• Here's a behind-the-scenes clip from Spanglish
• Two more featurettes about Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
• Here's a new clip from 'Closer'. (And not a very good one!)
• A video clip from Fat Actress - and it's surprisingly funny. 
• Britney's Naughty Toxic Bits at Kontraband. Brit's video has all the right ingredients: no singing, no clothing.
• A video clip from Fat Actress - and it's surprisingly funny.
• The Daily Show looks at The Friday after Thanksgiving shopping.
• The Daily Show in the Great White North. "With it's tolerant society, low crime rate and free health care, Canada is hell for Conservatives. "
• The Daily Show's senior Kiev Bureau Chief Rob Corddry admits he has no business being Senior Kiev Bureau Chief.
• Jude Law stops by The Daily Show to talk about the heated competition for Sexiest Man Alive.
• Coach Tyrone Willingham was fired by Notre Dame on Tuesday after three seasons in which he failed to return one of the nation's most storied football programs to prominence. He had two years left on his contract. Notre Dame averaged 7-5 under Willingham, but they were thinking more in terms of national championships.
• Do Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings have low ceilings because he was short?
• (The Smoking Cap Gun) Nanny Sues Imus Over Ranch Wrangle : "A New York woman who briefly worked as a nanny for Don Imus has sued the radio host for wrongful termination, claiming she was canned for bringing a harmless cap gun and pocketknife with her during a trip last Thanksgiving to the family's sprawling New Mexico ranch. Nichole Mallette, 24, also claimed in her New York State Supreme Court lawsuit, a copy of which you'll find below, that she was defamed when Imus later announced on his program that he had been forced to 'disarm' his nanny, whom he labeled as dangerous and a 'terrorist.' "
• Star Wars roundup - all the news and gossip and spoilers as of Nov 30th.
• Ain't It Cool News gets a kick out of Godzilla: Final Wars
• Earthquake shakes Mount St. Helens - the new lava dome is roughly the size of an aircraft carrier
• Beleaguered Butch Davis is out as the head coach of the Cleveland Browns.
• Baywatch bombshell Pamela Anderson has urged women to follow her example by claiming their "inner slut"
• Play 20 Questions with an AI program.
• MAXIM ONLINE has a section dedicated to the hot new Hardee's girl, Cameron Richardson.
• First images from THE WAR OF THE WORLDS due next month.
• Martha Stewart eyeing a return in a reality show. It will be like the Apprentice. Six candidates come up with creative stock swindles. Winner gets to "the the rap" for Martha in the next investigation.
• The trailer for The Chorus (Les Choristes) RECIPE: Take a heaping helping of Dead Poets' Society. Stir in a pint of Fame. Film in French. Voila!
• Two more clips from Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
• The trailer for The Wedding Date. Debra Messing stars as Kat Ellis, a young woman who returns to her parents' London home for her sister's wedding and has to confront her ex-fiance, who dumped her two years before. In a desperate attempt to face the ordeal with dignity, Kat hires a top-drawer male escort (Mulroney) to pose as her new boyfriend, only to realize that pretend relationships can be more nerve racking than facing up to the truth.
• Here's the incredibly LOUD trailer for Man of the House.: "In 'Man of the House,' a story laced with both comedy and action, hard-edged Texas Ranger Roland Sharp (Tommy Lee Jones) is assigned to protect the only witnesses to the murder of a key figure in the prosecution of a drug kingpin -- a group of University of Texas cheerleaders. Sharp must now go undercover as an assistant cheerleading coach and move in with the young women - possibly the most terrifying assignment in his thirty-year career in law enforcement."
• Here's the first-ever teaser for Bewitched, the big screen Nicole Kidman riff on the hit TV series, directed by Nora Ephron. (The film is actually about making a revival of the TV series. Will Ferrell plays a washed-up actor who hopes for a comeback playing Darren.)
• (Borowitz) RATHER’S RESIGNATION BASED ON FALSE INFORMATION. The veteran CBS anchorman withdrew his resignation from the network’s evening newscast today, revealing that his decision to resign had been based on information that later turned out to be false. When he made the startling discovery, Mr. Rather said, “My face was redder than my Aunt Mabel’s rhubarb pie.”
• Astronomy Pic of the Day gives an incredibly edifying and beautiful satellite picture of lake effect snow.
• This week's arthouse darling: House of Flying Daggers - 87% positive reviews. Subtitled movie from the director of Hero. The consensus is the same as for every Chinese wire-fu movie these days: beautiful photography, beautiful score (surprisingly not by Tan Dun this time).
• This week's one and only mainstream new movie: Closer - 63% positive reviews.
• After all the ballots have been counted, Christmas with the Kranks checks in with 3% good reviews. Those three positive reviewers really should re-think their career choice!
  • This is NOT the worst reviewed movie of the year. Among the films with 30 or more reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, there were four with even lower scores, and two others just as bad. Here's the bottom five and ties: (1-t) National Lampoon's Gold Diggers - 0% (1-t) Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 - 0% (3-t) Twisted - 2% (3-t) Yu-Gi-Oh - 2% (5-t) Christmas with the Kranks - 3% (5-t) Godsend - 3% (5-t) The Cookout - 3%
• This week's Box Office predictions from the Weekend Warrior. Pretty easy to make the calls this week, because there are NO new movies in wide release. The only new film in the Top 10 is Closer, and that's opening small, on 460 screens. National Treasure is expected to hold the #1 spot again.
• The Sacred Cheese Sandwich visits a strip club - right here in Austin, Texas.
• We linked to this once before, but it's worth a second look. Shapely Polish chick walks naked through a wintry downtown. Amazingly, nobody seems to pay much attention, although it is obviously freezing cold outside. Loads slowly, even with broadband, but worth the wait.
• GALLUP analyzes a tricky one for the President: Roe vs Wade. President Bush will have to appoint new Supreme Court justices - and 80% of Americans favor abortion rights in at least some circumstances, yet Bush must feel some obligation to the religious conservatives that elected him. This may be the most divisive issue in America. 47% of self-identified liberals feel that abortion should be legal in all circumstances, compared to a mere 13% of self-identified conservatives.

Other Crap archives. May also include newer material than the links above, since it's sorta in real time.

Click here to submit a URL for Other Crap

MOVIE REVIEWS:

Words from Scoop.

.avi's from Shiloh.

.wmv files made by Scoop from Shiloh's .avi's.

NOTE: because of a unique combination of circumstances with the Windows media player and some substantial bandwidth theft, we will have to do all of our movie files in zip format. Left click on the files as you normally would to view a picture. When you get a choice, click on "save", and put it on your hard drive in the directory of your choice. UnZIP and play from there.

I know this is not especially convenient, but it allows the film clips to continue. I can protect .zip files from hot-linking in the same way I can protect still images. For some reason, if I protect .avis and .wmvs from hot-linking, they will not play in the Windows media player, and I can't get a satisfactory work-around. Perhaps I will find a better solution, but for now this new policy allows you to continue getting the movie clips you want to see, which is much preferable to my abandoning the clips altogether.

Perhaps these tips will help if you have trouble with the codecs for these movies:

Shiloh says:

FYI when I hypercam vids to make the file size smaller I use DivX MPEG-4 Fast-Motion for the video compressor, then I use virtualdub to compress the audio. The properties for the vids says the video codec:  DivX Decoder Filter & audio codec:  Morgan Stream Switcher which I'm not familiar with. When I compress the audio with virtualdub I use MPEG Layer-3.  A friend of mine told me about compressing the audio about (6) mos. ago. Like I said previously, only been capping for a year & a half & I'm no expert. Hopefully this info will help members with the proper codecs for my vids.

 

When I cap big brother's I use hypercam mostly & sdp & asfrecorder if the set up allows me. I stopped using camtasia cause the file sizes were always too big, could never figure out the process, over my head lol, plus it cost too much to buy in my opinion.

A reader says:

You mentioned that some users were having trouble with the videos on your site. There is a tool designed to determine what codec is needed for a video. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ Hope this is useful to you or your users.

Scoop says:

I made the .wmv versions of each video. The codecs for these: Windows Video V8, Windows Audio 9. The upside of these is that you know the codecs, and they'll play in the Windows Media Player. The downside is that they are slightly larger, and slightly lower quality.

Words, pictures, and vids from ICMS
 

Sessomatto (1973)

Time for bit of silly nudity or nude silliness if you wish in another one of those goofy 1970's Italian comedies. Laura Antonelli, who has a huge volume in the Encyclopedia although nothing from this movie, exposes breasts and buns in "Sessomatto" (1973) and I think some of these 5 clips might even trigger off a smile 31 years later.  

• Antonelli clip #1 (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped)
• Antonelli clip #2 (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped)
• Antonelli clip #3 (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped)
• Antonelli clip #4 (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped)
• Antonelli clip #5 (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped)

That's it for today.

Yours faithfully,

 ICMS

Today from the Ghost...new vids of Skinemax regular Nikki Fritz baring all in a scene from an episode of the late night cable series "Bedtime Stories".

In clip #1 she strips. In clips 2 and 3 she covers herself in suds and masturbates.

• Nikki Fritz zipped .wmvs (1, 2, 3)

Scoops,
Today we take the time machine all the way back to 1933. And what do we find there? Probably the most famous "Damsel in Distress" scene of all time, Fay Wray all tied up in "King Kong". No nudity of course and yes it's in black & white (for you younger folks out there, they used to make them that way).

• Fay Wray (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

On our way back to the present we stopped off in 1943 (still in black & white) and found another famous "Damsel in Distress". Here is Jane Russell in the classic "The Outlaw". Jane of course went on to become one of the all-time sex symbols in Hollywood.

• Jane Russell (1, 2, 3)

"Secret Things"
Only the French could make a movie that graphically shows two women masturbating, shows those same women masturbating one another, shows tons of other sexually charged scenes of various explicitness, yet contains enough of a good story that it not be considered outright porn.

2002's Secret Things tells of a erotic dancer who is fired from the bar she works at for arguing with the boss. When a bartender tries to defend her, she is also fired. As the women talk and try to console one another, they become friends and move in together as roommates. As they both search for new jobs, they both land jobs at the same company, and decide to further their careers by sleeping their way to the top, without actually getting emotionally involved with their victims.

Things proceed nicely, but eventually, they become slaves of their own success as the young and ruthless CEO finds their weakness and turns them into victims.

Looking past the blatant sex, this is an excellent and well-done drama with some very good character studies. It's also sexy as hell.

• Coralie Revel
• Sabrina Seyvecou
• Coralie Revel & Sabrina Seyvecou
• Blandine Bury

• Keeley Hawes, briefly baring her breasts.

• Rachael Stirling is topless in several scenes. Plus we also see a bit of bum in links 3 and 4. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

• Rachael Stirling and Keeley Hawes both topless in a lesbian love scene. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

About Fawna MacLaren in Lover's Leap: the equipment there was after-market. What you see in the Hefmag and the Hefmag videos is the original stuff.

-Brainscan

JAMIE LEE TOO OLD AND FAT FOR MOVIES
Time To Start Doing Voiceover Work - Jamie Lee Curtis told FemaleFirst.co.uk that she is retiring from movies to spend more time with her family. She said that's more important to her now, and besides, "I'm a 46-year-old fat woman." She said, "I know that the film business is incredibly cruel as you get older. My age is an important factor. I am not aging well. I don't want to see my face growing old on camera."