The Clamdigger's Daughter (1975) is an atypical Roberta Findlay soft-core. It is a moody melodrama set in Cape Ann, MA. Chris Jordan is the mousy daughter of a drunken clam digger, but is in love with the most eligible bachelor in town (played by porn star Eric Edwards). His father, by coincidence, is the one that ruined her father's life, and both fathers are against the marriage. Not that Edward's father is perfect, as he is having an ongoing affair with a young woman, Trudee Adle. Edwards is supposed to marry Kim Pope, one of his social equals.

When Jordan is raped by the church organist, the two elope to her aunt's place, which turns out to be a whorehouse. Meanwhile, her father, upset about her leaving, attacks a local stripper. Later, his attempt to murder Edward's father backfires. The story is essentially Romeo and Juliet, but much darker. Throw in some recitation of Anabelle Lee, and you pretty much have the movie. The uncredited stripper does full frontal. Jordan shows breasts and buns. Adle and Pope show breasts.

Findley again uses the Doris Wishman style of scene transition. Rather than pay for expensive optical effects, she cuts to an inanimate object (the statue of the Men That Go Down to the Sea in Ships) then to the next scene. The CD-R from Something Weird Video is not well-mastered at all, as it completely lacks contrast. This is not a feel good story, and none of the nudity and sex is at all erotic. The acting is heavy handed. Yet, it is not business as usual for Findlay. Most of the music was classical, with exception of a sea chanty. For fans of the era and genre, this is a curiosity worth seeing once. Others stay away. D+

Code 46 (2004):

 "Everyone thinks their kids are special. If all kids are special, it makes you wonder where the average adults come from."

The story of Code 46 takes place in an unspecified time in the future when the world is controlled by multinational corporations. There are two worlds: "inside", a nice, sterile, high tech environment which encompasses most of the world's important cities, and "afuera", the impoverished, unregulated world outside the cities. A fraud investigator has been sent from his office in Seattle to a factory in Shanghai to investigate some stolen "papeles" - a form of ID/passport/visa that everyone "inside" must have.

In order to perform his job responsibilities, the fraud investigator has been specially prepared by The Sphinx, a giant all-encompassing ruling body of some kind, which seems to include both corporate and national authority. He has been inoculated with an "empathy virus" which allows him to read other people's thoughts. He arrives in Shanghai and quickly determines who has smuggled out the papeles and why. Only one problem. He doesn't turn her in. He knowingly fingers the wrong suspect.

Why does this trusted, straight-laced investigator do this? Because the criminal is not a profiteer, but simply an extremely compassionate person who has passed out the stolen papers for humanitarian reasons. Since he is an empath, he makes a psychic connection with all that compassion, is overpowered by the goodness he finds inside of her, and falls in love. He spends a night with her, then has to return to Seattle because he has no further permission to stay in Shanghai. Attempts to contact her prove fruitless.

Needless to say, his investigation does no good whatsoever, the documents continue to be smuggled out of Shanghai, and his boss is more than a little irked that he closed a case by fingering the wrong suspect. He is sent back to Shanghai to clean up his mess. This time he resolves to turn in his lover, only to discover that she has mysteriously disappeared. Some further investigation reveals that she has committed a "Code 46 violation", and has been sent away to have an abortion and a convenient memory purge.

What is a Code 46 violation? It is procreation between people who are too similar genetically. Future society forbids this, fearing a repeat of horrible genetic mutations of the past, like the population of rural Kentucky or the European royal families. This can be a problem even in our time, but in this future world, babies are routinely created either from cloning or in vitro fertilization. Without knowing it, a man may be sleeping with his twin sister, for example. The investigator is able to determine that the aborted baby must be his own, and that therefore he must also have committed a Code 46 violation.

But this doesn't stop him from wanting to pursue his lover, and to find out the exact nature of their genetic link, no matter the cost.

There are a number of components necessary for a great science fiction film about the future: thought-provoking ideas, an imaginative look at future locales, and a good story.

Code 46 manages some of those things, but not all.

The ideas are certainly provocative. It would be an interesting film to attend with a movie club or maybe with a group of friends who like to talk through the concepts explored by films. I can see where this could be an excellent conversation starter for an evening to be followed by many bottles of wine in convivial company. Is society really moving in this direction? In the case of an increasing number of anonymous sperm donors and the possibility of cloning, how do we keep people from mating if they are nearly identical genetically? Will that require everyone to get permission from the state before producing children? Will we all speak the same language in the future - an English-based argot laced with words from other languages (especially Spanish)? Are we really separating into two worlds, one prosperous and sterile, the other more passionate, but also lawless, impoverished and primitive?

The vision of the future? Well, let's just say that director Michael Winterbottom was not working with a James Cameron budget here. In fact, the future looks exactly like the present. Although their future science has "empathy viruses" and doctors can erase very precise portions of your memory, there has been no improvement at all on the internal combustion engine. Everyone still drives around in cars. More depressing than that is the fact that they are driving the exact same cars we drive now. Not similar ones. The exact same ones. The rental cars are 2003 models, unchanged in any way. The director did manage to cover up his lack of budget in some very clever ways. He found some excellent futuristic-appearing locations in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Dubai, and London to represent the inside, and he found some impoverished areas of urban India and the desert to represent "afuera". A sense of the future is enhanced by occasional shots from security cameras.

Winterbottom also came up with some great atmospheric photography. An early morning shot of an Asian city with completely deserted streets. Helicopter shots monitoring a journey through the desert which is punctuated by encounters with wild camels and primitive nomads. Nighttime shots of frenetic urban streets. All of this was impressive, but obviously not from the future. The director did what he could with the money he had, but it wasn't enough.

A good story? Boy, I'll tell ya. There isn't much of a story here at all. The film's first scene includes word slides which explain the details of the dreaded code 46 itself. If you pay attention to those, as I did, you already know the whole story, and don't need to watch the movie at all. As soon as you realize that the investigator (Tim Robbins) is going to fall in love with his suspect (Samantha Morton), you know they are headed for a code 46 violation, and you know that Big Brother will not approve. You know that there must eventually be a "Luke, I am your father" moment between the lovers. Although you don't know their precise biological relationship, you can venture a reasonable guess that is just as good as the one the script offers. (OK, I admit I guessed wrong. The film's explanation was, in fact, more interesting than my guess.) Once you hear that the future's technology includes mind erasure, assuming you realize the film is less than half finished, you can figure out that it won't be the last time that process figures in the plot. And that's about it. I've basically spoiled the entire movie, even though I haven't told you anything at all, because there just isn't any more to it.

It is the arty kind of S/F movie, not the kind driven by action and plot. There are no chase scene or gunfights; nothing resembling an action scene. There are not even any raised voices or fast cuts, or anything else to speed up your pulse. Let's face it, there is a very good reason why a film with name stars never made it to as many as 80 theaters in the entire world. Cynical distributors, faced with a glut of product, felt that general audiences would not respond to this movie, and did not want to commit any screens to it. In the very few theaters where Code 46 got a chance, the cynics were proven correct.

So is it a good movie? I actually liked it. In fact I liked it quite a bit, but on balance I recommend it only for fans of S/F, and even then only if you can tolerate extremely glacial pacing and low energy, ala Solaris. Like me, many S/F fans are likely to enjoy the concepts enough to overlook the negatives. 

Everyone else - stay away. There's no plot, no action, and the future looks exactly like the present. The empathy and the memory cleansing and the universal ID cards may make it sound like a juicy story by William Gibson or Philip K Dick, but at its heart it's really just a thoughtful, slow, talky series of two person discussions about the relationship between individual freedom, science, and the State. It just so happens that those discussions occur in front of some impressive scenery.

• Samantha Morton (1, 2). Samantha's crotch-shot is the only nudity in a film that could be PG-13 without it. That inclusion was a strange decision, but one I applaud!

As you know, we pride ourselves on our theme days here in the fun House. Wednesday is Anything Can Happen Day. Friday is Talent Round-Up Day, and so forth. We like to think that nobody has ever had a similar idea. Anyway, Monday is traditionally 46 day, so we go from Code 46 to 2046 with our mailbox:

Mailbox:

I know you like Chinese ladies so here's the lovely Miss Zhang Ziyi. I know she's not really showing anything but this is probably the most we'll ever see. In case you didn't know, the lucky dude she's rolling around with is Tony Leung, who was the real cop in Infernal Affairs.

"an anonymous contributor"
 

• Zhang (1, 2, 3)

Other Crap:

• Asian post-quake tidal waves have killed at least 7,200. One geophysicist said the quake was so strong it even disturbed the Earth's rotation.
• Defensive wizard Reggie White is dead at 43  
• FilmJerk's indispensable Early Report for 12/26/04
• Meet the Fockers opens big. It grossed $44 million for the weekend, $68 million for the long weekend (W-Su), and totally swamped the competition. Relative to expectations, Fockers was way above the $32m prediction.
  • Fat Albert did slightly better than expected, opening at #2, grossing $13m versus a prediction of $12m.
  • Darkness opened in the number six slot and grossed $6m, despite the fact that it was not expected to crack the top 10. (I think a scary, effective trailer had something to do with that. It got me interested in the film.).
  • Scorsese's The Aviator came up about 25% short of expectations ($9.4 versus $12.5m)
  • The Phantom of the Opera came up way short ($4.2 versus $7.7), and barely cracked the Top 10, just edging the long-term holdover National Treasure for 10th place.
  • The Life Aquatic was right about on target with about $5 million in mid-level distribution.
  • The holdover films dropped more than expected in a crowded field. The predictions for Lemony Snicket ran $17-$22m, but it grossed only $12 million, probably based on some disappointing word of mouth (I know the kids in my family were not impressed). Oceans 12 also underperformed, grossing $9m versus predictions in the $12 range.
• France outlaws sexist and anti-gay insults. "The French parliament yesterday definitively adopted legislation that could lead to year-long jail terms for anyone found guilty of insulting homosexuals or women." In theory, this law could lead to the jailing of clergymen for quoting the Old Testament in their sermons! France now forbids insulting people on the basis of race, Jewishness, sexual preference, or female gender. It is still allowable to make fun of white, heterosexual, Christian Frenchmen!!
• Now this is basketball as it should be played. Some guys make baskets with a cheerleader - and she's the basketball.
• "Inside Deep Throat," a documentary about that picture's 'social impact' and 'cultural legacy,' will premiere at Sundance next month.
• 8.9-magnitude earthquake, centered in Sumatra, batters Southeast Asia and Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Man, it's gonna be a bad century for Fond du Lac. First this, then the meteor in 2029. Should be pretty good for the insurance salesmen, though.
• The Ten Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time.
  • My favorite: A Canadian Christmas with David Cronenberg (1986). Santa is exposed to a previously unknown virus after being attacked by a violent moose, causing him to develop a large, tooth-bearing orifice in his belly and a lustful hunger for human flesh, which he sates by graphically devouring Canadian celebrities on national television.
  • Second fave: Orson Welles and The Mercury Theater Present The Assassination of Saint Nicholas (1939)
• Christmas 'Round the World: "Is it wise for Americans to remain ignorant on the Christmas customs of our foreign neighbors? The answer, of course, is yes. And here's why."
• A White Christmas - for Victoria, Texas! We didn't get any snow here in Austin, but it was cold enough. Even as I write this, early Sunday morning, the temperature at the airport is 27. The forecast for tomorrow? Perfect golfing weather. 61 degrees, with a gentle southeasterly breeze! That's Texas.
• Oh-oh. Remember Asteroid MN4, which had a 1/300 chance of striking Fond du Lac, Wisconsin on April 13, 2029 with the force of a million Hiroshimas? Well, NASA has upgraded the probability of impact to 1 in 45! We better get Bruce Willis frozen, so he'll still be healthy by then.
• Rising costs force Snow White play to lay off three dwarves. Damn that creeping inflation!!! The Altmark Stendal theatre says it could afford only four dwarves for its Christmas rendition of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, which led to protests from theatre-goers who wanted to see all seven dwarves. Next year's play: "Snow White and one scale actor of below average height".
• I can usually figure it out, but in the case of this site, I have no idea whether this is satire or genuine tinfoil hattitude! I am leaning toward thinking it is serious.
  • "I invite you to consider the wicked lives of some of these moral degenerates - men like Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, Marx, Bill Clinton ..."
  • "Homosexuals are the perfect foot soldiers for the devil."
  • "The Democrats don't need an exclusive special homo group. Almost all active Democratic Party political professionals are bisexual and gay. Those who aren't are into other weird, abnormal sexual behavior — satanic sex, etc."

  The Democrats and Satanic sex? I don't see it.

  OK, maybe Carville.

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:

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 Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

Scene of the Year

Words, pictures, and vids from ICMS

I think "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979) doesn't need any introducing at all. Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep star, while JoBeth Williams (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped) ends up naked in bed with the Hoffmeister and has an embarrassing encounter (for her at least) with his little boy, who doesn't find it frightening that there's a naked women he doesn't know walking around in his house. But at least they have something in common: they both like fried chicken (pollo fritto).  

Logan's Run (1976)  

Jenny Agutter (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped) treats us to some mild nudity in 1976's sci-fi movie "Logan's Run" and doesn't require introducing either.

The Trojan Women (1971)

 "The Trojan Women" (1971) might very well have been the only time in her career that Greek actress Irene Papas (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped) took off her clothes, if there hadn't been a scan of her showing a breast in the Encyclopedia, but it doesn't state from which movie it could come. Irene was already 45 when this was filmed but still looking very healthy. She played parts in well known films like Zorba the Greek, The Guns of Navarone and Erendira. She was born in 1926 and is still working today.

Lady Oscar (1980)

Fans of Lucio Fulci horror/thriller movies may be familiar with British actress Catriona MacColl (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped). She starred in three of his movies: The House by the Cemetery, City of the Living Dead and The Beyond. Infortunately she kept her clothes on in all these films. However she showed off her natural breasts in Lady Oscar (1980), her third movie only.

All in all we've seen two British actresses, one American and one Greek and this is where this international contribution ends.

Today from the Ghost...video clips of "Braveheart" co-star Catherine McCormack in scenes from "Dangerous Beauty" (1998). On the surface, this looks like just another costume drama chick flick. Granted it is that, but it's also beautifully filmed, well acted, quite funny at times, chock full of nudity and a very entertaining flick over all...even for us dudes. Scoop and Tuna both liked it was well. Here are their reviews at Scoopy.com

• Catherine McCormack zipped .wmvs. Baring breasts and bum in a couple of love scenes. (1, 2, 3)

Today is another "Babe in Bondage" day as we take the old time machine all the way back to 1965 for a peek at Pat Barrington (who used the name Pat Barringer for this one) in scenes from "Orgy of the Dead".

Pat is tied to a pole for the whole movie and has her blouse torn open to reveal awesome cleavage in her exposed bra. This flick written by Ed Wood is rated by many as one of the worst movies of all time.

• Pat Barrington (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Scoops, here are a few things I have worked on the past couple of weeks.

First one is Adriana Sage in the adult film "Aria", starring Aria Giovanni of course. She provided the only hardcore moments.

The others are blonde babes. Stormy Waters is probably the best of them.

• Adriana Sage (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

• Stormy Waters in "Heat". Here she is gettin' it on, including a money shot or two. (1, 2, 3)

• Carmen Luvana doing it all in "Carmen Luvana Exposed".

• Cameron Cain, money shot 'caps from one of her early movie...all the way back in 2002. Scenes from the adult flick "Someone's Daughter".

"Night Scream" (TV) (1997)
Mystery starring former child star Candace Cameron Bure.

• Candace Cameron Bure: slight pokies, some cleavage.
• Ellie Harvey: legs.

"Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe" (1991)
Terminator knockoff starring guvanah Jesse 'The Body' Ventura. The movie had a topless stripper scene reshot to get a PG13 rating.

• Marjorie Bransfield: partial boob.
• Sarah James: fully clothed obligatory stripper.

"Nostradamus"
Convoluted murder mystery based around the 16th century seer.

• Joely Fisher: cleavage.
• Mandy Hochbaum: pokies.

"Tomcat: Dangerous Desires" (1993)
Frequently capped classic but here's someone new.

• Christine Lippa: bare butt then bush.

"Dawg" (2002) aka Bad Boy
Dennis Leary/Liz Hurley sex comedy. Lots of fully clothed sex but no nudity.

• Elizabeth Hurley: nice pokies.
• Brigitta Dau: bra and panties as dream girl stripper. Covered in white stuff in ultimate money shot (as chicks are concerned).
• Mia Cottet: bare back, she's supposed to be topless but in some frames her flesh-colored tube top is visible (especially in the blooper reel).
• Kim Pawlick: cougar cleavage.
• Maria Canals: brassiere gettin' it on in car.
• Alice Amter: tight t-shirt.
• Elaine Hendrix: fully clothed sex as porn star.

Rescue Me: episode Sanctuary
The is the season one finale of the Dennis Leary firefighter cable series. There was alot of sex and bare boobs and Leary cursing an Irish streak but not a single nipple sighting throughout the entire season.

• Paula Devicq: nice pokies.

Da Vinci's Inquest: episode Little Sister part one
This is the series premiere.

• Sophie Merasty: topless as morgue corpse.
• Sue Mathew: tight sweater and cleavage.
• Maria Herrera: cleavage as hooker.
• Maria Herrera: she's the uncredited topless morgue corpse in a later season three episode "Should Have Been a Priest".

Cold Squad: seasons three and four
Season four is just starting with Joely Collins as the new secretary.

• Tamara Craig Thomas: fully clothed sex in episode "Life After Death"
• Crystal Lowe: upclose and personal panty crotch shot as dead hooker in season three finale.
• Joely Collins: tight sweater in season four opener.

Mutant X: season one

• Lauren Lee Smith: more cleavage than usual in "Lazarus Syndrome".
• Danielle Hampton: fully nude but cgi special effects covering up her naughty bits in "Interface".

First Wave: season one
Cleaning up my harddrive before I start season two and three.

• Joely Collins: bare back and shoulders in "Undesirables.
• Jill Teed: partial boob and full moon skinnidipping in "Undesirables".
• Kathryn Nicholson: partial boob dressing in The Aftertime".
• Jennifer Copping: tight flimsy shirt as singer in "Melody".