HARDWARE -- DVD review by porfle

 

 Originally posted on 10/14/09

 

The last time I watched HARDWARE (1990) was almost twenty years ago, and it was a washed-out, edited, pan-and-scan VHS version that, not surprisingly, didn't make much of an impression on me. Now, this hard-to-find gem has been lovingly restored and can be appreciated for the thrilling, visually-stimulating cyberpunk classic that it is. 

 Director Richard Stanley's sci-fi thriller has an incredibly simple story with gobs of dystopian goodness layered onto it. In a scorched world where civilization is in shambles and limited nuclear warfare has spread destruction and radiation over the land, a beautiful young artist named Jill (Stacey Travis) ekes out a living making junk-sculptures in her spacious apartment. 

Her on-again, off-again boyfriend Mo (Dylan McDermott), an ex-military scavenger with a mechanical hand, runs across the scattered pieces of a strange robotic device and brings them to Jill for use in her artwork. But when this prototype MARK 13 war-droid reassembles itself and goes on the attack, Jill and Mo and everyone else within killing distance are in for a really rough night. 

 Looking much more opulent that its budget (less than one and a half million dollars) would suggest, HARDWARE's harsh world is very well-realized and convincing. Some location shooting in Morocco bookends the film with some great desert exteriors, while the interiors are a triumph of production design. Jill's apartment in particular is endlessly interesting to look at and the retro-modern computer gadgetry that can be found everywhere has a clunky, jury-rigged quality. 

While much of the film's color scheme is red, black, and rust, the lighting within the apartment is as rich and varied as in Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA or the color comics in an old Warren horror magazine. 

Refreshingly free of digital technology (there's even an old-fashioned glass matte in one shot), the effects for HARDWARE prove how entertaining and satisfying it is to see real things really happening in front of the camera. Imaginative editing and camera angles give us just enough of an idea of the MARK 13's movements and general appearance while maintaining its mystery. Stunts, fire gags, and other assorted mayhem keep the excitement level high, especially with Stacey Travis doing most of the physical stuff herself. 

 

 

 Old-school gore effects are on the menu as well, most of which are seen here for the first time in the restored edition. This includes a nifty bisection as one character is cut clean in half by an errant safety door. Another hapless victim, Jill's lecherous peeping-tom neighbor Lincoln (William Hootkins), has a face-to-face encounter with the MARK 13 in which he literally goes to pieces. Hootkins, whose long list of memorable characters includes Porkins in STAR WARS and slimeball cop Eckhardt in Tim Burton's BATMAN, almost steals the show as the bloated pervert who drools over Jill through a telescope and later forces himself into her apartment. His jaunty rendition of "The Wibbly-Wobbly Song" is a delightful lead-up to his horrible demise. 

As mentioned above, much of HARDWARE's look seems inspired by Dario Argento and other Italian directors (SUSPIRIA in particular comes to mind during several scenes), while Stanley himself mentions such influences as ROBOCOP, TERMINATOR, THE EVIL DEAD, SOYLENT GREEN, WESTWORLD, and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE II. His camera is beautifully mobile and the barebones story is merely an excuse to indulge in loads of colorful stylistic fun. 

Stanley really seems to enjoy shooting the expressive Travis in imaginative ways as she brings all the intensity and physicality she can muster to her role (her two nude scenes are filmed with particular flair). Hardly an indestructible super-heroine, Jill runs the gamut of panic, terror, and despair while suffering as much physical abuse as DIE HARD's John McLane, until finally she gets mad enough to fight back with everything she's got. 

 Dylan McDermott's "Mo" (short for "Moses", we discover) is a stalwart but believable flawed hero. John Lynch is very good as his friend "Shades", a space shuttle maintenance worker who secretly carries a torch for Jill and must come to her aid even though he's just dropped a tab of some really intense acid. Iggy Pop can be heard as radio D.J. "Angry Bob" while Motorhead's Lemmy appears briefly as a motorboat taxi driver. The rest of the cast is well-chosen right down to the smallest roles. 

The evocative original score by Italian-film veteran Simon Boswell (PHENOMENA, DEMONS 2), which sounds alternately prog, New Age, and metal, is augmented by some great songs by Iggy Pop, Ministry, Motorhead, and especially Public Image, Ltd.'s "The Order of Death" ("This is what you want, this is what you get"). Rossini's "Stabat Mater" accompanies a particularly psychedelic death-by-injection sequence. 

 

 

Severin Films has done a really nice job with this 2-disc DVD. In 1.85:1 widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 surround sound, the picture and sound quality are very good. Director Stanley does an informative commentary track with the nudging of interviewer Norman Hill. "No Flesh Shall Be Spared" is a lengthy documentary with all-new cast and crew interviews which covers the history of the film in detail, including why it's been so criminally neglected over the years. Stanley also discusses the aborted HARDWARE 2 in an eight-minute segment. "Incidents in an Expanding Universe" is a 43-minute early Super 8mm version of HARDWARE which, while boring, is interesting to take a run through. The same goes for two more of Stanley's shorts, "Rites of Passage" and 2006's "The Sea of Perdition." Deleted and extended scenes round out the second disc. 

Alternately suspenseful, horrific, tragic, satirical, noirish, and downright funny (Jill inadvertently morphs into a bat-wielding martial arts character in one scene), HARDWARE is a real treasure for sci-fi and action fans which has finally been unearthed and restored to full power. It's high time for this exhilarating cinematic joyride to take its rightful place among the genuine gonzo classics of the genre.

 

DOWNSIZING -- Blu-ray/DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 3/31/18

 

For a movie that I originally thought was going to be a lightweight sci-fi comedy--sort of a modern-day THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN, or a variation on HONEY, I SHRANK WHATEVER--director/co-writer Alexander Payne's DOWNSIZING (2017) starts out as a fun indulgence and then, before you know it, develops into something much more substantial and meaningful.

The premise is instantly intriguing as scientists create a way to shrink humans to action-figure size, which will both greatly increase their financial wealth (little stuff costs a lot less) and decrease their negative collective impact upon the global eco-system. 

The actual shrinking part is where DOWNSIZING offers viewers the most enjoyable wallow in the story's sci-fi potential. We follow everyman Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig) through the process after they've gone through much soul-searching over this major (and permanent) change in their lives, submitting themselves to what amounts to a fascinating and suspenseful shrinking sequence inside a cold, impersonal laboratory environment.

This part of the movie is filled with wonderful sights such as tiny people traveling by bus or airplane in seperate sections with tiny seats, interacting with their fellow giant-sized alumni at a class reunion, etc. 

Naturally the effects are first-rate--with CGI currently at so advanced a stage it would practically be a disgrace if they weren't--giving the illusion a sense of dreamlike reality that's irresistible.

It's right around this point, however, that the story takes a more serious turn when something jarringly distressing happens to Paul.  He's suddenly left in his tiny new home in a tiny new city without a tiny wife, and facing the prospect of a lonely, meaningless tiny new life.

With Paul's arrival in the spotlessly clean mini-metropolis, the film shifts from the "ooh, ahh" sense-of-wonder of its premise to more down-to-earth social and interpersonal matters. 

We see Paul stumbling through the singles' scene until he runs into his almost freakishly outgoing new neighbor Dusan (an ebullient Christoph Waltz) who opens up a whole new world of experience on the wild side of life.

As Paul tastes the bohemian lifestyle he's brought back down to earth by Dusan's impishly abrasive housekeeper Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau), a Vietnamese political refugee who was force-shrunken by her government and shipped out of the country in a TV box, losing a leg in the process. 

Ngoc introduces Paul to the lower class of little people on the fringes of small society, giving him a sense of purpose when she shows him what a positive impact he can have on their lives.

While all of this is going on, Paul's new environment becomes so familiar that it gradually loses its miniature charm and starts to feel like the real world apart from the occasional giant-sized reminder.

The simple premise also gives way to a more political undercurrent that will result in Paul experiencing an even more drastic, life-changing event when he encounters the original downsized colonists and their elaborate plan to abandon the doomed outer world for a new life underground.  This is in addition to even more social concerns about how "normal" sized people begin to regard the ever-growing "small" population.

It's deep stuff--not excessively so but enough to provide ample food for thought until, before we realize it, DOWNSIZING has transcended its simple, lighthearted premise and evolved into almost an epic of emotional and philosophical import.  Yet this remains grounded by its small personal stories, not the least of which is an unexpectedly sweet sort of romance between Paul and Ngoc. 

Alexander Payne's deliberately subtle direction gives the cast a lot of room to excell, which they do. Damon has the "regular guy" thing nailed, while Waltz gets to be as flamboyantly outgoing as I've seen him.  Hong Chau is a delight as Ngoc, her flighty exterior masking both inner pain and a life-affirming resolve.

Cult favorite Udo Kier appears as Dusan's ship captain friend who still sails tiny ships that he has Fed-Ex'd to various bodies of water around the world. Kristen Wiig's part is small, but she makes the most of it.

Paramount Home Entertainment's Combo Pack includes the film on both Blu-ray and DVD discs, with access to a digital copy as well.  The DVD contains only the feature film in standard definition, while the Blu-ray has it in HD with the following featurettes: "Working with Alexander", "The Cast", "A Visual Journey", "A Matter of Perspective", "That Smile", and "A Global Concern."

I was initially dubious of DOWNSIZING's running time of two hours and fifteen minutes, but that was when I thought it was just going to be a comedy.  As it became sort of an epic, albeit a rather downsized one, that time was well filled. 


DOWNSIZING DVD  The DVD is presented in widescreen enhanced for 16:9 televisions with English 5.1 Dolby Digital, French 5.1 Dolby Digital, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital and English Audio Description and English, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles.  The disc includes the feature film in standard definition.

Street Date:      March 20, 2018 (4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD)    March 6, 2018 (Digital)
U.S. Rating:    R for language including sexual references, some graphic nudity and drug use
Canadian Rating: 14A, nudity, coarse language

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I AM DIVINE -- DVD review by porfle

 Originally posted on 4/2/14

 

I can't remember where I first heard about "Pink Flamingos" and its outrageous drag-queen star Divine--probably Danny Peary's book "Cult Movies"--but back in 1981 when I got my first VCR and started ordering movies on tape (owning a movie on VHS in those days was both exciting and expensive) that infamous John Waters film was one of them. 

And it didn't disappoint.  Outrageous?  The crudely-filmed paean to filth oozed with one outrage after another, culminating in Divine's most unforgettable act ever--eating dog poop, for real, right there in the final closeup. How, I wondered, does a person get  to that point as an actor, as a personality, and as a human being?  I knew quite a bit about the movie, but who was Divine?

I AM DIVINE (2013), a documentary by filmmaker Jeffrey Schwarz ("Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story"), sets out to answer this question in entertaining and fairly informative fashion.  With friends and acquaintances supplying the voiceover along with archival comments from Divine, we get the straight story (so to speak) along with tons of film and video footage presented in a pleasing animation-enhanced visual style. 

Being familiar as most of us are with Divine the flamboyant star (to put it mildly), my main interest was finding out about the person behind the character.  I AM DIVINE satisfies this curiosity by telling us the story of a lonely, introverted boy named Harris Glenn Milstead, whose childhood in Baltimore was a daily ordeal of getting mocked and beaten up for being different. 

Not openly gay--that would come later--Glenn was, as his family doctor warned his mother Frances,  a very effeminate boy.  Besides attending Sunday School, his interests lie in hairstyling, clothes, and, as he discovered while preparing to attend a costume party with his then-girlfriend Diane Evans, dressing up like a girl. 

This would later lead to his entry in various drag contests,  but while the competition busied themselves trying to emulate female appearance and behavior, Glenn's goal was to exaggerate it to the extreme. He didn't want to be a woman, but a bizarre caricature of one which would allow him to flaunt his own suppressed personality traits in public with no inhibitions. 

In a low-key,  matter-of-fact style, this film guides us through the various milestones of Glenn's life including his fateful meeting with aspiring underground filmmaker John Waters when both were teenagers.  Rare photographs and film footage recount the evolution of the Divine character, a collaboration between Glenn, John Waters, and makeup man Van Smith, and his appearance in early Waters films such as "The Diane Linkletter Story", "Mondo Trasho", and "Multiple Maniacs."  It was Smith who gave Divine his most distinctive feature--the partially-shaved hairline with grotesquely exaggerated eyebrows and eye makeup. 

Clips from Waters' early magnum opus "Pink Flamingos" include a behind-the-scenes view of the celebrated dog-poop finale in which they were forced to follow the dog around for hours waiting for it to perform as planned.  The documentary cuts away at precisely the fateful moment, presumably in order to avoid an X-rating, but it's still interesting hearing Divine and others talk about what it was like doing it and the effect it had on audiences at the time.  (As for me,  I can no longer watch the actual scene without gagging.)

Later, as one might guess, Divine would come to view such infamy as both a blessing and a curse which hindered his aspirations as an actor.  Meanwhile, however, we see his meteoric rise to underground super-stardom and cult worship with smash international appearances as a disco singer and stage actor. 

He also enjoyed subsequent successes in Waters' "Female Trouble" (described as the filmmaker's "Gone With the Wind") and later entries into the mainstream such as "Polyester" with Tab Hunter, the wildly popular "Hairspray" with Ricki Lake, and a non-Waters cult comedy-western "Lust in the  Dust" with Hunter and Lainie Kazan.

Inevitably, the documentary begins to reveal how overindulgence in drugs (he was a self-described "pot head") and food, along with a generally unhealthy lifestyle, would put Divine on the road to an early demise.  The tragic irony is that this occurs just as his career is hitting its peak and he has made a happy reconciliation with his parents.  Frances Milstead's own wistful recollections of her son Glenn give I AM DIVINE much of its heart and allow us to see the human being behind Divine's garish fascade.

John Waters fills in a lot of the blanks with his own personal stories, as do Divine friends and co-stars Mink Stole, Susan Lowe, Diane Evans, Ricki Lake, Tab Hunter, Lisa Jane Persky, and several others.  Among those appearing in archival footage are David Lochary, Van Smith, and Edith Massey. Several interview clips of Glenn Milstead himself reveal him to be a thoughtful, soft-spoken man who wanted to be accepted on his own rather than being forever identified with his fictional counterpart. 

The DVD from Wolfe Video is widescreen with 5.1 and 2.0 sound.  Subtitles are in English.  Extras include a commentary track featuring director Schwarz, producer Lotti Pharriss Knowles, and actress Mink Stole, along with trailers for this and other gay and lesbian-related films from Wolfe Video.

With copious amounts of footage showcasing Divine's wilder side, including shaking his massive flab onstage in halter tops and G-strings, famously getting raped by a giant lobster in "Multiple Maniacs", and (my favorite) strutting his stuff down the main drag of Baltimore in "Pink Flamingos" while actual bystanders gape in open-mouthed astonishment, I AM DIVINE should satisfy viewers who are interested only in the more freakish aspects of the immortal underground star's persona.  But its main accomplishment for me is the non-sensationalistic way in which it presents Harris Glenn Milstead as a basically decent person who was loved by many and fondly remembered by many more.

MUSCLE BEACH PARTY (1964) -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

 Originally posted on 5/19/21

 

Currently re-watching: MUSCLE BEACH PARTY (1964), the predictably meat-headed sequel to 1963's raucous romp BEACH PARTY. As the title suggests, it's the same frothy free-for-all only this time with muscles.

The muscles are supplied by a group of strongmen led by Jack Fanny (Don Rickles in a spoof of gym maven Vic Tanny), whose star beefcake, Flex Martian, is played by "Mission: Impossible" and "Police Squad!" regular Peter Lupus under the name "Rock Stevens."

Spoiled rich girl Julie (Italian beauty Luciana Paluzzi, later to play evil Fiona Volpe in the James Bond epic THUNDERBALL) spots Flex from her nearby yacht, is impulsively smitten, and orders her obsequious business manager S.Z. (Buddy Hackett) to purchase the entire strongman squad from Jack Fanny. Deals are made, contracts are signed, and then...

 

...fickle Julie falls in love with Frankie, breaking Flex's heart and igniting the usual jealous tiff between Frankie and girlfriend Annette that will have them at odds for the rest of the movie.

All of this is set against the same milieu as the previous film, with a bunch of vacationing teens living in ramshackle beach houses and springing into action with every fervent cry of "Surf's up!"

Returning are John Ashley as handsome smoothie Johnny, Jody McCrea as the brain-dead Deadhead, Candy Johnson as dancing dervish Candy, and various other somewhat familiar faces amongst the bikini-clad beach bums. 

 

Cute blonde Valora Noland's character name has been changed here from "Rhonda" to "Animal" (she would later pop up in John Wayne's THE WAR WAGON and the "Patterns of Force" episode of "Star Trek"). Also on hand once again are guitar-twanging Dick Dale and his Del-Tones, and Morey Amsterdam as kooky club owner, Cappy.

Chipper pop singer Donna Loren makes her debut in the series along with burgeoning superstar Little Stevie Wonder singing "Happy Street." (He'll share the marathon closing credits with Candy.) Future "Grizzly Adams" star Dan Haggerty, sans beard and long hair, is unrecognizable as one of the strongmen, Biff.

Conspicuous by their absence this time are Harvey Lembeck's Eric Von Zipper and his cycle stupids, although one female member, Alberta Nelson, returns as part of the Jack Fanny camp. 

Annette's hair-trigger jealousy and constant pressure on free-spirited Frankie to settle down and get married are just as tiresome as ever.

Still, the bickering lovebirds each get to croon a few pleasantly sappy love songs, with Frankie also delivering a real ear-bending banger in Cappy's club that gets the joint rocking.

Dick Dale proves that he and the Del-Tones are much better suited to cool surf-rock instrumentals when their attempts at lyrics about the surfing life evoke deep, rumbling groans. 

 

There's no fast-paced, colorful chase sequence this time, but the cartoony action of a no-holds-barred brawl between surfers and strongmen in Cappy's club sorta makes up for it.

This is topped off by an appearance by none other than the great Peter Lorre, who, along with Vincent Price (BEACH PARTY) and Boris Karloff (BIKINI BEACH), was currently under contract with American-International.

Semi-serious scenes (the gang rejects Frankie when he announces he's hooking up with sugar-mama Julie) clash with the unabashedly cartoony and often surreal  nonsense that makes up the bulk of the film, all leavened with heaps of bad rock and roll (some co-written by Brian Wilson) and numerous old school comics adding their seasoned silliness to the usual youthful antics to make MUSCLE BEACH PARTY a dizzyingly dumb distraction for the easily amused.

 

(Note: this is the one that my big brother and his friends were going to see at the theater and I wanted to go but he wouldn't take me with him, so I started crying and Mom made him take me. It was the classic case where Mrs. Cleaver made Wally and Eddie take Beaver to the movies with them. So I got to see "Muscle Beach Party" at the theater when it came out and had a wonderful time!)

MONDO CANNIBAL -- DVD review by Porfle

Originally posted on 11/14/14

 

When famous TV personality Grace Forsyte's ratings start to plunge, so does her integrity--leading to a desperate attempt to boost viewership by taking a film crew into the jungles of South America to record the most horrible atrocities she can find amongst savage tribes of (gasp!) flesh-eating cannibals!

Thus, Italian exploitation director Bruno Mattei (working under the name "Vincent Dawn"), responsible for such films as RATS: NIGHT OF TERROR, WOMEN'S CAMP 119, CALIGULA'S PERVERSIONS, and SCALPS, enriches the world of cinematic art with this offering entitled MONDO CANNIBAL (2004, Intervision Picture Corp.), known also as "Cannibal World", "Horror Cannibal 2", "Cannibal Holocaust 2", and "Cannibal Holocaust: The Beginning." Needless to say, it's about cannibalism.

The "Mondo" angle is a bit misleading, however, since this is neither an actual "Mondo Cane"-type documentary nor a mockumentary, although there's one scene near the beginning that looks real enough. Grace (played by Helena Wagner) and her boss, the TV network president, are viewing footage of what's purported to be actual cannibals preparing a corpse for feasting, and it looks like the real thing--disgustingly so--although it might simply be a prelude to a crude cremation.

Still, it's the one part of the movie that you won't want to watch while eating a nice, drippy, all-meat pizza or a steaming bowl of goulash. In other words, it's wicked grotty, innit.

The rest of the movie consists of Grace and her crew on an increasingly wacky jungle adventure filming fake natives running around killing each other with rubber clubs and feasting on the bloody entrails of their victims like a bunch of freaked-out "fast-moving" zombies.

The grossest thing about these scenes (and their rudimentary but fun gore SPFX) is wondering what the hell is that stringy slop the energetic extras are shoving into their mouths with such ravenous glee--it looks like spaghetti mixed with something somebody dug out of a dumpster behind a butcher shop.

Recording all this horror eventually isn't enough for Grace and her gang, who before long are in the thick of the carnage themselves as they attack a village and set fire to the huts, which are filled with screaming natives, while gleefully raping and massacring everyone in sight.

This rampant savagery is a weird and sudden change for Grace's environmental-advocate partner Bob Manson (Claudio Morales)--supposedly the "conscience" of the group--and her technical crew including cute blonde Cindy (Cindy Matic), whose main purpose on the expedition is to add to the film's brief nudity quotient.

Meanwhile, back in civilization, the TV executives (with the sole exception of one gray-haired bigwig with a weak stomach) are, to coin a phrase, "eating it all up" as the ratings skyrocket.

MONDO CANNIBAL is surprisingly competent in the technical department, with some nice location work including lovely shots of what is supposed to be Hong Kong (although the credits state that this was filmed entirely in the Phillipines). One of the funniest parts of the film is the title at the beginning of this sequence: "Hong Kong: Some Mouths Before..."

Performances are fair to, well, fair, but what star Helena Wagner lacks in finesse she makes up for with pure wire-taut intensity. Her efforts and those of the rest of the cast are hampered by bad dubbing and some jarringly dumb dialogue that adds to the perverse entertainment value.

The main drawback is that much of the earlier part of the film is just plain boring. Things definitely pick up later on, however, when the story starts edging its way over the top before spilling all the way over into a bloodbath of goofy gore and even goofier plot twists.

The DVD from Intervision Picture Corp. is in full frame with Dolby Digital stereo sound. No subtitles. The only bonus feature is a trailer.

In case you haven't gleaned as much from my description already, MONDO CANNIBAL isn't exactly the sort of entertainment to accompany your next Martha Stewart-style dinner soirée. But if you're in the mood for some severely whacked-out ultra-gore goodness packed with psychotic sadism and lacking any sense of decency whatsoever, then this should serve as a suitably sordid main course.

IT'S A BIKINI WORLD (1967) -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 5/31/21

 

Currently rewatching: IT'S A BIKINI WORLD (1967), a late entry in the "beach party" genre and one of several imitations of the official American-International Pictures series with Frankie and Annette.

Already-established AIP beach movie stars Deborah Walley (BEACH BLANKET BINGO) and Tommy Kirk (PAJAMA PARTY) are the Frankie and Annette equivalents here, with Deborah playing independent girl Delilah hitting the beach for summer vacation, and Tommy as local lothario Mike, who takes one look and decides to add her to his stable of bikini babes.

Finding her less than receptive to his manly charms and overhearing her desire for a more intellectual type, Mike dons a pair of glasses and disguises himself as his imaginary nerdy twin brother Herbert. 

 

Delilah takes an instant liking to the mild-mannered bookworm and all is well...until, of course, Mike inevitably falls for Delilah and must figure out how to reveal his true identity to her.

The film begins with an awesome main titles sequence in which scenes of teens frolicking on the beach are freeze-framed and transformed into comic-book art. Production values are just a tad chintzier than the AIP's, but locations and photography are pretty much on par.

Energetic performances add to the film's breezy ambience, as does a sprightly Mike Curb score. (This, despite Walley and Kirk reportedly hating the film and considering it a low point in their careers.) The romantic complications are always played lightly and for laughs, and several colorful action scenes are brisk and fun.

 

 

These consist of a series of races held as publicity stunts by beatnik enterpreneur Daddy (the great Sid Haig channeling "Big Daddy" Roth) to promote his lines of brand-name surfboards, skateboards, and even race cars. Delilah, with training by Herbert, competes in each against the arrogant Mike, unaware that he and Herbert are one and the same.

This series of races keeps the film moving at a fast pace when not focusing on the odd love triangle between Delilah, Mike, and Herbert. There are also several scenes taking place in Daddy's monster-themed nightclub, complete with music by the likes of Eric Burdon and the Animals, The Toys, The Gentrys, and The Castaways.

Without an established cast of characters, we don't get the feeling of comradery that exists among the AIP beach party gang. In fact, the only other teen characters we meet are Mike's not-so-bright friend Woody (played amiably by "Monster Mash" legend Bobby "Boris" Pickett) and his girlfriend Pebbles (Suzie Kaye, WEST SIDE STORY, CLAMBAKE).

 

 

Popping up here and there in the cast are Jim Begg (THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN), Carolyn Brandt (RAT PFINK A BOO BOO), and Lori Williams of FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! fame.

Scenes from Roger Corman's AIP horror flick ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS also pop up during a movie theater scene (with Woody acting as the clueless third wheel during Herbert and Delilah's movie date) due to the fact that AIP picked this movie up for distribution from the smaller company Trans American Films.

Of note is the fact that this film eschews the official series' tendency toward total cartoony farce and surrealism, as well as characters suddenly breaking out into song.

 

 

It presents instead a more traditional sitcom-style comedy which, despite its exaggerated characters and situations, might actually take place in the real world.

Direction is capably handled by co-writer Stephanie Rothman, who would go on to helm such exploitation staples as THE STUDENT NURSES, TERMINAL ISLAND, and THE WORKING GIRLS.

Surprisingly fun for such a lightweight "beach party" clone, IT'S A BIKINI WORLD should satisfy those with a soft spot for the Frankie and Annette beach pictures which had pretty much run their course. While certainly a lesser effort, it's a pleasantly amusing diversion nevertheless.

Is It A Christmas Story? Read "LIVE FREELY OR DIE HARDLY" And Decide For Yourself!

Here's a couple of things a lot of people don't know about the classic Bruce Willis action flick DIE HARD.  

 

One, it really happened. Two, John McClane, the NYPD cop portrayed by Willis in the film, wasn't by himself during this amazing adventure because I, too, was there. That's right--I have totally been cheated out of my rightful place in cool action-movie history by being left out of that stupid movie. So now, at long last, I have decided to set the record straight and recount the thrilling details of my incredible exploits during the great Nakatomi Tower hostage crisis so that the world will have yet another reason to admire me for how awesome I am.




What happened was, I had gotten out of the elevator on the wrong floor during my search for the secret office of a fly-by-night back-alley bikini waxing technician named Wilbur Cranflanflan. I wasn't really interested in getting a bikini wax, but I'd just lost a bet with a friend of mine who insisted that there were only nine Bradys in "The Brady Bunch" (including Alice), while I was certain that there were at least five or six hundred.



I mean, who knew that they reused the same ones for every episode? You don't reuse the same hypodermic needle when you're giving out flu shots, and it seems only logical to me that the safety requirements for proper sterilization should extend to the individual Bradys as well. But apparently Sherwood Schwartz didn't share my concern, so, long story short, I was obliged to get a bikini wax from this Wilbur Cranflanflan, who, despite his silly name, had been highly recommended to me by my personal trainer, Biff.



As it turned out, I was in the wrong building anyway, but I noticed that there was a party under way when the elevator doors opened and, party animal that I was in my reckless youth, I quickly jumped in and started to mingle. People began staring at me right away, which I attributed to both my stunning good looks and the fact that I wasn't wearing any pants due to my impending bikini wax. "Please try to control yourselves, girls," I said modestly. "There's only one of me to go around." Wary of the growing sexual tension roiling within the female inhabitants of my vicinity, I slipped into an office and came face-to-face with Detective John McClane, who was walking around on the carpet barefoot, making fists with his feet. "Fists with your feet," he muttered with amusement.



I held up my right hand in the traditional Apache greeting. "How, Fists With Your Feet," I said. "My name is porfle, but my Native American name is 'Dances Like Jeff Goldblum.' Are you waiting to get a bikini wax, too?"



Suddenly, the sound of gunfire erupted from the main ballroom, followed by piercing screams! When I finally stopped screaming, McClane (as he preferred to be called, I discovered later) grabbed me by the collar and we ducked into a nearby stairwell. "Terrorists!" he cried. "I have to stop them!"



"And I have to find Wilbur Cranflanflan!" I added breathlessly as we ran upstairs to a floor that was still under construction. McClane paced around nervously, trying to decide what to do next, while I gaped in awe at all the cool power tools that were just laying around waiting for me to play with them. There was even an official orange hardhat for me to wear! I barely noticed when McClane picked up a nearby phone and started trying to contact the police, because I was in the process of hefting a massive circular saw that I'd just flicked on and was sawing my way through several stacks of expensive imported lumber along with various items of brand new office furniture.



"CONSTRUCTION WORKER PORFLE ON THE JOB!" I screamed in giddy delight over the ear-splitting din as the air was filled with billowing clouds of sawdust. Momentarily distracted by McClane's frantic attempts to make himself heard over the racket, I sawed my way right through one of those fancy boardroom tables and neatly bisected the telephone. McClane stood there dumfounded as the severed cord dangled from the receiver he was holding to his ear. But before he could thank me or whatever he was going to say, there came the sound of footsteps quickly approaching the room. It was the terrorists!



McClane dived under a table. "DUCK!" he shouted.



"WHERE?" I cried, glancing around. That's just what we needed in a fix like this, I thought--some stupid duck flying around!



At that moment, a huge, blonde German guy with a machine gun leapt into the doorway, his face twisted with rage. I wheeled around in surprise and let go of the circular saw, which flew across the room and landed right on the guy's foot. He barked in pain and started hopping around on his other foot, unleashing a stream of German cuss words that sounded even dirtier than the American ones, while McClane seized the opportunity to run up behind him and hit him over the head with a large potted plant. The German guy fell back against the wall and slid to the floor, the plant still perched decoratively on his head.



A sudden thought struck me. "Omigosh! What if THAT'S Wilbur Cranflanflan?"



McClane glared at me, trying to catch his breath. "Who the hell's Wilbur Cranflanflan?"



"He's the guy that this whole thing is all about!" I shot back, rolling my eyes. Then, while a puzzled McClane processed this information, I began to formulate a plan. We would crawl around in the air ducts and climb up and down the elevator shafts until we found a way to blow up the whole building, and then everything would be okay. I quickly relayed this plan to McClane, who gaped at me in sheer disbelief. I think my cool plan had totally astounded him!



Suddenly, a cruel but snidely sophisticated voice came from behind us. We spun around in unison to find a tall, dapper gent with a Van Dyke beard backed by a gang of vicious-looking henchmen with machine guns. "So," he said to McClane in an oily European accent, "you must be the 'cowboy' who has been running around trying to...how do you say it...'throw a monkey wrench' into my nefarious scheme."



McClane stood up straight and coolly met the man's gaze with an insouciant smirk. "And you," he said slowly, relishing the moment, "must be Wilbur Cranflanflan."



The man's smug look wilted. "No, I'm Hans Gruber," he said uneasily. "Who the hell is Wilbur Cranflanflan?"



"There," I volunteered, pointing to the unconscious guy with the potted plant sticking out of his head. "That's Wilbur Cranflanflan."



"No, he isn't," Gruber frowned. "That's my henchman, Karl."



"Well," I shrugged, "if it isn't you, and it isn't that guy, then it must be one of these other guys." I indicated the henchmen standing behind him. "Okay, which one of you guys is Wilbur Cranflanflan?"



The henchmen glanced around guiltily at one another for a few moments, then turned to Gruber and shrugged. "We're not sure, boss," one of them admitted.



"What do you mean, 'you're not sure'?"



"Well," he said sheepishly, "we don't know what this Cranflanflan guy looks like, and--"



"Okay, wait," Gruber said, waving them off with an impatient look. "I am becoming tired of this game." He pointed at me and McClane. "Kill them both. Now."



They all raised their machine guns. This was it. I had to think fast.



"FOOD FIGHT!!!" I screamed.



In the momentary confusion that settled over the group, I grabbed what appeared to be a picnic lunch bag out of Gruber's hands and began to throw its contents at them. "Yippie-ki-yay, melon farmers!" I cried. Hans Gruber recoiled, eyes wide with terror, as the bag's contents came flying straight toward him.



"MY DETONATORS!" he shrieked.



The explosion took out the entire floor and blasted every window on all four sides of the building to smithereens. Black smoke churned from the gaping blast holes while shattered glass rained down on the street below. The shock wave could be felt for several blocks.



By some insanely unlikely freak of scientific happenstance, I was totally unharmed by the blast. Some physics professors refer to this rare phenomenon as the "Sub-Atomic Shield of Stupidity", while others blame it on an ancient Mayan curse passed down through the ages by living mummies. As for McClane, the explosion blew him into an air duct, which he had to crawl around in for several hours until he finally fell down an elevator shaft.



Hans Gruber and his henchmen, of course, were declared missing and presumed dead--that is, until they turned up a few years later in the small town of Miller's Crotch, South Dakota, delivering singing telegrams in gorilla suits. They all had amnesia and remembered nothing of their former lives save for the mysterious name "Wilbur Cranflanflan", the mere mention of which sent them screaming hysterically up trees and down manholes.



Anyway, you can see how markedly different Hollywood's version of the events is from what really happened. They added a lot of stuff to make it more exciting, but more importantly, they totally ignored my daring and heroic actions during the crisis. The only explanation that I've been able to come up with is that they simply couldn't find anyone great enough to play me in the movie. One good thing did come out of it, though--after miraculously surviving the explosion, I no longer needed that bikini wax. 

 

ATHENA: GODDESS OF WAR -- Blu-Ray/DVD review by porfle

 

Originally posted on 10/25/12

 

Like most feature-length condensations of a TV series or serial, Funimation's ATHENA: GODDESS OF WAR hits the high points of this action-packed Korean television series (which ran for one season in 2010) while skipping lightly over characterization. 

The film opens with a bang as agents of a Korean anti-terror task force called NTS (National Anti-Terrorist Service) infiltrate a high society party in full formal attire and end up pretty much blowing it all to hell.  Here we meet agents Lee Jung-Woo (Woo-sung Jung) and the beautiful but deadly Yoon Hye-In (Soo Ae, THE SWORD WITH NO NAME), who, in due course, will complicate their working relationship by falling in love.

But that's not the half of it, because Hye-In is a double agent also working for the bad guys--a terrorist group called Athena--and is also in love with their ruthless leader, Son Hyuk (Seung-won Cha).  To make matters worse, Hyuk has managed to become the head of an American intelligence group ostensibly working with NTS to prevent the kidnapping of nuclear scientist Dr. Kim, currently on the verge of completing work on a vital nuclear reactor.

With just shy of two hours' running time, ATHENA: GODDESS OF WAR dispenses with the finer points of all this drama and concentrates on two things--the doomed romantic triangle between Jung-Woo, Son Hyuk, and the lovely Hye-In, and lots and lots of action.  The former tends to get a bit sappy at times, especially with Jung-Woo and Hye-In basking in the romance of Italy between assignments and a drawn-out ending which stops just short of being maudlin.  Soo Ae does play her tortured indecision between the two men quite well--even while she's kicking bad-guy ass, we sense her emotional anguish.  (All of the lead performances, in fact, are fine.)

And kick ass she does, with the able help of the film's three directors and its nimble editors piecing together rapid-fire camera shots into coherent fight scenes.  Direction is sleek and brisk, giving these made-for-TV action sequences a pleasing feature-film veneer that is enhanced by some exhilarating location photography.

Various suspenseful situations such as the kidnapping of the Korean president's daughter or Dr. Kim himself lead to extended battle sequences filled with bullets, explosions, and gritty hand-to-hand combat.  The film occasionally drags as we keep ending up back at NTS headquarters for numerous briefings and other exposition, but the next stimulating shoot 'em up, car stunt, or chase scene is never far away.  Needless to say, all of this leads up to Athena's final and most devastating terrorist attempt yet, with our heroes risking life and limb to stop it.

The Blu-Ray/DVD combo from Funimation is in 16x9 widescreen with Dolby 5.1 Korean and English soundtracks (subtitles in English).  Extras consist of a trailer and previews of other Funimation titles.

There's nothing chintzy about this TV-derived feature, although the necessity of hitting the high points of an entire season's story arc (while understandably concentrating on the more action-oriented stuff) tends to render things a bit superficial.  Still, while not entirely memorable, ATHENA: GODDESS OF WAR is quite an enjoyable way for fans of Bond-style espionage exploits to be entertained for a couple of hours.

HOUSEWIVES FROM ANOTHER WORLD -- DVD review by porfle

 Originally posted on 3/2/10

 

 

Fred Olen Ray's Retromedia does it again with HOUSEWIVES FROM ANOTHER WORLD, another lighthearted soft-porn romp in the vein of BIKINI FRANKENSTEIN and TWILIGHT VAMPS. This time, the story which serves as a connective tissue for the numerous sex scenes is flimsier than ever, but ultimately that doesn't really matter all that much, does it? 

 

The movie opens, unsurprisingly enough, in the bedroom of Max (Frankie Cullen) and Karen (Heather Vandeven), but that's not Karen whom Max is having furious simulated sex with--it's their ditzy neighbor, Rita (Rebecca Love). 

 

Nicely intercut with this are shots of a meteor headed for a fiery rendezvous with Earth--the simple CGI looks pretty good--which might serve as a metaphor for the fact that Karen is coming home early from a business trip. When she discovers Max and Rita in bed together, she's furious. Rita, we find, was told that Karen had been killed in a freak skateboard accident and that Max needed to be held. 

 

Karen grabs a bottle of Jack and angrily stomps out into the desert behind their house, where she finds the pieces of the fallen meteor. One of the shards shoots a jolt of energy into her head, transferring an alien entity into her body. 

 

Seemingly morphed into a Stepford wife, Karen cheerfully forgives Max and Rita. But she secretly has a new mission--find the plans for a top-secret galaxy-probing satellite that Max is working on for the government and destroy them before Earth discovers her home planet, which will lead to an intergalactic war. (How? It doesn't matter.) 

 

Meanwhile, Max's competitors at work, Tom (Tony Marino) and Carla (Christine Nguyen), are busy trying to steal the plans themselves so they can take credit for them. Using meteor shards in the form of necklaces, Karen zaps Carla and Rita with more alien entities. Their mission, however, is put on hold when the intoxicating carnal sensations of their new human bodies drive them to engage in lots and lots of sex. Betcha didn't see that coming. 

 

 

As in the rest of these Retromedia sex farces, HOUSEWIVES is capably directed and looks really good for its low budget, with a pleasant musical score. Best of all, however, is the fact that the lead castmembers not only look terrific but aren't bad actors, either. Frankie Cullen and Tony Marino continue to display a deft comic sense that sets them apart from the average leering stud muffin, while Christine Nguyen's sex appeal is matched by her own skills in this area. Too bad this particular script doesn't give them much of a chance to be funny. 

 

Heather Vandeven looks about as good as you'd expect a Penthouse Pet of the Year to look and is quite enthusiastic in her sex scenes. (It appears as though she's using the famous Stanislavski method in her shower scene.) My favorite, though, is the adorable and delightfully buxom Rebecca Love, who has now joined my list of future wives which will go into effect just as soon as I become a billionaire playboy and bigamy is decriminalized. 

 

Rounding out the supporting cast are Ted Newsom as Max's boss Mr. Roberts--Ted plays a normal person for a change, and is surprisingly adept at it--and Ron Ford as the shady foreign-type (he wears a fez) who schemes to purchase the satellite blueprints from a debt-plagued Tom. Both actors bring a certain substance to their roles which adds a little weight to this otherwise paper-thin story.

The DVD from Retromedia and Infinity is widescreen with Dolby Digital sound. Extras consist of trailers for this and several other Retromedia releases. 

 

As an entry in Retromedia's growing list of sci-fi and horror-tinged softcore sex comedies, HOUSEWIVES FROM ANOTHER WORLD is extremely light on the comedy and story elements (though it does have a slight ZONTAR vibe at times). But with acres of bare skin on display and a cast that performs like Energizer bunnies at the drop of a hat, it's definitely fun to look at.

 

 

HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI (1965) -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 5/21/21

 

I've always loved the American-International "Beach Party" series, and I always will. This gives you a good idea of the overall tenor of my assessment of HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI (Olive Films, 1965). As for WHY I love these movies so much, well...err...uhh...

To be honest, a lot of people will hate this movie and others like it, and, as far as they're concerned, rightfully so. It's a supremely silly slapstick sex farce with the lowest teen denominator in mind, and it was made to shower undiscerning audiences with brightly-colored pop culture confetti made up of whatever seemed like it might appeal to them, including girls in bikinis, bikes, surfing, jangly rock 'n' roll, cartoonish action, really corny jokes, and cameo appearances by faces familiar to both the younger and older generations.

All of which is why I find these movies to be such irresistible fun--because that's all they try to be, and in their own stupefying way, they succeed.  It helps if you're a fan of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello (I am), two of the most appealing young stars of the 60s, and enjoy occasionally turning off your mind, relaxing, and floating downstream. It is not dying, even though some might feel that way about it.

 

This time, Frankie's serving six weeks of naval reserve duty in Tahiti, separating him from Annette and tempting him to indulge in the local "social scene." Even so, he expects Annette (as "Dee Dee") to be faithful to him back there in Malibu, so he enlists the help of witch doctor Bwana Chicky Baby (none other than the venerable Buster Keaton, whose assistants include the beautiful Irene Tsu and Bobbi Shaw) to help him keep an eye on her with the help of a magical pelican.

Bwana Chicky Baby also plans to divert the beach boys' attention away from Annette by creating the perfect woman, who appears to everyone first as an empty leopard skin bikini. The great John Ashley (HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER, FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER), an American-International mainstay doing beach duty for the studio, then gets to croon the title song before the bikini is suddenly filled by the gorgeous Cassandra (Beverly Adams).

In short order, a nattily-dressed Mickey Rooney and Dwayne Hickman show up as big business types looking for the "girl next door" to accompany Dwayne in a motorcycle race which Mickey hopes will improve the image of cyclists (an image that Eric Von Zipper and his bumbling biker gang do their best to sully when they show up and Eric falls in love with Cassandra).

 

 

 
Dwayne, against Mickey's wishes, falls for Annette, who plays hard to get as usual while the magic pelican keeps watch over their activities for the absent Frankie.  And thus the film's main action is established with lots of romantic complications and slapstick nonsense until the big bike race, which turns the final quarter of the film into a live-action cartoon that's like a cross between "Wacky Races" and "Road Runner."

This is the seventh film in A-I's "Beach Party" series (if you count "Pajama Party" and "Ski Party") and by this time the concept was starting to wind down. The next related films would be SERGEANT DEADHEAD and DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE, then one more "bikini" movie, the financial flop THE GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI. After that, the emphasis would be on stock car racing with FIREBALL 500 and THUNDER ALLEY.

But there's still fun to be had with this formula if it strikes your fancy as it does mine. Annette is just as appealing a fantasy girlfriend as ever, and gets to sing a couple of songs (one with The Kingsmen as her backup band) while fending off Dwayne Hickman's romantic overtures.

 

Rooney seems to be having a good time spoofing HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING (his character's name, J. Peachmont Keane, is a variation of that play's J. Pierpont Finch). He even participates in some of the many musical numbers that keep cropping up at the darndest times.

Most of the silliness comes from Harvey Lembeck's familiar Eric Von Zipper and his gang of "stupids", with "Seinfeld" regular Len "Uncle Leo" Lesser turning up as their cohort in crime, the evil North Dakota Pete.  The bike race finale throws any semblance of coherence or sanity to the winds, making the old Looney Tunes cartoons look like models of adult sophistication in comparison.

In addition to the great Keaton and Rooney, the film offers supporting roles and cameos from the likes of Brian Donlevy as Rooney's boss B.D. "Big Deal" McPherson and director William Asher's wife at the time, "Bewitched" star Elizabeth Montgomery, as (what else?) a witch. Frankie, by this time, was demanding more money and is relegated to just a few "Tahiti" scenes.  Annette, bless her heart, is just as wonderful as ever.

 

 

Will Dwayne and Annette win the big race instead of the devious Von Zipper and Cassandra?  Will Annette finally forget her vow to stay faithful to the unfaithful Frankie and give in to Dwayne's advances? Will the rest of the boys (including Jody McCrea's "Bonehead") forget hypnotic Cassandra and return their attention to the rest of the jealousy-inflamed girls? Will John Ashley sing another awful song? Will Mickey Rooney finish doing whatever it is that he's doing?

If you couldn't care less, there are probably a lot of other people who feel exactly the same way you do. I don't care that much myself, but as a lifelong beach movie lover, I sure do have a great time watching movies like HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI anyway. It's the ultimate in light entertainment, and if you take it lightly enough, the rational part of your brain will enjoy the vacation.  

THE JAIL: THE WOMEN'S HELL -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 9/27/15

 

No padding, no filler--just a solid wall-to-wall slab of pure, undiluted exploitation, dripping with sex, violence, and horror from start to finish.  That's THE JAIL: THE WOMEN'S HELL (2006), one of schlock superstar Bruno Mattei's final films and, from what I've seen, one of his most gleefully sadistic and extreme. 

This steamy mish-mash of elements from women-in-prison flicks mixed with a little poor man's PAPILLON by way of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME begins with three hapless female prisoners being transferred by boat to a remote jungle prison in the Philippines. 

Carol (Amelie Pontailler) killed her pimp, Lisa (Love Gutierrez) trafficked in "dirty things with dirty people", and Jennifer (Mattei veteran Yvette Yzon of ISLAND OF THE LIVING DEAD and ZOMBIES: THE BEGINNING in her first starring role), brags of having done a little of everything.

When they get to the prison camp they find a hellhole of sadism and brutality in which the trollish warden (Odette Khan), who looks like a female cross between Paul Giamatti and the guy from TIMECRIMES, is either torturing the inmates or renting them out to the Governor of the island (Jim Gaines, also of ISLAND OF THE LIVING DEAD and ZOMBIES: THE BEGINNING) as sex slaves in his nightclub-slash-brothel. 

The prison scenes yield the expected sensationalism including copious amounts of nudity--with a shower scene or two that would launch the slobbering pervs from PORKY'S into orbit--and the inevitable lesbianism, along with constant physical and mental abuse from the warden and her sadistic guards.  Chief among the latter is the constantly screaming Juana, played with singleminded intensity by Vanessa Bolabas in a gloriously one-note performance. 

The Governor's palace of carnal sin offers even more perversion with his customers, as vile a bunch of freaks as ever portrayed on film, using and abusing the more attractive prisoners such as Jennifer during all sorts of rapey activities, one of which involves a full-grown python. 

It's during the biggest and most elaborate of these sex parties that Jennifer and the others, including her new friend Monica (Dyane Craystan, ZOMBIES: THE BEGINNING) plan their big escape.  (This, by the way, comes after Jennifer has bargained to have Monica removed from a partially-submerged bamboo cage full of rats a la THE DEER HUNTER which she shared with several half-eaten corpses.) 

Unfortunately, the girls leap right from the frying pan into the fire when their escape attempt becomes a human hunting party, with the Governor's friends tracking them down like animals and disposing of them in horrific ways.  This is where Bruno Mattei goes all out to shock, horrify, and generally test our tolerance for graphic screen violence against a bunch of hapless damsels in distress. 

Gorehounds who live for this kind of stuff should be in hog heaven at this point, while the more easily offended--well, let's face it, I really doubt if the more easily offended are going to still be watching after the first five minutes.  Some viewers will find this sequence easier to endure by looking forward to the girls finally turning the tables on their tormentors, including that bitch-troll of a warden and her goons back at the prison. 

Bruno Mattei (under his "Vincent Dawn" pseudonym) puts the whole thing across in relatively capable fashion, displaying some of his best directorial skills and camerawork that I've seen so far.  Production values are fairly good thanks in part to some well-chosen locations, with a musical score that sounds as though it could've been written by Brian May.

As for the cast, Yzon and Craystan are the standouts, while the actresses playing the warden and head guard Juana are a hoot.  Anyone else playing a bad guy in this movie does so in such cartoonish, googly-eyed terms that even D.W. Griffith would tell them to tone it down.

The DVD from Intervision is in 1.78:1 widescreen with Dolby 2.0 sound.  No subtitles.  Extras consist of an interview with Yvette Yzon and Alvin Anson on "Acting With Bruno", a talk with THE JAIL's producer Giovanni Paolucci and co-writer Antonio Tentori ("Prison Inferno"), and the film's trailer. 

Mattei died in 2007, a year after this film was made, but he left behind a filmography packed with some of the most outlandish, mindboggling, and just plain nasty exploitation thrillers ever made.  And if that sounds good to you, then THE JAIL: THE WOMEN'S HELL serves up a heapin' helping of it with all the trimmings. 

Buy it at Amazon.com
Street date: October 13, 2015

CRIES OF PLEASURE -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

 Originally posted on 2/19/20

 

I guess I've seen about a dozen or so of the many films directed by Jesus "Jess" Franco (VAMPYROS LESBOS, SHE KILLED IN ECSTASY, COUNT DRACULA)  during his prolific career. And while nowhere near the expert many of his fans are, I can say that one never knows quite what to expect from him.

It all depends on Franco's budget, collaborators, various other factors, and, most of all, whatever mood he happened to be in when undertaking a particular project.

With CRIES OF PLEASURE (1983), Franco must have felt like skirting the boundary between two familiar themes: the twisty intrigue tale with elements of murder and betrayal, and the softcore sex romp in which he could indulge his penchant for long, meandering passages with naked people exploring each other's...well, long meandering passages.

It begins a bit like SUNSET BOULEVARD, with one of the main characters already floating dead in a swimming pool. The narrator, ironically, is a simple-minded mute named Fenul (Juan Cózar) whose only job is to wander around the mountaintop Spanish villa strumming on the guitar to provide background music for his master, Antonio (Robert Foster).

Antonio, a wealthy, arrogant young playboy, has a live-in lover and maid named Marta (Jasmina Bell) who later claims to have been raped by him at age 12 but remains desperately in love with him and serves as a sex slave.

Meanwhile, his beautiful houseguest Julia (Franco's longtime muse Lina Romay, THE HOT NIGHTS OF LINDA, SINFONIA EROTICA, TWO FEMALE SPIES WITH FLOWERED PANTIES) is about to meet his equally lovely wife Martina (Rocío Freixas, THE SINISTER EYES OF DR. ORLOFF), who that very day is being released from an insane asylum.

That's just about all the set-up the director needs to get cracking on yet another torrid tale of lurid lust and maniacal madness, all of which will commence right after the characters are all properly introduced and thrown into a succession of those long, meandering passages.

These are all shot in very extended takes as the camera lingers artlessly but intently over various combinations of nude, writhing bodies while occasionally wandering out the window to take in some of the Spanish oceanfront scenery.

The sex itself is technically softcore but sometimes threatens to cross the boundary into hardcore. As with many sequences of this kind, things tend to get monotonous (I've personally gotten to the point where I find just about all sex scenes boring), although Lina Romay's many fans will certainly have a visual field day here.

What makes CRIES OF PLEASURE more than just another sexploitation flick, however, is the queasy undercurrent of sadism, perversion, and ultimately murder that pervades it all. 

At least one participant in all this carnal decadence will be tortured to death, and somebody plans to murder someone else before it's all over.

While the extended sex scenes are furiously performed and at least marginally erotic, the most worthwhile thing about it all (for me, anyway) is how Franco's barebones plot, based on the writings of the Marquis de Sade, is revealed to us in broad, deliberate strokes that keep us attentively waiting for its resolution.

When CRIES OF PLEASURE does hit that final chord, it's just kinky and off-kilter enough to elicit a sigh of satisfaction that we've made it through yet another unpredictable Jess Franco fever dream with the feeling that, somehow, it has been time rather well spent.


Special Features:

    In The Land Of Franco Part 1: Stephen Thrower Tours Multiple Franco Locations in Portugal
    When Donald Met Jess and Lina Part 1: Filmmaker Donald Farmer Interviews the Power Couple in 1993
    Jess Franco’s Golden Years: Interview with Stephen Thrower, Author of ‘Murderous Passions & Flowers of Perversion – The Delirious Cinema of Jesús Franco’