Notebooks on Cinema

Charlie Spradling, Part 3: Television Appearances

2016-09-24T13:26:00.000-04:00

Full House: Cutting It Close (1988)

As far as I'm aware, Charlie's television debut came on October 14, 1988 with the Season 2 premiere of Full House. I'm not sure that I have to give my readers a lot of background information on this series, as anyone fucked up enough to enjoy the same kind of sleaze that I do has to have gotten that way somehow, but perhaps a brief description is in order.

Full House is about some guy named Danny (the infamous Bob Saget) and his three daughters, D.J., Stephanie, and Michelle (the infamous Candace Cameron, the infamous Jodie Sweetin, and the infamous Olsen twins) who live with some guy they call Uncle Jethie (the infamous John Stamos) and some other guy they call Joey (the infamous Dave Coulier). They basically stumble around the set delivering their various signature lines (Michelle: “You're in big twouble, mithter”; Stephanie: “How rude!”; Uncle Jethie: “Have mercy!”; and Joey: “Cut. It. Out.”), which are invariably followed by uproarious laughter from the studio audience. I'm not kidding. I bet there was at least one episode in which Michelle, Stephanie, Uncle Jethie, and Joey sat around in a circle and took turns saying their catch phrases for twenty-two straight minutes, and I'll bet the audience didn't stop laughing the entire time, except maybe when they had to halt taping for five minutes to stretcher away some guy whose appendix burst as he convulsed during a giggling fit. It's easily the worst series in all of 80s primetime network programming. There's probably only one scene worth watching in the entire eight-season run of this shitcom, and this is it:

Married with Children: Requiem for a Dead Barber (1989)

On February 12, 1989, Charlie appeared in an episode of Married with Children. I never really watched this show, and if this episode is any indication I didn't really miss all that much. It's basically just another dumb sitcom. The humor isn't of the warm, fuzzy, and innocuous Full House variety, but it's just as lame. I considered trying to “just turn down the volume and think about fucking Christina Applegate,” but I didn't want to miss the only decent scene in this episode, and probably in the entire series:

Twin Peaks: Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer (1990)

Spradling's first appearance in a good TV series came on April 19, 1990 with a very brief scene in the third episode of Twin Peaks.

In this episode, Ben and Jerry Horne take a boat to visit an across-the-border bordello called One Eyed Jacks (“One Eyed Jack's yearnin' to go a peepin' in a seafood store"), and upon arriving they're met at the dock by the show's eponym (I tried really hard to talk myself out of making that joke, but my better judgment was vanquished yet again).

But, no, seriously, all poor taste aside, you put that sailor on a USN recruiting poster and the Pacific fleet will soon be so awash with seamen they'll have to recalibrate their sonar instruments. Um, I mean they'll have to, uh, build more ships, or something.

Frequent David Lynch casting director Johanna Ray had worked on The Blob (1988), so I'm imagining the following conversation:

David Lynch: I need a breathtakingly beautiful woman with large breasts who doesn't mind being woefully underused in every single production in which she's featured.

Johanna Ray: I have just the person.

Charlie Spradling, Part 2: A Scream Queen for a New Generation

2013-07-24T01:40:00.000-04:00

The Blob (1988)

With the October 1988 release of The Blob, a remake of the 1958 classic, horror enthusiasts were treated to their first look at what should have been, and for a very brief period was, the next female face of horror. Many of the major scream queens of the late 70s and early to mid-80s had either gone on to successful careers outside of the genre or begun to see opportunities dry up. Some of the greats were still as active as ever (Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens, and Michelle Bauer still make several horror appearances a year), but the horror genre needed a fresh face, and Charlie Spradling had all the qualities one looks for in a scream queen (a beautiful face, a great body, a sense of humor, and a willingness to take off one's clothes) in spades. But could she scream?

The 1988 remake of The Blob was directed by Chuck Russell and co-written by Russell and Frank Darabont. The film takes place in a small, woodsy California town called Arborville. Arborville is such a small town that it needs only two law enforcement officers (Sheriff Herb Geller, played by frequent Darabont collaborator Jeffrey DeMunn, and Deputy Bill Briggs, played by Paul McCrane) and the night shift at its hospital is apparently staffed by only one doctor (Jack Nance). The town's economy depends heavily on winter tourism, but an Indian summer has a lot of residents worried that the skiers and snowmobilers that used to flock to Arborville will be seeking whiter pastures for the third year in a row.

The action begins when a homeless guy sees a meteorite crash in the woods. When he investigates, he gets some sort of slime on his hand and is unable to get it off. The ooze seems to be alive, and whatever it's doing to the man's hand is painful enough that he tries to hack his arm off with a hatchet. Brian Flagg (Kevin Dillon), the town delinquent (we can tell he's a delinquent because he wears a leather jacket and rides a motorcycle, and also because Sheriff Geller tells us so), witnesses this and wrests the hatchet from the old guy, who then runs into the woods. Flagg, who saw the goop on the geezer's hand and is either curious or concerned, chases after the vagrant. The old guy runs out of the forest, into the middle of a road, and gets hit by a car. The driver of the car is town football hero Paul Taylor (Donovan Leitch), who's out on his first date with cheerleader Meg Penny (Shawnee Smith). Flagg runs out of the woods and the three load the old man into the car and drive him to the hospital (which is more like a doctor's office).

After sitting around in the waiting room for a few minutes, Flagg leaves and Paul goes to check on the old guy. Unfortunately, the old guy is now sans legs and lower torso, and Paul suspects the pink slime is to blame (that, or the guy got hold of another hatchet and went to work on himself again). Paul goes and grabs the doctor, who takes on a shocked sort of expression,

calls for a nurse, and then just seems to kind of go away. Where does he go? I'm not sure, but Paul runs into his office to call the sheriff. Unfortunately, the blob is there waiting for him, and this happens:

The cops arrive and Meg's parents come to take her home. No one seems to believe her story. The doctor is MIA so he can't corroborate it, and, really, an old guy whose torso has melted away? That could've been anything, and it was probably that punk Brian Flagg. Word has it he melted away some other guy's torso last year. Luckily, the cops have already picked up Flagg on suspicion of who the hell knows (he just shows up at the scene in the back of a squad car), so they run him down to the station for interrogation.

Meanwhile, the blob is making its way around the town, dispatching its citizenry and growing bigger with each new kill. Sheriff Geller lets Flagg go because he doesn't have any evidence and Meg decides to sneak out of her house so she can recruit Flagg to help her save the town from the oozing menace. When she learns that her younger brother and his friend Eddie have gone to see Garden Tool Massacre at the Victor one-screen she runs to fetch him. She arrives just in time, too, because she's able to catch what's gotta be the best scene in the movie.

Charlie Spradling (“Coed”) in Garden Tool Massacre:

For a couple milliseconds I thought he said, “He Hot Karls her to death.” If not for that shot of the curling iron I'd still think that now. Still, as interesting a thought as “Hot Karling” a sorority girl to death might be, the only ways I can think of “hot curling” one to death seem even more twisted. By the way, am I mistaken in thinking that a curling iron is not a garden tool?

So anyway, the blob shows up and ruins the movie for everyone. Where that curling iron was going to go we'll never find out. Does Meg save her brother and his friend from the blob? Does the blob engulf Arborville and make its way toward Sacramento for the sequel? Do Meg and Flagg get it on? These things you can find out. Watch The Blob and see!

And so the question of whether or not Charlie Spradling could scream was answered in the affirmative. But in order to be officially initiated into Scream Queenhood, she had to show that she could take her clothes off and die in gruesome fashion. Horror fans would only have to wait until the November 1988 release of Twice Dead to see her do that.

Twice Dead (1988)

In Twice Dead, directed by Bert L. Dragin, Harry Cates (Sam Melville, who died a few months after the film was released), a former business owner who has fallen on hard times, moves his family into a dilapidated mansion he inherited from his aunt. His son Scott (Tom Bresnahan, credited in this and several other films as Tom Breznahan) and daughter Robin (Jill Whitlow) have apparently both been accepted at the local university.

When they arrive at their new home for the first time, they find a gang of hoodlums loitering on their front porch.

That was Charlie Spradling leaning against the car. Her character's name is Tina. Silk (Christopher Burgard) is the ringleader. The creepy guy with the switchblade is Crip (Jonathan Chapin). The pig astride the hog is Melvin (Travis McKenna). The big guy is Stony (Shawn Player). And the other girl is Candy (Joleen Lutz, who evidently used to be a Chicago Bulls cheerleader).

The cops run them off this time, but the hooligans make it clear they'll be back. There's no way they're going to cede their turf to this bunch of yuppies.

The Cates family moves in and Scott sees something weird.

Eventually the family settles in and things continue without incident for a while. Then one day Scott is invited to join a pick-up basketball game as he and Robin are walking home from school, and

I assure you, Charlie does speak in this movie. But we'll get to that...

Dad tries to teach Scott not to be such a pussy,

and then he and Mom head back to Colorado for a couple weeks to take care of a legal matter. The kids can't go because they have midterms. Meanwhile, some spooky shit has been taking place at the Cates residence, and Scott thinks it might be haunted by the ghost of his great aunt Myrna's lover, an actor from the 30s named Tyler Walker. It seems Tyler had fallen so hard for Myrna that he'd signed his mansion over to her. Myrna then left him for another man, and in case that wasn't enough to get her face on the cover of Bitch Magazine she sent some guys over to evict him from the house he'd given her. Tyler had gone quite crazy by this point, however, and had begun believing this mannequin

was his beloved Myrna. To keep her from leaving him he stabbed Myrnaquin in the back and then hanged himself.

While Scott's trying to sort out the house's history so he can figure out who's haunting it and why, Crip, who has an enormous hard-on for Robin, breaks into the place while Candy waits outside. The others show up a little later.

Tina stays outside to make out with her boyfriend. Jesus, those jeans. The fuckin' 80s, am I right?

Inside the house kids wearing leather jackets are dropping like flies.

Stony manages to escape by throwing himself through a window.

But it all turns out to have been an elaborate prank cooked up by Scott, who borrowed some goodies from his Theater Special Effects classroom, and Robin, who swiped some chloroform from her biology lab. Silk is pretty pissed when he finds out. He vows revenge.

A few nights later Scott falls asleep on the couch, but he's awakened by

Now if I had directed this film I would have had Melvin grab that head off the shelf and stick his dick in its mouth.

But then, there's a reason they didn't let me into film school...

Dad's attempts to teach Scott not to be a pussy didn't work, and he ends up practically handing the shotgun over to Silk.

Crip's got Robin up in her bedroom. Tina and her boyfriend have gone up to the Master BR to get the film its R-rating. Scott is tied up in a chair. Everything is going smooth as, well, silk, until Melvin has to go and motorcycle rape Myrnaquin

and then all hell breaks loose.

Fortunately, Tina and Cheeta don't hear all the commotion. It's remarkable how soundproof these old houses can be.

Things do indeed heat up.

Hey, that's my brand.

A mysterious wind topples the bottles and they fall onto the cord for the electric blanket,

which Cheeta then grabs.

There oughta be a warning label...

Not such a bad way to go, though, all things considered.

So, wait, did that current pass into Tina through his dick? I like to think that's what we're supposed to believe, but she did have her hands on his chest.

And with that, Charlie Spradling is officially a scream queen. Not only that, she's the most promising scream queen to come along in years, perhaps ever.

You can imagine the rest, but it's much more fun to actually see it. It's available as a DVD double feature with The Evil.

Mirror Mirror (1990)

In 1990, Charlie delivered one of her biggest and best Scream Queen performances in Mirror Mirror, directed by Marina Sargenti. Credited simply as Charlie (she dropped the “Spradling” for a little while in 1989 and 1990), she played Charleen Kane, a rich, popular girl who's running for Class President.

Megan Gordon (Rainbow Harvest)

and her mother (Karen Black)

have just moved to a new town from Los Angeles following the death of Megan's father. They've just bought a house from the estate of an eccentric old lady, and when they arrive at their new home they find that a mirror has been left in Megan's new bedroom. The realtor offers to have the mirror removed, but Megan says she wants to keep it and asks her mother to purchase it from the estate.

Nikki Chandler (Kristin Dattilo) is running against Charleen Kane for Class President, but she's worried that she's being outspent and that her bra size is going to lose her points with voters. Her boyfriend Ron tries to be supportive.

Yes, that was Stephen Tobolowsky as the teacher, Mr. Anderson.

Megan has difficulty making friends on her first day of school.

Nikki picks up Megan's books and goes after her. She finds her in the restroom, and tells her not to worry about Charleen Kane and her asshole friends. She and Megan become pals.

Hey, look who it is.

That's right. It's Tom Bresnahan (again credited as Breznahan), Charlie's Twice Dead costar. He plays her boyfriend, Jeff, in this movie.

Meanwhile, Megan's been noticing that there's something strange about that mirror in her bedroom. She's been having weird visions, and it seems that the mirror is making things happen when she wishes for them.

When Charleen Kane and her friends continue to pick on her,

Megan guiltily believes herself to have been responsible for the result.

Megan's mother invites William Sanderson, the operator of a local pet cemetery, over for dinner. Oh, and his character's name is Mr. Veze.

The harassment continues,

and Megan's personality begins to change. It seems she's becoming more and more possessed by the mirror. More bad things happen.

Megan, Nikki, and Ron attend a party thrown by the Kane campaign.

“A better student body.” She's sure got my vote. Nikki isn't exactly Stephen Tobolowsky herself, but, come on, let's not kid ourselves.

Megan looks pretty good without all the eye makeup,

and Jeff asks her to dance. Charleen is jealous.

What the fuck?

Megan, now fully under the control of the mirror, begins killing off her enemies.

Charleen takes her clothes off.

And never puts them back on again.

Now it's up to Nikki to break the spell the mirror has over her friend before whatever has come over from “the other side” destroys them all.

Mirror Mirror goes off the rails a little bit toward the end, but it's highly recommended overall.

Charlie Spradling

2013-07-20T19:42:00.000-04:00

When I was around fourteen or so, I was a hardcore Full Moon Entertainment fanatic. I think Puppet Master was probably the first Full Moon title I saw, but I ended up watching every Full Moon release of the early 90s, largely because Charles Band was such a marketing genius. Band's marketing strategy was twofold. First, at the beginning or end of each Full Moon video release was a video magazine called Videozone that showcased past and future Full Moon releases. This Videozone featurette was itself so entertaining that I'd sometimes rent Full Moon releases that didn't look particularly interesting just to see the next Videozone installment. Second, prominently featured in these featurettes (and in a few Full Moon films) was a stunning jet black-haired spokesmodel named Charlie Spradling. Usually dressed in a tight-fitting Full Moon t-shirt, Spradling would introduce upcoming releases, display Full Moon merchandise, and generally serve as eye candy for the adolescent males that were Full Moon's target audience.

This will be the first post of a multi-part series dedicated to the all-too-brief entertainment career of Charlie Spradling. Unfortunately, Spradling has become nearly as obscure as this blog, so unearthing biographical details has been something of a challenge. I'll try to be as comprehensive as I can, however, and if any readers are aware of any information that I've left out, I'd be grateful if you'd share it with me.

(A Very Brief) Biography

According to IMDb, Charlie Lynn Spradling was born on September 27, 1968 in Fort Worth, Texas. There doesn't really seem to be a lot of information out there about her early life, but it appears she got her start in show business in 1988.

License to Drive (1988)

Charlie Spradling's first film role that I'm aware of was an uncredited appearance in 1988's License to Drive, directed by Greg Beeman. This is a film that I liked a lot when I was a kid, but when I last saw it I didn't have as much fun watching it as I'd expected I would. I still love most 80s teen comedies, but this one just hasn't held up over the years. Still, it has its moments, and one of these is a brief cameo by Spradling.

License to Drive stars Corey Haim as Les Anderson, a real semen smear of a kid whose primary ambition in life is to bed out-of-his-league Mercedes Lane (Heather Graham). Les believes a driver's license is the key to getting Mercedes in the sack, as the sight of him behind the wheel of a car will demonstrate to her, once and for all time, that he is not eleven years old. Mercedes, for her part, is obsessed with Eurotrash fuckwad Paolo (Michael A. Nickles), who drives a flashy sports car and sometimes lets Mercedes manipulate his gearshift. Les imagines that what attracts Mercedes to Paolo isn't his money, his good looks, or his expensive car, but his fucking driver's license, and he thinks that once he gets a license of his own he'll be in the game.

Opportunity falls into Les's lap at a party a night or two before he's to take his driving test. Mercedes gets into a fight with Paolo because Paolo, who's probably thirty years old, doesn't want to waste his evening at a high school party. He's already had to make four or five beer runs because he's the only guy there capable of growing facial hair. Anyway, Mercedes tries to make Paolo jealous by telling him she has a date that weekend. “With whom?” Paolo sneers, and Mercedes looks around for a suitable candidate. Seeing none, she points to Les, who's the only person in the room other than Paolo she thinks might have a penis. “Him,” she says hesitantly, a little uncertain about whether she's used the correct gender-specific pronoun. “That guy? He's eleven years old.” Les grins and makes a mental note to shoplift a box of condoms next time he's at the pharmacy.

On the night of his big date Les is still without a license, having flunked the written component of his driving exam. He refuses to let this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity pass him by, however, so he steals his grandfather's Cadillac and takes Mercedes out to a club called El Rey that she wants to go to. As soon as they arrive she jumps out of the car and hurries in, leaving Les out on the sidewalk to convince the bouncer that not only is he not eleven years old, but that the piece of ass who entered the club just before him really is his date. Meanwhile, we learn that Mercedes has selected this particular destination because it's where Paolo hangs out, and Paolo is indeed there, but with another chick (Charlie Spradling!), whom he introduces as Veronique.

So Mercedes storms out of the place as if Paolo has committed some egregious sin even though she's the one whose idea it was to make their relationship non-exclusive. What she should do is have Les take her home so she can have a good cry and then beg Paolo to take her back the next day. Instead, perhaps because she recognizes that Veronique is not only much more mature than she is, both behaviorally and, uh, anatomically, but is a goddess besides, she decides to significantly lower the bar and go get drunk with Les.

Over the course of the remainder of the movie Les demonstrates how much shittier of a boyfriend he would be than Paolo. When Mercedes gets drunk and passes out, does Les do the honorable thing and take her home so she can sleep it off? No, he puts her in the trunk of his car so that he and his friends Dean (Corey Feldman) and Charles (Michael Manasseri) can go to teen hangout Archie's Atomic and try to pick up some other girls. That's right. Not only does Les have no qualms about hooking up with another chick on the very night of his first date with Mercedes, he dumps her in his trunk so the babes at Archie's Atomic won't be turned off by the sight of some unconscious floozy in the back seat.

Yes, that's Les Anderson, every woman's dream catch. In addition to having no driver's license, a wandering eye, and a best friend who is an absolute scumbag,

he looks like he's eleven years old. Mercedes Lane might not be able to compete with Veronique, but surely she can do a hell of a lot better than Les Anderson.

Welcome to the Jungle (2007)

2012-03-30T11:37:00.000-04:00

A couple words of advice for the aspiring filmmakers of the world:

1) Do not jump on the "found footage" bandwagon. Having your film look like an amateur video does not give it a more authentic feel. It doesn't make it seem like a documentary. It makes your film look cheap, it makes you look lazy, and it makes the viewer feel annoyed. With the exception of Cannibal Holocaust, I can't think of a single good film that's been made this way. Just don't do it. I don't care how low your budget is.

2) Having characters that are insufferably obnoxious and irredeemably stupid only makes the viewer want the film to end sooner. As a filmmaker, your job is to make the viewer want the film to be longer. I stay at home and watch movies instead of going out to bars and clubs because I like to avoid being in the company of imbeciles.

In Welcome to the Jungle, four unbelievably abhorrent young adults decide to head into the jungles of New Guinea to find Michael Rockefeller, who disappeared in that region in 1961 and is apparently thought by some to still be alive, after a pilot tells them he spotted a 70ish-year-old white male while flying over the island. They think they can capture footage, or maybe even an interview, with Rockefeller (despite recognizing that well-funded search parties combed the jungles of New Guinea for months in the 60s and found no sign of the man) and then sell it for a million dollars. So they grab their video camera, make their way to New Guinea, and the viewer gets to see about an hour of asinine antics and bickering before they get slaughtered by cannibals. Everything's supposed to be as the camera recorded it, but in one scene in which the two females have a conversation the view switches from one to the other as each speaks and they're clearly not passing the camera back and forth, which would be idiotic but at least wouldn't be a glaring flaw. I don't understand how a writer or a filmmaker can create a movie that's based around a gimmick and not manage to stay within the structural confines that gimmick requires. It's like that movie Nick of Time, which was advertised as taking place in "real time," its ninety-minute runtime coinciding with the ninety-minute duration of the film's events (Johnny Depp's character's daughter has been kidnapped and he has ninety minutes to assassinate someone or other or Christopher Walken's character will kill her), but there's one scene that's in slow motion, Depp's character blacks out at one point and rather than have a blank screen for the minute or so that he's supposed to be unconscious the film just skips ahead to when he wakes up, and then there's the minute or two of introductory and closing bullshit that takes place before and after the main action (not to mention the closing credits). Such ineptitude is unforgivable.

I will admit that there are a couple of effective scenes in this film, but they're not worth wading through the rest of this mess for. Avoid it.

Amazonia: The Catherine Miles Story (1985)

2012-03-25T22:12:00.000-04:00

I first saw this film around twenty years ago under the title White Slave. According to IMDb, it's also been released as Forest Slave, Cannibal Holocaust 2, and Captive Women VII. It's a beautifully photographed work, somewhat tamer than many of its cannibal/jungle predecessors, but still rife with exploitation elements. Elvire Audray, who plays Catherine Miles, is nude or semi-nude throughout pretty much the entire film. The film contains the obligatory animal deaths (a leopard killing first a deer and later a monkey -- no humans killing, mutilating, or torturing animals, I'm happy to say), bug-eating, and scenes of torture. When the natives learn that Catherine isn't yet "a woman," they take her virginity with what looks like a hunk of sugarcane in a ritual that all the tribe's females apparently have to go through upon reaching puberty. When one of the tribespeople commits adultery, he's hung upside down, his face is smeared with honey, and he's left to be devoured by insects. In one scene, two distant relatives of Sarah Palin fly over the natives' village in a helicopter and start picking off its inhabitants with a rifle. At one point they mow down a naked eight-year-old kid and then finish him off with a head shot that blows his skull to pieces and sends his brains flying (this is shown in close-up in order that no one will leave the theater wondering whether the child might've survived). There are decapitations aplenty, and it looks like the make-up department spent so much time getting the severed heads just right that they insisted on having the natives carry them around through half the film. All in all, I found it to be an enjoyable way to spend an hour and a half.

Cannibal Ferox (1981)

2012-03-24T23:42:00.002-04:00

Gloria (Lorraine De Selle), Rudy (Danilo Mattei as Bryan Redford), and Pat (Zora Kerova) venture into the jungles of Paraguay to look for evidence supporting Gloria's graduate thesis, which asserts that cannibalism never existed (apparently, there are rumors of a cannibalistic tribe in this region, and Gloria's brilliant two-fold plan is to first locate the tribe and determine whether or not they actually practice cannibalism -- perhaps by extending her arm and seeing if anyone takes a bite -- and then, when no evidence of cannibalism is discovered, to head back to New York and present her experiences to her thesis advisor as definitive proof that anthropophagy has never been practiced anywhere in the world). As they blindly bushwhack their way through the jungle in search of the tribe's village, they happen upon Mike (Giovanni Lombardo Radice as John Morghen), a sadistic cokehead, and Joe (Walter Lucchini as Walter Lloyd), who's sustained a serious injury and has to be carried through the thick undergrowth.

Mike begins to tell a story, despite Joe's objections,

about how he, Joe, and a Portuguese emerald prospector were abducted by cannibals...

Mike goes on to explain that the tribespeople snacked on their Portuguese guide and that he and Joe just barely managed to escape.

The group makes camp for the night, but when they awaken the next morning Gloria has disappeared. When they find her, she's fallen into a pit that's been dug as a trap for animals. A pig has fallen into the trap as well, and before helping Gloria out of the pit, Mike takes a few moments to slowly slice the poor creature up with his knife.

They find the tribe's village, but the only people there are a few old men. Everyone else seems to have disappeared. Mike and Pat slip into one of the huts to fuck, and then Mike suggests that they find a native girl and have themselves a threesome. They find a young couple horsing around by the river (which is strange, since Rudy has just observed that all the younger villagers appear to have vacated the area), and while Pat holds the boy Mike rips the girl's top off and holds a knife against her breast. He hands the knife to Pat and urges her to cut the girl, but Pat, who's normally a nice enough gal but has been made aggressive by the coke Mike's pushed on her, hesitates. The girl tries to run away and Mike shoots her. "Diana!" cries the native boy (her name was Diana?), and then Rudy, who's witnessed this last part of the encounter, attempts to subdue Mike but is held at bay by Mike's pistol.

Rudy has begun to think that this Mike guy might be kind of an asshole, and this suspicion is confirmed by Joe, who on his deathbed in one of the village huts relates the real story to Rudy and Gloria. It turns out that Mike had terrorized the tribe, killing a couple of the villagers and hacking off one guy's penis. Most of the villagers had fled. Only the ones who were too old to travel had stayed. Joe dies, and Rudy and Gloria discover that Mike and Pat have stolen all of their supplies and left. They realize that they should probably get the fuck out of dodge, but before they can make their escape the young men of the tribe return to the village with Mike and Pat, whom they've captured, and it's time for this formerly peaceful tribe (who never previously practiced cannibalism and other atrocities but have now been driven to it by Mike's actions) to get their revenge on whitey.

When I first saw this film, it was under the title Make Them Die Slowly. "Banned in 31 Countries!" enticed the video box. "The most violent film ever made!" it proclaimed. Well, it's far from that, but it isn't completely devoid of grisly goings-on and sadistic spirit. Dicks are chopped off and eaten, women are suspended from hooks that've been jammed through their breasts, heads are chopped open and their contents consumed. As usual, the real violence is reserved for the animals, which makes what happens to the humans a lot less effective (not that it'd be all that effective in this case anyway). Still, what salvages this film is the silliness of the story and the ridiculous dialogue. It would've made a terrific comedy if they'd left out the animal cruelty.

Eaten Alive! (1980)

2012-02-11T23:15:00.000-05:00

Sheila (Janet Agren) treks into the jungles of New Guinea to find her missing sister, Diana (Paola Senatore), who disappeared some months before after joining a "purification cult" led by religious nut Jonas (Ivan Rassimov). In the middle of a rain forest teeming with cannibals and venomous snakes, Sheila and her guide Mark (Robert Kerman) discover the cult's village. Once they find it, they have to decide between staying and joining the cult (which involves, among other things, being forced to drink drug-laced green stuff, being violated with a dildo dipped in cobra blood, being gang raped during your husband's funeral, and walking around topless) and trying to escape through the jungles and back to civilization (which involves, among other things, having your penis chopped off and tossed into a snake stew, being given a mastectomy without anesthetic by an unlicensed surgeon, and having various body parts sliced off and eaten while you lie wondering whether a poisonous snake is going to slither into one of the newly formed orifices). This one loses points from me for having a lot of human-on-animal abuse, a mostly uninteresting story, and for being really poorly edited (even the uncut version looks like some disgruntled crew member picked up the prop machete and started randomly hacking away at the film). Many scenes are cannibalized (no pun intended) from earlier jungle films. This definitely isn't one of the genre's stronger offerings.

The Mountain of the Cannibal God (1978)

2011-09-06T15:32:00.000-04:00

When ethnologist Henry Stevenson disappears during an expedition into the jungles of New Guinea, his wife Susan (Ursula Andress) and her brother Arthur (Antonio Marsina) enlist the help of Professor Edward Foster (Stacy Keach), a colleague of Henry's, to mount a search. Accompanied by a group of porters, who are dark-skinned and therefore expendable (the only reason these guys are in the film is so there'll be someone to get killed off along the way -- just once I'd like to see one of the white guys die first), they make their way toward Ra Ra Me, a mountain that is sacred to the cannibalistic Puka tribe that inhabits the region and Professor Foster's best guess as to Henry's destination. On their way, they meet up with adventurer Manolo (Claudio Cassinelli), who joins them. After run-ins with Puka decimate the party's ethnic heterogeneity, we learn that some of the group's members have been less than honest about their motives.

This is a solid adventure film in addition to being decent exploitation fare. It has a higher budget than most films of the cannibal genre and boasts beautiful cinematography, a solid score by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis, and a script that isn't completely ridiculous. Still, it recognizes that if it's going to have the word "cannibal" in the title it'd better deliver on the gore, nudity, and barbarism that junglesploitation aficionados have come to expect, so it tosses in an all-out cannibal-style sex party replete with human intestine ingestion, a guy fucking a Range Rover-sized hog in one of the more explicit bestiality scenes my thoroughly desensitized eyes and brain have witnessed in a mainstream movie, a native woman pleasuring herself (complete with a close-up of her doing a little vaginal spelunking with one finger), a guy getting his wee wee chopped off, people biting into live snakes, and, of course, Ursula Undressed.

"I don't kill animals," says Manolo at one point in the film. Unfortunately, he's the only one associated with this film (or, for that matter, with any film of the genre) who possesses that particular scruple. There's plenty of animal abuse in this one, though it's fortunately less gratuitous (I have less of a problem with nature documentary-type footage of animals killing each other, and if the violence is inflicted on animals by humans, I'd prefer that the humans at least eat what they kill) than that found in Lenzi's and Deodato's films. Alternate titles include Slave of the Cannibal God, Prisoner of the Cannibal God, and Primitive Desires.

Jude (1996)

2011-09-01T03:05:00.002-04:00

When they have to depict two characters falling in love many filmmakers use the shorthand of what The Godfather called "the Thunderbolt." One sees another or they look at each other and it's instantaneous. It's standard narrative economy and you're expected to suspend disbelief, at least when the romance isn't central to the story. If it is or it's assigned any importance beyond including it because it's expected "the Thunderbolt" can sabotage a movie.

It's easier when the relationship started before the film did. Then an audience member can assume there's something more to it than "This person, like me, is quite physically attractive." Because when that's all it is (or all that it's presented as being) you can't expect people to care if the two end up together unless those watching are eugenicists. One of the worst recent examples was Miami Vice (2006).

Not that Colin Farrell and Gong Li were any less plausible than dozens of other movie relationships. But that flimsy affair, based as it was on "You have lovely skin" / "Thanks, that's some sexy stubble" (dialogue paraphrased), was considered important enough to receive its own mournful denouement. It beats The Godfather as an example because after "the Thunderbolt" there was a sequence where Michael courts Apollonia (not this Apollonia) so it works the same as it having started before the movie did in that you can imagine anything you want happening in the gaps and as wordless moments go Apollonia touching the necklace Michael gave her to show that she's wearing it and the smile between them has it over Sonny and Isabella awkwardly hugging in the shower or staring at each other on a speedboat.

One of my favorite "burgeoning love" sequences is in Jude.

"In the Victorian period, Jude Fawley (Eccleston) is a young man who dreams of a scholarly university education. Circumstances conspire against him, however, forcing him into a job as a stonemason and an unhappy marriage to a country girl, Arabella (Griffiths). He remains true to his dream, however, and months later, after his wife's sudden departure, heads for the city, where he thinks education lies for any man who is willing to work hard. There he encounters his beautiful cousin, Sue Bridehead (Winslet), who shares his intelligence and disdain for convention."

What about you? Am I forgetting ones that were worse than Vice?

Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977)

2011-08-31T21:10:00.001-04:00

While undercover at a mental institution, exotic beauty/investigative journalist Emanuelle (Laura Gemser) sees a nurse get one of her breasts gnawed off by a patient. She's so intrigued by this event that she slips into the patient's room, pulls up the restrained woman's gown and photographs her vulva. While showing the photos to her editor, she notices a strange tattoo above the woman's "pubic region." A staff researcher at the paper informs her that the tattoo is worn by members of a cannibalistic tribe in the Amazon that's long been thought extinct. Her editor suggests that she take a trip to South America to find out what's going on, but Emanuelle isn't sure it's such a good idea. She goes to see an anthropologist (Gabriele Tinti) who's an expert on cannibalism. He shows her a film of a guy getting his penis chopped off and Emanuelle says, "Sign me up." They leave the next day, but before their departure Emanuelle has time for a quickie with the anthropologist and a bon voyage fuck from her boyfriend. When they arrive in South America, they visit the professor's friend, who sends them off into the jungle with his daughter Isabelle (Monica Zanchi) and a nun (Annamaria Clementi). As you'd expect, it isn't long before Emanuelle and Isabelle have to stop and wash each other, inside and out, in a lake. Then they meet up with an impotent hunter (he can't get it up when he's with his wife, but he still likes to spy on the ladies as they sleep, nightgowns bunched up around their mid-torsos so their crotches can breathe -- it's hot down there in the jungle, you understand), Donald (Donald O'Brien), and his sexually insatiable wife (she often has to sneak off with the hired guides to get her needs met), Maggie (Nieves Navarro). Then the action starts. Not the sex action -- that started thirty seconds into the film and never stops for long. The cannibal action, what little there is of it. The film is fairly heavy on sex (of the softcore, Emanuelle-style variety) and nudity, but somewhat light on violence (which isn't to say there isn't any -- nipples get sawed off and eaten, people are disemboweled and their entrails devoured, and Donald meets his demise in a creative fashion). Fortunately, there's no real animal abuse in this one, unless you count the chimpanzee who smokes a cigarette while watching Emanuelle and Isabelle explore each other's womanhood.

Did you realize they had chimpanzees in South America?

I didn't either. They also have alligators, apparently.

One of my favorite things about this one is the dubbed dialogue, particularly the part in which Emanuelle asks Donald what he's doing in the jungle. Donald's reply:

Hector's Top Ten Films of the 1930s

2011-08-30T23:09:00.001-04:00

10. Grand Illusion (Renoir, 1938)

Two French soldiers escape from a German POW camp. This anti-war film was made two years before the largest conflict in human history broke out. Apparently, not everyone got the message.

9. Sabotage (Hitchcock, 1936)

The wife of a movie theater operator begins to suspect that her husband is part of a terrorist organization planning a series of attacks on London.

8. The 39 Steps (Hitchcock, 1935)

Wrongfully accused of murdering a spy who has just told him about a conspiracy to steal British military secrets, Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) must clear his name and thwart the plot.

7. The Man Who Knew Too Much (Hitchcock, 1934)

When Bob and Jill Lawrence (Leslie Banks and Edna Best) receive information from a French spy while vacationing in Switzerland, a group of assassins led by Abbott (Peter Lorre) kidnaps their daughter in order to keep them quiet. This film was made a few years before Alfred Hitchcock really hit his directorial stride, but it was a good preview of what was to follow.

6. Frankenstein (Whale, 1931)

Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) creates human life by cobbling together body parts from individuals who are no longer using them. The result is a large, simple-minded monster of a man (Boris Karloff) who doesn't fully understand who or what he is. When the monster kills Frankenstein's assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye), who's been relentlessly tormenting him, Frankenstein decides that the creature must be destroyed. Terrific sets (particularly Frankenstein's laboratory) and a character-defining performance by Karloff.

5. Vampyr (Dreyer, 1932)

When occult-obsessed Allan Gray (Julian West) spends a night at an inn in the village of Courtempierre, he witnesses a series of supernatural events. Minimal dialogue and the use of title cards gives Carl Theodor Dreyer's first "talkie" a silent film feel. Lots of cool images and effects.

4. Freaks (Browning, 1932)

Conjoined twins, microcephalics, a bearded lady, and an assortment of other amazing carnival performers exact revenge on two "normal" performers who have plotted against one of their fellow "freaks." This is the kind of film that wouldn't be made today, and in addition to being a fascinating look at the sorts of marvels nature can produce it treats the "freaks" as heroes and the "normal people" as villains. Audiences and censors didn't get the message, though. They found the film so disgusting that it was banned in many places and cut from 90 to 64 minutes. It'll probably never again be seen in its original, complete form, and that's a shame.

3. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Lang, 1933)

Criminal mastermind Dr. Mabuse returns in Fritz Lang's sequel to his 1922 silent Dr. Mabuse, Der Spieler. While confined to a mental institution, Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) has been developing plans for a crime wave of apocalyptic proportions. When Mabuse dies, it appears that society can breathe a collective sigh of relief, but then a string of crimes executed in just the way Mabuse described them leads Inspector Lohmann (Otto Wernicke) to suspect that sinister forces are at work. Is the mad genius orchestrating these events from beyond the grave? Not quite as good as the first film in the series, but an excellent work nonetheless.

2. M (Lang, 1931)

A child killer stalks the streets of Berlin, and as public hysteria mounts the police intensify their efforts to find the murderer. This elevated vigilance begins to interfere with the activities of criminal organizations, and crime boss Schranker (Gustaf Grundgens) assembles the city's underworld workforce so they can hunt down the killer. Fritz Lang treats the murderer, Hans Beckert (hauntingly played by Peter Lorre), with sympathy, and that's something we see far too rarely in cinema (much less in real life). One of Lang's best films.

1. The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock, 1938)

Iris (Margaret Lockwood) and Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) are two passengers on a train bound for England. When one of their fellow travelers, Miss Froy (May Whitty), disappears, Iris and Gilbert attempt to find her, but none of the other passengers seems to recall ever seeing her. I love movies that take place aboard trains, especially when they're directed by The Master of Suspense. This is one of Hitchcock's best.

Private Vices, Public Virtues (1976)

2011-08-29T21:06:00.001-04:00

Crown Prince Rudolf, son of Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Josef, is said to have committed suicide at his hunting lodge in 1889, supposedly because he was unable to marry the woman he was in love with, Baroness Marie Vetsera. Vetsera was found dead with Rudolf, and there's been some debate over the last 120 years as to whether they really took their own lives. Miklos Jancso's Private Vices, Public Virtues is about the days leading up to their deaths, and I'm no historian but my guess would be that this nudityfest departs significantly from what actually happened. The story is a little difficult to follow, partly because of the way the film was written and partly because of the way it was edited, so you'll forgive me if I get a detail or two wrong. What I understand of the plot follows.

Omnisexual Rudolf (Lajos Balazsovits) has been enjoying an incestuous three-way affair with the son of a prime minister and his sister while doing his best to avoid his wife, whom he despises (I think she's the only person in the entire film, male or female, that Rudolf doesn't try to bed). He surrounds himself with fellow hedonists, and a large band of musicians follows him around wherever he goes (these are the only characters that spend more than 50% of the film with their clothes on), providing a jovial soundtrack for his non-stop mischief. One of his constant companions is his former nanny, who raised him from birth and apparently did such a good job that he kept her around to help him with things like drying his penis after he climbs out of the pool. Rudolf's days are filled with drink, debauchery, and various pranks, most of which are aimed at embarrassing his father or his father's soldiers.

The film opens with Rudolf cavorting about in the nude (which is more or less how he spends the entire film). He rolls in the hay (literally, not figuratively), dances around, and jumps into the pool. He fires a gun into the air to see if it will awaken his sleeping wife, and when it doesn't he lifts her dress, removes her underwear, and leaves her exposed posterior to redden in the sun. Then he gives his former nanny a ride on his bicycle, stops so she can urinate into a hat,

and then relaxes in a haystack while she gives him a handjob.

Later Rudolf and his friends decide to throw a massive party, get everyone drunk, and have themselves an all-out carnival of carnality. They invite a good hundred or so guests, spike their champagne with an aphrodisiac powder, and keep everybody dancing. Clothes soon start to come off, and before too long everyone's at risk of serious full-body sunburn, so they move the festivities inside.

One of the guests is Mary Vetsera (Teresa Ann Savoy, who would later appear in Salon Kitty and Caligula, here as Therese) who, as it turns out, is a hermaphrodite (long before Mark Wahlberg wore a thirteen-inch prosthetic penis so that Jessie St. Vincents in theaters all over the world could exclaim "You are [Dirk Diggler]!" Savoy was fitted with a somewhat more modest four-incher that was convincing-looking enough that Ashley Judd cornered her at a Caligula twenty-year reunion party at Bob Guccione's New York mansion and begged to see it), and I guess Rudolf falls in love with her (in any case, he vaginally penetrates her with his penis and then she anally penetrates him with hers).

While all this revelry, buggery, and general naughtiness is going on, Rudolf is receiving increasingly strongly-worded threats from his father, who's embarrassed by his heir's behavior. Rudolf takes these threats no more seriously than he takes anything else, and he regularly humiliates the soldiers who deliver his father's messages. When the soldiers bring him a letter from his father, Rudolf marches out to greet them in the nude, tells them he needs to take a bath, half-listens to the general's attempt to explain why he's there while two young women soap him up in a washtub, drops his father's letter into the water without reading it, and then sets his dogs on the soldiers. When the soldiers later return to arrest him a couple dozen or so naked men and women grab the general, force him to dance for them, roll him around in a hay cart, then yank his pants down and watch as Mary anally rapes him. Rudolf is all set to lavish the soldiers with further such hospitality on their next visit, but before he can do so he, Mary, and his two other fuck friends are shot and their bodies are arranged in such a way that it appears that they've committed suicide. Geez, what assholes.

If you like your cinema brimming over with male and female full-frontal nudity, this is the film for you. If you don't, well, there's really not all that much else here. Also called Private Vices, Public Pleasures.

Last Cannibal World (1977)

2011-08-28T21:54:00.001-04:00

Later released as Cannibal and Jungle Holocaust, Ultimo mondo cannibale (Last Cannibal World) was Ruggero Deodato's first stab at the cannibal genre. Robert Harper (Massimo Foschi) and three companions land on the Philippine island of Mindanao, where an oil-prospecting expedition is underway. When they arrive at the prospecting team's base camp, though, the entire team has disappeared. Robert and Rolf (Ivan Rassimov) go tromping off into the jungle to try to determine what happened (well, no, really Robert stumbles into the woods in a mad panic and Rolf chases after him, but unless you want this to be 10,000 words long you'll allow me a bit of reviewer's license) while Charlie (Sheik Razak Shikur) and his girlfriend Swan (Judy Rosly) stay behind to repair the plane, which lost a wheel during the landing. Robert and Rolf come upon a tribe of cannibals feasting on the corpses of their former associates and decide they'd better leave Mindanao's oil to be used by its native inhabitants when and if they ever emerge from the Stone Age. When they arrive back at the plane, though, it's too dark to take off, so they spend the night in the cockpit, planning to leave come first light. Halfway through the night, Swan wakes up and goes outside to take a leak, but no sooner does she drop her trousers than one of the savages grabs her and hauls her into the woods. So, instead of leaving the next morning, Robert, Rolf, and Charlie go looking for Swan (this is stupid). A tribe of primitives (it isn't clear to me that this is the same tribe that snacked on the other prospectors, but it might've been) captures Robert and carries him back to their cave (which is pretty awesome), where he has to endure such indignities as having his clothes ripped from his body one torn piece of cloth at a time, having his penis fondled and pulled at by a number of the natives (considering that most of them aren't wearing a stitch of clothing, you'd think the male sex organ would've stopped arousing their curiosity long before), being thrown into a pit and urinated on by a group of naked kids, having difficulty getting an erection when a tribeswoman tries to give him a sympathy tug, getting stones thrown at him by another group of naked kids, etc., etc. Finally, Robert makes his escape, but can he get to the plane before he's recaptured? This is a fairly well-made film: terrific location shooting, an authentic feel, even the dubbing is done well. The subject matter is pretty gruesome, but it's explored in a somewhat less exploitative and gratuitous fashion than in Deodato's later works (though I suppose a lot of people might disagree after seeing one particularly delightful and more or less out-of-nowhere scene in which a woman gives birth to a baby, checks its genitals and sees that it's female, and then tosses it to the crocodiles; there are also a couple of animal abuse scenes that I find a lot less than delightful).

Tentacles (1977)

2011-08-27T23:20:00.000-04:00

A giant octopus, driven mad by high-frequency signals from equipment being used in the construction of a tunnel, starts snatching an oceanside town's residents out of their boats and strollers, and it's up to journalist Ned Turner (John Huston), Sheriff Robards (Claude Akins), and marine biologist Will Gleason (Bo Hopkins) to stop the sanguinary cephalopod.

It all starts when a mother parks her baby's stroller by the water and then leaves the child unattended for a moment while she goes to chat with a friend. She returns to find the stroller floating in the sea and her baby nowhere in sight (this is one thing I like about films of the 70s. If Tentacles had been made in the 90s or 2000s, it would've turned out that the baby had somehow survived. In the 70s, they weren't afraid to kill off a baby or two, and a lot of filmmakers probably would've had the kid's severed head float up to the surface for good measure). Later, a boat captain (complete with pegleg) is seen being dragged into the depths by one of his crewmen. The crew member isn't able to see the creature responsible for the captain's descent to Davy Jones' Locker, but when the remains are found later there's not much left.

Ned and the sheriff puzzle over what animal could've torn all the flesh from Captain Pegleg's skeleton and even sucked some of the marrow from his bones. They have no answers, so they turn to Will Gleason, who posits that the culprit is a giant octopus. More and more people begin to disappear, and Will is finally forced to come up with a creative way of dealing with the molluscan menace. I don't want to give anything away, but it involves killer whales.

Judging by its average rating on IMDb (3.2), most people didn't like this movie as much as I did. I can understand, to a point. There are some problems with the script. Actually, it often seems as though all copies of the script were lost at some point and the cast and crew had to reconstruct it from memory during filming. Glaring errors abound:

1. As a compromise, Will Gleason assures his wife that rather than dive to 140 feet as he'd planned, he'll go no lower than 120 feet. A couple scenes later, she tells her sister that he promised to dive no lower than 150 feet.

2. Though it's been established that the creature is a giant octopus, Ned refers to it as a giant squid at one point (perhaps this is meant to show that he doesn't care enough to distinguish between the two, or perhaps in an early draft of the script the monster was a giant squid and no one bothered to change Huston's copy, and then they didn't want to piss him off by asking him to do another take).

3. The worst error is when Shelley Winters's character, Tillie, calls her son by the wrong name. Winters was in her mid-50s when this film was made, yet her character is supposed to be Ned's (played by 70-year-old Huston) older sister and she has a ten-year-old son. Seemingly suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's, Tillie first has trouble recalling her son's last name

and then confuses his first name with that of his friend.

(and whose idea was that hat in the first clip?)

If you can ignore flaws like these, and if you can cope with subplots that go nowhere or are left unresolved, and I can do both, you might enjoy Tentacles. Particularly if you like awesome diving scenes, aquatic life of all kinds, and a director (Ovidio G. Assonitis) who isn't afraid to experiment.

One more note: Maybe it's just that seeing John Huston had some part of my mind thinking about Chinatown, but I couldn't help but notice that one of the film's actors had the first name Claude and another had the last name Mulvihill.

Mädchen Amick

2011-08-27T03:07:00.013-04:00

Mädchen Amick was born December 12, 1970 in Reno, Nevada to a musician and a medical office manager. She's 1/2 German, 1/4 Norwegian and 1/4 Swedish, if you want to start your own breeding program and were interested in the ingredients. Mädchen is German for "girl." It's pronounced "maid-shen" and "was chosen by her parents because they wanted an unusual name." She was raised in Sparks, Reno's twin city, and "encouraged by her parents to follow her own creative instincts where she learned .. the piano, bass, violin and guitar as well as .. tap, ballet, jazz and modern dancing."

I've mentioned that the song I'd watch anyone do a serious karaoke version of is "Total Eclipse of the Heart." I haven't decided what my choice for interpretive dance would be. The frontrunner is "Somebody to Love" by Queen but after seeing this I'm willing to consider "Strong As I Am" by The Prime Movers. There are no videos of Robert McQueen High School's Modern Dance Team (the Lancers) circa 1988 on YouTube, but if there were Mädchen Amick wouldn't be on them because she dropped out of school a year earlier "to move to Los Angeles to model and act."

Would it have looked like this if she had been in such a video?

No. Tanya dancing to a tape of "Do You Love Me" by The Contours is the least plausible scene in Sleepwalkers and that's a movie with werecats and death-by-corn-on-the-cob. Mädchen Amick dancing to it in 1988 wouldn't be as strange since it was a year after Dirty Dancing but "Do You Love Me" wasn't on that film's soundtrack release so it would've been something like "Hungry Eyes" by Eric Carmen. Now that I say that a 17-year-old Mädchen Amick dancing to "Hungry Eyes" in a park in Reno would be a great YouTube video. I'm sorry that it doesn't exist. (The first result for "madchen amick" on YouTube is "Mädchen Amick takes off her panties." The featured result is a tribute video set to Joe Cocker's "You Are So Beautiful." 584 results for "madchen amick." 6,860 results for "you are so beautiful tribute." It's an impersonal choice.)

Except for Sleepwalkers I haven't seen her dance in a movie (tap-dancing, appearing as a ballerina, jazz-handsing or in the modern style) and I've never seen her play the piano, bass, violin or guitar so I read that less as her parents encouraging her to follow her own creative instincts than them putting her in a room with a bunch of instruments on one side and hardwood flooring and a ballet mirror on the other and seeing if anything took. It didn't, but when she looked in that mirror she must've thought "I like what I see here. I should move to Los Angeles." The following is an account of what happened next.

Star Trek: The Next Generation "The Dauphin" (1989)

She worked as a model for Elite. Her specialty was looking back over her shoulder while holding a drink

or pretending to strangle herself.

She was "one of hundreds of actresses who were specifically auditioned for a role as Wesley Crusher's girlfriend .. She lost the competition to Jaime Hubbard, but appeared on the episode as her friend and bodyguard."

There are two large gaps in my geek background. I didn't read comic books growing up and I wasn't a Star Trek fan. So, when I skipped through "The Dauphin" on Netflix looking for her scenes I was confused when "Teenage Girl / Anya" looked like Mädchen Amick in one shot

and this

in the next. Then I said "Eh, Star Trek" and shrugged. Then I remembered the reason you're reading this is you want me to spend my time finding these things out so you don't have to so: "Anya" is a shapeshifting alien. Mädchen Amick is her "Teenage Girl" form. She's in one scene.

Baywatch "Panic at Malibu Pier" (1989)

The pilot episode is available on Disc 5 of Season 1 on DVD from Netflix but I'm not renting Disc 5 of Season 1 of Baywatch and Hector hasn't seen it so here's LavigneLove from the U.K. with an IMDb User Review:

"As it is the first ever episode, it at least has some more plot development than the later episodes which were all about just showing off beach flesh. Madchen Amick made her screen debut in this (just after a small role in Star Trek TNG) and she looks just as stunning as she does in 'Twin Peaks.' She has a beauty in this that takes it to another level beyond the typical blond beach chick. She also adds a darker edge to the film as a disturbed girl who falls for one of the lifeguards. Strangely, this movie version does involve some topless shots of a woman being photographed (and also another saucy scene in a beach tent) which I cannot imagine the network could show at a prime time hour. Maybe these scenes were added for the video release."

I know LavigneLove wants me to think that if I rent "Panic at Malibu Pier" it'll end with Amick promising to catch someone with her Death Bag only for David Hasselhoff to run in yelling "Like Hell!" and shoot her but I'm still not putting it in my queue. All I'll ever see of it is this clip (it's set to "The Boy from Ipanema" and that's as random as anything Michael Anderson does in Twin Peaks):

"The song was inspired by Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto (now Helô Pinheiro), a fifteen-year-old girl living on Montenegro Street in the fashionable Ipanema district in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Daily, she would stroll past the popular Veloso bar-café, not just to the beach ('each day when she walks to the sea'), but in the everyday course of her life. She would sometimes enter the bar to buy cigarettes for her mother and leave to the sound of wolf-whistles. In the winter of 1962, the composers watched the girl pass by the bar, and it is easy to imagine why they noticed her—Helô was a 173-cm (five-foot eight-inch) brunette, and she attracted the attention of many of the bar patrons. Since the song became popular, she has become a celebrity.

In Revelação: a verdadeira Garota de Ipanema (Revealed: The Real Girl from Ipanema) Moraes wrote she was: 'the paradigm of the young Carioca: a golden teenage girl, a mixture of flower and mermaid, full of light and grace, the sight of whom is also sad, in that she carries with her, on her route to the sea, the feeling of youth that fades, of the beauty that is not ours alone—it is a gift of life in its beautiful and melancholic constant ebb and flow.'"

Parker Stevenson?

The Great American Sex Scandal / Jury Duty (1990-ABC)

Hector R. Hecht's review:

"Sanford Lagelfost (Bronson Pinchot) is an accountant on trial for embezzlement. The voir dire process narrows the jury pool to a group of twelve not-so-ordinary citizens which includes Phil Beckman (Alan Thicke), a businessman; Abby Greyhouwsky (Lynn Redgrave), a community organizer; Rita Burwald (Heather Locklear), a prostitute; Carlucci (Stephen Baldwin), who works in a restaurant but tells everyone he's an entrepreneur; Harold Griffith (William G. Schilling), a retired teacher and widower; and Miss Doddsworth (Mädchen Amick), a spoiled rich girl. Amick doesn't have a single line of dialogue in the first thirty minutes or so of this TV movie, but that's primarily because she has a pair of large headphones that she never takes off and so no one bothers to talk to her. When she finally does open her mouth, it's to urge her fellow jurors to speed things along by going ahead and declaring the defendant guilty, because anyone who's stupid enough to be arrested deserves to be executed and exported (does she mean deported, or is there a market overseas for accountant meat?).

Then one night, after the judge (Reginald VelJohnson) orders that the jury be sequestered, she wanders out into the...lobby, I guess, of the hotel they're all staying in and starts bitching about how bored she is to Harold, who used to be a teacher and is therefore full of inspiring bits of wisdom. Harold tells her he just lost his wife and was forced to retire from his job, so she should just perk up. And so she does. Like most of the characters in this film do at one point or another, Miss Doddsworth undergoes a dramatic (and more or less instantaneous) transformation. After her talk with Harold, she's social, enthusiastic, and she no longer believes people should be executed for being stupid enough to be arrested (though she still thinks they should be exported). She even helps to kick the shit out of a pimp who's been harassing Rita. At the end of the film, the jurors are all best pals. They're so close that they're the only ones who attend Phil's and Abby's wedding (other than Judge VelJohnson, who presides over the ceremony)."

A collage of Mädchen Amick in TGASS/JD. Pick out your favorite. Is it Miss Doddsworth on barbiturates (third from the right on the top)? Miss Doddsworth convincing someone not to jump (one over)? Or Miss Doddsworth considers the evidence (bottom left)? Other questions: How does that white and orange top not slide down, shoulder adhesive? Why is a trial for embezzlement The Great American Sex Scandal? Is "It's like Twelve Angry Men, only instead of Henry Fonda it has Alan Thicke" the Superlative for Least Enticing Actor Substitution?

Don't Tell Her It's Me / The Boyfriend School (1990)

I'm starting the count on Mädchen Amick films with multiple titles: two.

"Gus Kubicek (played by [Steve] Guttenberg) is a depressed and overweight cartoonist who recently won a battle against Hodgkin’s disease. His caring sister Lizzie Pots ([Shelley] Long), a nosy romance novelist, responds to his sadness by trying to set him up with a suitable woman. Yet to do so she must make him seem more dynamic and attractive. When Gus falls in love with Emily ([Jami] Gertz), he adopts the persona of Lobo Marunga, a leather-clad biker from New Zealand."

IMDb's 4jfmn4e02: "Kyle MacLachlan [as "Trout," Emily's boyfriend] is a very funny two-timer in an off-handed way that is never affected and actually humorous. Not to be overlooked is beautiful American-born Madchen Amick, Trout's secret playmate, who is actually half German, a quarter Norwegian, and a quarter Swedish." If someone asked me to talk about Mädchen Amick's role I'd fall back on the division of her ethnicity, too. "What part did Amick play? Kyle MacLachlan's secret girlfriend. Did you know she went to Robert McQueen High School in Nevada?" For Dale Cooper/Shelly Johnson shippers.

I'm Dangerous Tonight (1990-USA Network)

IMDb's melvelvit-1: "The Animism professor at Tiverton College finds a sacrificial cloak hidden in an ancient Aztec altar and goes on a homicidal rampage before committing suicide. Soon after, a campus co-ed (TWIN PEAKS' Madchen Amick) buys the ceremonial cloth at an estate sale and turns it into a ravishing red cocktail dress that removes sexual inhibition and triggers another murder wave before being stolen from the morgue…"

(Why is the delivery guy so well-informed on the history of the Aztec sacrificial altar he's dropping off?) Directed by Tobe Hooper ("Chainsaw" from Summer School pronunciation: "toe-bay huppert"). Anthony Perkins plays a helpful Psychology professor. It isn't available on DVD but after watching this collection of scenes I don't know why this didn't make it onto IMDb's Memorable Quotes page:

Anthony Perkins (stating his opinion as a scholar): "That's not to say that person would be entirely unaffected. For example, if they were sexually repressed the cloak might transform them into, uh .. "

Amick: "A whore."

Perkins: "Exactly."

Twin Peaks (1990-91, ABC)

Another count: how many times she's referred to as Twin Peaks' Mädchen Amick or Mädchen Amick from Twin Peaks (or Madchen Amick from Twin Peaks) in external reviews used for this post. If you were interested enough to "Read More," I assume you've seen it but if not, it's the first thing (trying not to say "only thing") you should rent.

My favorite Shelly scene:

I can offer trivia: Amick was nominated for a Soap Opera Digest Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress: Prime Time. She lost to Lynne Moody for Knots Landing. What else? If you've ever said to yourself "I'd like to see a well-edited tribute video for Bobby & Shelly and Copper & Audrey set to Lady Gaga," you're welcome?

For the Very First Time (1991-NBC)

"In the early 1960s, a Catholic teenage girl [Cheryl Pollak, Paige from Pump Up the Volume] and a Jewish teenage boy [Corin "Corky" Nemec] living in the same neighbourhood become friends. Together they experience the first stirrings of their burgeoning sexuality. When the girl's parents become increasingly suspicious, they pressure her to stop spending time with him. The boy, from a liberal family, struggles to comprehend what is happening. Finally, she comes to visit him in the night, and they consummate their relationship--with distressing consequences. Not a morality tale, this film shows how religion can tear people apart."

dragonchariot's User Review (come for the Austin civic pride, stay for the comment about Mexicans that looks bad out of context):

"i was at first intrigued by the fact that i had never heard of this movie and after seeing that cheryl pollack and corin nemec were in it, i decided to stay awake until 4am to watch it. anyway, the only redeeming thing about this movie is madchen amick's beauty. i suppose pollack's and nemec's acting is okay, but they have a horrid script to work with. unlike the other reviewer who commented on the lack of texan accents (the movie is supposed to take place in austin and very few people there have a twang) i think that the accents were there (in supporting characters like mary margaret's date and john) and were unnecessary. they were also very very bad. i am so very tired of hollywood 'southern' accents that sound nothing like the area where the accent is supposed to be from. and since it was supposed to take place in austin and shooting movies there in 1991 would not have been expensive, i fully expected there to be familiar shots of the town: the beautiful capitol building, the UT tower lit up for a winning football game, etc. none of these things were there. also, it takes about 5-6 hours to drive to mexico from austin. at one point in the movie, michael and his posse take off for mexico to lose their virginities and are able to drive off when it is dark (during the summer and early fall it doesn't get dark in austin until 9pm or so), spend time in mexico getting drunk and having sex with mexican (is there any other kind?) whores, and then return to austin by dawn. while this is theoretically possible it is NOT very likely. and if anyone has started school in the hill country (usually the third week of august, but may have been in september in 1960) they know that unless they want to pass out from heat stroke they DO NOT wear their letter jackets!!!!! in august and september in austin and the surrounding areas it is 90+ degrees. only people with no body temperature would be stupid enough to wear sweaters or letter jackets on the first day of school. all in all, a very bad made for tv movie experience."

Amick's place in 1991: she can star in a USA movie, but if it's on NBC or ABC she plays a minor character.

The Borrower (1991)

Another film unavailable on DVD. You can buy the laserdisc new for $125 on Amazon if you're interested. Directed by John McNaughton (Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Mad Dog and Glory and Wild Things).

" .. about an alien serial killer, who is sent to Earth to live among humans as a form of penalty … The alien's penalty includes having his body genetically transformed to look like a human's, but since this transformation is not perfect, after a while his body starts to revert back to its original form and his head explodes, prompting him to 'borrow' a new head from the next person happening to be present at the time -by squeezing it off with a crab-like claw and placing it on its own neck."

There's a twist (and I'm not putting that in air quotes, winking at you or saying "Get it?" I'm only calling it a twist) where the alien serial killer has to make temporary use of a dog's head. That's where Amick and her shotgun come in (I don't think the scene loses anything by being dubbed in Italian):

Sleepwalkers (1992)

Hector R. Hecht:

"Mädchen Amick is really smily [and dancy] as Tanya Robertson in this abject failure of a motion picture. Charles Brady (Brian Krause) and his mother (Alice Krige) are sleepwalkers, which means they can shapeshift into 50s sci-fi creatures, turn invisible,and other stupid shit like that. You can't hurt a sleepwalker by shooting it, stabbing it, torching it, running it over, or any of the other customary ways of ending something's life, but one scratch from a cat's claw will turn it into an oozing lump of pulsating flesh. Sleepwalkers have to feed on the lifeforce of virginal females (naturally, because nothing spoils a perfectly good lifeforce faster than a squirt of semen), and in case you ever wondered what lifeforce looks like, it's this purplish lightning-looking shit that shoots out of your mouth when a sleepwalker tries to make out with you.

Anyway, Charles and his mother move to Travis, Indiana, which is this complete shithole whose cops ride around in their patrol cars singing, 'Here comes Johnny with his pecker in his hand, he's a one-ball man and he's off to the rodeo.' Charles attends the local high school during the day, and then goes home and has sex with his mother in the evenings, which I guess is understandable because he's only allowed to date virgins, and if he has sex with any of those their lifeforce won't be any good to anyone. He decides to ask Tanya, who he can tell is a virgin by looking at her yearbook photo (and why does he have a yearbook, anyway? He just moved to the god damn state last week), out, so he goes to the movie theater where she works and finds her rocking out to 'Do You Love Me' by The Contours. The theater is strangely empty of patrons (no surprise there -- once they paid Stephen King $12 million for a script he probably wrote on the back of a napkin while waiting for his kid to finish his Happy Meal, they had to decide whether they wanted to put the remaining $4.25 of the film's budget toward special effects or hiring extras), so Charles has plenty of time to charm her with some of the most inane dialogue ever written. The next day, he gives her a ride home from school and........ah, who cares…"

Why is Enya's ominous humming played over the end credits instead of The Gathering of The Cats? The music they did use sounds like a temp track.

"RIP CATS WHO FOUGHT THAT MONSTER CAT THING" says YouTube's spawn138. If you've ever said to yourself "I'd like to see a tribute video to the teenage love story in Sleepwalkers set to the Backstreet Boys," you're .. you know what, you're not welcome, because why did you want to see that? You're making me uncomfortable. Stand over on that side of the room for a little while.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

Shelly's in two scenes.

Harry Dean Stanton is also in two, but his are better. There's "a cup of Good Morning America" and this, which always does it for me.

Dream Lover (1993)

"The movie opens on divorce proceedings involving Ray Reardon (Spader), a successful architect, and his first wife."

That's not correct. The movie opens with this:

"Shortly after their divorce, he agrees to go to a gallery opening to meet a woman that his obnoxious friend, Norman (Larry Miller), sets him up with. While he is there, he embarrasses himself by bumping into a woman (Amick), making her spill wine on herself. She wastes no time verbally abusing him. A week later, he runs into the woman, named Lena, at the supermarket. She apologizes for her behavior and the two go to dinner. They have sex the next day, marry shortly thereafter

Doesn't match Amick, but damn if they didn't get Spader right.

and become parents.

Despite his happiness in the marriage, Ray becomes suspicious after catching Lena in several lies about her past. Over time, Ray becomes increasingly paranoid when his wife begins sporting bruises that she will not explain and begins doing things that indicate that she is having an affair. During a tense confrontation, Lena taunts Ray by claiming to have had an affair with an unnamed friend of his and refusing to tell Ray if their children are biologically his. Ray hits Lena, who then has him arrested and committed to a mental hospital for observation. Despite an attempt to prove that Lena has been lying, the judge finds Ray to be mentally incompetent and orders him held for six months."

My favorite part of Ray's defense is his insistence that he didn't cause one of the bruises on Lena's face because he "never hit that high." It's an obvious frame-up!

"Shortly after Ray has been committed, Lena privately admits to him that his suspicions about her were correct all along and that she did what she did to get his money.

After Ray convinces one of his friends to tell Lena that she has made a mistake in her 'master plan', Lena shows up at his birthday party to talk to him. Ray lures her away from the attendants who are supposed to be supervising him and tells her that having him declared insane was the 'mistake' because he could not be held legally accountable for killing her. He then strangles her to death on the lawn."

Not a bad summary, but it leaves out that the friend who visits Ray and passes his message along to Lena is a lawyer and he whispers his plan in her ear before carrying it out so she can tell him if it'll work. I like to think their conversation after went something like this.

She was nominated for a Saturn Award ("presented annually by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films." Which one's Logjammin'?) for Best Actress but lost to Angela Bassett for Strange Days. If you've ever said to yourself "I think Ray listened to an Evanescence cover of a Korn song while he put together his elaborate revenge scheme, shouting along 'I want you crying with your dirty ass in front of me!'" You weren't the only one, but why watch that when you can see the original, directed by the Hughes Brothers?

"The plot of this video revolves around a young individual [Aaron Paul] from high school who is picked on, beaten up, laughed at, and ridiculed with Korn performing inside the brain of the tormented boy. He seeks revenge throughout the video. The final scene shows him arriving at the school prom with an escort. He then vomits at those who had picked on him from across the auditorium, leaving them in disgust and humiliation."

The vomit is projectile, but it's too late to suggest it for Hector's list and as a music video it wouldn't qualify.

CrystalxSpinning says "Lena was so pretty, too bad she was such a bitch." I say Mädchen Amick's so pretty, too bad she's marginally talented as an actress and has kind of a flat, affectless voice.

For the Completist

See Mädchen Amick's career 1994-present. Consider this trajectory in romantic leads: Love, Cheat & Steal (between John Lithgow and Eric Roberts) to Trapped in Paradise (Nicolas Cage) to French Exit (Jonathan Silverman).

To Kiefer Sutherland in Fallen Angels, "Love and Blood."

Why the cut? Did Sutherland's character stare at her for a few hours before walking over?

Andrew McCarthy in The Courtyard. Henry Thomas in Bombshell.

To Graham Greene and a camoflauged Adrian Pasdar in Wounded.

Actually, no, but it would've been better that way. Favorite parts of the trailer: Pasdar asking her if she's ever read The Bible, so he can be sure she's familiar with "an eye for an eye," and the gunshot sound effect when Amick puts the gun to her throat at 0:54. Does Julie kill herself halfway into the movie? Watch Wounded and find out! (Don't watch Wounded.)

Bonus clips:

The List

and The Rats.

Wild Beasts (1984)

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When a zoo in an unspecified (I think) German city has its water supply contaminated with PCP, its animal population goes apeshit, escapes from captivity, and starts snacking on the city's human residents.

Elephants disrupt traffic,

crush cars,

and trample people.

A tiger terrorizes subway commuters.

A polar bear mistakes an elementary school for an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Sewer rats flood the streets and chew their way through a couple engaged in a late-night necking session.

A blind musician (who doesn't let his disability stop him from decorating the walls of his home with paintings) gets eaten by his seeing-eye dog.

"What I like about this one is the texture."

It sounds like a lot of fun, and parts of it are, but it really wasn't as well done as it could have been. I usually complain about horror remakes, but this is one film that probably should be remade, though preferably by someone who's halfway competent.

Warning to my fellow animal lovers: The Italian Humane Association clearly wasn't on-site to monitor animal action during the making of this film.

Sugar Boxx (2009)

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Imagine a 70s women-in-prison film. Now take away all the nudity, the violence, the sadism, and the sexism. Scrub away all the grime, both from the prison inmates (in 70s WIP films, the women spent half the movie in the showers but still looked like they'd just swum through a sea of sewage; in this film, they spend no time at all in the showers and there's never a moment when they don't look like they just returned from a weekend spa trip) and from the prison itself (what there is of it -- there's not really a traditional prison setting in this film). Take all the inmates on a field trip to the mall and give each of them the money to buy several new outfits. There. Now you have Sugar Boxx.

Cut and Run (1985)

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After finding the bloody remains of the subjects of their story on drug smuggling, Miami reporter Fran Hudson (Lisa Blount) and cameraman Mark Ludman (Leonard Mann) discover evidence connecting the massacre and other drug-related activities to Colonel Brian Horne (Richard Lynch), a war criminal and former associate of Jim Jones long thought dead. It further appears that their boss's (Richard Bright) son, Tommy (Willie Aames), is somehow mixed up in Horne's drug operation. They head down to South America to see what else they can uncover, but upon arriving they have to contend with Horne's army of native acolytes and fearsome assassin Quecho (Michael Berryman).

If that plot summary makes any sense to you, I've done a better job than I imagined I could of making this extremely confusing story seem halfway coherent. Still, if you watch this movie it's not because you're expecting an ironclad narrative, but because you want to see the violent rapes, brutal murders, wanton torture, abundant nudity, ghastly death scenes, and exquisite location photography with which director Ruggero Deodato tends to fill his films, and if that's the case Cut and Run probably won't disappoint. Women are stripped naked, thrown to the ground, held in spread eagle position by daggers that have been thrust through their legs, gang raped as they lie there like frogs pinned to dissection tables, and then decapitated. One guy learns what it's like to be a Thanksgiving wishbone when he's placed in a contraption that pulls the ropes that are tied around his ankles in opposite directions, tearing him in half. And there's much, much more!

And if that's not enough to make you want to place this classic at the top of your Netflix queue, or buy the fucker outright, consider this: Willie Aames. Who is Willie Aames, you ask? Well, let's consult his IMDb biography. Here we go: "[Willie Aames] overcame a painkiller addiction after getting injured playing the Christian superhero 'Bibleman' in a traveling show." Other than that he's one of the very worst actors of his or any generation, that pretty much tells you everything important there is to learn about Willie Aames. In Cut and Run, Aames emotes each and every line with such intensity that you expect him to fall dead from a stroke at any second. He doesn't, though, perhaps because he's wearing his lucky Mickey Mouse shirt through the entire film.

Willie Aames, tons of sex and violence, beautiful scenery, an energetic 80s-ish score; what more could you want in an exploit-action movie? A guy slam dunking an iguana? Well here you go:

The Man from the Deep River (1972)

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When a group of primitives mistakes him for Aquaman, nature photographer John Bradley (Ivan Rassimov), who's on assignment in Thailand, is captured and brought back to the tribe's village, where he's expected to perform aquabatic feats like pulling turtles from the depths of the river to the surface and then tossing them into the air, all while at spearpoint. Initially Bradley wants to escape, but he soon finds himself drawn to the charms of life in the village, which include the cutting off of tribespeople's tongues and hands for minor infractions and the near-constant butchery of animals, and he decides to join up. After enduring an unpleasant initiation ritual, he becomes a full-fledged member of the club and gets to spend his days disemboweling various members of Kingdom Animalia. He falls in love with Maraya (beautiful Me Me Lay, and I'll resist the nearly overpowering urge to make the obvious joke) and wins the right to marry her by besting his competitors in a sort of tribal version of The Dating Game in which the bachelorette sits naked on the floor of a hut and the contestants reach through a hole in the wall and grope various body parts. Bradley reaches through and takes hold of her hand, and she apparently finds this more romantic than Bachelor #1's breast massage and Bachelor #2's well-meant but poorly executed attempt to pick the lice from her pubic thatch. John and Maraya get married and spend the next ten minutes or so of the film frolicking about in the nude and screwing in a bed of... flour? But a hostile tribe of cannibals and a turn of bad luck soon threaten Bradley's newfound happiness.

Also appearing under such titles as Sacrifice! and Deep River Savages, Umberto Lenzi's The Man from the Deep River was the first of the cannibal/jungle exploitation films. The violence against humans is less extreme than in many of the films that followed (there's one scene of cannibalism, which Lenzi later reused in Eaten Alive!, but most of the people in this film get off easy), but Thailand's long and proud tradition of animal torture is on full display (snakes and crocodiles are cut to pieces while still alive, the top half of a monkey's skull is hacked off and its brains eaten, the villagers entertain themselves by watching cockfights and pitting a mongoose against a cobra, etc.). When the film isn't distressing (real animal abuse is distressing; pretend human abuse isn't) it's usually fairly boring (except the scene with the elephants -- that's awesome). I don't particularly recommend it.

A Viewer's Guide to the Characters of Boogie Nights (1997)

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Luis Guzman played Maurice TT Rodriguez

Character Shorthand: Such a charmer. Cool as a cucumber. You put him in a movie we're talkin' box office. Box office.

Defining Quote: "I'm just this poor fellow from Puerto Rico. You know, I've got this club here that's one thing. But soon that goes, I die and what do I have? I got nothin'. So I want something I can send home, you know? Something I can send to my brothers and say 'Look at me. Look at me and all the beautiful women I've been with.'"

IMDb Keyword: Nightclub

Notes: I have an explanation for why Maurice's last name is spelled incorrectly on the sign at the end. His brothers arranged it because, while they felt honored by the gesture, they realized that "Rodriguez Brothers Night Club" is a horrible name and believed that once he was out the expense Maurice would say "Forget it" and put the Hot Traxx sign back up instead of paying to have it redone.

His deleted scene with Rollergirl is much better than you would expect from one where a man and a woman talk about how small of a penis the guy has. It must've been cut for pacing because it doesn't fit in the sequence where Dirk gets fired but it also doesn't fit for other reasons. It'd undercut the earlier joke where Jack's solution to Maurice asking to be put in a movie is to cast him as a bartender and it'd make you wonder what they planned to do with the footage (considering Jack's stance against amateurs and Maurice's claim that it's real small, babe).

Maybe it was a private film for Maurice to send to his brothers. I don't have a brother, but if I did and he sent me a film of him having sex with someone I couldn't see myself wanting to watch it. "She's a beautiful woman" wouldn't make it any easier of a sell. I'd return it to sender with a courteous note that read "No, thank you, Maurice. I don't want to look at you, and about your idea for what to call our club .. "

Does he picture his brothers sitting next to the projector in Puerto Rico, cheering him on? "Sí, hermano! Tener relaciones sexuales con esa mujer hermosa! Bueno!"

Burt Reynolds played Jack Horner

Character Shorthand: Filmmaker

Defining Quote: "It is my dream, it is my goal, it is my idea to make a film that the story just sucks 'em in and when they spurt out that joy juice they just gotta sit in it, they can't move until they find out how the story ends."

IMDb Keyword: Pater Familias

Notes: "How interesting would it have been to see Forrest Gump and .. that Robin Wright character make that baby that we see at the end? That sex scene. How does Forrest Gump have sex? … It's going 'What could be more sort of human or what could be more like of a revelation of a character than watching them have sex?'" -- Paul Thomas Anderson talking to Mike Figgis here

He takes pains to point out that he's not trying to be salacious about it but from what I remember hearing once (and this could be something that someone else made up) he isn't far off from what happens in the Forrest Gump novel. What's said there is supposed to be that Jenny wants to have sex with Forrest because of the size of his penis. I don't think I can agree (about porn becoming another genre, I told you I'm not sure about what's said to be in Forrest Gump's pants).

I've seen mainstream films with penetration shots or unsimulated sex acts. The Idiots, Antichrist, The Brown Bunny, etc. It's always a distraction. I haven't seen Nine Songs, where it is the narrative but in the films where it wasn't it didn't feel revelatory. It felt gimmicky. I shouldn't say this without seeing NS because I like Michael Winterbottom and should give it a chance and in two of the three films I mentioned doubles were used for the actors.

But, while this could get too academic I think that acting is simulation by definition so when you introduce unsimulated acts you change what it is you're doing. An erection isn't acting. Fellatio isn't acting. It's only exactly what it looks like. You can still call it a performance but you're no longer pretending to do something and, as Sir Ian McKellen would tell you, acting is pretending.

That isn't to say Dirk Diggler doesn't do any acting. Just that performing sex acts "in character" as Brock Landers isn't enough of a separation for me to refer to it as such and I don't see what it would add to the character that you wouldn't get from having it be explicit but simulated. The premise that there was a Golden Age of pornography where they wanted to tell stories is also false. They included a narrative to get around obscenity laws. Once those were relaxed you started to see movies where the story was "everyone fucks their brains out."

I don't want to sound rigid. I don't doubt that sex films can be artistic and I'm not saying that they shouldn't have stories. Only that trying to make them "dramatic" or using regular actors for them might be a misguided ambition, though Winterbottom, Jack Horner and others could prove me wrong or have already proved me wrong. Are there any examples anyone could provide?

If you haven't listened to the audio commentaries on the Boogie Nights DVD and are for some reason still interested in this article I'd recommend them. One of my favorite parts is when Paul Thomas Anderson and Mark Wahlberg talk about Burt Reynolds having to be talked out of using an Irish accent for Jack. Related question: is the film in the movie called Spanish Pantalones because Dirk decided his character should have a Spanish accent (and why don't we ever hear what Dirk's Spanish accent sounds like?) or did he know the movie was going to be called Spanish Pants and he was going for verisimilitude?

Julianne Moore played Amber Waves

Character Shorthand: The Foxiest Bitch in the Whole World. She's a mother to all those who need love.

Defining Quote: "I miss my two sons, you know? I miss my little Andrew and my Dirk. You know, I always felt like Dirk was my baby, my new baby."

IMDb Keyword: Semen In Woman

Notes: We can agree that Amber wrote the copy for Buck's stereo store commercial, right? "We're open. We're ready. All you need to do is walk over, get down and come inside us." I don't know if there's a single scene in the movie where Moore isn't note-perfect for the character.

John C. Reilly played Reed Rothchild

Character Shorthand: People tell him he looks like Han Solo.

Defining Quote: "If movies, films caused violence we'd be able to wipe out violence tomorrow. Boom, no more films. That's fine with me. I'll find something else to do. I'll fuck on my own time. You know, I've got other interests. I'm a magician."

IMDb Keyword: Magician

Notes: Why is Candy surprised that she's topless? Was that part of the trick and Reed's pretending that it's her doing as a wink to the audience? Regardless, I don't know how many clubs will allow him to perform that act. He might want to stick with the cards, even if means he has to deal with all those evil forces.

Nicole Ari Parker played Becky Barnett

Character Shorthand: Chocolate Love, 100%.

Defining Quote: "I have a look, O.K.? The look I have is just fine."

IMDb Keyword: Wedding Reception

Notes: There isn't a lot to say about Becky. Without that deleted scene she gets a happy ending. That's nice. She knows a lot about fashion. She's able to wash her vagina in a matter of seconds. She's a Pisces. I'm told she has a supple ass ..

Don Cheadle played Buck Swope

Character Shorthand: One hell of an actor.

Defining Quote: "I have this very unit in my home. Yes, I do. But of course I got it modified with the TK-421, which, uh, kicks it up another, I don't know, maybe, three or four, um, quads per ch-channel. You know. But that's, that's really, that's technical talk. That doesn't really concern you."

IMDb Keyword: Actor (sometimes these get repetitive)

Notes: For as many times as I've watched this I still crack up when he says he'll have to get his tools out and lube everything down (hand motion). Moore's a pro. She almost does the same but she holds her tongue and maintains her composure.

Between the donut shop robbery and Hotel Rwanda I don't know if there's anyone who's better than Cheadle as an ordinary person responding to violence or the threat of violence in movies.

Heather Graham played Rollergirl

Character Shorthand: Needs to practice breathing through her nose when performing fellatio on extremely well-endowed men so she doesn't have to inhale deeply first.

Defining Quote: "I don't take my skates off .. and don't fucking come in me." / "You don't ever disrespect me. FUCKER. YOU DON'T EVER DISRESPECT ME, YOU FUCKER! YOU THINK YOU CAN FUCK? YOU CAN'T FUCK ME, YOU FUCKER. YOU CAN'T TOUCH ME. YOU CAN'T TOUCH ME, YOU FUCKER."

IMDb Keywords: Roller Skates / Beating With Roller Skates

Notes: Her scene with Julianne Moore in the "Compared to What" sequence and the one in the limo were the best Heather Graham's ever done. She hasn't come close since. I'd say the same about Gwyneth Paltrow and Hard Eight / Sydney. Actors do well with Paul Thomas Anderson. You have an idea about Rollergirl as a character developed over a couple of hours and in a minute it's gone.

Mark Wahlberg played Dirk Diggler (Eddie Adams)

Character Shorthand: The King of Dirk. Thirteen inches is a tough load. He doesn't treat you gently. He can, though. He can fuck hard or he can fuck like really gently. He's the best. His presence when dressed is powerful and demanding. When stripped to the bone, he's more eruptive than a volcano on a bad day (despite it being notoriously difficult to get a skeleton to ejaculate).

Defining Quote: "You know what? I'm the biggest star here, man. That's the way it is. I wanna fuck. It's my big dick. So everybody get ready fuckin' now!"

IMDb Keyword: Big Penis

Notes: You've seen Boogie Nights, right? Next entry. "Nothing?" Well, what about a Superlative for Most Quietly Hilarious Dirk Line? "First we're gonna check for holes, see what we can find."

William H. Macy played Little Bill

Character Shorthand: "A 5 year old inquisitive and imaginative boy who loves his hamster and is a fan of the (fictional) Blue Sox baseball team. He also likes Captain Brainstorm because he comes up with great ideas. He enjoys going to kindergarten, although he misses Elephant, but he is still happy." Oh, Boogie Nights Little Bill.

Defining Quote: "My fucking wife has an ass in her cock in the driveway, Kurt. All right? I'm sorry if my thoughts are not on the photography of the film we're shooting tomorrow."

IMDb Keyword: Shot Through The Mouth

Notes: Everyone calls him Little Bill. How did he get that nickname? He's average height so it doesn't work as a short joke or a tall joke. Is it another Maurice and Rollergirl joke (with his wife's interest in "Big Stud[s]")? It can't be. Most of the characters in the movie are oblivious enough to call someone by an insulting nickname without knowing that it's insulting but they're also polite and sweet-natured enough to stop if he asked them to and why wouldn't he ask them to if it reminded him that his penis isn't large enough to satisfy his wife? I'm going to go with unexplained.

The murder-suicide is the turning point of the film but the part that may go unnoticed is Little Bill ran Jack's sets for him. He would've found a way of explaining the shooting delay to Dirk without telling him he didn't look good and he would've already known that Johnny Doe's co-star wanted to be sodomized so Jack wouldn't need to be told and could be ready to hide his disappointment. If they'd known they were going to lose that kind of quality control someone would've locked the door for his wife on New Year's Eve.

Nina Hartley played Little Bill's Wife

Character Shorthand: "What the fuck" does it look like she's doing?

Defining Quote: "Shut up, Bill. You're embarrassing me."

IMDb Keyword: Public Sex

Notes: She might've survived the film if she'd been less inconsiderate. The unfaithfulness is emasculating as it is. Could you let the Big Stud stop for a second so the two of you can move over and give Little Bill some room to sleep in his own bed while the two of you go at it? If you want to have a dozen people watch you with someone's ass in your cock ask Kurt to get his camera out so Little Bill can at least pretend it's going to be used in Spanish Pantalones. The guy in the driveway had a good tan. He can pass as a Spaniard if Dirk can.

Joanna Gleason played Dirk's Mother

Character Shorthand: Don't be mean to your son or he'll be shot to death by a man in bikini underwear while listening to "99 Luftballons."

Defining Quote: "Don't think I don't know what goes on here when I'm not here. I wash your sheets. I know she's been here. Or are you doing something else in there with your music and your posters on the wall?"

IMDb Keyword: Mother Son Relationship

Notes: What's she saying? That Eddie's sheets have joy juice on them when she washes them? That's not right, cool or sexy, Eddie. Or is she saying there's perfume (or the faint smell of horses) on them? Or that Eddie is masturbating to Cheryl Tiegs and Farrah Fawcett? Or putting on perfume and a horsehair wig and masturbating to Bruce Lee and Al Pacino in Serpico? That last one's unlikely.

Kai Lennox played High School-College Kid

Character Shorthand: Doesn't think it's that cool to leave him with a hard-on.

Defining Quote: "We watch her films a lot at my frat house. I go to CSUN."

IMDb Keyword: Sex In The Backseat Of A Limousine

Notes: A representative of the large subclass (class?) of misogynistic porn fans. He'll watch her movies, ram it in there like she's a hole in the wall if given the chance and expect a compromise handjob but still believe she should be ashamed of herself and subject her to mockery and contempt as a cover (while his friends make strange Metal Faces).

What's weirder and more pathetic, though, a girl who "love[s] to suck cock" or frat guys who watch porn together? Still, there's one thing he's right about: Jack's films circa 1983 do look like they "fuckin' suck." You saw that Rock Harders clip.

Laurel Holloman played Sheryl Lynn

Character Shorthand: She won a blue ribbon at the Seventh Step Benefit Horse Show.

Defining Quote: "Your cock is so beautiful."

IMDb Keyword: Pleasure

Notes: If I were running a Film Studies course and some Kubrick-Hitchcock acolyte asked me "Dr. Scroggins [don't laugh, my character has his PhD in Movies], how important are actors, really?" I'd put this scene on a reel to demonstrate how important actors are for dialogue. Holloman has plenty to contend with. "Afternoon Delight," the horse lover joke, how almost everything she says is completely ridiculous, the Korean subtitles, etc. She pulls it off. For true Boogie Nights completists, Holloman starred in a film with Nicole Ari Parker two years before called The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love.

Jason Andrews played Johnny (Limo Driver)

Character Shorthand: Knows when a girl has OD'd. A useful ability when working for The Colonel James.

Defining Quote: Scotty: " .. is she all right?" Johnny: "Shut the fuck up."

IMDb Keyword: Limousine

Notes: Do you think the On the Lookout series was his idea? With The Colonel gone he needed some excuse to keep the limo. Floyd Gondolli would've liked it because it features "the next stars, the real people in the world." It was bad luck for Johnny that the first co-star they found for Rollergirl was the worst possible candidate. I wouldn't guess there was a second attempt.

Robert Ridgely played The Colonel

Character Shorthand: No longer Jack's friend.

Defining Quote: "I'm looking forward to seeing you in action. Jack says you've got a great big cock."

IMDb Keyword: Sex With Minor

Notes: The implication is that he's caught with incriminating photos of children. I wonder if the moral code whereby the worst thing to be in prison is a child molester or child pornographer exists or if it's an invention of film and television. It makes sense, the same as it does that it'd be an inexcusable act in the porn community. (To give you an idea of scale, Jack has a painting of Bill in his house at the end but won't talk to The Colonel. Bill murdered his wife and a stranger.) Mostly because it's assumed a lot of the performers were molested as children.

Lil' Cinderella (Amber Hunter) played The Colonel's Lady Friend

Character Shorthand: I think maybe she did too much coke.

Defining Quote: "Hi. Do you have any coke at this party?"

IMDb Keyword: Drug Overdose

Notes: "Lil' Cinderella made her debut in the porn world in 1994 at the age of 18. She hardly fits the image of the stereotypical porn princess - she's smaller (4'10"), thinner and, compared to the glut of silicone queens in the industry, flat-chested. She has an innocent, schoolgirlish quality about her, which disappears once she gets into a scene; she is renowned in the industry for the incredible energy she throws into her sexual performances."

Titles include Little White Chicks, Big Black Dicks (2004), 100% Blowjobs 8 (2002; I can't stand those videos that are only 97% blow jobs), Jr. College Schoolgirls 6 (1999; those university girls are too uptight), Fucking Up That Ass (1997; finally, a title in her filmography with a double meaning), Hillbilly Honeys (1997; she had the accent for it) and Toilet Tramps 2 (1997; as a sequel joke here, Toilet Tramps 2: Electric Boogalo < Toilet Tramps 2: Two Shades of Blue).

Ricky Jay played Kurt Longjohn

Character Shorthand: Very often minimal means a lot more photographically than most people understand.

Defining Quote: "All right, now now Summer I want you to take Skye's thong off .. Yeah, actually take it off that's good and finger it. Oh, that's good. Oh no, that's good lick the thong, yeah. You know, that's really good technically, but but but it lacks passion. I want to see some passion here."

IMDb Keyword: Hot Tub

Notes: Superlative for Most Quietly Hilarious Scene in Boogie Nights: Kurt and Little Bill in the driveway.

Philip Seymour Hoffman played Scotty J.

Character Shorthand: He works on the films, you know, sometimes. So if you ever, yeah ..

Defining Quote: "Uh, do you like my car, Dirk? I mean, 'cause .. I wanted I wanted to make sure you thought it was cool or else I was gonna take it back."

IMDb Keyword: Unwanted Kiss

Notes: Dirk's at his most likable in the scene where Scotty kisses him. He tells Scotty his car is cool, appears interested, wants nothing to do with Scotty's mouth but does his level best to get across how inappropriate he's acting without saying anything cruel and is still willing to hug him and tell him he loves him. So you know how far gone he is later by the tone of his voice when he tells Scotty to "mind [his] business, please" when his #1 fan tells them that they should be careful about defrauding a man with more money than God and twice as much coke, crank and smack.

Melora Walters played Jessie St. Vincent

Character Shorthand: She'll need to use poetic license in order to capture your essence.

Defining Quote: "That is a fucking great idea."

IMDb Keyword: Painting

Notes: Best Random Line Reading in Boogie Nights: Above.

Jon Brion & co. played Awards Ceremony Band Members

Character Shorthand: Dirk appreciates the groove they're laying down.

Defining Quote: wakka chikka wakka chikka

IMDb Keyword: Award

Notes: He knocks his chair over in a hurry to get up and congratulate Dirk but do you think Buck was secretly disappointed not to win Best Actor?

I don't want to criticize minor details about the award scenes. I like that the statues look like a voluptuous, naked woman holding a mirror above her head for the recipient. I wish that when he finally won Best Director Martin Scorsese had strolled up, leaned into the mic, shrugged slightly, said a half-hearted "Thank you" then karate-kicked the air and walked off the stage. But, come on, "Best Cock?"

It has to be based on the AVN Awards. Their first ceremony was in 1984. The categories tended to match up with Oscar categories (including Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction and Best Screenplay .. for Puss 'N Boots, which probably wasn't about a talking cat). Even today you might have categories for Best Anal-Themed Release (2011 winner: Big Wet Asses! 16). Best Big Bust Series (Big Tits at School, which like Big Wet Asses could have a more creative name), Best Ethnic-Themed Series, Asian (Naughty Little Asians, which should be called Naughty Naughty, Little Asians and have a picture of Reed on the cover making the "shame shame" gesture with his fingers) and Black (Black Ass Addiction, all right, I'll stop soon) and Best Internal Release (Unplanned Parenthood, which I guess is for, uh, abortion fetishists?) but there are no body part categories for the actors. As Rollergirl might say, who cares if you've got big tits (at school)? It's how you use them. (Though I do admit that this year's AVN Awards were sponsored by something called PussyCash.)

Philip Baker Hall played Floyd Gondolli

Character Shorthand: Future Man

Defining Quote: "I'm not a complicated man. I like cinema. In particular, I like to see people fuckin' on film, but I don't wanna win an Oscar and I don't want to reinvent the wheel. I like simple pleasures like butter in my ass, lollipops in my mouth. That's just me. That's just something that I enjoy. Call me crazy. Call me a pervert. But there is one little thing that I want to do in this life and that is I want to make a dollar and a cent in this business."

IMDb Keyword: Video Tape

Notes: Was butter a lucky first choice or did he try other substances first? Mayonnaise? Ketchup? If someone says "We're out of butter. What about margarine?" does he slap the person in the face, Johnny the Limo Driver style?

Thomas Jane played Todd Parker

Character Shorthand: He doesn't dance Sunday nights.

Defining Quote: "Hey hey hey hey hey hey hey. We want something else from you … " / "Naw naw, see. I'm not kidding. I want what's in the safe. We want what is in the god damn safe in the god damn master bedroom in the fuckin' floor in the god damn fuckin' floor safe .. "

IMDb Keyword: Dancing

Notes: There's more to it than Todd's greed. He tells Rahad that they met before at Party Boys, where Todd dances. Another theory: Rahad came in one night as under the influence as he is in the movie and humiliated Todd in some way. There may have been some jokes about his sexual preference? Called him "kiddie." Patted him on the ass. Told him he'd look great in a cut-off Rick Springfield shirt ("He's a buddy of mine. I can get you one cheap.") and boxer shorts. Whatever happened, it looks personal for Todd. I prefer that to thinking he was spring-loaded by coke to escalate their theft for dramatic purposes.

Jonathan Quint played Johnny Doe

Character Shorthand: Not an actor.

Defining Quote: "Lock and load, Jack." / "YES, bitch! Yeah, that's it, lick my balls. Fuck me. Who's your daddy, bitch? Augh. You live. You live. YYYYYESS!"

IMDb Keyword: Video Footage

Notes: Best edit from the screenplay was taking out the part where Johnny Doe crashes his Malibu into Eddie's parents' car, killing all three of them. Brock Landers doesn't need to point a gun at someone's head to get her to go down on him. All he has to do is glance at his crotch and say "Why don't you feast on that?" They know his reputation.

Michael Penn played Nick the Engineer

Character Shorthand: Has an early version of Stan Bush's "The Touch" for clients to use for their demos because if you can sing "The Touch" you can sing anything.

Defining Quote: "No, not really. Maybe. It sounds balanced to me."

IMDb Keyword: Bad Singing

Notes:

Robert Downey, Sr. played Burt (Studio Manager)

Character Shorthand: Knows his industry jargon.

Defining Quote: Reed: "We look like assholes right now, man." Burt: (nod)

IMDb Keyword: Demo Tape

Notes: If you asked a 12-year-old boy to come up with some rock lyrics the result would sound a lot like "Feel My Heat." So it's only right that Dirk sounds like a 12-year-old when he sings it.

Veronica Hart played Judge

Character Shorthand: Is backed up with so many cases she hasn't had time in the last eight months to change the picture of the Governor from Jerry Brown to George Deukmejian.

Defining Quote: "When was the last time you were arrested and, uh, what was the charge?"

IMDb Keyword: Child Custody

Notes: "Tuesday Morning, September, 1983" is a very specific unspecific title card. With her profession and what her criminal record must look like it's no surprise that Amber doesn't get visitation rights with her son but the shot of her crying outside the courthouse is the most painful part in the film.

Veronica Hart was an inspiration for Amber Waves. For comparison with Lil' Cinderella her titles included Woman in Love: A Story of Madame Bovary (1978), The Seduction of Cindy (1980), Angel Buns (1981, maybe that one doesn't fit but note the use of "Buns," not "Ass." It's more playful), Amanda by Night (1981) and the aforementioned award-winning Puss 'n Boots (1982). Read the following to yourself as Little Bill describing it to Jack Horner:

"Private Puss plans to get pregnant to get out of the army. She hires a male prostitute only to find out too late he has had a vasectomy. She then joins her friends to peep on Sergeant Matthews with a woman. Private Nora gets caught sexually abusing Private April in the shower but pretends April is the molester. Private Bobbie forces herself on two male soldiers. The women unload a delivery van while Private Sandy pleasures its driver. While conducting gambling, Private Terri mistakenly pleasures the wrong man under the table when another one pays her. Meanwhile, Private Sandy lets a French speaking man take her from behind. Private Puss dates Sergeant Matthews. Privates Bobbie and Puss avenge April by using a dildo to sexually abuse Private Nora. They eventually leave secretly so she'll be caught supposedly pleasuring herself from behind."

Channon Roe played Joe (Surfer)

Character Shorthand: Doesn't respect the "No Refunds" policy masturbation shows typically have.

Defining Quote: "You don't do this, donkey dick. You don't! Fuckin' faggot."

IMDb Keyword: Gay Bashing

Notes: The gay High School-College Kid. Another example of the film's anti-hypocrite stance. Before he's beating Dirk up he's watching him as intently as possible and giving him directions. "Harder," "faster," etc. Does this ever come up when the Surfers are discussing who's going to play bait when they go out and assault street hustlers for fun?

"You don't have to do it again, Joe. You've volunteered the last four times."

"No, it's cool. I'm used to it now."

"Fine, but tonight can you try to stall him so his pants are still zipped when we get there? I'm tired of having to aim my kicks to avoid their exposed genitals."

"What do you want me to do? These faggots just shove it in my face as soon as I park the truck .. "

B. Philly Johnson played Rahad's Bodyguard

Character Shorthand: The black guy with a gun in his jacket.

Defining Quote: "How you doin'? Come on in."

IMDb Keyword: Gun

Notes: Maybe if Rahad wasn't such a baseball fan he'd notice how bad this guy is at his job. He gets about five minutes with that bag and if Todd hadn't mentioned the floor safe the three of them (all relative strangers) would've left him sitting at the dining room table with baking soda. When his employer is threatened and shoots the guy who pointed a gun at him instead of staying on the guy with the gun the Bodyguard aims at his two friends (who only moments before were insisting they should leave) and starts firing and even though they have the distance of a couch between them he doesn't hit either one of them. Shoddy all around.

Alfred Molina played Rahad Jackson

Character Shorthand: Eddie Nash

Defining Quote: "I make these little, uh, mix tapes together, you know? I put all my favorite songs together. Hey, Cosmo? Which one is this? Number .. number eleven, yeah. [It's not.] I love it. You know you know you know when you buy a tape or something or an album you know you put it on and the songs are the bands put 'em in some fuckin' order like they want you to listen to it in that order, you know? I hate that. I fuckin' hate that. I don't like to be told what to listen to, when to listen to it or anything."

IMDb Keyword: Silver Pistol

Notes: In the script Rahad gets killed in a shootout with the cops. In the film you might worry for Dirk and Reed's safety after they escape but if Rahad can even remember what happened in the morning he still has a couple of dead bodies to explain.

Joe G.M. Chan played Cosmo

Character Shorthand: He's Chinese.

Defining Quote: [bang]

IMDb Keyword: Firecracker

Notes: Where is he when the shooting starts? He disappears. Hm. One last theory: the Bodyguard wasn't shooting at Reed and Dirk. He was sick of those damn firecrackers and saw his chance. Cosmo "accidentally" caught a stray.

The Internet asks "Tweed no Whirry or Whirry no Tweed?"

2011-08-17T02:00:00.002-04:00

We wanted to start a feature where we answer your questions but since we have fewer than five readers (counting us) for now they will have to be questions we either ask each other or find on the Internet. Our first question comes from darktone, who asked me (and anyone else reading) the following on an IMDb message board on July 27, 2005:

"Would it be [Shannon] tweed or would it be [Shannon] whirry? Which of them had better counterparts or 'assistants' in their soft-core flicks? If you could choose only one of them which would it be? Why didn't they do a soft core movie together? Would you like to see them in a threesome with another guy in a movie?"

1. "Which in better in the B-movie area? Would it be tweed or would it be whirry?"

I have to limit this comparison to movies I've seen, so for Whirry it's The Granny,

IMDb Plot Summary: "Granny's family wants her dead so they can collect her insurance. While she is on her death bed, she drinks an eternal life potion and returns to the land of the living. She is on a mission to wreak havoc over her greedy relatives."

IMDb Keywords: Castration / Good Versus Evil / Female To Male Foot In Crotch

IMDb User Review: "My only complaint is that I can't figure out for the life of me why movie-makers will always put glasses on a female character (who is obviously very attractive) and then act like all the characters think she's ugly. Is being visually impaired such an ugly thing in America? Well, anyway .. "

Dangerous Prey

IMDB Plot Summary: "On a trip to Europe, a woman gets abducted and soon finds herself in a training facility for female mercenaries. In deed, a doctor and his wife manipulate the women into killing. If they do not comply, a chip inserted into their brain will kill them."

IMDb Keywords: Czechploitation / Rape / Shower / Lesbianism

IMDb User Review: "This is not legitimate entertainment by my own standards … It defines as a 'damsel-in-distress' show in my dictionary, and that's sayin' it! Shannon Whirry holding a gun on the front box cover is the reason to get excited. Well, DUH!!! What's with all the lesbians, the nudity, the S&M??? They have absolutely NOTHING in connection with this supposed-to-be action thriller, don't you agree?! Movie writers and directors need to come up with better talents in putting a figurine out to play 'Kill' instead of throwing in some useless sex and wasted duplications. So far, nothing's changed."

and Fatal Pursuit.

IMDb Plot Summary: "A rugged ex-cop P.I. and a beautiful British female insurance investigator [Yes, that's Whirry] search for diamonds that were stolen in a brutal robbery."

IMDb Keywords: English Accent / Sarcasm / Sex

IMDb User Review: "I especially like the way our Yanni-looking leading man (who aspires to Jimmy Buffet-ness) and B-movie queen Shannon Whirry (whose English accent fades in and out in even single lines) attempt to banter and have chemistry; it's laugh-inspiring. Plot? Who knows! All I can tell you is that Malcolm McDowell had reached his low point here. Avoid this movie at all costs!"

This is the trade-off with YouTube. If you want to find a clip of Shannon Whirry's "sexy legs in black stockings" you have several choices. If you want an example of her English accent in Fatal Pursuit, no luck. I'll try to make up for it with bonus IMDb User Reviews:

"One of the first scenes it the movie shows people getting shot up. some guy somehow gets caught on fire and falls into death next to a parked limo. he is about a meter away and the limo explodes. this is the highpoint of the movie and it wasn't even good."

"I loved the relationship between our heroine and the hero. They obviously went all out to provide a study in contrasts, he a beer drinking slob from the Big Easy, and she a stuffy British bird who is not easy at all. And it worked! I wasn't familiar with the actress; I noticed in her listings she is something of a 'B' queen, and I greatly appreciated her showing her wares (the film's dialogue comments, after she gets drunk and our hero brings her to bed unconscious, that she is a '10,' and that not far from the truth. ((Those who might lecherously ask, 'What, me Whirry?'… the answer would be a resounding 'yes.')) By the way, let me jump ahead and provide another reason why I liked this film... it broke the rules, in this scene. Normally, the hero would be too much of a gentleman to take advantage of a lady in this state of stupor, but our cad of a hero actually did! I thought they were kidding, and at the end it was going to be one of those, 'naw, I was a good boy' sort of thing, but that was positively ground-breaking..! Certainly only wonderful in movie terms; in real life we'd be talking downright contemptible, date-rape without question. She actually tells him, once she wakes up in the morning and over the phone, 'I hope you used a condom.' And her character was meant to be uncool!) So I loved this relationship. And our hero... whom I see from his listing has a tendency to cast himself, as the producer of many of his own vehicles... looked like a real hunk a' man as we used to appreciate in the old days, good manly build (in a natural way, without the superficial buff) hairy chest and all. And even though he was a rapist, there was a soft side to him .. "

For Tweed it's Scorned,

IMDb Plot Summary: "A man so desperate for a promotion prostitutes his unwilling wife to his boss. Then despite this sacrifice, another man is brought in to take the position and the first man is faced with a demotion and potentially being completely ousted from the company. Humiliated, he chooses to commit suicide. His wife then vows revenge on everyone involved and manipulates her way into Stevens' home as a tutor to his teen son. Of course, what she teaches is not on a school curriculum. She further starts poisoning his wife, while seducing her and her husband. Everyone, of course, is set against each other. But none of the group think of blaming Tweed."

IMDb Keywords: Boxer Shorts / Bubble Bath / Rear Entry Sex / Underage Smoking / Staring at Someone's Breast / Father and Son Have Sex with the Same Woman / Basketball / Surprise Ending

IMDb User Review: "The seduction/sex scene with Andrews' son is one of the best scenes in any soft core porn movie. The way Mrs. Tweed comes into him, how she uplifts her dress and later rides him is brilliant.

But the scene that has changed the genre is the pool table sex scene (maybe not at explicit as in 'Body Chemistry 4') where Tweed leans and Andrews' does her behind. Her face, her moans, the whole scene is worth your money."

Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death

IMDb Plot Summary: "The government hires a feminist at the local university to track down the Piranha Women living in the uncharted Avocado Jungle (westernmost outpost is San Bernardino) to convince them to move to a reservation condo in Malibu. She hires a guide [Bill Maher] at the edge of the jungle, a male chauvinist pig, and they have many arguments about men and women as they work their way in, and eventually confront the Piranha Women."

IMDb Keywords: Gender Roles / Government Conspiracy / Piranha

IMDb User Review: "Bill Maher plays a light-hearted chauvinist who teaches a tribe of sensitive men all about beer and corvettes. Seeing Bill Maher in purple bikini underwear before being put into a pot to stew, and having him discover a carrot in the pot and uttering the words 'What's up Doc' is very worth the viewing experience.."

and Meatballs III: Summer Job.

IMDb Plot Summary: "A dead porno movie star returns from the beyond to help a nerdy teen to score with the beautiful wife of the owner of the camp he is spending the summer working at. Wow." (I don't know if I've ever seen a "Wow" at the end of an IMDb Plot Summary before.)

IMDb Keywords: Yanked Off Bikini Top / Good Samaritan / Roman Numeral in Title

IMDb User Review: "I used to think Meatballs III was the best in the series. But after a while, I realized I was wrong. None of the films are actually all that funny … Part II involved some kind of Martian thing hiding among the campers."

"How was this movie pitched? Angel from Heaven needs to teach a virgin how to bang a chick. And she is not just an Angel, she is a Porn Star Angel. If it was meant to be a joke, I did not laugh. ackkkk My intestines have exploded. DO NOT EVER SEE THIS!!!!"

The Granny = Cannibal Women, Scorned no Fatal Pursuit (Tweed doesn't have an English accent in Scorned) and Dangerous Prey no Meatballs III. I'll use their "A-movies" as a tiebreaker. For Whirry there have been two. Out for Justice, which I don't recall her in, only William Forsythe.

So, I'll lift a review of Whirry's performance from The Goddess and The Genius.

"This was Shannon Whirry’s first movie role. She plays Terry Malloy, a cocktail waitress who tips Gino [Steven Seagal] to a crooked cop’s double life. She probably doesn’t have more than 5 minutes of screen time, but she makes an impression. Gino refers to her as 'the one with the nipples you could dial a phone with.' Unfortunately, she spends much of her time on-screen weeping first at the death of Bobby and then at the shock of discovering another woman murdered. Also, even more unfortunately, Shannon affects a really bad Brooklyn accent, which mercifully fades out after a few moments. [Another accent. Whirry's a chameleon.]

Just cleavage this time around. But she does get a great little scene when Gino escorts her out of the nightclub. She’s wearing a bustier top, which is absolutely incapable of containing her busom. Even though Gino is getting a divorced, he does not fall for Terry’s obvious charms. Combined with his pony tail and beret, it makes you think maybe Gino is gay."

Also Me, Myself & Irene. I'm not going to embed the YouTube clip, but here's arcticfox2276's commentary: "thats really her boob [Jim Carrey's] sucking. he was really embarressed. he said he kept applogizing to her between ever take. she didn't give a crap because she's a failed actress." I disagree. I don't think she "[gave] a crap" because

Tweed's includes Hot Dog… for Girls, um, I mean The Movie. I've never seen it and Hector, our site's resident Ski Movie Expert, is currently unreachable. You can't get cell service up on the K-12. That leaves Detroit Rock City. I was born in between Generations X and Y. (Different birth years count for each depending on your source.) This has its advantages. One is that I was both too old for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and too young for KISS. I don't have to bother with or pretend to enjoy things like the TMNT reboot (Elias Koteas is Elias Koteas to me, not "Casey Jones") or Detroit Rock City.

Whirry in better in the B-movie area.

2. Which of them had better counterparts or 'assistants' in their soft-core flicks?

Isn't Tweed Whirry's counterpart, and Whirry Tweed's? That's made redundant by another question, so I'm ignoring it. What do you mean by "assistants," guy who asked these questions six years ago? Co-stars? That's Whirry. Her movies also starred Harry Dean Stanton (wait, what? Harry Dean Stanton was in Playback and the video cover advertises George Hamilton's involvement?), Malcolm McDowell (twice), Charles Napier, Timothy Bottoms, Bo Svenson, Rip Taylor, William Devane, Maxwell Caulfield, Jan-Michael Vincent, David Carradine and Nick Cassavetes (you may know him as the son of John and Gena Rowlands or the director of She's So Lovely or The Notebook; I know him as Packard Walsh from The Wraith, so he's my Elias Koteas/"Casey Jones"). Tweed had Lance Henriksen, James Gammon, James Brolin, Erik Estrada, Jim Brown, Steven Bauer and Andrew Stevens (more than twice).

3. If you could choose only one of them which would it be?

Choose one for what? To rub her modesty patch against a guy's stomach in a B-movie? I'm going to defer to the pundits from IMDb:

"Rack and face to Tweed. Acting to Whirry." -- djspock

"well, whirry has these erotic tongue technique o i go with whirry!" -- Pinduchitti

"How do you know about this erotic tongue technique? I don't know about erotic tongue technique but she sure nuff had a great pair of erotic jugs." -- m_wonderful

"Tweed was prettier, but Whirry has those bigger, floppy rib-pillows. So this presents quite a quandary." -- mcfly-31

"Shannon Whirry very, very easily .. Those enormous boobies were just great .. " -- m_wonderful again

"Tweed has implants. Therefore she loses. I like pie." -- Samoan Bob

4. Why didn't they do a soft core movie together?

That's a good question. Pacino and De Niro had Heat, why didn't Tweed and Whirry have Fatal Heat, Dangerous Heat, Private Heat, Indecent Heat, Hard Heat, Night Heat, Cold, uh, Heat, Sexual Heat, Twisted Heat or a remake of Body Heat (with Whirry as William Hurt and Tweed as Kathleen Turner) or Dead Heat (with Whirry as Treat Williams and Tweed as Joe Piscopo)? Professional rivalry? No company could afford both? A disagreement over what kind of accent Whirry would be allowed to try? I don't have an answer.

5. Would you like to see them in a threesome with another guy in a movie?

Who's the guy? If it's Harry Dean Stanton, "yes."

Frank Bauggs (?-1987)

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Played by David Wolos-Fonteno in Death Wish 4: The Crackdown.

Love and Death on Long Island (1997)

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" .. study what happens to anyone beholding an actress--the spectator, the audience, or ourselves in any of our voyeur roles. And the most important thing in that vexed transaction is the way the actress and the spectator must remain strangers. That's how the magic works … For there cannot be this pitch of irrational desire without that rigorous apartness, provided by a hundred feet of warm space in a theater, and by that astonishing human invention, the screen, at the movies. And just as the movies were never simply an art or a show, a drama or narrative, but the manifestation of desire, so the screen is both barrier and open sesame.

The thing that permits witness--seeing her, being so intimate--is also the outline of a prison." -- from the introduction to Nicole Kidman by David Thomson

"Giles De'Ath (John Hurt) is a British writer who doesn't use or understand anything modern. One day, he forgets his keys and locks himself out of his flat. It begins to rain, so he goes to see an E.M. Forster movie but, instead, accidentally enters the wrong theatre and sees the teen flick Hotpants College II starring Ronnie Bostock (Jason Priestley)."

"He becomes instantly infatuated with Ronnie's beauty and obsessed with the young actor. He goes to his movies in the cinema, buys teen magazines and cuts out pictures of him, and buys a VCR and TV in order to play rented video tapes of his movies."

The novella it's based on (by Gilbert Adair, who also wrote The Holy Innocents, later filmed as The Dreamers) was a retelling of Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. "Mann's original intention was to write about 'passion as confusion and degradation.'" From the Amazon review of Adair's book: "Initially denying even the possibility that he might be experiencing a homosexual crush, De'Ath soon finds himself giving in to this 'strange and bothersome distraction' by scouring teenybopper magazines for articles like '20 Facts Ya Didn't Know About [Ronnie]!!' 'As someone who did not know any facts at all about him as yet,' he notes, 'I confess I felt a certain onset of excitement.'"

If you're any kind of cinephile, you have a Ronnie Bostock. That doesn't mean you agree with Giles that Jason Priestley is a mega dreamboat, only that you can relate to his strange and bothersome distraction. While others are unable to find a single redeeming feature in an actor or actress, your thoughts about him or her could be punctuated by multiple exclamation marks. That's Thomson's magic.

Love and Death on Long Island is a story about a spectator who out of irrational desire tries to remove that rigorous apartness. Most of us prefer the prison.

Hector's Top Ten Films of the 1920s

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I must confess that I haven't seen nearly as many films from the silent era (and very early sound era) as I should've. I've actually seen so few films from the twenties that in order to make this a "top ten" list rather than a "top eight" one I have to include two films that I'm not certain I've seen in their entirety. You might argue that I'm not qualified to create such a list, and you'd probably be right, but I have a great deal of appreciation for 20s films (particularly of the German Expressionist variety) and there are several films from this era that have impressed me so much that I can't bear not to include them in a "top ten" list of some kind. So, if you see that titles you feel should be here are missing (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Sunrise, Battleship Potemkin, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Last Laugh) the reason I haven't included them is that I haven't seen them.

10 and 9. The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925) and The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921)

These two films are at the bottom of this list not necessarily because they deserve to be there, but because I don't think I've seen either in its entirety. During a Chaplinfest on AMC fifteen or so years ago, I caught part of The Gold Rush and watched the last 2/3 of The Kid. The Kid was very touching. I don't recall much about The Gold Rush, but Chaplin's films are always entertaining.

8. Nana (Jean Renoir, 1926)

I've always thought Jean Renoir to be one of the most overrated directors in the history of film (which isn't to say he's bad), and this is probably my least favorite of his works. The only reason it's #8 on this list (and the only reason it's on the list at all) is that I can only think of eight films from the 20s that I'm certain I've seen all the way through and it would seem like cheating to give a film I've only seen part of (or haven't seen at all) a higher ranking. I found the film dull, the title character off-putting (I guess she was supposed to be, but...), and Catherine Hessling's performance obnoxious.

7. Pandora's Box (G.W. Pabst, 1929)

Lulu is a much more interesting character than Nana (what was this 20s trend of making movies about showgirls with toddlerspeak names all about?), Louise Brooks was a much better actress than Catherine Hessling, and from what (little) I've seen G.W. Pabst was a much better director in the 20s than was Jean Renoir. A solid film.

6. Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Benjamin Christensen, 1922)

From what I've read, the version of this film that I saw (on VHS, twelve or thirteen years ago) is kind of a mess, so it could be that this film isn't as high on this list as it should be. Once I see the Criterion edition (it's on my "to see" list, along with about 15,000 other titles), it might move up. Whether it does or not, this part documentary, part comedy, and part horror curiosity is certainly interesting.

5. The Lodger (Alfred Hitchcock, 1927)

Joe has begun to suspect that the Buntings' unusual new boarder is responsible for a string of recent London murders, but might there be another explanation for the lodger's mysterious behavior? This silent is one of Hitchcock's best films.

4. Faust (F.W. Murnau, 1926)

The first, and probably best, of several film adaptations of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's play, Murnau's Faust is full of fantastical imagery and nifty effects. Well worth seeing.

3. Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)

Other than Georges Melies's less serious Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) (1902), Metropolis is the earliest science fiction film I've seen. This dazzling blend of futurism and anti-capitalist sentiment was a remarkable achievement in its day, and in my opinion it would be a remarkable (if somewhat dated-looking) achievement today.

2. Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (Dr. Mabuse the Gambler) (Fritz Lang, 1922)

Master hypnotist, manipulator, counterfeiter, disguise artist and all-around criminal genius Dr. Mabuse has made a career of conning millionaires out of their fortunes, but will a persistent police inspector, a romantic obsession, and a sudden turn of conscience be his undoing? The version of this film that I saw was five hours long (last I checked, the most complete cut available on DVD was around four and a half hours in length) and I'll admit that I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about sitting through a 300-minute silent, but I was somewhat fanatical about Fritz Lang at the time and so I forced myself to watch it. I'm glad I did, as I found myself mesmerized from the opening scene. Highly recommended.

1. Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922)

Perhaps the best vampire film ever made, Nosferatu has an authentic feel due to the time it was made that simply couldn't be replicated today (Werner Herzog tried in 1979 and failed miserably). Max Schreck wasn't the Dracula that one imagined while reading Bram Stoker's 1897 novel; he was far more terrifying, and this was partly due to his inability to speak (except by way of title cards). The high-contrast lighting, dread-inspiring set design, and skewed camera angles combine to make Nosferatu more like an extended nightmare than a coherent story, and that's how most horror films should be. A masterpiece.

Death and the Maiden (1994)

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"Paulina Escobar (Weaver) is a housewife married to a prominent lawyer in an unnamed South American country. One day a storm forces her husband Gerardo (Wilson) to ride home with a kind stranger. That chance encounter brings up demons from her past, as she is convinced that the stranger, Dr. Miranda (Kingsley), was part of the old fascist regime and that he tortured and raped her while she was blindfolded. Paulina takes him captive to determine the truth. Despite attempts by both her husband and Miranda to convince her that he is innocent, Paulina is certain that he is the one, and forces her husband to be Miranda's 'attorney' in the 'trial' she arranges for him."

This is the climactic scene, so if you haven't seen the film I recommend you watch it first. It plays better in context. Under the threat of death if he doesn't make a genuine confession, Miranda starts talking.

He can't stop. Does he think that if he does before she's convinced he isn't pretending he'll be thrown over or is he relieved that he can at last make all his "secrets" and "ugly thoughts" known? It's left ambiguous. You could interpret it as a model example of torture leading to a false confession. You could say the point is it no longer matters if what he's saying is true but my feeling is that it is.

There have been entire movies about what Kingsley lays out in three minutes. He's plaintive, angry and pathetic. There's the snorting laughter of a mischievous child, a detached fascination with what he allowed himself to become and an enthusiasm for recalling every last detail. There's a truthfulness to it, almost an integrity, that's enough to satisfy Paulina.

How is it that people come to do what Miranda is accused of? It's too much to ask of a film for it to answer that question but it's no small accomplishment that Kingsley and Death and the Maiden give an account that feels the least bit honest. It doesn't matter if it's a false confession. It'll do.