Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 23rd, 2010
The biggest troublemakers at Beaver High (get it?) are sent to a remedial school for the summer. There (wait for it), they make life miserable for the principal while (you're not gonna believe this) finding various ways to see the female students naked, not to mention getting it on with the (but of course!) sexy French teacher. It's hijinx and nudity, 80s style.
What we have here is a sequel to a cash-in on Porky's, which means there is hardcore porn out there that is more artistically ambitious. But having just made and argument (in my review of Joy) for the preservation of 80s travelogue erotica, I can hardly then turn my nose up at the teen sex comedy from the same period, now can I? Having said that, this is far from being the funniest or most interesting of that species. If you came of age in the 80s, you'll know every beat of this movie, and every tired punchline, by heart, even if you've never seen it. And if you didn't grow up then, you'll still see everything coming.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 23rd, 2010
Supermodel Joy (Claudia Udy) flits from man to man, never satisfied. There's the photographer who loves her, but he, it seems, is too much of a boy. Far more intriguing for her is the older man (Gerard Antoine Huart) she falls for, and keeps returning to, moth to a flame, despite his refusal to give up the other woman in his life. The root of Joy's problem seems to be twofold: she is haunted by the memory of having caught her parents in flagrante as a young child, and she is obsessed with her father, who left her when, again, she was very young.
So yeah, nothing creepy about the older man fixation at all, now is there? At any rate, this is glossy erotica cut very much from the same cloth as Emmanuelle, complete with pointless travelogue footage to show off all the location shots and half-baked philosophical musings about sex (or, more specifically, female sexuality). There is also a minor subplot involving Joy's nude shot as part of a campaign for the liberation of the aforementioned female sexuality, though this gesture towards feminism feels rather dubious, serving only as an excuse to get the heroine naked again. Well-produced though the film is, it lacks the narrative drive of something like The Alcove, meandering gently along to a rather abrupt conclusion. It is an interesting, semi-nostalgic reminder of the lost days of theatrical soft-core, but for sheer entertainment value, a dollop of Joe D'Amato-style sleaze will get you farther.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 27th, 2010
The time is the 1930s, the setting Africa, as Mussolini attempts to recreate an Empire through the colonization of Abyssinia. An officer and poet Elio (Al Cliver) returns from the campaign with the spoils of conquest, one of which is Abyssinian princess Zerbal (Laura Gemser, of D'Amato's Black Emanuelle films). The erotic heat in his home is already pretty torrid, what with wife Alessandra (Lilli Carati) carrying on with secretary Virma (Annie Belle). Zerbal's arrival upsets the emotional apple cart, passions flare, and the supposed slave starts to exert more and more influence over the putative masters.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 22nd, 2009
Enzo Castellari, Tarantino fave and director of the original Inglorious Bastards, here gives us a tale of wartime intrigue that sweeps from the retreat of Dunkirk to the Battle of Britain. During the Dunkirk evacuation, a team of Nazi saboteurs don English uniforms and mingle with the embarking troops. Captain Paul Stevens (Frederick Stafford) finds evidence that this has occurred, but no clues to the identities of the saboteurs. Indeed, the second-in-command of the group, Martin (Francisco Rabal) has become his close friend and roommate. The saboteurs target Britain's radar system, a critical part of the island's defense against the Luftwaffe. It's up to Stevens and his specially assigned team to stop the saboteurs before the Battle of Britain is lost.
It's amusing, of course, to watch a film all about England's fate hanging in the balance with not a single English actor in the mix. But the story is a good one, and the action is relentless, ranging from the epic scale (the Dunkirk scenes are quite spectacular) to the more personal (plenty of exciting gunfights around the radar installations). The dogfights are a somewhat less satisfying combination of rather obvious models and stock footage, but Castellari's inventive use of split screen keeps the visual interest high.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 18th, 2009
A mysterious figure digs up the shattered remains of an android in the desert wastes of a very grim, polluted future. The man brings the head and hand in for barter, and they are picked by Hard Moe Baxter (Dylan McDermott, in a role that nicely deconstructs Mad Max). Moe takes the hardware back to the flat of his artist girlfriend (Stacey Travis), who incorporates the pieces into a sculpture. Unfortunately, these remains are part of the M.A.R.K. 13 military droid, and when Moe absents himself, the robot reactivates and goes on the rampage.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 13th, 2009
An insubordinate officer (Bo Svenson), an African-American who Has Been Pushed Too Far (Fred Williamson), a thief, a gambler, and a coward are among the prisoners loaded up onto an Allied convoy in 1944. When the trucks come under attack from the Germans, the prisoners escape, and decide to make their way to Switzerland. But their journey is a complicated one, with another firefight around every corner, culminating in a particularly violent case of mistaken identity, which results in their volunteering to tackle a suicidal train-jacking.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 10th, 2009
After an opening, fragmentary montage of a traffic accident, we encounter Melvin Devereux (John Savage), standing in front of his father's grave, making a few cynical remarks apparently in the wake of dad's funeral. Then, after a strange conversation with a mysterious woman (Sandi Schultz), Devereux begins to make his way home. But his route is blocked by one obstacle after another, and his journey becomes ever longer and ever more frustrating as he drives down the empty roads of the Louisiana countryside. He is then plagued by a hearse, which will not let him overtake, and that turns up wherever he goes. Soon he becomes obsessed with catching the hearse, after seeing his name on the coffin inside.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 9th, 2009
Dr. Stephen Arrowsmith is a haughty scientist who sees himself above such petty concerns as ethics. He has married his wife Muriel (Barbara Steele) for her money, and when he catches her in the arms of one of the servants (Rik Battaglia), he tortures and kills them both, cuts out their hearts, and uses their blood to create an elixir of youth for the maid/co-conspirator Solange (Helga Liné). He then marries the psychologically fragile Jenny (Steele again, now blonde), Muriel's heiress, planning to drive her insane and take control of the his dead wife's fortune. Sure enough, Jenny starts seeing things, but the ghosts she is seeing are real.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 10th, 2009
A middle-aged man (Jean Rochefort) recounts his youthful sexual awakening to the charms of the local hairdresser. Developing a fixation on the erotics of a women cutting men's hair, he resolves to marry a hairdresser, and decades later, he gets his wish. His wife is the lovely Anna Galiena, and once wed, they rarely leave her little shop (indeed, they also get married there).
Writer/director Patrice Leconte is dealing with a pretty specialized fetish here, but he in the early goings, he actually comes close to making us understand Rochefort's obsession. Leconte's precise attention to sensual details sells us the young boy's developing passion, but in the long run, the older Rochefort's inclination is rather harder to take seriously, or even be that interested in. The couple's idyllic life in the salon is obviously not mean to be seen in any realist sense, but even as a parable, it's rather thin. Rochefort spends his days doing crossword puzzles while Galiena reads gossip magazines, gazing adoringly at her as she tends to various customers (whose eccentricities feel like the inevitable conventions of this sort of art film, even as they do provide a necessary spark of life to the very still narrative), and launching, at the drop of a hat, into improvised dances to Arab music. This last quality is supposed to be charming, but by the third number (in a short, 82-minute film), it is simply irritating. Having created a situation where, once the courtship is accomplished (a matter of mere minutes of screen time), nothing can happen, Leconte decides to wrap things up with a conclusion that is clearly supposed to be poignant, but is utterly fatuous. The film is delicately wrought, and quite lovely, but also fundamentally empty-headed. In the end, it comes across as little more than a precious presentation of a middle-aged, rather misogynist fantasy.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 27th, 2009
Frankly, if you need any information beyond the title of this release, then it probably isn't for you. It's The Sinful Dwarf, man! But if you really must know more, be it on your head. Mind-bogglingly stupid and broke newlyweds Mary and Peter (Anne Sparrow and Tony Eades, actors of an ineptitude that passeth all understanding) check in to the boarding house of retired (and scarred) burlesque performer Lila Lash (Clara Keller) her son Olaf (children's show host Torben Bille), the titular sinful dwarf. Mary hears noises in the attic, but Peter won't listen to her. He should, as Lila and Olaf keep a harem of women up there as prostitutes, ensuring their submission through forced injections of heroin. Now they have their sights set on Mary...
Whatever you fear or hope about a film with this title, the reality will likely exceed your imagination. “Exploitation†is almost too tame a word to describe the spectacles here, whether we're talking about incessant close-ups of Bille's sweaty, greasy, drooling, leering face, or Keller's disturbing Marlene Dietrich impersonation. If you don't need a shower after watching this, you aren't human. In other words, it's sublime.
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