Wednesday

Tuna

comments and pics from Tuna

"Garden of Evil" (1998)

Garden of Evil (1998) is decidedly a terrible horror film. The 3.0 rating at IMDB may, in fact, be a little high. The plot involves Malcolm McDowell as a highly intelligent man with a rapid aging disorder who has turned to gardening to create beauty. Angie Everhart is a tough police detective whose partner (Sarah Peterson), disappears. Everhhart becomes convinced that McDowell had something to do with the disappearance.

McDowell is renowned for his green thumb, and will not reveal any secrets. Up to this point, the plot is not doomed.

Everhart stakes out McDowell. First huge mistake. She hasn't really been given much of a character to work with anyway, and minute after minute of her talking into her tape recorder while seeing nothing useful is not entertaining. There are no other suspects, and what McDowell was up to in his demented but brilliant mind was never well explained. 

Everhart is naked, but has flower petals covering up the essentials. Peterson shows a breast.

I could write the entire film off easily, except that coupling the beauty of flowers and women made for great symbolism and wonderful imagery. More development of both the McDowell and the Everhart characters might have turned this into an interesting yarn. McDowell is certainly capable of doing more with a part, and there is a rumor that Everhart can act if given a real role and direction. There really is nothing here, but, with a little effort, there might have been. D-.
 

 

  • Thumbnails
  • Angie Everhart (1, 2 )
  • Sara Peterson ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

    • Speaking of Angie
    Angie didn't get naked there, but a year or two later she was getting much more generous with her favors.

    Here she is in Sexual Predator, a pretty decent STV erotic thriller with Angie again teamed with Richard Grieco.

    Angie Everhart ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

     

    Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy)

    Calendar Girls (2003):

    As you probably know, it seems that all British movies shown in the USA now fall into two types:

    Type A - Black comedies about ultra-violent gangsters

    Type B - Gentle, quirky comedies about eccentric small-town provincials who are doing something vaguely naughty or socially unorthodox. (Growing marijuana in their greenhouse, getting naked in public, boys giving up football for ballet, girls giving up baking for the trumpet, etc)

    This movie is a Type B, and quite a good one in some ways. In fact, Calendar Girls is just about the best 90 minute movie I saw in 2003.

    Unfortunately, it was 108 minutes long.

    The basic story works beautifully - a simple premise about some rural ladies' clubbers who decide to do a naked calendar to raise some money in memory of one of their husbands, who died during the year. They struggle against various puritanical factions, they manage to pull it off, and instead of selling their few hundred calendars and buying a new sofa for a hospital, they end up world famous, and making enough money to build a whole new wing on the hospital. It's based on a real event, and it is a sweet and stirring story about acceptance and true love, not romantic bullshit.

    Unfortunately, it has a sub-plot which is mismanaged. Helen Mirren plays the woman who engineers the nudie calendar, and she has a son who is a teenager. The teenager faces all sorts of social repercussions from his mom's eccentric project, then starts to turn to anti-social behavior. Mom's decision to go to Hollywood with the girlies instead of staying behind after her son's arrest places a strain on the relationship of the two stars (played by Mirren and Julie Walters), as well as the relationship between mom and dad. At various times, the paperboy son throws out every local newspaper with a story about his mom, and then the dad talks to the tabloids about how he hasn't been laid since the girls started working on the calendar.

    The husband and son either needed to be fully-developed characters in their own separate storyline, or they needed to exist merely as humorous props to add punch to the story about the old naked ladies. The film just couldn't decide which direction to go, so it ended up in limbo where it seemed to want to develop those characters, but didn't know how. As a result, the sub-plot created a lot of tension in the plot that was never really resolved. Is the kind going to become a heroin addict or a serial murderer because of his embarrassment and/or his mom's neglect. We don't really know. Will the two friends eliminate the tension between them. Well, they seem to, but the cause of the tension is never erased. Is the kid's anti-social behavior important? We're led to believe it is, but in the end the dad just blows it all off as nothing. The whole sub-plot with the son seemed unnecessary and half-developed. They could easily have cut 15 minutes of unfunny material out of this film by writing the character of the son out altogether. He was only needed for two or three laughs - walking in while his mom and her friends were getting naked - tossing out the newspapers. And those actions could have been done by a son of any one of the less important naked ladies. Making that change would have gotten rid of the bummer aspect of the sub-plot, while moving the main plot more economically.

    Brevity, after all, is the soul of wit.

    Having made that argument, however, I must point out that the strengths of this movie still make watching it a very pleasant, witty, and life-affirming experience. The first 45 minutes are simply terrific. I laughed out loud a few times (the ladies belong to the world's most boring club, and their tedious meetings are used as a device for humor), and I found the occasional tear creeping down my cheek. Unfortunately, there was a lot of anti-climax and repetition after they gave their first press conference, not to mention the distracting sub-plot.

    • Helen Mirren. Mirren is a few months younger than Charlotte Rampling, keeping her from the Geezer Nudity Award  for 2003r. Like Rampling, she still looks pretty good with her clothes off. Unlike Rampling, she has quite a rack on her. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

    • Julie Walters (1, 2)

    • Celia Imrie. Talk about racks, This ol' gal has some humongous ta-tas..

     

    Mailbox:

    SCOOP:

    YOU'LL FIND THIS IN MARCH HUSTLER. PICS SHOULD HIT THE 'NET SOON.

    -- AFTER THE LA TIMES EXPOSED DETAILS OF HIS GROPING, ARNOLD SAID "I DON'T REMEMBER THINGS I DID BACK THEN" THESE PICTURES WILL JOG HIS MEMORY -- IN ONE OF THEM, A WOMAN (WHOSE EYES ARE BLOCKED OUT) IS SITTING ON HIS LAP, WITH A BIG SMILE ON HER FACE -- HER LEGS ARE WIDE OPEN AND HER SKIRT IS PUSHED ABOVE HER WAIST -- IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO TELL IF IT WAS TAKEN BEFORE OR AFTER ARNOLD'S MARRIAGE, SINCE HIS RING FINGER HAS COMPLETELY DISAPPEARED INSIDE THE WOMAN'S
    VAGINA!

    -- IN ANOTHER PICTURE, A DIFFERENT WOMAN IS GIVING ORAL SEX TO ONE OF ARNOLD'S FRIENDS -- WHILE THIS IS GOING ON, ARNOLD KNEELS BEHIND HER, BITING HER ASS!

    ==================

    Scoop:

    Tweaking around with the controls in PhotoShop I ended up with this version of the often capped scene from Nell. I don’t know what’s the proper etiquette in these cases, but you undeniably see more of Jodie Foster this way.  NB: no retouching or faking, just changing what’s already there...

    Scoop says: I approve. I found it very sexy to see her in good light with natural flesh tones.


     

    OTHER CRAP:

    You might want to look at this one first (hint-hint):

    • Fourth Annual Weblog Awards Nominate your favorite weblogs for the Bloggie awards to be presented at SXSW Interactive. You could nominate, for example, Other Crap (OtherCrap.com), in five or ten categories, and/or you could nominate sites that actually deserve to win.

    We now return to our broadcast:

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

    Click here to submit a URL for inclusion in Other Crap

     

     

    MOVIE REVIEWS:

    Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

    • The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
    • If there is a white asterisk, it means that there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
    • A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
    • If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

    Brainscan

    comments and pics from Brainscan

    Lustful Addiction (1969)

    Lustful Addiction (1969) is a classic exploitation film.  The message of drugs-are-bad-m'kay is used as a socially acceptable backdrop to show three very nekkid women.

    The first of these gals plays the protagonist, an addict who will do anyone for a fix.  Those anyones include her supplier, a hooker, and the new-found love of her life.  In the remake, Ruby Larocca plays the addict and Misty Mundae the love of her life, which turns the scene into another Seduction Cinema special... girl meets and greets girl.  In the original, the actress playing the protagonist-addict is uncredited.  In fact everyone is uncredited. And her lover is a guy.  And the original actress is... how to say this without offending Miss Larocca.... way better looking.  Way.  Better.  Really wish I knew her name.  Here she is anyway.  Three collages. (1, 2, 3) First with her supplier, second with her new boyfriend, third with a hooker, from whom she scores another fix.  Did I mention this woman was quite attractive?

    As our friendly neighbohood addict goes looking for a fix... BTW, she looks much healthier and better fed than any junkie I've seen portrayed on the big or small screens... she stops at a strip joint.  While she waits, an uncredited stripper does a routine that lasts longer than LOR-ROTK, but much less entertaining.  Grabbed a couple of frames and stuck them together, just so we can add her to the list of uncredited strippers in The Gimps database (over 300 strong and growing).
     

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    S'more VHS caps of Hefmates, from tapes that may never be transferred to DVD.  I despair.

     

    Young Doctors in Love (1983)


    From Young Doctors in Love (1983), the bountiful Kimberly McArthur, Miss Jan '82.  Kimberly plays the peace offering from the medical staff to the chief surgeon at the hospital Xmas party.  Quite the peace she is, too.  Hmmm, I guess there are reasons the pun
    is considered the lowest form of humor.

    A word about this scene.  Dabney Coleman plays the irritable head guy.  What a stretch.  Between the time that Kimberly disrobes and crawls into his lap, he pulls out a gun and shoots the television he is watching.  Must have been some bad news.  That's her reacting to the shot in collage 2.

    Second Hefbabe is Gig Rauch, who as Gig Gangel was monthly person of the magazine in Jan 1980.  This is the only on-screen nekkidness I've found of her, from the terminally awful Killing Device (1993).  Not much exposure.  Too bad, because Gig was a beauty by any other name. 

    Centerfold Fantasies (1997)



    And then Carrie Westcott (1, 2) (Miss Sept '93) and Petra Verkaik (Miss Dec '89) show up again in the last caps I have of Centerfold Fantasies (1997).  These are full-frontal and sometimes full-backal nude scenes from a tape that would have won an Oscar is they gave
    out statues for Hefmate nudity.  Helluva category, worthy of all our support.
     

    Daimon Hard
    • Rachel Ward in Fortress (1, 2, 3)
    • Hsu Chi in The Transporter
    DragonScan
    Jezebelle Bond in Exposed ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

    Watty

    Roxane Mesquida in Sex is Comedy

    (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 )

    Variety
    Bettina Zimmerman in some new caps from Jedilein

    Audience babes flashing at Live Ozzfest (Pantera Concert) (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 )

    The paparazzi catch Uma Thurman with her pants down

    Pat Reeder: The Comedy Wire

    www.comedy-wire.com

    Pat's comments in yellow:

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    CAREFUL THIEF OVERLOOKS DETAILS

    You Can't Spell "Idiot" Without "I.D." - Sheriff's deputies in Kern County,  California, allege that James Paul Egan robbed a 7-11 and took elaborate precautions to hide his identity.  He wore a hat, gloves and a bandanna over his face during the robbery, then ran to a nearby backyard to ditch his disguise, his gun and the jacket he'd been wearing.  But in the pocket of the jacket, he'd left his jail ID with his photo on it.  They found him in his attic, where he'd tried to change his appearance by shaving his head, but he'd left all his hair in the kitchen trash can.

    *  On the bright side, it'll save the prison barber the trouble.
    *  The police were really surprised to find that there was a light on in his attic.
    *  And HE'D been in jail before?  What a surprise!
    *  You know, this is exactly what happened the last time he went to jail.
     

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    Dear Scoop,

    Please pass along to the people at Retrocrush that I've already seen their release about the origin of the (worst sex scene) article and was planning to run the info on Wednesday's Comedy Wire.  Apparently, the Daily Mail in Britain stole the story, then it was picked up and run everywhere, so I had no reason to suspect there was anything fishy about it.  I try to always credit original sources and get the set-ups accurate (my pet peeve is when Jay Leno changes the story to make for an easier joke), so I assumed Film was a European magazine I wasn't familiar with. Also, unlike the NY Times, when I get something wrong, I always run a prominent correction.

    I love Retrocrush and recommend it to people all the time, including our DJ clients.  You can imagine from reading "Hollywood Hi-Fi" why that site would be my cup of tea.  Mention that I wrote that book and have contributed articles to "Cool & Strange Music Magazine," and that should assure them I'm a righteous dude.