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Alert:
Some of our back issues from the 2002-2003 era are on a sub-domain called daily.scoopy.net. My IP
has messed
up that domain, and is currently working to fix it. It should be fixed by Monday.
(Jeez, I would hope so.)
Third Party Videos:
Helene Joy in
Desolation Sound. Hey, Spaz
has the day off, so I took on the Canadiana responsibilities.
Barbara Hershey is today's
collection-builder:
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Last Summer.
There is good news and bad news with these videos.
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The good news is that they are the best ones I've even seen from
this film. Not quite DVD quality, but better than VHS, taken from a TV
broadcast. Although this film was considered an important and provocative one in
its era, it has been largely forgotten, and has never come to DVD.
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The bad news is that the TV broadcast was a watered-down
version. I have never seen any captures from the uncut version except for the
rough ones that Umpire did years ago. (They are in the Encyclopedia.) A
remastered uncut DVD would be very welcome.
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The Entity. I think the only actually Hershey flesh on display is a brief
shot of her from the rear. The rest was done with prosthetics and body doubles.
That fact notwithstanding, this is mighty hot stuff! Barbara gets repeatedly
fucked by an invisible demon.
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The Last Temptation of Christ and
Boxcar Bertha. If you want a
good trivia question for your buds, Hershey remains the only woman with a
starring role in two different Scorsese films. Yes, Scorsese directed a Roger
Corman film, as did many others who would move up to bigger budgets.
In addition to her love scenes in Boxcar Bertha, Hershey also
did the nasty in real life (and maybe on screen) with David Carradine, and they
recreated their love scenes for a Playboy spread. They were together for about
three years and had a son together.
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Drowning
on Dry Land. She was in her fifties when she did this one. Once again, she
became romantically involved with her co-star. She and Naveen Andrews are still
together after eight years, although she will turn 59 in a week or so, and he is
in his thirties.
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Love Comes
Quietly. This is the real treasure of today's collection. This film is so
obscure that neither Mr. Skin no I had any previous record of its
existence! This one also has good and bad news.
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The good news is that Hershey is totally naked front and rear,
and her breasts are the largest they have ever been.
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The bad news is that the size of her breasts can be attributed
to a very advanced state of pregnancy. I believe that would be little Free
Seagull, later known as Tom Carradine, in her belly.
Here are some sample captures:
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In addition to all the films shown above, Hershey has gotten her kit off in
another obscure hippie-era film called Dealing (1972), for which we have no
clips, but have the capture to the right (she may have been pregnant here as
well, but was not showing)
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OTHER CRAP:
Catch the deluxe version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles, here.
MOVIE REVIEWS:
Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format. Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.
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Ghost Story
Ghost Story (1981) is supposedly based on a novel of the same name by Peter
Straub. They did end up using the name, and some character names, but
otherwise completely ignored their source material. Rather, they decided to
hire a bunch of geriatric superstars (Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas,
Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and John Houseman) and have them sit around once a week and
tell each other ghost stories. Why? Cause Ghost Story is the name of the
movie. Pay attention please. Next, we see Alice Krige turn into a decidedly
unattractive ghost, and scare Craig Wasson, son of one of the codgers, to jump
naked out the window and flash his pecker. The other son, also played by Craig
Wasson, is summoned to his father's house with his brother's funeral as a
pretext, but actually to provide important exposition. Seems he also did a
tour of duty ghost fornicating.
So, he gets home, and codgers start dying. Clearly the ghost is doing it,
and just to tell us that, in case we are too stupid to guess, they bring in
two more characters for exposition. Seems the old codgers caused the demise of
Alice Krige a half-century ago, and she holds grudges. It is unclear why she waited 50 years to get
even.
The critical and IMDb reactions indicates
a C by our scale, but I would have said C- based on my viewing experience. It
is competently filmed, Alice has lovely body parts, and the cast was
interesting. Unfortunately the plot was entirely predictable after the first
10 minutes. I may keep it on hand as a cure for insomnia.
- IMDb readers say 5.7, which seems surprisingly high to me.
- Ebert liked it
at 3 stars.
Scoop's note:
I really have mixed feelings about this one. I had read Peter Straub's
novel, so I saw the film in the theater in 1981. I was disappointed that the
film kept virtually none of the elements which made the novel a good read, but
I thought it was all right on its own, sorta spooky and entertaining enough to
keep me from losing interest, with some sexy nudity from Alice Krige. Then I
watched it again when the DVD came out and changed my opinion completely. I
concluded that the few interesting elements were vastly outweighed by the slow
pace, the "so what" nature of the resolution and the complete lack of
scares. I suppose the two decades of intervening films had something to do
with my change of heart. This film just seems kind of old-fashioned and dated.
We have come to expect ghost stories to move quickly and offer plenty of
surprises - "in the moment" scares.
The thing that has changed the most about film and TV projects over the
years is the pacing. As a general rule, the farther back you go, the slower
they seem. Sometimes I watch old TV comedies that I used to like, "Burns and
Allen" for example, and the pacing is so slow that I have a hard time paying
attention in between the jokes. There are exceptions, of course. Some of the
Marx Brothers individual set-pieces are fast-paced, but there are also sags in
their films. For the most part I am always struck by how slow everything is in
older entertainments.
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Don't Sleep Alone
Caps and five clips as
we look at Lisa Welti in Don't Sleep Alone. She has no problem living up to the
title of the movie, She also has a "damsel in distress" scene to open the movie.
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The Hunger
Episode "NECROS"
William Cobb (Philip Casnoff) arrives in New Orleans during Mardi
Gras and falls for a beautiful young woman (Celine Bonnier) whose
constant companion is a strange old man. Cobb's friend, owner of a
restaurant, tells him that since the arrival of those two in town there
have been many missing persons. William is just looking for a good time
and doesn't believe any of the superstitious people who say the old man
is the Devil himself.
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Notes and collages
The Ladies of
Sci-fi/Fantasy
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Judy Geeson
Inseminoid |
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... could a film have a more awful name?
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Brooke Adams
in the remake of
Invasion of the Body Snatchers |
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... I recommend the black & white original for a variety of reasons. The
story was written as a magazine serial during the cold war and was a warning
to the readers about your friends becoming communists while you were not
looking; a great slice of historical paranoia in the U.S.A. presented as a
sci-fi tale. If you look at Rod Serling's TV series "The Twilight Zone,"
you'll see that Serling also used sci-fi to make important social points which
were taboo to talk about at the time in real terms.
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