Members Bonuses

What happens when a gangster becomes a vampire? Robert Loggia gets to chew the scenery for a couple of hours to show us. The original Femme Nikita, slim Anne Parillaud, is the real vampire who accidentally starts turning the mob into the undead. John ("Animal House") Landis directed this strange combination of horror movie, police drama, romance, and comedy. Don Rickles is pretty funny as a vampire mob lawyer. It has its moments, but appeals mostly to those with a taste for the offbeat. In keeping with Landis's tradition, it also includes cameos from other directors and other diverse luminaries, including Linnea, Michael Ritchie, Dario Argento, Sam Raimi (The Original Alan Smithee Jr), Franz Oz, and others. Anne Parillaud (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9) The obligatory strippers. Teri Weigel is seen in various frames. (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11) New releases and stuff, from Johnny Web

Lots of great new releases out yesterday. Unfortunately, the mainstream sources didn't have what I wanted. Blockbuster and Best Buy avoided the DVD of Trick (although I rented the VHS from Blockbuster), neither source had the unrated Romance (a general release French movie with real sex scenes), neither source had Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, or Big Brass Ring. Kinda ticked me off.

Lorri Bagley in "Trick". I did manage to get a VHS copy from "Blockbuster". These will make beautiful DVD caps in a couple days when I track that puppy down. In the meantime, these are not so bad of the Veronica's Closet Vixen. Don't rent the movie unless you can really get into a sensitive love story between two gay guys looking for a place to be alone, filled with plenty of gay supporting characters. I don't know if it is realistic or not, and I'm not at all homophobic, but I just plain wasn't interested in their world. It's probably pretty good. The movie did get a very high rating at IMDb, but I don't think those scores can be attributed to heterosexual males.

Tori Spelling plays a best friend of one of the guys, and she talks non-stop and sings loud and brassy. She plays the part of a bad singer and actress, and she does it well. She delivers a few laughs until her character gets too annoying, but that's the fault of the writers who just don't know when the joke is over. (I don't know if it is really her singing voice). Strangely enough, during the movie the heroes encounter a drag queen who looks exactly like - no, not Judy Garland, but Tori Spelling! I have trouble with these illusion/reality crossovers in general, but this one is too weird.

Neve's brother, Christian Campbell, is the main character, a writer of musical comedies. Musical comedies? Isn't that a pretty sad cliche? The other gay guy is a go-go dancer. Why the stereotypes? Can't these guys just be accountants and marketing consultants and construction workers and convenience store clerks? Musical comedies? Anyway, here's Bagley. (1, 2, 3)

Tamara Clutterbuck in "Set it Off". Terrific movie. Four black women, down on their luck for some various reasons, fair and unfair, decide to become bank robbers. It's not such a good premise when you describe it, but it works well because of the time spent developing the characters and earning our understanding. Although we know they are doing something evil, and we are not really asked to sympathize, we find ourselves rooting for them to succeed. Which they don't. It has a partial cop-out ending which kind of spoils the realism, but the clever script does justify that ending with an earlier plot twist, forgotten until we realize its importance. Some great looking women in this movie like Vivica A Fox and Jada Pinkett, but the only nudity comes from the obscure Tamara Clutterbuck

Susanne Lothar, of the hill people, in "Funny Games". This is a film extension of the Theatre of the Cruel. Two soft-spoken young men in tennis whites and white gloves show up at a cottage, and brutally kill a family and their dog. The narrative focuses on the lead killer, who talks to the audience in a twist on the "asides" which normally come from sympathetic characters. It is just unrelentingly sadistic and unapologetic about it. Every time it gives us some hope for the family, it explodes it with an even greater cruelty. At the end of the movie, the psychos get away with everything, and sail across the lake to start again at another house. In the final moment, at the threshhold of the other cabin, the killer turns to us with a conspiratorial wink, like George Reeves at the end of a Superman episode. Creepy. At one point the killers make Lothar undress, but for some reason the movie turns shy at this point and only shoots her head and shoulders, as if to torture us as well as the family. (The scene shown here is when she was attempting to escape). Some reviewers hailed this German-language film as a creepy masterpiece. As you can imagine, reactions to it were sharply divided.

Janet Suzman, in "The Draughtsman's Contract". Another truly strange movie. This time Peter Greenaway is over-the-top in wordy and boring set-up, and doesn't have enough female nudity to help us along. Stay away from this movie, which is preternaturally slow moving (intentionally), unless you are familiar with Greenaway and know what to expect. He's probably my favorite filmmaker, and even I don't much care for this one, so if you find his other movies obsessive and languid, you'll find this one unrelentingly talky and pretentious, and you'll probably be right.

Charlize Theron, in "The Astronaut's Wife". Rip off. Bad movie. Not really very scary. Not really very interesting. An update of Rosemary's Baby, except the seed is implanted by an alien insted of Satan. Good acting and production values can't make up for weak source material. And the flesh is a rip-off. It got an r-rating because Depp said "cunt". The flesh is like a frigging Disney pic. Charlie even has her nipples covered in the bathtub, as you can see in this frame. And they didn't even care enough to cut the frame that shows it! At no time in the film do you ever really care about any character.

"Watch Me". I have talked about this one before. Today's caps are babe #2, Kelly Burns, or Kehli O'Byrne, or whatever her name is this week. I suppose Frodo will probably know several more aliases. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) "Romance". These are taken from the male nudity site, done by somebody else, but you'll get the idea, because the hard-ons are directed toward women, not men. Quite hard core. (1, 2, 3)

I'll have more of the new releases as the DVD's become available.