Tower of Evil (1972), AKA Horror of Snape Island is a terribly under-rated British slasher film which takes place on and abandoned small island with a lighthouse. As the film opens, a father and son fishing team go to the island in dense fog, though we don't find out why until much later. They find two dead guys, a decapitated woman, and Candace Glendenning, who kills the father before she is knocked unconscious by the son. She becomes a catatonic, but the police are convinced she murdered her three friends. A psychiatrist is trying a combination of drugs and hypnosis to reach her.

Meanwhile, an expedition is starting for the island comprised of a museum team, and a private investigator hired by the parents of Glendenning, who don't want to believe she committed the murders. Seems one of the dead guys was impaled by a solid gold Phoenecian sword, and the museum postulates that the Phoenicians must have buried a ruler there, and there will be a large gold statue of Baal, and other priceless artifacts. The same fisherman is to take them there. We learn that his brother, sister-in-law, and their child had lived there, and that the family moved there because the brother was insane.

People start dying, and the smell of it is that Baal is doing them in, but, in fact, the ending is perfectly natural, which is one of the reasons why I enjoyed it, and why I don't classify it as horror. It has atmosphere, breasts and buns from Candace Glendenning, and breasts from Seretta Wilson as the decapitated girl. Seretta Wilson was still working as of 1998, so this film clearly didn't hurt her.

IMDB readers have it at 3.9 of 10, but many of those who commented agreed with me, that this was an entertaining example of 1972 era British horror. Obviously, the effects were not up to todays quality, but it was a pretty good yarn set in a pretty good location, and the acting ranged from adequate to pretty good. C-.

.wmv clip:

• I saw Spaz's post in yesterday's edition and realized that I had a clip of Jolene Blalock showing her butt on Enterprise, but was too stupid to realize its importance. Here's the clip. (The A/R is slightly out of kilter, but the quality is quite good HDTV.)

• Here is the preview collage from the same scene, which is a little brighter, and is in approximately the right A/R (I had to guess)

La Curee (1966):

I've talked about this film before. My comments can be found here, and Tuna's usual great caps can be found in his section

What I want to bring to your attention today is that much publicity accrued to this film in 1966 because of a scene in which the director filmed his wife - Jane Fonda - swimming topless. Clear nudity from Jane was considered big news in 1966.

I never saw the film back then, so I can't tell you if the scene was ever part of the theatrical cut, but the point is that the scene is not on the DVD - not in the main part of the film, not as a deleted scene, nowhere.

For the record, just to show that I'm not imagining it, here are stills taken on the set. (1, 2, 3, 4)

Where is the missing scene, and when did it disappear?

The Producers (1968):

Mosey over to the Movie House page if you want to read my thoughts about this film. I have pictures there, and even some song lyrics.

At one time, this was my favorite comedy, but this Mel Brooks movie hasn't weathered the years as well as Blazing Saddles. It seems old fashioned now. In the 35 years since it was made, comedic styles have changed, and some of the hammy performing doesn't hold up, especially Zero Mostel's.

The script must still be plenty good, because the stage version is the toast of Broadway even now, as you read these words in 2004.

(No nudity)

• Lee Meredith. You probably know who she is, even if you don't know her name. Remember the Miller Lite ads with Mickey Spillane? Remember The Doll who was always on the Mickster's arm? That was Lee.

• Unknown (1, 2, 3)

MAILBOX:

Hey Scoop,

I don’t know why it took me almost a week to write this. I went to The Daytona 500 last Sunday, and here are the highlights:

LeAnn Rimes sang the National Anthem. Say what you will about country music singers, at least they don’t need a big screen scoreboard to sing the National Anthem (unlike some pop singers...and even then they might get the words wrong). Oh, she didn’t appear to be wearing a bra with the cold, nippley wind blowing through Daytona and her blouse (anyone get caps?).

President George W. Bush was the Grand Marshall for the event, announcing “Gentlemen, start your engines.” These 4 words locked up the Southern vote for the incumbent, along with Wisconsin and Michigan.

Because of the President's appearance, Ben Affleck was bumped from Grand Marshall to driving the pace car at the start of the race. He got a pretty good cheer from the crowd, but they were quickly disappointed when they found out it was “lame duck” actor Affleck and not the real duck from the Aflac commercials.

The first car out of the race was Mark Martin in the #6 “Viagra” car. I guess he couldn’t keep it up with the younger drivers. His machine went limp before too long. He started out strong, but went down.

D

OTHER CRAP:

• FilmJerk.com presents the Early Report for the week of Feb 22
• Online trailer for Kaena: The Prophecy. Voice work for this animated film was the last screen role for the Irish movie legend Richard Harris.
• Karl Malden given Lifetime Achievement Award by SAG
• Call me crazy, but I don't think this is a real cover of US magazine
• Wow - the SAG awards went to the right people. Whoda thunk it?
  • Nothing against Bill Murray and Sean Penn, but it's pretty obvious that Johnny Depp created the most memorable performance of the year, and I'm pleased to see the SAG recognize that.
  • As for Charlize Theron - well, they may be actors, but they aren't retarded. If they saw the movie they voted for her.
  • Renee Zellweger was an OK choice in her division. So were the others.
  • The only one really memorable performance of the year that they missed was Bill Nighy in Love Actually (Tim Robbins won, and was a perfectly satisfactory choice among the nominees). Nighy wasn't nominated, and wasn't nominated for an Oscar, either, although he won the BAFTA.
• The Lord speaks to ... Andy Rooney? I really miss the old days when the Lord would speak through idiot savants and tiny Estonian children and mysterious words formed in Post Alpha-Bits.
• Carrie picks Mr. Big, dumps the commie, returns to N.Y.
• Four free short videos from Playboy's Twins & Sisters!
• Four free short videos from Playboy's Cheerleaders & College Girls!
• Jolene Blalock did some pretty sweet rear nudity on the Feb 11th broadcast of Enterprise. Because of the hypocritical new post-Tittygate morality, the scene was censored in the USA, but it was shown uncensored in Canada. Make mine a Molson's, eh?
• Weekend Update from 2-21-04 is now online. Jimmy Fallon delivers the quote of the day, "This week, Georgia's board of education approved the plan that allows teachers to keep using the word 'Evolution' when teaching biology. Though, as a compromise, dinosaurs are now called 'Jesus Horses.'"
• The Screen Actors Guild will kick their members' asses if they accept any work on South Park. It is a clear violation of their principles to appear in anything worth watching.
• Jerry Springer Opera Scoops British Theater Awards: "A foul-mouthed opera about Jerry Springer's lurid talk show has won four of Britain's top theater awards including Best New Musical at the Laurence Olivier Awards on Sunday. "
• It may sound pretty cool, but I doubt that men with two dicks really like it that much.
• Yonic Symbolism and Erotica Exotica Gallery. "Yonic" is the female equivalent of "phallic", if you catch my drift. If you aren't into drift-catching, it's an entire site dedicated to pictures of twats. Not the metaphorical kind of twat like John Major, but actual female genitalia.
• Just a reminder to everyone - a warning from the past. Just before the 2000 election, the Washington Post reported: GOP group pays for pro-Nader TV ads. "Nader, running a low-budget campaign, is not airing any television commercials of his own and it's possible that the Republican Leadership Council will end up spending more on pro-Nader media than Nader himself."
• Nostalgia: A look at the CROSSFIRE! marble-shooting game
• Of all the sites on the internet, this may be the hardest to look at. "Without Sanctuary" - a history of lynching and other public barbarism in American history - as depicted in postcards! I'm not surprised. I have often written that our human history shows us to have been consistently racist, greedy, and deluded. Usually all three. As the narrator says, " I can't help but think of these photos, and the march of time, and of the cold steel trigger in the human heart."
• Fascinating facts about the U.S. Constitution. Did you know "Pennsylvania" was misspelled? Did you know Ben Franklin was the oldest man to sign it? Did you know they have never been able to remove the urine stains from when Lyndon Johnson pissed on it?
• Now here's a page I recommend personally.
• This online version seems like a perfect clone of the original PacMan
• Play the original Centipede online. It seems like a perfect clone to me.
• Unsung Themesongs. You know the theme music from these shows, but I'll bet you didn't know there were accompanying words. I knew about the Bonanza song, because I remember when the four of them sang it. In fact, I think there are more verses not listed here. The others are new to me.
• The Arabic version of the Big Brother reality television program has started, with a prize of $100,000 for the winner and, of course, a glorious martyr's death for the losers. (Seriously, there have been many modifications made to adapt the show to the culture of the Middle East.)
• $10,000 reward to anyone who saw Bush perform his National Guard duty. "If you personally witnessed George W. Bush reporting for drills at Dannelly Air National Guard Base between the months of May and November of 1972 we want to hear about it."
• Critics say Gibson's film mimics a hateful book, specifically an obscure, possibly anti-Semitic book written by a 19th century nun who claimed that her version of the story was revealed to her directly by God.
• The Internet - smell the difference!
• Schwarzenegger says foreign-born citizens and visitors from the future should be able to run for president. Geez, there's a surprise, eh? I guess he's been watching his DVD of Demolition Man, in which people in the future say that Arnold Schwarzenegger became President in the 21st century through just such a constitutional amendment.
• The Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the UK" has been named the most influential record of the 1970s in a magazine poll.
• Timed to coincide with the new Gibson movie, here is a report on Jesus on the silver screen. The two most famous actors to portray him are Willem Dafoe and Max Von Sydow, reflecting the Hollywood Movie and European Art tendency to portray Christ with Northern European features.
• Here is the full "Pentagon report" on climate change.
  • As I suspected, the key sentences ignored by the Guardian/Observer are as follows: "Rather than predicting how climate change will happen, our intent is to dramatize the impact climate change could have on society if we are unprepared for it." and "In this report, as an alternative to the scenarios of gradual climatic warming that are so common, we outline an abrupt climate change scenario patterned after the 100-year event that occurred about 8,200 years ago." In other words, it is a what-if scenario based what would happen to a world of six or seven billion people if certain past geological events repeat themselves. To see how extreme the scenario is, read this sentence, "In 2007, a particularly severe storm causes the ocean to break through levees in the Netherlands making a few key coastal cities such as The Hague unlivable."
  • It is also important to note that the report is NOT talking about climate changes caused by or capable of being modified by human activity. It is about possible human responses to recurring and probably inevitable geological events which have always occured throughout planetary history, albeit most dramatically before the era of humans, and will inevitably occur again. The key sentence here is, "We should prepare for the inevitable effects of abrupt climate change – which will likely come regardless of human activity." In essence, it asks us to think about how to deal with the inevitable cyclical climate changes that have happened throughout the world's history, becuse they will happen again sooner or later, maybe sooner. "With at least eight abrupt climate change events documented in the geological record, it seems that the questions to ask are: When will this happen? What will the impacts be? And, how can we best prepare for it? Rather than: Will this really happen?"
• More of Julian Beever's awesome pavement drawings
• Vintage nudes
• Aussie biologists say the Great Barrier Reef is doomed. A new report from Queensland University's Center for Marine Studies says the Pacific Ocean is getting too warm, too fast. Experts say the world's largest chain of living coral will be mostly dead by 2050. A rise in water temperature of less than 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit will cause the coral to lose its vibrant colors. Analysts have predicted that water temperature will rise nearly 11 degrees this century.
• It's official. Ralph Nader will run for president, thus costing John Kerry the all-important crackpot vote.
• All four new films bomb at the box. Even Disney'd new film could do no better than a 9 million dollar open, less than half of the holdover "50 first dates". The biggest bomb was ignited by Meg Ryan's boxing movie, which opened at a mere 3 million.
• Lost Brian Wilson Album Premieres in U.K.. Brian Wilson received a tumultuous standing ovation for the first-ever performance of his shelved 1967 album.
• Secret Pentagon report says that massive climate changes could trigger global anarchy. This is not from Weekly World News, but from The Guardian/Observer. Given that these people are notoriously gullible and have been known to interpret information selectively (The Guardian fell for the famous Presidential I.Q. hoax from Linky and Dinky), I think I'll wait to see the actual document before I buy in. The Observer claims to have the document, but does not make it available, which gets my antennae out immediately. My guess is that they failed to mention the word "if" in referring to a report which gamed out various possibilities and their possible effects. Again, this is just my guess, but the observation that "Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters" was probably preceded by a phrase like "In the highly unlikely worst-case scenario, ... ".
• Here is an excellent ten minute featurette on HELLBOY.
• Writers Guild honors Lost in Translation (original screenplay), American Splendor (adapted screenplay).

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.

Words from Scoop.

.avi's from Shiloh.

.wmv files made by Scoop from Shiloh's .avi's.

Various:

• Demi Moore is still pretty hot, but when she was young, and her breasts were still made of human flesh, and she slept with adult males, she was seriously hot, and never hotter than in "About Last Night ..."  Here is her sex scene with Rob Lowe. (.wmv version)

• Demi Moore, same movie, different scene. No sex, but full-length nudity from Demi, even a hint of pubic hair. (.avi version of both scenes, .wmv version of this scene)

• Blair Brown. I don't even know what the hell she is doing now, but she'll alway be one of my favorites for having done a sex scene with John Belushi. How cool is that? In this movie, however, she pulled easier sex scene duty with the handsome Bill Hurt in Altered States. (.wmv version)

• In this scene, Blair is transforming into a lizard, if I remember correctly. (Hey, it's a Ken Russell movie)  The vid just shows the human part of the metamorphosis. (.avi version of both scenes, .wmv version of this scene)

• If you want to see Jamie Lee Curtis topless, and even nekkid from the rear, then the movie you're looking for is Love Letters, in which she takes off her top about two or three hundred times. OK, not that many, but a lot.  The movie sucks, but given the ubiquitous breast exposure, I'm not sure that the film quality is really very important. I mean, let's be honest. Given a choice of some really great acting from Ken Branagh, and some really great bouncing from Jamie Lee's breasts, I'll take the latter.  Here's a sampler.  (.avi, .wmv)

Perhaps these tips will help if you have trouble with the codecs for these movies:

Shiloh says:

FYI when I hypercam vids to make the file size smaller I use DivX MPEG-4 Fast-Motion for the video compressor, then I use virtualdub to compress the audio. The properties for the vids says the video codec:  DivX Decoder Filter & audio codec:  Morgan Stream Switcher which I'm not familiar with. When I compress the audio with virtualdub I use MPEG Layer-3.  A friend of mine told me about compressing the audio about (6) mos. ago. Like I said previously, only been capping for a year & a half & I'm no expert. Hopefully this info will help members with the proper codecs for my vids.

 

When I cap big brother's I use hypercam mostly & sdp & asfrecorder if the set up allows me. I stopped using camtasia cause the file sizes were always too big, could never figure out the process, over my head lol, plus it cost too much to buy in my opinion.

A reader says:

You mentioned that some users were having trouble with the videos on your site. There is a tool designed to determine what codec is needed for a video. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ Hope this is useful to you or your users.

Scoop says:

I made the .wmv versions of each video. The codecs for these: Windows Video V8, Windows Audio 9. The upside of these is that you know the codecs, and they'll play in the Windows Media Player. The downside is that they are slightly larger, and slightly lower quality.

Scoop. You had a review of Logan's Run recently.  Since I know you live in Austin, I wondered if you know that the futuristic water park shown in the movie is in Fort Worth.  I don't remember the name - something like Water Gardens - but I went there years ago, and immediately recognized; it from the movie.  It's surrounded by buildings, as I remember, and I wondered how they used it without showing the rest of downtown Fort Worth.

Absolute Aggression (1996)

Here's a quick review - I rented a new-release DVD called Absolute Aggression.  Here's the IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205722/

Plot - criminals are hunted in various-themed Virtual Reality Games - WWII, jousting knights, old west cowboys and Indians, etc.  If You Die in the Games, You Die in Real Life is the catch-word.

This stinker is dated 1996 and starred Robert Davi in his best over-acting bad guy persona.  The only reason I'm sending you this, is the nudity. 

• Amy Lynn Baxter - former Pet and Bunny both - plays a reward for good Virtual Reality performance. 

• But what I thought interesting, is they use the same footage as was seen in Bog Creatures.  This footage had various maidens being chased by Knights or warriors outside of a castle.  The women are terrorized, with many of them being partially stripped and shown topless. At first I thought this film had lifted the footage from Bog Creatures, but this one probably was the original (1996), with Bog Creatures (2003) ripping off the nude footage.  It fit that story even worse than in this one.

• There is a little nudity by another actress, but nothing to get excited about. 

So, it predated Bog Creatures, and I wonder why (other than it stinks) was it held up for 8 years before showing up as a DVD rental?

Scoop's notes: I don't know the answer to that, but I do know this: those films are both directed by the same man, the legendary J Christian Ingvordsen. He also directed Firehouse which, according to rumor, is supposed to be the film debut of Julia Roberts, although Tuna and I were not able to find her in that film.

I don't know if he is the worst director of all time, but he has to be a legitimate contender. His IMDB scores are almost in an identical range to those of one of our favorites, John Sjogren. Sjogren goes from 2.32 to 3.08, and has made ten films. Ingvordsen goes from 2.07 to 3.29, and has made 20 films, nine of which are currently rated at IMDb.

1. (3.29) - Strike Zone (1999)
2. (3.08) - Bog Creatures, The (2003)
3. (2.96) - Hangmen (1987)
4. (2.67) - Firehouse (1987)
5. (2.60) - Cyber Vengeance (1995)
6. (2.49) - Search and Destroy (1988)
7. (2.16) - Outfit, The (1993)
8. (2.15) - Mob War (1989)
9. (2.07) - Airboss (1997)

Firehouse and Bog Creatures are pretty much his career achievements!

He's in his mid 40s now, so Ingvordsen might say, as a Phillies pitcher said in a memorable 1961 quote, "I am in the twilight of a mediocre career"

Guess you guys figured I would get to this one sooner or later. It's entitled...cleverly enough... Brainscan. And I swear on my dead cat's grave I had not seen and had not heard of it until maybe a year ago.

Brainscan (1994) is the story of a computer-savvy dude played by Edward Furlong, the actor who played the adolescent John Connor in T2. Am I the only one who wonders why he didn't go into horse-racing? Anyway, kid does a terrific job in this movie, which even after a decade's progress in computer gaming ain't half-bad. The plot is tense enough, even though the online bad guy plays a quasi-comedic role as though he wants to be Dennis Leary... which is to say, he is painfully unfunny and an asshole to boot. Or is that Dennis Miller? Same difference.

But the movie goes from being a solid C in my book to a D+ because of a cheesy, entirely improbable, goodie-two-shoes ending. Sheesh. I figure they showed it to a bunch of teenage girls with an original ending true to the movie and the girls just hated what happened to Furlong, so the producers made em change it. Or something very much like that.

The only goodies given up were those of a real cutie, named Amy Hargreaves. She plays the Thora Burch-American Beauty role, of the girl next door who loves the geek and brings out the good in him. She even strips in front of a window as the guy next door (Furlong) tapes her, although neither principal is so overt about it all as the characters in American Beauty. Grabbed every frame of Amy's toplessness and put just about all of them into two collages. Amy, in case you were wondering, went on to do a half-dozen movies and a few guest-shots on tv, but the last thing IMDB lists for her is dated 2000. I guess we all know what that means.

So what can you say about Brainscan? Erudite, witty, sophisticated... timeless in so many ways. But enough about me. The movie? Well, it is just okay if you see it all, pretty darn good if you turn off the player with 10 minutes to go.

• Amy Hargreaves (1, 2)

Next up, a single collage that illustrates two very welcome trends:

1) TV stars in progressively more revealing clothes. This was an upward trend until Janet tried to screw the pooch by showing off one of her 37-yr-old hooters at halftime of the country's most sacred holiday. Seems to have been only a temporary backlash from the moral police. On with the show.

2) HDTV and single frames with the clarity that only the best scans could achieve two or three years ago.

Herewith an edited collage of HDTV frames, posted by a most generous viewer. The subject is a pokitudinal Jennifer Aniston in an episode of Friends. Beginning to think I don't watch enough television.

• Jennifer Aniston

Scoop,

Here are a couple of new .wmvs for you...

First up is a short one featuring Catriona MacColl going full frontal in an episode of 'Strangers', called Touch

• Catriona MacColl

Next up, the lovely, busty and all natural Renata Dancewicz, who is getting some devilish education in Der Teufel und die Jungfrau.

• Renata Dancewicz, full frontal.

More Canadian stuff (no nudity)...

"Ginger Snaps" (2000)
Horror about pair of sisters one of them who becomes a werewolf. There is a sequel now showing in the cinemas and another one in the works. No nudity but Katharine Isabelle shows some "tail".

• Katharine Isabelle: underwear, fake prosthetic chest.

"Puppets Who Kill: episode Cuddles the Demon"
More puppet sex. Tamara Hickey from the tv series The Associates and Blue Murder plays a sex therapist with a hands-on approach. No nudity although Dan Redican shows some butt cleavage and nearly gets defiled by Cuddles the comfort doll in a Deliverance sort of way.

• Tamara Hickey: underwear.

"Les Bougon" (tv series)
In last week's episode the Bougon daughter is half naked dancing for a music video.

• Hélène Bourgeois-Leclerc: major cleavage.

"Nothing Personal" (1980)
Movie that show down Suzanne Somers while she was hugely popular in Three's Company.

• Suzanne Somers: bare shoulders, wet sweater.

"Funeral Home" (1980) (aka 2 Cries in the Night)
Bad William Fruet horror. The big busted scream queen lead Lesleh Donaldson did not put out in the nudity department and even in the swimming hole scene she did not go in into the water.

• Lesleh Donaldson: bigguns in bathing suit.
• Linda Dalby: nipple pokies.
• Peggy Mahon: cleavage swimming in bathing suit.

"New Waterford Girl" (2002)
Coming of age comedy. The highlight is a boxing match where Tara Spencer-Nairn knocks out a guy out in 30 seconds flat, fast but still 20 seconds longer than many guys first sexual experience.

• Liane Balaban: very slight cleavage.
• Tara Spencer-Nairn: cleavage and pokies.

• Alyce LaTourelle (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37)

• Alyce LaTourelle .wmvs (1, 2, 3)