Saturday

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Romeo Is Bleeding (1993) is the same old corrupt cop gets in over his head story, this time with Gary Oldman as a NYPD sergeant who is building up a retirement nest egg by selling out protected witnesses to the mob. He is juggling a wife and a girlfriend, but gets in way over his head when asked to finger Lena Olin, Russian Mafia type, and very frightening individual. When his first tip on her location proves wrong (it had never occurred to the best brains in the Mafia that the feds could move a witness), the mob cuts off his toe to insure loyalty, then orders him to kill Olin. Olin, on the other hand, offers him flesh, and tons of money, to help her. MTV thought Olin deserved a nomination for best action performance, probably for the scene where she is shot in the leg, cuffed, and knocked unconscious in the back of a police car, and causes Oldman to lose control of the car by crushing his head with her thighs, then escapes through the windshield.

For me, the only thing worthy of note in this film was Olin's breasts, which she showed from every possible angle in front of a mirror, while wearing a leather thong outfit. She also showed most of her buns, and her panty crotch in other scenes. IMDB readers give this 6.1 of 10. Ebert and Berardinelli both trashed the film, but charitably awarded 2 stars, probably on the strength of Olin's performance. When I am over-tired, I put an action thriller on to keep me awake. I was wide awake when I started this one, and was snoring by the exciting ending. C-.

UPDATES:

Charlie's French Cinema Nudity site is updated.

MOVIES:

The Tall Guy (1989) - As I wrote in my main review, this may be the most underrated comedy in history now that Groundhog Day is accepted as a classic. It was written by the guy who did Notting Hill, the Blackadder TV shows, Four Weddings, and other classics of British Comedy. The last half of this movie basically consists of "Elephant!", a musical about the life of The Elephant Man. Paralyzingly funny! The best faux musical since Springtime for Hitler. The second funniest scene is the insane sex between Jeff Goldblum and Emma Thompson, which must be the funniest sex scene ever filmed, and is also quite sexy! Jeff displays some comic gifts, and even manages to out-mug Rowan Atkinson on occasion. That ain't easy, because Atkinson himself makes such rubber-faced over-the-top actors as Gary Oldman and Tim Curry seem like Zen masters in deep meditation.

• Emma Thompson (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
• Joanna Kanska

Angels and Insects (1995) - This is a pretty good film, but it must be one of the most pretentious and blatantly symbolic films ever directed by someone not named Greenaway. (In fact, Greenaway seems like a rather obvious influence on this director's style). It is about an entonologist, and it uses the behavior of his insects to parallel his own life - to the point where his wife dresses up like a butterfly, a honeybee, etc. To use the words of Dennis Miller, if the symbolism were any more obvious, Andrew Lloyd Webber would be writing music for it.

• Patsy Kensit (1, 2, 3, 4)

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 I inexplicably determined there might be something of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Lawdog or Junior or C2000 or Realist or ICMS or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

This time I'm presenting you with another one of those Italian 1980's exploitation films set in the Amazon. The title of this one is "Schiave bianche: violenza in Amazzonia" (White slavegirls: violence in the Amazon) or shorter "Amazonia". It is said to be the true story of Katherine Miles. She was allegedly an 18 year old girl whose parents owned a huge plantation in the Amazon. During a boating trip her aunt and uncle had them and Katherine killed by natives. But Katherine survived the attack and was abducted by another native tribe where she had to stay for more than a year before she could return to the civilized world to take revenge on her aunt and uncle. This film mainly shows her ordeal during that one year period. I've searched the net but wasn't able to find anything on a contemporary Katherine Miles who lived such an adventure. My guess is this is all a hoax and the entire story is as real as an Omega or Rolex watch you can buy on streetcorners in Italy from dodgy vendors.

The role of Katherine is played by Elvire Audrey (in the IMDb Audray, in Lui magazine from 1982 as Audret). There is not one single moment in this film where she seems to be interested in her character or the movie. She only has one or two facial expressions, but that's not surprising when you're a graduate of the WSSA (the William Shatner School for Acting). Furthermore this film has the obligatory animal cruelty scene, luckily not so explicit as in other films of the genre. The other actors are equally bad and uninterested in the film. It would have been better if they had closed the one giant hole in the "script" : why did the native tribe where Katherine ended up prevent her from going back to her world and why did she have to undergo their rituals ? Except for one man all the natives are depicted as nice people, so this question keeps popping to mind.

Now let's see what poor Katherine had to endure. In the first 25 minutes of the film the story is set up and culminates when Katherine's parents are murdered and she's found more dead than alive by the good natives who cut off her parents' heads (the bad natives being those who killed her parents). Kat is carried on a stick to a village. From that point on Elvire is at least topless and at times completely naked throughout the rest of the film. Upon arrival the leader of the tribe has her stripped, cleaned and put on display for the rest of the tribe for an auction. The bad guy buys her for a goose, a pig and another animal that I don't remember. Then he takes her to his hut to have his way with her. She opposes him, so he has a couple of women help him to take her. But he stops his attack when he notices that she is still a virgin. Apparently it's bad luck to touch virgins in this tribe since all girls here, so we are told, are deflowered with a stick at the age of 4 in a special ritual. So Kat has to undergo this ritual as well. Then she becomes part of the tribe (links 1 to 4).

Then the good guy challenges and kills the bad guy and from that moment on Kat becomes the woman of the good guy. She refuses to give herself to him because she wrongly thinks he killed her parents. Meanwhile Kat has made herself popular amongst the natives. She plays a self-made flute which the children in particular seem to like (links 5 and 6 top left : a variation of the Pied Piper, a cute, nude blonde instead of a an ugly medieval German). She also fixes a guy's broken leg, then she buries her parents' heads who had been hanging in the village all the time. At long last she learns that her man didn't kill her parents, he just cut off their heads, as custom there wants it, when they were already murdered by the baddies. So that's okay then, she doesn't stumble over such trivialities, and she finally agrees to play his flute as well and they live like husband and wife (links 7 and 8 top). Finally she gets her hubby so far as to let her take revenge on her aunt and uncle (link 8 bottom). I think I've revealed enough now, so I'm not going to give away the ending but believe me, it's nothing spectacular. One might ask how did she communicate with her man and the tribe. Well doesn't it come in handy that the good guy's cousin was raised by missionaries who spoke English until she was 7 and sent back to her people ? Link 9 is a scan from the leaflet inside the DVD and link 10 is a scan from an old and weary issue of French magazine Lui in which Elvire gave a small sample of her talents for the goofy film "Plus belles que moi, tu meurs" from 1982.

Lastly a few words about the DVD. It played fine on my computer but had lots of problems on my stand-alone player. The image (4:3) quality is average and the transfer is a bit too light. The sound isn't to write home about either. Furthermore the Dutch subtitles are minimalistic in every way : entire parts aren't translated and their size is minuscule. The disk is an all regions PAL disk intended for the Dutch market but I found at the Austrian based Sazuma.com.

• Thumbnail Preview
• Elvire Audrey (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

• Thumbnails
• Thumbnails

• Nudes (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
• Doris Zelenski (1, 2)
• Artistic hands
• Carmen
• Electric Beauty
• Lisa
• Marlene Deietrich
• The Mainbocher Corset