Cry Your Purple Heart Out
1976
from the vault of obscurity
This is a primitive soft-core sex comedy which I don't remember at all. Although the
cars and billboards on screen indicate that 1976 is the right year
for the film, it must have been anachronistic then. It seems more like the bad
films that we used to watch in college dorms and grindhouse theaters in the
sixties. There's not even much nudity, so it really plays out like a porn film
without the actual porn. By the time 1976 had rolled around, the sexual
revolution in both society and cinema had pushed this short of no-budget tease
film to occasional appearances as four A.M. features in all-night drive-in
marathons. Sometimes we hardcore drive-in aficionados would run into a film like
this several times under different names, but it didn't matter that much,
because we weren't going to a drive-in marathon based on the name of the fourth
feature or fifth feature. Even if we were, the whole shootin' match only cost
about a buck, and we would have never asked for a refund on that basis.
On other words, this no-budget production is from the very bottom of the barrel.
Everything about it is clumsy and amateurish. Per IMDb, the writer/director
never wrote or directed anything else. For most of the actors, this film is
their only IMDb credit. The only notable exceptions are Arlana Blue, who
appeared in several porn films under many different names, and Richard Young, a
semi-familiar face as a bit player on the TV shows of that era.
Here's what Code Red films wrote about this movie on
their blog (edited slightly to remove references to another film on the same
DVD):
"CODE RED has uncovered a rare motion picture shot in New
York, thought to be completely lost. HOW TO SCORE WITH GIRLS is a wild comedy
about some groovy GI's on a crazy night in the big city on a mission to get some
hot chicks! Originally released as CRY YOUR PURPLE HEART OUT, the film was soon
re-released by NMD Pictures under the HOW TO SCORE WITH GIRLS title. The
filmmaker, Ogden Lowell, told us that only eight 35mm prints of the film were
ever struck and that the negative is no longer at Technicolor and is basically
lost. CODE RED searched high and low and was unable to find any of the eight
35mm prints anywhere. Ogden did still happen to have a 3/4 inch tape master made
in 1980, so thankfully the film is not completely lost. Although the best
materials for this film are no longer available, we feel this very rare film
still deserves to be seen, even in its only surviving elements. Do not buy the
DVD if you are expecting a high quality remastered transfer. We do think it is a
wildly entertaining exploitation film of a bygone era, and we truly hope that
discerning fans can still enjoy it regardless of the less-than-stellar surviving
master materials used. Thanks for understanding."
In other words, this is a bad copy of a bad film.
And bad it is. This film would have been considered lame even in 1966, let alone
1976. But that very fact almost makes it interesting to watch, at least for a
few moments. If you were around then, you've probably forgotten about stuff like
this, and a brief look will make you smile ironically, in grim remembrance of an
age which was not quite so gilded as we have tried to portray it to our
descendants, and even to ourselves. If you are too young to remember that era,
watching this for a few minutes will be a valuable reality check, because
neither your elders nor the cultural history books will mention the existence of
dreck like this in the underbelly of the mid- seventies.
Even the nudity is disappointing. There is no frontal lower-body nudity at all.
In fact, there are long stretches of the film without any type of nudity. If not
for the one good nude/sex scene with Arlana Blue, there would be only about five
seconds of nudity in the entire film, as you'll see below.
Cougars, Inc
2011
In a modern take on Risky Business, an impoverished student turns to pimping in
order to stay in his expensive school. The contemporary twist is that he rakes
in the dough by selling the services of his dorky friends to lonely Cougars.
Because we all know that gorgeous women in their 30s and early 40s have to pay
high school nerds to fuck them.
Anyway, the flimsy premise might have formed the basic of a screwball
exploitation comedy, except that this film takes itself seriously, which is to
say it tries to offer moral lessons, it doesn't offer much exploitation fare,
and it isn't funny. That kinda lets the air out of the old tires, doesn't it?
In other words it's more crap. The pool of competent actors is deeper now than
it was in 1966, and filmmaking techniques have improved considerably in the past
35 years, so Cougars, Inc is slicker and much more professional crap than Cry
Your Purple Heart Out. But it's still crap. It's too bad that screenwriting
hasn't kept pace with technology.
I did watch it all the way through (no tribute to my good sense), but Zorg had
already done some videos by the time I finished, so I was mercifully spared that
ordeal. Lord willing, I will never have to think of this film again. Here's
Zorg's 720p vids:
HD upgrades
Here's Kate Winslet in Mildred
Pierce, episode 2 (my vid, 3rd party captures below)
And these 3rd party videos:
Here's Saskia Reeves
in Women in Love (see below)
Here's Rosamund Pike
in Women in Love (see below)
Here's Olivia Grant in
Women in Love (see below)
