Sunday

Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave

(2005)

I couldn't really understand all the details of this film because the narrative doesn't take the time to flash back to the story's development in the previous four films.  The filmmakers undoubtedly felt that such a recap would be unnecessary because ... well, because nobody would be stupid enough to watch a film called Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave unless they were already rabid fans of the series. They were wrong. I guess I showed them a thing or two because, by God, I am that stupid!

What can I tell you? I'm just the kind of devil-may-care moron who will jump into an unfamiliar swimmin' hole without checking it out in advance. I'm too dense to be afraid of the unknown. I even watched Anal Addicts 18 without having picked up all the nuances and plot twists which were developed in 13-17.

Anyway, as near as I can tell, the plot of Rave to the Grave goes a little something like this:

Several industrial drums of a top secret substance are floating around. When ingested in large quantities, this substance turns humans into brain-eating zombies, but when taken in small doses it can be a powerful hallucinogenic. Crossing over to zombie status is obviously not desirable, but getting to the brink and pulling back appears to be the ultimate high. Some teenagers find one of the canisters and the resident science nerd analyzes it and figures out that it is very similar to Ecstasy. The science guy's best friend is the drug dealer guy (isn't that always the way?), who immediately realizes how the chemical potential can be converted to financial potential.

Their home-made drugs basically all end up being passed around at a Halloween rave, where the uninhibited ravers take them with abandon, in quantities so large that many partygoers pass the point of "at the doorway of the living dead" and actually become brain-craving zombies. Raves and Halloween being what they are, it's really not possible to distinguish the zombie lunatics from the ordinary lunatics dressed like zombies for Halloween, so a fair share of brains are consumed until the party goes from pretending to be out of control to being out of control for real.

The film is played strictly for low-brow laughs, especially by two bumbling Russian agents who want to recover the missing canisters for their own motherland, in the hope that the senior Russian authorities will reward them with free trips to Euro Disney. The heavily armed Russians go to the rave and, assisted by a few of the teens, end up blasting away virtually everyone there until ...

Dude, do you need a review? How good could it be? It was made in Romania for the Sci-Fi channel and is rated 2.7 at IMDb. The cast consists almost entirely of unknowns, although Peter Coyote makes an unexpected appearance in the opening scene. Your heart has to go out to Coyote for having to accept a tiny role in a cheesy project like this after once having worked with Spielberg, Polanski and Road Runner.

I guess there might actually be circumstances in which one might want to watch this film. One might be hooked on the series, or one might want to be the second person stupid enough to watch a film called Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave without having seen all of the previous ones. I would assume that anyone in one or both of those two groups is incapable of reading these or any other words, so it seems safe to tell you readers to avoid it.

In the unlikely event that I am wrong, and that you are in one of those target groups and also capable of recognizing written languages, I have to admit that the film did provide me with some entertainment, although I fast-forwarded through a lot of really dumb stuff. I even laughed out loud a couple of times. For example, while the zombie students bite most of their fellow students in the head, they bite the cheerleaders ... well ... elsewhere.

Maybe you had to be there.

At any rate, the film is probably a bit better than I'm leading you to believe. It's technically competent, has a pretty good score, and is fairly well acted. It also offers plenty of brief flashes of breasts from anonymous zombies and partiers. Granted that is not much of a recommendation, but if that's enough for you ... party on, dudes.

Nudity

Film clips of various anonymous zombies and party animals.

 

 

In Tranzit

(2007)

Farmigamania!

Official blurb:

"In the chaotic aftermath of WWII, a group of German POWs are accidentally sent to a female-run Soviet prison camp. When the guards are given the task of weeding out the SS officers, they play a bitter game of cat and mouse with the prisoners. Each group slowly learns that situations are not what they seem; prejudices are sometimes unjustly held; and love can be found in even the harshest places."

Ambitious international co-production starring Vera Farmiga, John Malkovich and various European stars.

I hope to have a review of this in tomorrow's edition, if I don't have any more highly important zombie movies to look at. In the meantime, here are some Farmiga collages. Find another collage and a film clip in the LC section.

 

  • * Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe).

  • * White asterisk: expanded format.

  • * Blue asterisk: not mine.

  • No asterisk: it probably sucks.

OTHER CRAP:

Catch the deluxe version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles, here.

 

 

 

 

 

 


The Eroticist

1972

Today is a Hankster Grab Bag day as we play with some clips from this week's Fun House.

Stefania Casini in "1900 aka Novecento", she's naked and giving hand jobs to two famous guys. (DeNiro and Depardieu.)

 

A very young Melanie Griffith shows tits in "Night Moves".

 

In "Devil in the Flesh" Maruschka Detmers gives a blow job.

 

Elizabeth Berkley with a tittie flash in "Moving Malcolm".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes and collages

Killing Me Softly

2002

Part 2 of 2

Heather Graham

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bikini Hotel

(1997)

This is the second of a five-part series featuring the famous 6'2" babe, Julie Strain.

Film clips of Julie Strain in Bikini Hotel. (Sample below)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Cook

(2008)

Maybe I'm just drowning in horror flicks lately, but I enjoyed this silly little 2008 comedy/horror flick. It's unpretentious, a little bloody but not over the top, silly at the same time, and quite funny. Mark Hengst is a hoot as the non-English-speaking Hungarian cook, no easy task when his main English line was "OK!", spoken in a loud almost screaming voice.

It's spring break at the sorority house, and most of the girls and all of the staff are gone, but a few girls stay behind, so a temporary cook is brought in to take care of them.

The cook speaks no English aside from the aforementioned "OK!", but it doesn't matter because he serves sumptuous feasts three times a day, food the girls don't really recognize, but assume is Hungarian fare. It really is OK, at least until someone notices that one by one, the girls seem to be disappearing. That isn't unusual over a long holiday, but where have they gone, and oh, by the way, exactly WHAT have they been eating?

What makes this movie work quite well is that they take a bunch of attractive young women, not especially great actors but adequate, give them some funny lines, create a very simple and straightforward horror plot, throw in a guy who does a really good job as the cook, and just keep everything very light and frivolous. The girls all love to come to the kitchen and talk to the cook, and he talks back in Hungarian (subtitled) and tells them exactly what he has planned for them, but they just smile happily as they have no clue what he's saying. It's all very dumb, yet somehow it works. I liked it.

Nina Fehren Brooke Lenzi

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the following have film clips, some have collages, Vera Farmiga has both

Vera Farmiga in In Tranzit (sample right)
Brigitte Hall and Christina Boutte in Death Toll
Deborah Fallabella in Primo Basilio
Eva Kuli and Rika Lemhemyi in Taxidermia
Piroska Molnar in Taxidermia
Laura Christensen in Razone
Nathalie Press in In Tranzit

Irina Solano in L'Age de Homme
Karina Testa in Frontieres
Vikki Blows in When Evil Calls. Vikki Blows? If ever a performer was destined for a porn career ...!
unknown in When Evil Calls. I don't know what's so bad about Evil calling. Whenever that happens I just let my answering machine take it

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dita von Teese

Here is part 3 of 7 of the film Pin-Ups2, in which Dita does all sorts of naughty, explicit lesbian and solo activities.

 

Clips: Classics

Samantha Morton in Band of Gold. I like Samantha a lot, but had never seen this before. This was a TV series shown in the UK between 1995 and 1997.

Kate Winterich in Kissing on the Mouth (2005). It's most memorable for Kate's close shave.

Sophie Marceau in Beyond the Clouds. (1995) Hey, it's the French mega-babe in a movie directed by Antonioni and Wim Wenders. You can't go wrong. (As long as you don't actually have to watch the movie.)

 

 

Clips: New Films

Catherine Zeta-Jones in Death-Defying Acts (2008). No nudity, but she's belly dancing. I watched this yesterday and was disappointed. It stars the talented Guy Pearce as Harry Houdini. Zeta plays a Scottish psychic who tries to scam Houdini out of the reward he offered to anyone who could determine his mother's last words. Zeta figures to win the prize by establishing a close relationship with him that will enable her to find out the answer before the official test. Although it is completely fictional, it's a great premise for a historical romance that ends up being a rather straightforward Hollywood love story with a sad ending. It's actually a pretty good movie, just not as cool as you hope it would be when you read the concept. Despite a $20 million budget and Zeta's place on the A-list, there are no current plans for a North American theatrical release.

 

Georgina Cardona in El silenci segons Bach (2008) That means "The Silence Before Bach." Sample right

Heidi Holland in Chill (2007) Sample right.