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"The Demoniacs", from Tuna
This is Jean Rollin's
Pirate classic! Two young innocents wash up as
shipwreck survivors, and they are raped and
killed by some particularly inept pirates while
the captain's girlfriend watches and masturbates.
So you can see it's a classy movie. The innocents
then make a deal with the devil in order to come
back and get revenge. The devil's advance scout
is a woman who wears clown make-up. The devil
wants to have some hot monkey love with the
little muffins before sending them back into the
world. His Supreme Unholiness looks like Antonio
Banderas, which is consistent with what I always
thought.
Later there is a great
scene in a churchyard where the girls use their
new satanic powers to make the statues fall on
the captain's girlfriend. One of the largest
falls on her, and it looks sorta like the statue
is screwing her, but she somehow escapes. They
had no special effects, so she had to make it
look like she was wrestling with the statue, ala
Lugosi and the rubber octopus.
Rollin came up with some
tremendous locales to give this a spooky and
artistic look. Some scenes were filmed in a ship
graveyard, others in an old abandoned cathedral
overgrown with vines. The tavern where the
pirates hang out is decorated with all types of
bizarre artifacts like stuffed bats and monkeys
with exaggerated genitals.
It's a truly strange
movie, but Rollin managed to get a lot of mileage
out of his zero budget. (According to the stories
circulated after the filming, the actors had
nothing to eat during the filming except the fish
and crustaceans they managed to wrangle from
local fishermen!) It could actually be a pretty
good horror/gore movie except for a few things.
Rollin doesn't use those quick surprise cuts so
necessary to tension, so all the danger and
mystery comes walking up to the camera languidly
from a ways off. He isn't exactly Hitchcock in
this regard. The acting in this movie is even
worse than usual. The two demoniac girls never
acted in anything but this movie. One of them was
a local Belgian girl that they had to hire as a
precondition for getting some good Belgian
locations they wanted. The pirate captain is an
American, if I remember right, and turns in
possibly the silliest performance ever. I guess
it was intentional, I don't know, but he
exaggerates every gesture and facial expression
like those old silent movie actors. Imagine
Captain Kirk in pain. The whole movie is worth
watching just to see him and his cohorts mug and
cavort. Rollin starts out the movie with the old
cliche of showing some action backdrop while each
character's face comes on the screen (mugging
away, of course), and the narrator tells us about
them, kind of like when Dr Evil goes around the
table and introduces all his evil cohorts.
Tuna noted the following
plusses:
- Superb transfer
from film to DVD, and the most risque
version ever released.
- Rollin savors each
moment instead of rushing through the
film.
- Beautiful colors
and framing.
- Beautifully lit
night scenes. I agree with both of these
last two points. The story is goofy, and
the acting bizarre, but I challenge
anyone to come up with a better looking
zero-budget movie. The cinematography has
a professional look and feel, not just in
the clarity of the images, but in the
artistry as well.
- and let me add, the
two little demoniac girls are cute, and
Joelle Coeur is one helluva sexy woman.
Thumbnails, part 1 Thumbnails, part 2 Joelle Coeur (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24) The Demoniacs (I have no idea
which is which, and apparently neither has Tuna)
(1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23) Mireille D'Argent (1,
2,
3)
Hookers (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8)
"About
last night ..", from Johnny Web
This movie was meant to
be called "Sexual Perversity in
Chicago", identical to the David Mamet play
upon which it was based. (The movie was Mamet's
one act play expanded significantly to a
full-lenghth screenplay by Tim Kazurinsky -
remember him from SNL?) The three major TV
networks, however, wouldn't accept the trailer
ads for the film, so the last minute title change
resulted in "About Last Night ... "
It's basically a four
character play, about the rise and fall of a
relationship, and the effect of that relationship
upon their best friends. The friends were
essentially jealous - not of the love they found,
but of how they dominated each other's time. In
the new relationship, each lover stole the
other's time away from the best friend. I've
mentioned before that Jim Belushi and Elizabeth
Perkins are funny in an over-the-top way as the
friends, especially Belushi as a life-embracing
party animal. Demi is absolutely lovely. Before
the exercise and the implants, you might say that
she wasn't as perfect in a technical sense. Her
breasts were small, and her butt was not that
tight, and I guess she deliberately set out to
change that. But I don't think I'm alone in
saying that she was just about perfect before the
changes. Her beautiful face, her raspy voice, her
smarts, and her acute feminity made her a great
star. And she was great in this movie. Romantic
comedies may not be the equivalent of King Lear
in the level of acting skill required, but not
everybody does them well (Rob Lowe comes to
mind), and Demi did this one very well, indeed.
The movie portrayed the relationship quite
realistically except for kind of a cop-out ending
which looked tacked on. Anyway, you have a
beautiful Demi perfect for the role, Belushi and
Perkins for some laughs, and a reasonable amount
of Demi nudity. That's enough to make it a
worthwhile rental. You won't even notice or care
that Lowe is so strangely stiff. When he has to
deliver a line he looks like Dan Quayle holding a
press conference, deflecting a question, trying
to pretend that he knows where Europe is. Demi
Moore (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7)
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