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"The Dirty Seven", from
Tuna
Also known as
"Emmanuelle, Queen of the Desert", so
you can probably figure out the premise. Hey,
Tuna did all the suffering, so you don't even
have to watch the sucker to see 21 pictures of
Laura Gemser.
The rest of the cast all
have names like Giovanni, Angelo, amnd Salvatore,
so I guess it's a spaghetti-softcore from Italy.
I guess that would be with limp noodles.
thumbnails Laura Gemser (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21)
"The
Bare-Breasted Countess", from Johnny Web
I did this one for Jess
Franco's birthday. He turns 70 TODAY! The big
seven-oh. I think probably the best thing about
him is that in 41 years of filmmaking, including
a stint working with Orson Welles, he hasn't
learned one blessed thing. The movies he makes
today are every bit as bad as his first efforts,
possibly worse. You have to sit back in awe of an
accomplishment like that. So happy birthday,
Jess. Feliz cumpleanos, amigo.
This film is also known
as "The Loves of Irina", "Les
Avaleuses", and about a dozen other names,
and available in many, many different variations.
This particular version is the fairly rare
x-rated one, contributed to us by Frodo. (Many
thanks.) It shows no penetration, but features
one on-camera BJ, and a whole bunch of footage
trapped between hardcore and softcore (like
spread shots and carpet munching, and my favorite
when Romay gives a BJ to the penis-shaped
bedpost, presumably to sharpen her skills. Or
maybe to sharpen her teeth because I don't think
PetSmart sells any custom chew-toys for Vampires,
and they are too embarrassed to buy the doggie
ones when they don't own a pooch.) I wish it were
lit a little better, because Romay is so hairy
that you can't see anything but hair, even when
she opens up.
I've discussed this film
and the director, Jess Franco, many times in the
past, so I'll give you a bunch of links later if
you'd like to learn more about the king of
grade-z EuroCrap. Although he is primarily known
for his Horrotica films, Franco did not restrict
himself to making bad horror films. He made many
other kinds of bad films as well. And I use the
word "many" advisedly. Possibly he made
more movies than anybody else in history.
Unfortunately, unlike Jean Rollin, who was truly
excellent at lighting, Franco couldn't match his
sense of cinema with any kind of technical
competence, so he has some nicely-composed scenes
which are spoiled by poor lighting or fuzzy
focus. Alas. So his only positive is the ability
to imagine some artistically conceived shots, but
even they are spoiled by poor execution. This
doesn't make for really good capturing material,
but some of them came out OK. Others suck. So it
goes.
From the wonderful world
of grade-z cinema: it takes money and skill to
film real bats. They generally fly at night, they
fly low, and they are generally antisocial
critters who hang around in unlit places. So,
when Franco needed to show the countess flying as
a bat, he photographed a medium sized bird flying
through the skies. They did at least find one
that flapped its wings quite a bit like a bat, I
mean at least they didn't use a hawk or something
which does a lot of gliding. But it's obviously a
bird, it's obviously daytime, it's obviously
hundreds of feet in the air, and they just added
some bat-like noises to the footage.
Note on #4 - I didn't
cut out either of the girls' heads. That's really
the way it is in the print, a shot of apres-sex
repose, with both heads missing, one on either
side. Not even Franco is that bad a filmmaker
(not normally, anyway), so I suspect something
got lost in the conversion from the screen aspect
ratio to the standard video 1.33-1. If he really
shot it like that, it gets my nomination for the
poorest filmed scene ever, because it's also in
atrocious light (see the Swin collages). And I
don't mean ever by a real filmmaker, I mean ever.
My nomination also includes the films my dad made
of the Fourth of July picnic in 1959 with his
first camera.
Romay's on-camera BJ is
shown in the top left of #3. The guy's phaser
never stiffened, which I thought was the best
acting in the movie, until I heard the guy's
voice and realized that he'd be happier sitting
in a bubble bath listening to his Judy Garland
albums. Hey, Franco, if you just need some hetero
guy to work for free and get blown by starlets,
send me an e-mail. My address is in the card
attached to your birthday present. Or have your
people call my people. I'm pretty sure I can work
some BJ's into my schedule.
Lina Romay (1,
2,
3,
4,
5)
Monica Swin (IMDB says Swinn with two n's) (1,
2)
Link "The Pure and Extreme Cinema
of Jesus Franco" Link "Mondo Erotico: The Films of
Jess Franco"
Link "Graven Images: The
Perversity of Jess Franco" Link "Horrotica! The Sex Scream
of Jess Franco"
"Webmaster",
from Johnny Web
"Webmaster" is
a 1998 Danish movie featuring the haunting
love-theme, "You are the Webmaster of My
Heart". I didn't make that up. Yup, that's
the life of a webmaster. We may look like fat
geeks with B.O. and broken glasses and pizza
stains on our shirts, but when we aren't studying
coding tricks and browser bugs, why, we are
deadly with the ladies. What a time it is to live
in this world where the women push the
quarterbacks and Fabio lookalikes aside to get to
a man who never exercises. Top of the world, ma!
This film is supposed to
be about the internet of the future, which looks
a lot like the first Atari Home games. And it
projects a spooky future Denmark which is barely
recognizable as Denmark. It's so high tech it
looks almost like you could be ... I don't know,
maybe in The Netherlands. Pretty doggone eerie.
I knew I was in trouble
with this DVD when the "special
features" included "sound" and
"a menu". And those weren't SOME of the
special features, they were ALL of them. Whew,
that is almost as high-tech as the future they
predict. What a dizzying ride the future of
Denmark will be, with those computer generated
graphics that look just like in the old movie
"Tron". It only makes me wish I were a
younger man, so I could live to see such marvels.
Assuming I could get Danish citizenship.
Karin Rorbech Karin Rorbech unknown unknown
"Double
Exposure", from GR
I haven't seen this
film, but it has a topless scene from Michelle
Pfeiffer's sister, DeDee, so it can't be all bad.
Dedee Pfeiffer
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