Hitcher in the Dark (1989) is an Umberto Lenzi originally titled Paura nel buio. A 22 year old rich kid with a complex due to his mother abandoning him at age 10 is cruising around Virginia Beach in a Winebego, picking up women, then killing them when he finds himself again impotent. He picks up Josie Bissett, who he decides looks like his absent mother, drugs her, cuts her hair and dies it, and the first thing she wants to do when she comes to is fuck him. Her boyfriend is looking for them.

The dialogue is very stilted, the sound effects are much too loud (such as slaps to the face), and most of the acting is very weak. On the other hand, the anamorphic transfer is very nice, Bissett shows breasts and buns, one time wonder Oralee Sanders shows breasts as the first victim, and several unidentified women show breasts at a totally gratuitous wet T-shirt contest. IMDB readers have it at 4.1 of 10, but with only 11 votes. For me, this is a C-. The dialogue is hard to take, and the surprise ending involves a plot element that always pisses me off.

Innocents with Dirty Hands (1975):

This movie has a great opening scene. A handsome, idle adult man is flying a dramatic bird-shaped kite which is a bright red color, presenting a stark contrast against the blue sky. The kite plummets from the sky and lands square on the bottom of a beautiful naked sunbathing woman. He follows the string, and assesses the situation from afar, hesitantly. She encourages him to come and take his kite. He does so, thus getting a look at her shapely rear when he removes the kite. She then turns around, showing him the rest of her body, and asks if there is anything else he would like.

If only the film had lived up to the lurid promise of that beginning. I didn't hate the film as much as Tuna did, but I was completely unimpressed by it, yet another Claude Chabrol disappointment.  (Tuna gave it a D. All of Tuna's criticisms are fair, but I would say C-, meaning it is worth a look if you are interested in the genre, the famous director, or Romy Schneider nudity, but should otherwise avoid it) 

If you have seen a bunch of straight-to-video American "erotic thrillers" in the past decade, you have already seen this film, with its contrived and convoluted plot, artificial characters, logic holes, incomprehensible character motivations, and one-dimensional acting. Someone could remake this film scene-by-scene, line-by-line with a Baldwin brother and Kari Wuhrer, and if the idioms were translated properly into American English, you would never suspect for a moment that it you were watching a 1975 French film. I don't know if that is praise or censure. Maybe a bit of both. Claude Chabrol's film must have been good enough, in a way, if it was still being imitated endlessly twenty years later. The downside is that neither the original nor any of the copies are really very good. They are simply grade-B erotic thrillers.

My general rule of thumb is that there cannot be a great movie with a resurrection, not even if Jesus is involved. This one has two resurrections and no dieties, placing it out of the "A" game altogether. But I ask you this? How unpleasant can it be to watch a movie which begins with Romy Schneider stark naked in the first scene, and continues to get her naked throughout the picture. That ain't all bad.

I have told these stories before, but I'll repeat it for those who haven't followed the first eight years worth of these comments. I feel a special connection to Romy Schneider for several reasons.

One of them is that I lived in Vienna for some time, and she is an important part of the Austrian part of me. Romy is to Austria as Melina Mercouri is to Greece, a highly successful symbol of the country's popular culture, a beautiful international presence, and a symbol of the country itself. Romy would be iconic in Austria even without the "Sissi" films, but the fact of the matter is that she was not only successful in international projects, and Austria's most famous acting export, but she also played Austria's most famous princess-turned-empress, Empress Elizabeth (Sissi), and she played this role not once but four times. Romy first assayed this role when she was a teenager in 1955. It made her famous and adored, and she kept coming back with sequels for eight years. Those pictures were Austria to the world, and Romy became the country's unofficial cultural ambassador.

The more important reason why I am stirred by Romy is that she started me along the path toward studying and archiving film nudity. She was the first woman I ever saw naked in a movie. It was the early part of 1963. I don't remember the exact date, but I remember that it was still wintry at night. I was a high school freshman when my friend, the Wily Duck, persuaded me to join him in an expedition to see Boccaccio '70, an arty, bawdy, European comedy with nudity. The Wily Duck wasn't called that for nothin'. He was a crafty kid, and he had a plan. There were two theaters about a block apart. My mother would drop us off and pick us up at the one which was showing a revival of Darby O'Gill and the Little People. We would pretend to go to that movie, then skulk around to the other theater. If the theater showing Boccaccio '70 didn't let us in, we'd simply return and watch ol' Darby and his banshees. The plan went off without a hitch. The art house showing Boccaccio '70 never asked any questions. They sold us our tickets, we saw the entire film, and snuck back to the rendezvous with my mom, who didn't suspect a thing.

Boccaccio '70 wasn't bad at all. I have subsequently read that the European version consisted of four separate stories from four different directors, but there were only three in the version we saw. We thought that two of the segments (directed by Fellini and DeSica, starring Anita Ekberg and Sophia Loren) were terrific -very entertaining and very sexy. But it was the third one, the boring one directed by Visconti, that I'll always remember, for it was in that segment that I saw my first naked woman on screen.

• Romy Schneider (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

On such innocent memories are an old man's nostalgia based.

OTHER CRAP:

• The producer says Ashley Judd's sex scene in "Blackout" is "the hottest sex scene ever"
• Best version yet of Paris Hilton's public beaver shot
• retroSPICE presents: EVELYLN 'TREASURE CHEST' WEST
• Prince Charles asks Michelle Heaton, "how heavy are your boobs?" He may have some king potential after all.
• Page three girl Luci chosen to be Playboy centerfold
• THOUSANDS OF SADDAMS SURRENDER. $25 Million Bounty a Motivating Factor, Officials Believe.
• Dr Steven Hawking in a strip club. Pretty sure he was watching, not dancing.
• Too dirty for words: "Everyday conversation is now so foul-mouthed that only a handful of words can be considered truly taboo, according to the authors of the new edition of the Collins English Dictionary."
• is Kobe a victim?
• Connelly soft and pretty. Hulk Smash Connelly Husband. An interview with film star I. Hulk
• Shiver me timbers! 100% positive reviewws for Pirates of the Caribbean
• Arnold & Cameron for Alien 5?!
• James Van Der Beek hitched to actress Heather McComb
• Thousands Attend Seventh Annual Redneck Games
• We've run this link before, but ya just can't get enough of this. Bill Shatner's video version of Rocketman.
• 2003 Western Open. Tiger wins wire-to-wire, by five strokes, ties all-time record score. Why can't I have a slump like that?
• What do Lou Pinella and Reese Witherspoon have in common? No, not funny-shaped heads.
• THE Irish built the Great Wall of China. "Husky laborers from the Emerald Isle were recruited by the Chinese to build their wall -- because native workers couldn't lift the huge rocks used to build the 4,500-mile-long barrier". So says Weekly World News.
• Break out your Dead Pool entries again. Buddy Ebsen dead at 95. Buddy is best remembered as Jed Clampett and Barnaby Jones, but he had a great and diverse career. He was the original Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, but had to drop out after 10 days of filming. He was once Shirley Temple's dance partner. To me and many of my generation, he'll always be Georgie Russell, Davy Crockett's loveable sidekick.
• The All-Star game will determine Pete Rose's HOF status. If the team he bets on covers the spread, he's in.
• If you work with Brad Pitt, you are not allowed to look at his feet. I didn't make that up.

Other crap archives. May also include newer material than the ones above, since it's sorta in real time.

MOVIE REVIEWS:

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 there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Lawdog or Junior or C2000 or Realist or ICMS or Mick Locke, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

Today we take a look at "Human Nature"...So here is Patricia Arquette managing to show it all as a woman with a problem (she grows body hair like your lawn sprouts weeds).

Now don't let this scare you off, only cap #1 shows the excess hair. The rest do a good job of showing off Arquette in all her glory.

This movie had mixed reviews, but I liked it.

• Patricia Arquette (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

Link #1...wet t-shirt cleavage from "Just Married".
Links 2 and 3...A little cleavage and some pokies from "Phoenix"
Links 4-6...Yup, still more lovely cleavage. This time from "Summer Catch".