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"Maniac Nurses Find Ecstasy" (2000)

Interestingly enough, Ecstasy was in Vermont, not far from Montpelier.

Here's the formula: shoot some cheap videotape footage of women in white lingerie. You don't even need to shoot sound footage. In fact, it's more flexible not to. Just make sure there are plenty of shots of the women from behind, so we can dub in some voices later without having to worry about lip-synching. This gives us the additional advantage of having the movie in any language for later distribution. Why, just imagine your masterpiece in Catalan or Frisian, or even in Latin for its run in Vatican City. Include a little bit of nudity and gore, although this will have to be cut when the pope watches.

"Hey, scoop, now that I have the footage of them doing various things in my backyard, how does that become a movie?" Easy, make up a story. Any story. Just watch an old episode of Alfred Hitchcock on Nick at Night, and copy down a plot summary. Now have one of your friends with a deep voice read your summary aloud, and tape him. Add this here and there throughout your footage as a narration.

"Hey, scoop, I did that and it's only 44 minutes long." No problema, amigo. Here's how to pad it while making it seem to be shot "on locale". Watch a travelogue on TV and tape it. Let's say it's about Venice. Choose about 10 minutes of good stuff, insert it in your footage somewhere near the end, and have one of the characters say something to another, something like "you wonder how it all began? Your mother and I met in Venice, where I was working as a gondolier ... " Have him or her recite some background activities, some interesting facts about Venice, or just some generic thoughts like "those were the good times, I tell you. Yessireebob." If you have a friend who can say it with an Italian accent, all the better. Any accent will do, really. People who watch movies like this can't tell the difference between a Chinese accent and Estonian.

"Hey, scoop, no travelogues on tonight. Just some shark specials on Discovery." No fuckin' problem, my friend. Just change the monologue to "your mother and I met off the great barrier reef, where I was hunting the Great White with Captain Cousteau's crew." Pretty much any real-life footage will work.

"OK, done, now I still need another 15 minutes?" Easily done. This is where you add some fine art which will make your film much admired at Cannes. Does your script take place over four days? That's three sunsets and three or four sunrises which not only add to the beauty of your masterpiece, but provide an all-important time marker for your film, and much more subtly than ripping the top page off one of those desk calendars. Do your characters live in a house? Surely there is a beautiful old home near you which will make for some good exteriors. Your narrator needs to say something like, "meanwhile, in Stately Scoop Manor". Finally, perhaps one of your characters is reading some magazine. Right after the footage of the character, turn you vidcam on some of the articles he or she was reading. If you show some warning signs of cancer or something, you'll not only add educational value but also provide redeeming social importance, which is so critical to those obscenity trials. And this has an added plus. Later in the film you can add the exact same footage back in as a flashback, while your character tries to remember that third warning sign. Use the same footage again and again to add to the fun, as you provide valuable insight into your character's psychological development, or deterioration, as the case may be. Now the only thing left to do is to dust off the mantlepiece, and make a little extra room for your Palme D'Or.

Nicole Gyony (1, 2) Hajni Brown (1, 2) Susanna Makay (1, 2) Anete Maynard and Eva Shubert

SIDEBAR: there isn't even much nudity, as if sitting through a cheesy grade-zzz movie wasn't hard enough. This movie would be unbearable if it featured frontal nudity from a 25 year old Michelle Pfeiffer. With virtually no nudity, it could be used in Latin America to torture political prisoners.

"Fruits of Passion", (1980), from Johnny Web

This film is more or less in the same artistic tradition of "In the realm of the senses". Like that one, it is a French-Japanese joint effort about the orient with a high aesthetic sense and supercharged eroticicm. Unlike "Senses", this one is about China, and has no violence to speak of. It is a filmed version of "Flowers of Passion", Pauline Reage's sequel to "The Story of O".

In my opinion, it is very artistic indeed. The Illiers collages should speak for themselves. The set and art design are obviously done with very developed aesthetic sensibilities and a real love for the Chinese style. It's also quite sexy. Klaus Kinski wrote in his autobiography that they were really doin' the nasty in this movie. Kinski was nutty as a fruitcake, and he said a lot of crazy shit in his life, but this one rings true of you see the scenes between him and Dombasle, or between him and the hooker (miscellaneous1). And obviously, the Illiers blowjob wasn't faked.

Is it a good movie? Heck I don't know. It's beautiful, well-performed, and has a lot of sex and nudity. I guess that alone isn't such a bad resume for any film. I also thought it was boring and not a little bit pretentious. Let's face it, why do you keep watching? Fast forward to the next sex scene. They threw in some blather about love versus lust, and some socio-political content about the liberation of China from imperialism, but so what? It isn't a thriller or a love story or any traditional film format. It's just a beautiful movie about a woman who agrees to learn about love in a bordello in order to master the art for her lover. Take it for what it is, and it's impressive. It is more or less its own genre - the artistic porn film with real actors and semi-literary roots.

I was so impressed with the art design that I called in Elya to watch part of it, and she agreed on the artistic side, but she said, "you didn't say it was a horror movie". I had to explain to her that Klaus Kinski really looks like that. He wasn't playing a vampire or a zombie, but an English businessman. That was the real Kinski, and that is pretty damned scary, to be sure.

Arielle Dombasle (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) Isabelle Illiers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11) Miscellaneous (1, 2)

"Puppet Master" from Tuna

Let's face it, most horror films do not compare well to mainstream Comedy/Drama/Action. A few exceptions come to mind like Poltergeist, The Birds, The Exorcist, Jaws and Psycho, but, for the most part, comparing horror to mainstream movies is not even useful. More useful is comparing them to other films in the genre. I feel the same way about erotica, porn, and westerns. Note that all four of these genres have huge followings. So even if they are not great cinema, they are entertaining. That being the case, I feel that "B" bimbos have celebrity. The Puppet Master (1989), by director David Schmoeller compares well to other horror films in my opinion.

Schmoeller, in a "making of" featurette observes that there are two kinds of scary. The first is surprise, as in jumping out of a closet and saying boo. The second is suspense (pioneered by Hitchcock) where the audience sees the threat, but the character doesn't. The suspense is heightened if the audience feels a rapport with the character. Puppet Master uses suspense, not surprise. Films using suspense can afford a slower, more even pace. There is also time for more detailed character development (which is necessary for the heightened suspense).

In the case of Puppet Master, Schmoeller finds a way to employ suspense and control production costs with a simple camera technique. Cut to still of puppet, then show first person POV from a low camera angle chasing the victim. This lets the audience in on the secret (necessary to the suspense), while saving a fortune on puppeteers. To give you an idea, one 16 second segment of stop motion puppet animation took three days to shoot, and the actual puppeteering required as many as five puppeteers per puppet.

Now, to the story. It is 1939 at a hotel in Bodega Bay, and a puppet maker has learned the secret of animating puppets (an ancient Egyptian trick), but hides his creations then kills himself when he realizes the Nazis are after him. Fast forward to the present day. An group of widely scattered psychic friends are psychically contacted to come to Bodega Bay by one of their number. They arrive to find him dead. Not long after, they find out one at a time about the puppets, mostly the hard way. We have a short cameo appearance by Barbara Crampton. The exposure is provided by a two time wonder -- Kathryn O'Reilly.

This is neither the first nor the last film to use toys come to life as a plot device. Some critics of Puppet Master think of this as a flaw. Funny they didn't feel that way about the jack-in-the-box in Poltergeist. This film features better than average acting and plot development for horror, goes very light on gore, has good puppeteering, some wonderful set design and good photography, the DVD quality is good, and the "making of" featurette is interesting. If you enjoy horror (you know who you are) then don't avoid this one.

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Barbara Crampton Kathryn O'Reilly (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) Unknown (1, 2)

"Puppet Master 2" from Tuna

Puppet Master 2 follows the formula for a horror sequel. Up the body count, up the gore level, don't worry as much about plot, and use cheesy dialogue to make sure even the mentally defective can follow the plot. This time, the director is special effects expert Dave Allen, and we have none of the clever camera work, much more of the puppets in action, and even a new puppet called flame, who is sort of a Nazi with bullets for teeth, a flame thrower arm (roasts a fat lady with it, and she didn't sing) and a bad temper. The puppets in the original were basically likeable, but followed the will of their master. This time, they are more like juvenile delinquents. The horror here is more of the surprise variety than suspense.

It is a few years after the first story ended.The widow has died (her brains were sucked out through her eyes), and the hotel has become the property of the federal government. Before the opening credits, the puppets dig up the original puppet master, and re-animate him. The part of the puppet master is played by the invisible man, bandages and all. He is a little the worse for wear having been dead for 50 years. Meanwhile, a group of FBI agents/paranormal investigators arrive at the house to look for signs of the supernatural. They, of course, find what they are looking for and more, while the puppet master reveals his master plan, which is to revive his dead wife, who happens to look just like the head FBI agent. The exposure is by one of the FBI people, who sits up in bed topless, stands up adjusting her panties, and walks across the room. She does all this to put on a shirt and go back to bed. She is Charlie Spradling, who has 26 credits at IMDB.

Maltin rates this one as mildly better than the first, but it has none of the elements I liked in the original.

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Charlie Spradling (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

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