"The
Frightened Woman" The
Frightened Woman (Femina ridens 1969) is an
offering from the murky underbelly of the indie
world. Written and directed by noted Italian
director Piero Schivazappa, this film explores
the nature of dominant and submissive roles
between men and women by focusing on a couple
playing games over a weekend. There is some
bondage, and mild S & M. There is also a
surprise ending. One of the strong points of this
film is that, while the ending was unexpected, it
wasn't jarring; it was easy to accept the plot
twist.
Set decoration was very avant guard, and there
were some very interesting lighting, props and
camera effects. Only 9 people rated it at IMDB,
and gave it fairly high marks. I could find no
detailed review anywhere on line. Noted actress
Dagmar Lassander played the lead, and spent a lot
of the film exposing her breasts. This was two
years into her remarkable career which spanned 25
years in which she made 64 films.
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Dagmar Lassander (1,
2,
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10)
"The
Beguiled" (1971)
The Beguiled is anything but typical Clint
Eastwood fare. It is the story of a Union soldier
who is wounded, and wanders into a southern
finishing school for girls. The headmistress
decides that they should dress his wounds before
he is turned over to the Confederate army. The
headmistress, teacher and the older students soon
become far more impressed with Eastwood as male
then Eastwood as enemy. Meanwhile, Clint is
literally trying to save his life and get back to
the North.
Soon, however, Clint starts thinking with the
little head. He gives possibly the best
performance of his career here, and Geraldine
Page is amazing as the head of the school.
Frankly, there was not a bad performance in the
film. Jo Ann Harris played an older student who
ends up in Clint's bed (and shows us breasts and
buns). The film has a real noire ending. Despite
a fairly low budget, this was a box office
failure. Eastwood blames the marketing, which
tried to sell it as a typical Eastwood
shoot-em-up. In fact, Eastwood is bedridden or on
crutches for the entire film. Some see this as a
transitional role from squinting western
gunfighter to Dirty Harry. Over the years, The
Beguiled has gained the following it deserves.
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JoAnn Harris (1,
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"Primary
Suspect" (2000) I just watched
this sucker about two days ago, and I've already
forgotten what it was about. I think one of the
Baldwins plays a cop who was in a deep undercover
operation with his wife. They were both in way
too deep, having become addicted to drugs in the
course of maintaining their cover. The wife was
killed in a bust, and when the evil drug dealer
got out of prison only five years later, Baldwin
conspired with one of his cop buddies to take the
druglord out. But he, in turn, was being set up
by various other parties.
Ludicrous, improbable film which ended up as a
straight-to-vid.
Audra
Lea Keener Just for info. If you haven't seen
Lee Majors
in a while, you may be a little surprised to see
what he looks like now.
"Belly"
(1998)
Here's the complete antithesis of Breaking the
Waves. Brilliant visual and aural presentation of
what is essentially a 90 minute rap video. Hype
Williams may someday be a great director, because
very few people have his eye and ear, but he
isn't there yet. This story is disjointed, the
acting is done by amateurs (some of whom are
good, while others are not), some characters
speak in such heavy dialect as to be
incomprehensible, and the story would be
impossible to follow except for a clumsy
voice-over. In addition the moralizing at the end
is virtually contradictory to the lurid
glamorization of evil pervasive through the film.
There are some outstanding sequences, especially
one which is a black version of the climax in
"Scarface", but it just doesn't add up
to much. Two boyhood friends become successful
criminals together, but are moving in separate
directions. One wants to go straight and raise a
family. The other wants to expand his criminal
enterprises.
But I predict that some day this guy will have
the right script, and he'll make a helluva
powerful movie.
Minimal nudity. I'm not even sure whether
there is any, except for some fleeting looks at
strippers (not pictured here). T-Boz
Taral. I like the way Hype Williams takes
advantage of the high albedo of dark-hued skin.
He produces some powerful lighting effects. See
#2 as an example (1, 2, 3) La Vita
Raynor
"Tango
and Cash" (1989)
I'm not 100% sure, but I think reviewers
missed the point on this movie. I don't think any
movie could be this bad unless it tried to be, so
I think it must have been some kind of an
action-genre parody. I'll tell you what - if it
isn't intentionally dumb, it is a strong
contender for the worst script ever written.
Tango and Cash are superhero cops, played by
Stallone and Kurt Russell, respectively. Tango is
a Wall Street type, Cash is a trailer-park guy.
Hilariously, the L.A. papers just refer to them
as "Tango" and "Cash" -
pretty impressive fame credentials for a couple
of working stiff vice squad guys. Between them
they are destroying the operation of a druglord,
and he's getting mighty pissed. The druglord
knows, with his druglord intuition, that if he
can just get rid of these two guys, that he has
nothing to worry about from the thousands of
other cops in L.A., so he frames them for the
murder of a federal agent. After their
conviction, he hijacks the truck sending them to
a minimum security prison, and sends them to a
hardcore prison that he controls completely
through bribery. It is not clear why he doesn't
simply drive them off a cliff, or take them to
his own headquarters, because the legit
authorities have no idea where they have gone. Of
course, with the odds against them hundreds to
two, and with every prison official as corrupt
and criminal as the prisoners (the druglord
apparently has an office in the laundry room),
Tango and Cash fight their way out without
weapons.
Then they kick ass and do good and restore
justice, and punish all the guys who lied against
them at their trial, and some other stuff which
I've already forgotten. I think Cash screws
Tango's sister (Teri Hatcher), who works as a
stripper and is quite happy and successful in
this profession despite her upper class family
and the fact that she doesn't take her clothes
off. I'm not kidding here. The other girls at the
club do strip, but I don't know who they are.
Their pictures are below.
I think the entire thing ends in a gladitorial
combat between a heavily armed RV and some large
construction equipment. Again, I'm not kidding
here. The baddies drive earthmovers. Tango and
Cash were able to buy the RV on sale cheap
because the television only gets Michael J.
Pollard 24/7.
I rarely recommend movies on the basis that
they are bad-good, but this is an exception. This
may be worse than that movie with Mastroianni as
General Custer. It will leave you throwing things
at the screen when you hear the corny dialogue,
become aware of the ludicrous plot twists, follow
the prison escape, see Jack Palance as the
druglord, and see the battle of the bulldozers. I
give it a lot of stars. So bad it has to be seen
to be believed. Never comes within a galaxy of
reality. I don't blame Russell and Stallone. They
didn't write this crap. Frankly, I still don't
know if it is arch tongue-in-cheek parody or it
is simply sophomoric. Either way, a lot of
laughs.
Teri
Hatcher as the non-naked stripper Other, more
traditional, naked-type strippers. (1, 2, 3, 4)
"Night
Moves" (1975), from Johnny Web and Tomcat
Other people have concentrated on the
"sweater half off" scene where
Melanie's breasts are dry and visible, but TomCat
went after some more revealing frames in her
swim. There are some great frames, but they are
video quality and quite dark. This could turn out
to be a treasure when it is released on DVD.
Griffith (1,
2,
3)
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