The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) is the second attempt to bring the depression era classic novel by James M. Caine to the silver screen. The first, in 1946, was made during a pro censorship pendulum swing, making it impossible to do justice to the novel. For this reason, the director doesn't think of this as a remake, but rather as a proper interpretation. I, for one, agree. Jessica Lange plays the waitress/cook/wife of a much older Greek restaurant and filling station owner, and is trapped in a passionless marriage. Jack Nicholson is a drifter and petty swindler who wanders through to con them out of a free meal. The Greek owner sees him as a mechanic for his station, and, when Jack sees Jessica, he agrees to the job.

It isn't long before Jack and Jessica both find exactly what they want in a heated sexual encounter on the kitchen table. There are a few problems with the romance. First, there is the matter of a husband. Second, Nicholson isn't really the husband type. After several abortive attempts to run off together, Nicholson and Lange plot to kill her husband. There are many twists and turns from there.

Maltin hates this film, at 1 1/2 stars. He does admit that the violent sex between Nicholson and Lange is very hot, and that seems to be one of his objections. I enjoyed this film at lot. It was beautifully photographed, and the performances were uniformly excellent. The chemistry was good between Nicholson and Lange, and Anjelica Huston plays a small role as a lion tamer whom Nicholson sleeps with.

Huston shows her left breast and nipple from the side. Lange shows only see through and pokies, but her sex scenes ignite the screen anyway. IMDb readers have this at 6.3 of 10. This is more of a character driven drama than anything else. Using that as a genre, I give it a C+.

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

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MOVIE REVIEWS:

Words from Scoop.

.avi's from Shiloh.

.wmv files made by Scoop from Shiloh's .avi's.

NOTE: because of a unique combination of circumstances with the Windows media player and some substantial bandwidth theft, we will have to do all of our movie files in zip format. Left click on the files as you normally would to view a picture. When you get a choice, click on "save", and put it on your hard drive in the directory of your choice. UnZIP and play from there.

I know this is not especially convenient, but it allows the film clips to continue. I can protect .zip files from hot-linking in the same way I can protect still images. For some reason, if I protect .avis and .wmvs from hot-linking, they will not play in the Windows media player, and I can't get a satisfactory work-around. Perhaps I will find a better solution, but for now this new policy allows you to continue getting the movie clips you want to see, which is much preferable to my abandoning the clips altogether.

Various

• Daryl Hannah, fortyish, but in tremendous shape to play a stripper in Dancing at the Blue Iguana. Long clip ( .avi- zip) (.wmv - zip) .

• Bridget Fonda, not showing much in Touch, but hey, it's Bridget Fonda. Unfortunately, there's too little of Bridget and way too much of Skeet Ulrich's butt, as The Skeeter does his world-famous Johnny Depp impersonation ( .avi- zip) (.wmv - zip) 

• Erika Eleniak gives up the goods for Steven Seagal in Under Siege ( .avi- zip) (.wmv - zip) .

Perhaps these tips will help if you have trouble with the codecs for these movies:

Shiloh says:

FYI when I hypercam vids to make the file size smaller I use DivX MPEG-4 Fast-Motion for the video compressor, then I use virtualdub to compress the audio. The properties for the vids says the video codec:  DivX Decoder Filter & audio codec:  Morgan Stream Switcher which I'm not familiar with. When I compress the audio with virtualdub I use MPEG Layer-3.  A friend of mine told me about compressing the audio about (6) mos. ago. Like I said previously, only been capping for a year & a half & I'm no expert. Hopefully this info will help members with the proper codecs for my vids.

 

When I cap big brother's I use hypercam mostly & sdp & asfrecorder if the set up allows me. I stopped using camtasia cause the file sizes were always too big, could never figure out the process, over my head lol, plus it cost too much to buy in my opinion.

A reader says:

You mentioned that some users were having trouble with the videos on your site. There is a tool designed to determine what codec is needed for a video. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ Hope this is useful to you or your users.

Scoop says:

I made the .wmv versions of each video. The codecs for these: Windows Video V8, Windows Audio 9. The upside of these is that you know the codecs, and they'll play in the Windows Media Player. The downside is that they are slightly larger, and slightly lower quality.

First up from the Ghost, a few video clips from "Anarchy TV" (1997).

• Tamayo Otsuki...going topless and briefly showing the other 2 B's. (zipped .wmv)

• Jessica Hecht, Tamayo Otsuki (and a some dude) all go full frontal and do some nekkid TV aerobics. (zipped .wmvs) (1, 2)

Next up, scenes from one of those guilty pleasure b-movies that you just can't help but love...The way over the top 1991 movie "Stone Cold". This was Brian Bosworth's first movie, and Hollywood's one and only attempt to turn the then-popular NFL star into an action hero.

It died at the box office, it's been straight-to-vid only for the Boz since then. (although he will be co-starring in the upoming Adam Sandler remake of "The Longest Yard").

There are a ton of positive comments at IMDb, and I agree...as far as low-budget late 80's/early 90's action flicks go, this really isn't that bad of a movie. Lots of bullets, bikers and babes, plus some great co-stars. Lance Henriksen is simply too cool as the leader of the Biker Bad Guys, and Sam McMurray ("Drop Dead Gorgeous", "The Tracey Ullman Show", "Raising Arizona") delivers some comic relief as the bumbling FBI agent in charge of "handling" The Boz.

If you think of "Road House" as being on the A-list of so-bad it's good late 80's/early 90's action flicks, I think you'll find "Stone Cold" to be a B+

• Laura Albert, the actress and stunt woman briefly showing breasts and bum views. By the way, she had a small part in "Road House"! (1, 2)
• Laura Albert (zipped .wmv)

• Tracy Hutchinson, another actress/stunt woman who was cast in the demanding role of "Pool Playing Chick". Here we see her exposing her big'uns while playing pool.
• Tracy Hutchinson (zipped .wmv)

• Brief gratuitous nudity from some unknowns showering
• Unknowns (zipped .wmv)

FEARDOTCOM is a 2002 film with stunning visuals, but nothing really scary... just like most horror movies. Homage was paid to the little girl with bouncing ball that Fellini gave us in SPIRITS OF THE DEAD, who in turn was inspired by "bouncing ball" imagery from Mario Bava... but at least these little girls were spooky. The little girl in FEARDOTCOM is just a little girl they dressed in a wig, with no sense of foreboding whatsoever.

This is a movie where it's very difficult to identify the lesser-known actresses. I see from checking in the archives that my fellow Scoopers may not have called some gals correctly. For example, the main victim of Alistair Pratt (the mad doctor, as played by Stephen Rea) is identified in the credits as either "victim" or "Alistair's Victim." Which to choose? Regardless, this blond woman has either been misidentified in the archives as either Astrid Skuyat or Evie Garratt or Gesine Cukrowski or Amelia Curtis. (I figured I'd ought to mention these names, in case people run searches in the future, trying to pin down which face belongs to the breasts.) She is really Isabella Van Waes (according to someone who listened to the DVD commentary; I only had the silly video), who was also misidentified as the other victim seen bound and hanging for just an instant. Anna Thalbach has also been misidentified for Emma Campbell.

This is a tough science, trying to figure out who's who... just to get things right, I can spend too much time trying to see whether an unknown is called by a name, hoping to cross-reference with the end credits.

• AMELIA CURTIS plays Denise Stone, a computer expert. She appears semi-nude in her damsel in distress scene. Curtis appears to have concentrated her career mostly in television; she did bare her wares in an exercise entitled "South West 9" (2001), which I noticed in the archives.

• ISABELLE VAN WAES is a Flemish lass who is selected as a possible "leading lady" by a creepy videographer, and she walks into a seemingly abandoned warehouse. Her career in real life does not appear to have proliferated after this screen debut, but unlike her disastrous film career in the snuff movie within the movie, there's always tomorrow.

• ASSORTED. The nudies are Astrid Skuyat (probably) and Emma Campbell, who has been captured more comprehensively elsewhere in this site.

Moving on to 1972's "THE WOMAN HUNTER", a TV-movie about an emotionally troubled rich heiress who nobody believes, when she thinks someone is trying to kill her. I probably have never seen a pat ending as unbelievable as this flick presents. Of course there is no nudity, but Barbara Eden is made to appear glamorous, and does show off non-critical flesh. (I began to believe maybe they did not "censor" her belly button in "I Dream of Jeannie," after all.) She also offers us a "wild" dance, the closest thing we may get to see her in the way she moved in bed since she faced those phallic snake things in 7 FACES OF DR. LAO.

• BARBARA EDEN

• NORMA STORCH. No nudity, but I thought she had a striking face. She was fifty at the time, and died of cancer a year ago. She was the better half of Larry "F Troop" Storch, who has a cameo here as the life of the party; he manages to break up the partygoers with the most unhilarious comments imaginable. (But he does it well. Good old Larry.)

From THE WITCHES OF SAPPHO SALON (2001)... a Seduction Cinema offering that actually has a kind of plot! Every thirty years, in order to stay young, witches of a hair salon need to sacrifice virgins born on special dates. It's no great shakes, but at least some effort went into this production. The featured fillies mostly appear to be one-trick ponies, to date.

• ELINA BELLBROOK is the witch's accomplice, Bridget. She looks appropriately depraved.

• ELIZABETH GRACE is the sweet heroine, Janet. She kindly shows us everything she's got. Ms. Grace manages to pull off somewhat of a performance. She had a guest spot on 2002's "sexy" TV series, "Hotel Erotica."

• BRIGITTE EVES plays the head witch Tanith in a not particularly dynamic way. But at least she's not shy.

• UNKNOWNS. One of them is probably Layla Maxson.

As always, Mister Grundy invites you to visit his Yahoo Group, Sick Sexy Sinema Shots.

COLORIZED THREE STOOGES SPARK PROTESTS
Wise Guys, Eh?! - Columbia TriStar has reignited a controversy by releasing two Three Stooges DVDs that include both black-and-white and digitally colorized versions. Columbia claims young people won't watch black-and-white films. But Roger Ebert called it "vandalism." And George Lucas said it's possible the Stooges' dated humor is still funny because black-and-white provides the context to let us appreciate it for what it was. But putting the Stooges into modern-looking color might make them unfunny.