True Blood (1989) is an average action film about a young gang leader (Jeff Fahey), who visits a rival gang for retaliation. When the police arrive, the rival gang leader shoots a cop between the eyes, then plants the gun on Fahey. Fahey tries to escape with his then 10 year old brother, but has to flee the police alone. The dead cops partner, James Tolkan, swears revenge. Cut to 10 years later. Fahey returns to Chicago, now a Marine veteran and upstanding citizen, to find his little brother. Tolkan is still out to get him, and little brother is now a gang banger in a gang run by, you guessed it, the same one who framed Fahey for the cops murder. Sherilyn Fenn plays the love interest, and shows her breasts when the bad guy interrupts her shower.

The film is nearly endless chases, punctuated by fighting. Few have seen it. IMDB voters say 5.7/10. The DVD is a real budget job, and is scarcely better than VHS. This is no more than an adequate genre piece. C.

Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

"You see, Coop, I do think you're a much nicer person than Eddie. Eddie is an asshole, but he's cut like a statue, and hung like a horse. So I don't even care that he's completely insincere, and cheats on me constantly. I'd be interested in you if I were looking to get married or have a relationship, or something, but I'm 16 and all I'm into now is sex. Sex with Eddie, not you." 

It is a parody/homage/remembrance of the "summer camp" movies of the 70's and 80's, and it manages to get all the familiar clichés and characters on the screen. Sometimes it's funny and right on the mark. At other times the funny concepts are ruined by going on too long or being woefully overperformed, as if Larry Storch were acting out the part of all three stooges. 

On the last day of camp, the kids are putting on the final talent show, but Skylab is falling out of the sky, toward the rec center. The science geeks end up saving the camp by deflecting the falling satellite with a homemade device made from radio receivers and peanut butter jars and other camp flotsam. The details aren't important.

This is a difficult movie to analyze because at times it tries very hard to be bad, in order to create the same feel as the bad movies it parodies. Therefore, if it succeeds, it sucks, and your viewing reward is to earn a smile of recognition of its suckworthiness. This leads to confusion, because the worse it is, the better it is. The following is quoted from salon.com

"Wet Hot American Summer" is a thoroughly inept piece of moviemaking. You're more likely to find a ham sandwich at a Passover dinner than to find a laugh in this picture"

Thus, if the movie had been funny, it would have failed. 

Obviously, the reviewer at salon.com didn't understand how Captain Kirk tricked Mudd's robots. 

No nudity

Devil's Prey (2001)

Straight-to-video grade-b teen horror formula stuff.

Five college age kids get kicked out of a rave because one of the guys is dealing. They're stoned, and on the way home they hit a girl with their car. She doesn't seem to be hurt very much, but she's scared, and she begs them for a ride because devil worshippers are after her. Needless to say, giving her a ride means that the devil worshippers are now after all six of them.

And these aren't those suburban-type devil worshippers like Ruth Gordon, but scary dudes in pointed hoods and white evil clown masks, carrying satanic flashlights.

They make it to a sheriff and a priest, and a friendly cafe, except .....

You can guess.It's exactly as good as it sounds, kinda like satanic cultists chasing Scooby and the gang. Roly Rhit! I don't know who these people are, but there's quite a bit of nudity.

• Dancers

• Victim

Roger Corman is famous for re-making and re-packaging his films. This is more or less the same movie as the eponymous Pamploitation classic from 1973, updated with a bunch of newfangled techniques. In fact, the film has far too much technique. The director movies the camera constantly, never lets a set-up last more than a couple seconds before a cut, and makes constant use of colored filters and extreme close-ups. Frankly, a little of that goes a long way. After about 15 minutes of the film, I was ready to have a heart-to-heart with the director and tell him that sometimes its OK to just set a camera in one place and let the actors act.

Of course, considering the actors he had to work with, maybe he made the right choice.

The two stars, the main gladiatrices, are Karen McDougal and Lisa Dergan, two former playmates, the former a playmate of the year. The movie camera loves McDougal, but I don't think she'll be taking any of the Streep roles in the next generation. Dergan didn't look as good in the movie, but looks terrific in her commentary section, and did a more credible job with her lines. The rest of the cast consists mostly of Russians and Russian-speakers from Central Asia. I guess the filmmakers found a place to shoot cheaply with competent but inexpensive labor.

You'd be surprised how well these guys can create an inexpensive film entirely in the editing room. There is nothing special about the actual filmed footage in this film, except that the set design was better than average for a made-for-vid. It's just the usual grade-b fare. But the director and his editor took that footage and turned it into something that looks like a real movie, and is paced fairly effectively. Strike that last remark. Make it "something that looks like a very long rock video".

It doesn't really have enough T&A for a titty film, and it has no frontals, and the scenes are too dark and too arty, and the camera inevitably cuts away from the good stuff just when you're expecting more, like Red Shoe Diary scenes. I guess that makes sense, because artificially enhanced chests would not look appropriate in Roman times. The good news is that when it shows some womanflesh, that resultant skin belongs to three very attractive women, the two playmates and a striking dark-skinned woman named Kemirimbe Severina Kamugisha. (Hire this woman, and she'll fill every one of your ethnic quotas. I guess she is African and Central Asian and Japanese, and maybe European as well). 

It doesn't really have the kind of quality that you'd expect from a mainstream theatrical release, but it isn't all bad, either. 

So I guess a near-miss as a regular period film coupled with a near-miss as a tittie film might result in a watchable film for a lot of you. I didn't mind watching it, except for the constantly jumpy camera work and editing, and the director did that on purpose! But let me stress this again. Every time he's about to show the best parts of a beautiful naked woman, he makes a jump cut to something else, and I think you'll get frustrated when he keeps doing that.

 The remake is much more sophisticated than the original, but technical sophistication is overrated.

• Karen McDougal

• Lisa Dergan (1, 2)

• Kemirimbe Severina Kamugisha

Charlie's French Cinema Nudity site is updated

The Premiere of "O"

Gabrielle Union (braless, I guess)

The Lady of Soul awards

Eve (braless) and Leeza Gibbons (cleavage)

L'il Kim doing her usual thing (a bit of aureola in pic 68, I think)

QUESTION FOR F.H. READERS?. Last week I read an interview with Kate Winslet in which she mentioned that she just lost 50 pounds, and another article in which it said he is now down 90 pounds from her lifetime high. Kate has mentioned in earlier interviews that her high was about 100 kilos (220 pounds), so I reckon she now weighs about 130. In other words, she definitely must have some babe potential, because that seems like about the right weight for her size. But where are the pictures? Has anybody seen the new, svelte Kate? Are there any glam pictures of her new form out there?