Saturday

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• Netscape 7.0 is available free for download or on CD.
• MSIE 6.0 is available free.

Motel Blue (1997) is a Sean Young film (this is Sean Young night). Soleil Moon Frye is a new DOD investigator who is assigned to do a complete background check on on Sean Young, a hi tech engineer who is upgrading from Secret To Top Secret clearance. She is the only women in the division, and is told that the investigation is no more than a formality, but it doesn't take her long to discover that Sean is into kinky extramarital sex, and has been using forged documents. She is, however, fascinated by Sean's sexuality, especially as her own is repressed. She makes direct contact with Sean, and dabbles in her hedonistic world. Her boss is singularly uninterested in what she is discovering. Eventually, Frye finds herself in legal trouble.

This film doesn't work well for me. First, there are way too many inaccuracies about how DISCO does clearance investigations, and the way clearances are awarded. I might have overlooked that, but part of the premise of the film is that Sean Young is stunningly beautiful. I find her sexy as hell, but I have never heard anyone accuse her of being beautiful. Sean shows breasts and buns in several scenes.

IMDB readers have this at 5.4 of 10, but with only 28 votes. Apollo readers give it the same score. It was a direct to video release in the US, and it is a weak 4/3 transfer, which is a shame, because there are some interesting shots, especially through a window of Motel Blue. Factoring in my tendency to write off a thriller once it looses credibility, the proper score is probably C. Genre addicts and fans of Young will likely enjoy it.

Harvard Man is a big disappointment in that there were rumors of Buffy nudity during filming, so we hoped for some deleted scenes or an extended cut or something. No luck. Buffy has sex twice, with plenty of moaning and groaning, but no skin.. The first time she is (apparently) naked, but the scene is cut so that you see her feet or her shoulders or her face. The second time she is fully dressed, sitting on someone's lap.

There is some distant nudity of a Canadian actress named Polly Shannon, but the DVD was very difficult to work with. Polly probably doesn't mean jack to you if you are currently more than 5 meters from the nearest bottle of Molson's, but I suppose you Great White Northerners know who she is, because IMDb says she played Maggie Trudeau in a popular TV miniseries this Spring

• Polly Shannon (1, 2, 3)
• Shannon's resume glossy from the "Trudeau" site
• Buffy not getting naked

Other crap:

• Leann Rimes in Blender Magazine
• I don't know about you, but I just don't know who to vote for until I consult Barbra Streisand's election recommendations. I've been trying to find Keanu's recommendations, but I had no luck.
• He'll never have that recipe again. Flamboyant, emotional, passionate, hard-living Richard Harris - A Man Called Horse - passes away at 72. I can only name about five actors that could move me to tears. Harris was one of them. Here is a BBC Obit.. Here is a detailed entertainment bio.
• read about the film Within the Woods - which was essentially Sam Raimi's first draft of Evil Dead.
• Rebecca Romijn's layout in November Maxim online
   

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.

Tintorera (1977) is Jaws with tits. Sharks, shark-hunter, skinny-dippin babe who gets it...and in addition to it all, the guys who play Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfus boff a lot of girls, some of em kinda famous. How could it go wrong? Let me count the ways. IMDB awards this five-day-old can of Bumblebee a rousing 3.2 and believe me, someone was being mighty generous. Mighty.

Look at it this a-way: when Susan George, Priscilla Barnes, Fiona Lewis, B movie bim Jennifer Ashley, Hefmate Laura Lyons and one-timer Erika Carlsson all show the goodies you'd figger I'd really like this movie, despite its faults. Yet the makers of this.... uh-hem... """movie"""".... had the babes agree to strip and then hid them behind things and under things, in dim light and from the back or side, with a camera positioned in the Basque country while the action was on the Riveria... well talk about pissing me off. And then the company what sold it to me reproduced it on VHS running at SLP speed. Surprised you couldn't hear me scream all the way to Texas. Conclusion: the people who made this movie could fuck up a wet dream. Glen or Glenda was a masterpiece by comparison.

For the exposure:
• Fiona Lewis plays the Susan Backline part. First shark victim 'cuz she gets all nekkid and swims alone, at night. You see Fiona's hooters under the fading light of a crescent moon and then her bum underwater, 'cept you don't see her face, so it coulda been someone else.

• Jennifer Ashley has the only clear exposure. Nice hooters in good lighting and just a hint o' bush.

• Priscilla Barnes got topless in a mass skinny dip, punctuated by a shark attack. The camera appears to have been the same one used by Sam Zapruder. So, yep, she is topless but she occupies about 4% of the screen at any one time.

• Erika Carlsson? See above re: mass skinny dip.

I left out Susan George because her performance, as a whole, and her exposure, in particular, were so pathetic as to bring tears to my aged eyes. I love that woman, watch Straw Dogs maybe twice a year, would sell my first-born to the Gypsies if I had a first-born, but ye gods, what a bollixed up mess of a performance she had, topped by toplessness that could not have been less interesting or erotic if Roseanne Barr had played the part, if'n you catches my drift. That leaves only Laura Lyons, but I'm saving her for another day.

Second thing for the day is a set of VHS caps from the movie, Hot Moves (1985), only because VHS is the only format in which it comes. The center of attention is Debi Richter, former Miss California (1975) who went right into acting and did a bunch of things, including a couple of short-lived sitcoms and frequent guest appearances on Hill Street Blues. Married and divorced Charles Haid (Andy Rinko of Hill Street fame). Thems the facts.

Now for the commentary. Quoth one critic about Lynda Carter in her Wonder Woman days: there are only two reasons she's on television and they are holding up her costume. Oh please! If that were the case, if all it took to be a television hit was a pair of mighty-fines, then two women would have dominated the Nielsen ratings in the 80's: Debi Richter and Rebecca Perle. Both gave up their wonderous goodies in two movies, both tried to break into TV, but each was an afterthought of the airwaves. Debi's main exposure was in this horny teenager movie, once on a nude beach (collages 1 and 2) whilst being spied upon through binoculars that sport cross-hairs. Cross-hairs? On binoculars? Sold only in Texas and the D. C. area. Second time is while attempting to get into the pants of the biggest frickin' geek who ever appeared on the silver screen (collages 3 & 4). But he refuses. Why?

Because his true love is a girl played by Jill Schoelen. Oh, crimony, Jill is a right fine specimen of the female persuasion but what guy, much less a terminal geekazoid, would turn down someone who looks like Debi Richter? I hate movies that do that sort of thing to make some pious statement about love winning out. Hate em. And so I've watched Hot Moves no more than a half-dozen times. Well, maybe eight or nine.

• Debi Richter (1, 2, 3, 4)

"A Matter of Cunning" (1983) is a Canadian "after dark" unrated softporn made in Montreal. It has all the elements of a straight-to-video production. In fact it was directed by Alan Erlich during a dry spell between directing television series. Until a couple of weeks ago I never heard of it until someone mentioned it on CNDB. The video itself is not listed in the IMDB and is long out of print.

Leading star is soap actress Callan White who plays a woman trying to sleep her way to the top with no success. Also stars Page Fletcher, John Ireland and Michele Scarabelli as a fully-clothed secretary. This video is also early career nudity for Canadian actresses Nancy Cser and Lynne Cormack (aka Lynn Cormack) who are still acting today.

• Callan White: all three B's in various nude and love scenes. (1, 2, 3, 4)

• Nancy Cser: full frontal as nude model, again in bathtub with Page Fletcher. (1, 2)

• Lynne Cormack: breasts gettin' it on above the sheets with Alan Jordan.

Today we feature a "Babe in Bondage"... an unknown buxom blonde slave girl up for auction in the 1970 nudie sex flick, "The Notorious Cleopatra".

• Unknown buxom and full frontal blonde. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

It took me a long time to figure out who this was. At first, I only knew that the captures were from the movie "Trois milliards sans ascenseur" and I thought that she was some obscure actress. However, after a search on internet, I learned that Nike is in fact a rather famous Hammer-horror star. Then I noticed the resemblance of this actress with the one on the cover of "The devil rides out". Turns out that Nike Arrighi plays in both movies, indeed. So, I'm pretty sure that it's her.

I think that these are fairly rare captures, because I've never seen anything of her before.

DILBERT WEASEL AWARD WINNERS
Another Loss For The Record Industry - The Dilbert comic strip lampoons corporate weasels, so Dilbert.com held a poll to let readers choose the biggest weasels of the year. The Democratic Party, home of Gary Condit and Robert Torricelli, was named Weaseliest Organization, just ahead of Major League Baseball. France easily defeated Saudi Arabia for Weaseliest Country, while reporters scored an upset over lawyers and politicians for Weaseliest Profession. Microsoft beat Arthur Andersen and Enron for Weaseliest Company. And for Weaseliest Individual, Martha Stewart beat Gary Condit and the French Olympic Skating Judge.