I am frequently amazed by what turns up on DVD, and Belle of the Nineties (1934), is one of those surprises. Written by and staring Mae West, this black and white film was entertaining. Mae plays a showgirl in Saint Louis who is seeing a heavyweight contender. When his manager requests that she go away long enough for the fighter to concentrate on training, she takes a job in New Orleans. The owner of the club is a true villain, but Mae is more than his equal.

Mae was 41 in this film, but even then looked younger than she was. She sang several blues numbers including Saint Louis Woman and Hesitation Blues, and spouted her famous one-line comebacks. No nudity, of course, but some interesting looks at one of the true legends of cinema.

The Insider

The Insider is a specialty filmmaker and photographer who occasionally sends in some of his private collection from outtakes, set-up shots, private parties, and stuff like that. Through the years, he's sent in some pretty cool and unique stuff of both men and women. Here's his story for today:

"Scoop. I was shopping at Ralphs yesterday and passed the magazine rack. It dawned on me that I know one of the cover girls. In the magazine she posed in clothes and unrevealing non-bikini swimsuits, but I have lots of naked pictures of her and she's easy on the eyes. her model name is Collette (no last name). In some of the pictures she appears with Mason Marconi (dark hair) and Tonya Qualls (longer-haired blonde)."

Mason Marconi is also nude in some of them.

Rabid (1977)

Boy, this lack of nudity lately is getting me down. I mean, here's a movie with Marilyn Chambers, and even she keeps her clothes on most of the time, and never shows anything but her breasts. If Marilyn Frigging Chambers stays dressed, what is the world coming to?

This movie was Marilyn's big chance, the road out of porn and into real movies. The brave director who took a chance on her was the eccentric Canadian auteur David Cronenberg, who wrote and directed.

Marilyn plays the victim of a motorcycle crash who is turned into a rabid man-eating monster by bad skin graft surgery. I didn't know that reconstructive surgery could have this effect.

But it sure explains a lot about Madonna.

Anyway, Marilyn bites some people and makes them rabid, who bite some other people, and so on. In addition to whatever she does with her mouth, she has a vagina in her armpit, and inside the vagina is a penis which emerges to penetrate the victims. Where exactly did they graft that skin from?

The Canadian authorities find a way to inoculate against future cases of the rabies, but there is no hope for the previously infected man-eating monsters. The health authorities report that they must be killed and their bodies must be disposed of properly. To comply, the police start driving around in armored garbage trucks. Some of the police are snipers on the roof of the trucks. The other guys serve as the disposal crew in those white anti-contamination suits which make them look like Tony Manero on the moon.

Here is a highly detailed summary and analysis from an outside source.

The movie is gross and outré, characteristic of Cronenberg films. While it is odd, and occasionally packs some shock value, I thought it was pretty darned boring and flat. The only real surprise was the very first time that Marilyn attacked someone. After that, it was the usual trite dialogue and predictable events, and Cronenberg's usual paranoia about the misuse of science and authority. I wonder if he ever considered working with Oliver Stone.

As for Marilyn, well, her hopes of a mainstream career were dashed. In this film, she showed her breasts many times, but nothing else. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

I met her once, at a magazine convention in Florida in the early 80's. It didn't work out. I wasn't bothering her or anything, but I went over to introduce myself, just to be polite (we were both guest speakers at the convention). For whatever reason she didn't even say "hi, nice ta meecha". I guess I could understand if she just avoided me. I mean she wouldn't be the first woman to do so and nowhere near the last. But she avoided everyone, male and female. The hosts laid out a beautiful party in the evening, and Marilyn wandered off to her own outside table, where she sat huddled and conversation for hours with the other woman who accompanied her to the convention, their heads close and intimate enough to kiss one another without actually doing so.

IMDB summary: 5.8 out of 10. Cronenberg's scores are in a narrow predictable band. He has his enthusiastic cult following, and then there are people who find his movies totally repulsive, so he always ends up far from either the top or bottom because of the pull of these opposing poles. His scores are all within the narrow band of 5.5 to 7.1, and that is the range from Crash (low) to Dead Zone (high).

To illustrate my point, the score most often given to Crash is 1/10. The second most common score is 10/10. So people love him or hate him.

Crash (his movie lowest rated movie at IMDB) got perfect tens from one out of every seven voters, but Dead Zone (his highest rated at IMDB) got perfect scores only once in ten. And I understand completely. I think you could make an equal case that Crash is his best movie, not his worst.

Dead Zone does best at IMDb because it is his most human and accessible film, and it even has a sensitive character with whom we can sympathize. But I suspect that his hardcore fans like that one the least.

DVD info from Amazon. Bare bones, 4:3 aspect ratio. Clean transfer, but no widescreen version and no features. Not a good purchase value, even if you are a fan.