Dear Scoopy,

I've just read what ICMS wrote about the movie Performance. I happen to remember an entry in Mart Maltin's "The Voyeur's Guide to Women in the Movies" (Chicago, 1994), which has the title "Did they? Boy! Did They?":« Mick Jagger really does fuck Anita Pallenberg and Michele Breton on screen on the film "Performance" ('70). According to a recent bio of Jagger, the scenes were toned down (or cut out of) the theatrical release, but surfaced later and were shown at a pornographic festival film in Amsterdam. Is there any reliable information about this info?

Yours sincerely,
Carausius

Some parts of that claim seem to be clearly false, like the Amsterdam festival, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened. It's not like Anita was shy around the Rolling Stones. She had been with Brian Jones, was Keef's lover during the shoot, and became Jagger's lover afterwards. She was also carrying on with Donald Cammell, who co-directed the film. Girl got around.

Britfilm says:

"So, how real were those sex scenes? Pallenberg now admits that they went beyond the call of duty. But I put it down to method acting. At one point she spent a whole week in bed with both Jagger and Breton: There was a camera under the sheets. It was like a porno shoot. Cammell and Roeg flanked the happy trio with a 16mm wind-up Bolex, and Roeg has said that even today he can see Cammell's smiling face emerging from beneath the bed linen asking: "How was it for you?" Some of the footage was so explicit, however, that the film processing lab called to say that it flouted the obscenity laws and they were legally obliged to destroy it, which they did, with hammer and chisel."

On the other hand:

David Cammell, brother of the director, refutes the rumors that the sex was real. "There was nudity and we did have a problem getting it processed, but there wasn’t actual, physical sex," he says.

According to producer Sandy Lieberson, who owns the outtakes,  Jagger's not actually in any orifices, but "he's up and ready." Of course, Lieberson only has the footage which was developed, so there may have been real sex in the portion that was destroyed! Nonetheless, this certainly refutes the Amsterdam story. If there was real fuckin' goin' on, that footage no longer exists. At any rate, let's hope Lieberson can cut a deal to get those outtakes on a special edition DVD!

Chained Heat II (1993):

As time goes on I find the concept of sequels to be more and more confusing. At one time, a sequel meant that the second film told more about the same characters. Rocky 2 told more about Rocky in the period after Rocky 1. Sometimes the follow-up indicates a prequel rather than a sequel (Batman Begins), or maybe a bit of both (Godfather, Part II), but the basic idea should be to relate more about the same characters. I generally don't mind this kind of sequel. Sometimes, as in Godfather 2 or The Empire Strikes Back, or Aliens, or Goldfinger, the sequels are almost as good as or even better than the originals. Even when this type of sequel is vastly inferior to the progenitor, I still don't view the later pictures as rip-offs, but just failures.

There has also been a second kind of sequel which lives kind of a parallel existence: the kind where the second and subsequent movies are not additional adventures of the same characters, but are essentially the same damned movie over again with a different cast, like those sequels to Wild Things. I find this type of sequel to be extremely irritating. Chained Heat II is such a sequel. It stars different people, but it is fundamentally the same movie as Chained Heat, which in turn is fundamentally the same movie as every other "women in prison" flick. The formula is as follows: an innocent woman is framed or railroaded into prison, where she encounters sadistic lesbians and/or corrupt authorities. The matrons and warden make the inmates get naked for inspections and work details. The inmates also take frequent showers. The prison authorities are also using the women to generate income, always through illegal activities, usually through white slavery or prostitution. The innocent girl struggles to escape.

This one comes from the assembly line of Lloyd Simandl, who has churned out an array of "B" genre movies in Czechoslovakia with cookie-cutter scripts, using inexpensive Czech labor and locations. The Czech Republic has plenty of atmospheric shooting locations: cobblestone medieval streets, glorious palaces, closed factories and prisons, moribund towns, and so forth. The Czechs also have the technical expertise to deliver a product which looks very similar in quality to anything in Western Europe, so Simandl found himself in a great position - doing business in a country filled with low costs, pretty girls, and Western technical standards. Most of his movies include a handful of American and Canadian performers (or others who speak English fluently), and they deliver the bulk of the lines, while the Czech actors take small roles or hang out in the background as extras. In this case, as guards, prisoners, thugs, and others not required to speak much or at all.

This movie looks excellent. It's on good film stock, is properly lighted, and is directed with competence, if not flair. If you choose a few moments at random and leave the sound off, you might swear it was an A-level Hollywood movie. It has no pizzazz and not a lot of energy, but it has the usual serviceable plot, some over-the-top sexual shenanigans, and lots of nudity.

The only cheat for you "guilty pleasure seekers" is that most of the nudity is provided by the Czechs, as minor characters and extras. They're all attractive, but basically anonymous. There are various unnamed prisoners providing breasts and buns in group scenes, plus Petra Susser (topless in many scenes and a brief frontal) and Lucie Benesova (the full monty in a shower scene). Among the international stars, one (Kari Whitman) shows no flesh at all, and another (Brigitte Nielsen) delivers nothing but some areola. That leaves Kimberly Kates to deliver the only nudity from an actress familiar in North America. Kates does supply full-frontal exposure in the shower, and later shows her breasts in another nicely lighted scene.

I would recommend it as a guilty pleasure if all the nudity had come from women familiar to us. As it stands, it's not recommended, but is a reasonably competent WIP film, if that's your bag.

 

Lucie Benes
Kimberly Kates
Brigitte Nielsen
Petra Susser
Unknowns

Other Crap:

Movie Reviews:

Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format. Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.

The Big Bounce (2004)

The Big Bounce (2004) is a caper movie set in Hawaii and based on an Elmore Leonard novel. This is the same Leonard that inspired Cat Chaser, 52 Pick-up, Get Shorty and Jackie Brown. Not only did it have good source material, it had a dream cast, which included gorgeous newcomer Sarah Foster, and the likes of Willie Nelson, Morgan Freeman, Harry Dean Statton, Gary Sinise and Charlie Sheen. It was a box office flop, earning $6.47M against an estimated $50M budget.

I am at a loss to understand why everyone hated it. The characters were likable, there were more than enough twists and double-crosses, and I will be quoting at least two lines of dialogue for a long time. Freeman, who plays a judge, says, "God is an imaginary friend for adults." When Foster is told that her boyfriend's wife is at the beauty parlor, she says, "oh, getting her hair enlarged?"

Owen Wilson is a petty criminal and surfer dude who ends up in Hawaii working for a crooked construction company. When he sides with native protestors, and shatters his foreman's jaw with a baseball bat, he is fired and arrested. Judge Morgan Freeman releases him, and gives him a job at his resort. He is seduced into helping Sarah Foster rip off the head of the construction company for $200 large. Of course, not everything is as it seems.

Foster definitely shows buns laying in front of a pool, and her character strips, runs into the water, and climbs aboard a boat in a long shot that could be anybody. She also shows a lot of cleavage, and is often in a bikini.

IMDb readers say 4.7. Ebert, in panning the film and awarding two stars, admitted that it was sort of fun to watch. Berardinelli saw it as a flawed idea, but awarded 2 1/2 stars. The photography is wonderful, and could be a travel film for Hawaii. There is some great surfing in the film, and lots more in the special features. The pace is a little leisurely, and the mood is light throughout. I enjoyed it, and may watch it again. Based on the number of voters at IMDB (3.168), a lot of people saw it. Over 2,000 of those place it between 4 and 7. The film is a C-. If the humor appeals to you, you will be entertained.

Sara Foster

Teaser (1973)

Teaser (1973) is a soft core with some elements of a roughie. Becky Sharpe is a mousy girl who works at stamp shop, and lives at home with her mother. She has a suitor, but doesn't give him any, or, in fact, much attention. She has one small character quirk. She likes to dance naked in a gogo club. She rejects an amorous cash offer from a customer, and he follows her and rapes her when her car stalls. She is then picked up by a couple (Rene Bond and Carlos Cole), who play Good Samaritan, taking her home, comforting her after her ordeal, and making arrangements to get her car fixed.

That night, Rene gives her a nude massage. The next day, they swim nude together, then have sex in front of a fire place. Later that evening, Sharpe discovers that her rapist is a friend of the couple she has trusted.

Cult favorite Bond, at this point in her career, has already had her boob job and has started doing hard core as well. For those who don't remember the story, she went to David Friedman and asked him if she would get bigger and better roles if she had her boobs done. He loaned her the money. She rather quickly moved to hard core, and I don't know if Friedman got his money's worth.

This film is a real anachronism, with outdated and non-pc 70s morality, and is an interesting time capsule look at fashion in the early 70s. There are not enough votes at IMDb for a score. Both Sharpe and Bond do lengthy full frontal and rear nudity, and have a tepid girl/girl scene. The transfer quality is a little weak compared to other Something Weird Video releases. This is a D, however, GBond fans will want to see it.

Becky Sharpe
Rene Bond
Unknowns