Flesh for the Beast (2003) was written and directed by a familiar name, Terry West. We know him from the best of the Misty Mundae films, such as Lord of the G-Strings, Spiderbabe, Playmate of the Apes and Roxanna. This time, he tries his hand at a European style gore feste sexy horror film. A group of psychic researchers are called to a mansion recently acquired by the current owner, who is paying them a lot of money to rid the house of the ghosts. The former owner of the house was an occultist, but ran it as a whore house/gambling emporium. Now, the house is possessed by ancient hooker succubus flesh-eaters, who first fuck, the fuck over each of the team in turn.

The last to be engaged by a succubus is the only female member of the team, Jane Scarlett. The three ancient succubus hookers are played by Ruby LaRocca, Caroline Hoermann and Barbara Joyce. Joyce shows breasts. The other three women all show everything. West succeeded at what he was trying to do. He made a European style gore horror film with lots of nudity and sex, and a surprise ending. The film is heavy on fake blood and intestines. It is also heavy on nudity and simulated sex. My only real complaint was that all of the ancient succubus prostitutes had very trimmed pubic hair. This seemed out of place on old sexy ghosts.

IMDB readers have this at 4.9 of 10 based on only 8 votes. This is a worthy addition to this gory genre, and hence a C-.

Updates:

• New volumes: Jodie Fisher
• Updated volumes: Jodie Foster, Shannon Tweed (including two movies not previously in her volume)

Wow, two bullshit films today, but at least an addition to our Shannon Tweed collection.

Dead by Dawn (1998):

Alan Pakula was a serious-minded Yale graduate who migrated west to California-style showbiz, and made his mark in the movies as a producer. He must have been pretty damned good at it, because his credits include To Kill a Mockingbird. After he did that for a decade or so, the studio system started to crumble in the late sixties and early seventies, so Pakula started directing his own films. He was a top-notch filmmaker in the 70s and 80s, having directed such acknowledged triumphs as Sophie's Choice and All the President's Men, and other noteworthy films which were characterized by their intelligence and their compassionate liberalism. After All The President's Men, his career took a downturn, and by the 1990s he was directing thrillers, some pretty good (1990's Presumed Innocent, with Harrison Ford), some not so good at all (1986's Dream Lover, starring Kristy McNichol).

If you are an intelligent and patient person, you are probably wondering why I am discussing one of Hollywood's most beloved A-list icons in an article that is supposed to be about a lame softcore sex movie made a year after Pakula's death.

I'm getting there. Stay patient for a minute.

In 1992, during the thriller phase of his career, Pakula directed a movie called Consenting Adults, which didn't do much at the box office ($21 million) and is now largely forgotten. It has been forgotten for good reason. It sucked. Here are his directorial efforts sorted by IMDb rating:

1. (7.99) - All the President's Men (1976)
2. (7.48) - Sophie's Choice (1982)
3. (7.16) - Parallax View, The (1974)
4. (7.07) - Klute (1971)
5. (6.79) - Presumed Innocent (1990)
6. (6.67) - Orphans (1987)
7. (6.51) - Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing (1973)
8. (6.37) - Sterile Cuckoo, The (1969)
9. (6.20) - Pelican Brief, The (1993)
10. (6.12) - Starting Over (1979)
11. (5.71) - Comes a Horseman (1978)
12. (5.70) - Devil's Own, The (1997)
13. (5.53) - See You in the Morning (1989)
14. (5.34) - Consenting Adults (1992)
15. (5.19) - Rollover (1981)
16. (4.68) - Dream Lover (1986)

Consenting Adults did, however, star two major Hollywood names, Kevin Spacey (pre-stardom) and Kevin Kline. "The Two Kevins" are the grade-A version of "The Two Coreys". Spacey played a shifty wheeler-dealer who was always looking for the bigger, better deal. Kline played a 40ish fuddy-duddy who found himself trapped in a joyless suburban life. The two men became neighbors and then friends, after a fashion, and Spacey started to seduce Kline into a more sinful and daring world-view. The piece de resistance of the seduction was an offer to swap wives. Simple enough - one night they would each go to the other's wife in the dark, and make love to her. The women would catch on, but if they refused, well, so what? Nothing ventured, nothing gained. The women consented without any problems, but Kline woke up with a major one. Spacey's wife was killed during the swap-night, bludgeoned to death with a Louisville Slugger. When the bloody bat was found with Kline's fingerprints all over it, he seemed to be headed for the electric chair. There are many more twists to the plot, but I can't reveal them without spoiling the entire movie. You have the idea, and can probably guess the rest.

I suppose even the most patient among you has now lost patience with me, so I'll get to the point. Dead by Dawn is basically the same movie as Consenting Adults. The plot description is identical - right down to the baseball bat.  The only difference is generated by the fact that Dead by Dawn is a softcore sex film, so it has lengthy sex scenes. By adding 25 minutes worth of sex, the script had to economize somewhere else, so Dawn of the Dead has only about the first 60% of the plot of Consenting Adults, cramming the last 40% into two short scenes which skip over some of the interim revelations and get straight to the finale. I guess that was a pretty good edit, since the second half of Consenting Adults was implausible to being with, but Dawn of The Dead condensed the plot to the point where it ends with our abruptly-discovered understanding that the ersatz Kevin Kline character will fry for a crime he did not commit.

I'll bet you are thinking, "So, a softcore sex movie actually had a plot as good as an Alan Pakula film. That's a good thing, right?"

Wrong.

Three reasons:

• Remember that Consenting Adults was a flop to begin with .
• The plot was butchered so badly with inexplicable editing and a an unsatisfying and too-abrupt ending that it was no longer at even the mediocre level of the original.
• It isn't a good softcore sex film in the other areas where a softcore should be good, like the sex scenes.
  • Shannon Tweed, 40ish and near the end of her career in erotica, did her first sex scene in her underwear until the final minute, when she removed her clothing while sitting down with her back to the camera, so that only the top of her buns were visible. In her second sex scene, she stayed in her underwear. In the last minute of the film, she finally flashed one of her mammoth breasts.
  • Jodie Fisher's first sex scene basically wasn't a sex scene at all. It was a topless women hugging a man interminably, while they flopped around a suburban swimming pool. Fisher's final sex scene was the only good one in the film. She was seen fully naked from the rear (she looked great), and her breasts were exposed from several angles.

I can't recommend this film at all. The borrowed plot is not really relevant to this evaluation. The salient point is that it's filled with long, passionless sex scenes in which the participants are fully-dressed or in panties. There's no sign of a pubic area anywhere, and almost no nudity from Shannon Tweed.

• Jodie Fisher. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11) I also created a new Encyclopedia volume for her. It appears that she retired from showbiz after this movie.
• Shannon Tweed (1, 2)

Knightwalks (1995):

The summary of Knightwalks on the DVD box is as follows:

"Detective Joe Average is faced with the mysterious and unexplainable murder of the daughter of Paris Martel, a high-stakes drug dealer. As you would expect, the investigation goes deep into the underworld of crime and leads to big trouble."

Doesn't sound too bad.

Has nothing to do with this movie.

This is the story of a pimp and his designated driver, the tough guy who drives various hookers around from client to client. The driver is a nice guy who minds his own business and reads magazines while the girls are with their clients. The pimp is a psychotic asshole, and some of the girls whisper that some of the previous girls have been contracted out to make snuff films. We don't see anything like that, but we do see him get upset with one of the girls, and he assigns her an unspeakable punbishment. She can only screw the clients who look and dress like Jim "The Anvil" Neidhardt.

Eventually, the pimp gets mad at the nice guy, but before Mr Pimp can kill him, the nice guy is saved by a hooker because the nice guy never made her have sex with Jim "The Anvil" or any other famous guys named after construction tools. Well, maybe Fred "The Hammer" Williamson, but no other ones.

Pretty exciting stuff, eh? And that was the best stuff. I would guess that there was enough dialogue and plot to fill about five minutes of air time. The rest of the movie was as follows:

1. Show stock footage of Los Angeles traffic.

2. Show woman leaving car, meeting client. Show first half of sex scene in which the woman's lower body is wrapped in a sheet.

3. Cut to the driver sitting in the car reading a magazine.

4. Cut back to the second half of the sex scene, in which the woman is still covered below the waist.

5. Show more stock footage of Los Angeles traffic. In fact, show the exact same stock footage each time - same intersections, same cars, same turnpike exits, same everything. If the next client is particularly far away, show the stock traffic footage TWICE to indicate the passage of distance.

Repeat about six times. All the sex scenes are as identical as the traffic footage, but they are not stock footage. They scenes can be distinguished because there are two different hookers, the johns are always different, and - I think you're really gonna like this - the hookers' lower bodies are covered by a different colored sheet in each scene! Clearly, they went the extra mile on the production values and spared no expense to bring us viewing pleasure.

This DVD includes ten films for ten dollars (same DVD as Dead by Dawn). You get what you pay for. This one is worse than Dead by Dawn. In fact, this film may represent the very reason why the expression "lame" was created. The women not especially attractive, the sex scenes were created by a cookie cutter, the woman always have a sheet wrapped over their body below the waist, and the plot is non-existent. Oh, yeah, the acting stinks as well. To be fair, the photography of the original scenes is actually pretty good - nice colors, pretty good sharpness. (The stock footage is hilariously different stock.)

Oh, yeah, it's called Knightwalks because the driver is named Knight, and ... um ... uh ... Knightdrives sounded like a shitty title. Interestingly, this is the same process Dickens used to name Martin Chuzzlewit. I can see that these filmmakers must have been profoundly affected by Dickens in many other ways as well, ranging from their use of paper to write the script all the way to the appearance of The Ghost of Traffic Past.

• Gladys Hans (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
• Deborah Stevens (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

OTHER CRAP:

• Tony Blair's wife whips out a tit in public.

• Boston's mayor, Mr Ebeneezer Grinch, has cut the traditional Enchanted New England Village from Christmas because of budgetary constraints. Bostonians, just drive down to Newark and catch the Enchanted New Jersey Village instead. You want yer fuckin' Chris'mas? We got yer Chris'mas right here. You need a little extra imagination to pretend those rats are reindeer, but we think you'll enjoy da holiday magic in our Enchanted Syringes.

• Righteous Brother Bobby Hatfield has lost that livin' feeling. Now singin' duets with Jim Morrison in rock 'n roll heaven.

• Miss the old Perry Como Christmas specials? Kid Rock really brings that back, including an obscene version of Frosty the Snowman, with his own treatment of Holiday Love . Not to be confused with his treatment of Holiday Inns.

• Continuing with their successful “Re-Imagining History” series, CBS network today announced that it will replace the Reagan special with “Betsy Ross: Mini-skirted Crack Whore” during the upcoming Fall sweeps period.

• Controversial rock singer Courtney Love has claimed she no longer takes drugs. In a related story, scientists have found that bears now leave the woods to shit in urban toilets.

• Pondering the mysterious and most heinous Keanu Reeves

• Pamela Anderson has taken on her most amazing role yet — as a lapdancing cartoon - a secret agent called Erotica Jones.

• An Al Qaeda Web site is running a warning issued to Muslims to leave Washington, D.C., New York City and Los Angeles because of implied imminent terrorist attacks, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute.

• URL says it all: NakedProtesters.com

• Easter Eggs found in popular DVDs .... The site also includes Easter Eggs in games, software, etc.

• a photographic tribute to carnival sideshow strippers

• Dennis Miller explains how he became a conservative

• We hear the playback and it seems so long ago - a quiz on 80s song lyrics

• Halle Berry has methane gas shooting out of her butt constantly. I didn't make this up. That's really what Halle said.

• Here's another gift possibility for the difficult-to-please name on your Christmas list - a four hundred year old wax vagina

• How to have sex in a cupboard (and other places)

• The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) salutes Classic Bathing Beauties

• Tennis star Andy Roddick will now be the focus of his own reality series.

• NUDE SUPERSTAR MODEL AGENCY

• NBC chief admits: Our shows 'sucked'

• The legendary Voyager 1 spacecraft, the most distant human-made object, has reached the end, or perhaps just the beginning of the end, of our solar system

• NBA Cheerleader/Dancers: MEET THE CAVALIER GIRLS

• vote for your favorite NFL cheerleader

• A complete summary of Siskel/Ebert reviews 1991-96

• The critics conclude The Matrix Revolutions sucks: only 36% positive reviews

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

Click here to submit a URL for inclusion in Other Crap

MOVIE REVIEWS:

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.

• Emmanuelle Seigner, the French actress bares breasts and bum in scenes from the Roman Polanski film "Bitter Moon" (1992), also starring Hugh Grant, Kristin Scott Thomas and Peter Coyote.

Be sure to pay Graphic Response a visit at his website. www.graphic-barry.com.

So in a previous incarnation I sent in caps of Julie Strain, Katie Lohmann, Nikki Fairchild and Regina Russell from Sex Court: The Movie. Gonna finish up that movie today with caps of six more babes. All of them triple B, some seriously so, and with more than a little honest-to-goodness muff diving to add some spice. Do I smell an Oscar?

The movie, itself, is a take-off of Sex Court, which I suppose appears on the bunny channel, but no one I know admits to getting it, so I'll have to take IMDB's word for it all. Lemme see, four couples are invited to Judge Julie's mansion for an off-site trial. Said trial lasts all of a minute, so you get 99 minutes of what brought the couples there. None of this is the least bit profound, but it is a convenient way to show boys doing girls and girls doing girls.

The movie includes one supposed lesbian couple, played by cross-over pornabee, Inari Vachs and Skinemax babe Ava Lake (aka Ava Niche, aka Mia Zottolli, aka just plain Mia). Damned strangest pair of lesbians, though, because Inari does three guys at various points in the movie and Ava does a fourth. The world could use more of that kind of flexibility.

• Ava Lake (1, 2, 3, 4)

• Inari Vachs (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Oh yeah, and the movie shows Judge Julie and her staff getting it on with one another and with the contestants. Among those staff members are newcomer Catrina James... cute as a button... web model Skye Ashton, pornstar Alexandra Silk and actress Stephania Swinny. Stephania used to be Stephanie when she spelled her last name Swinney and appeared in erotic thrillers, such as Witchcraft 6 and Outside the Law. Then she was blond and cute with a natural softness to her features. Now she's brunette, tattooed and pumped up in more ways than one. Used to be the kind of girl you'd walk across a quiet street to say hello to, now she's the kind you'd run across a busy turnpike to get away from.

• Catrina James (1, 2, 3)

• Skye Ashton (1, 2, 3, 4)

• Alexandra Silk

• Stephania Swinny (1, 2, 3, 4)

Lots of positives here, most of them nekkid. Julie Strain does provide some humor and none of the scenes is allowed to bog down. It's the just thing when you got some to waste creatively.

There was an additional image of Regina Russell I just had to pass along. It comes from the photogallery in the DVD extras (which also includes a Julie Strain home movie that I am saving for another day). The image is crystal clear, something that superDVD technology promises to bring to every frame of a movie. Can you imagine? The improvement would be comparable to that seen in going from VHS to present DVDs. We'd have to go back and re-cap movies like American Pie and Eyes Wide Shut and Showgirls all over again and the Scoops would have to keep the Funhouse going just to show them. Sounds like a plan

Venus Williams
(1, 2)

Paris Hilton follow up From today's NY Post Page Six:

HILTONS WARN ON SEX TAPE
THE parents of Paris Hilton - reeling from the news that their eldest daughter made an amateur porn tape - are threatening legal action against anyone who helps make the tape public. "The Hilton family is greatly saddened at how low human beings will stoop to exploit their daughter Paris, who is sweet-natured, for their own self-promotion as well as profit motives," a statement released last night said. "Paris is working very hard on her career. The release of a private tape between a younger girl and her older boyfriend is more than upsetting . . . Anyone in any way involved in this video is guilty of criminal activity, and will be . . . vigorously prosecuted." Paris' co-star, Rick Solomon, the husband of Shannen Doherty, is being blamed for leaking the steamy video. Hilton lawyers looked into whether Paris was "underage" at the time, but she was 19 when the tape was made three years ago. Paris, meanwhile, caused major damage to the hotel where she and her latest fling, "Australian Idol" loser Rob Mills, have been staying, according to the Sydney Sun Herald. Later, at a Melbourne nightclub, Hilton blotted her lipstick with a paper towel, gave it to a stranger and said, "Here, keep this. You might make a fortune with it one day."

Here's the only assessment of that CBS Reagan movie I've seen that comes from a professional TV critic who actually saw a little of it. This actually might be worth catching on Showtime just for the laughs. James ("Gable & Lombard") Brolin has now played three well-known men, and thanks to his superb acting skills, it sounds like the most accurate portrayal of a known human being that he's been able to muster was of Pee Wee Herman in "Pee Wee's Big Adventure."

IT'S SO PATHETICALLY BAD THAT IT'S HYSTERICALLY FUNNY
By ADAM BUCKMAN

November 5, 2003 -- IT WAS one of the funniest tapes I had ever received from a TV network. It was a special promo reel sent over early last month for "The Reagans," a miniseries about Ronald and Nancy Reagan - the very same miniseries that became so embroiled in controversy that CBS finally dumped it yesterday.

I never saw the finished product, but if it were anything like the promo, this four-hour miniseries was about to go down in history as one of the worst made-for-TV movies ever. This tape was so hysterical, I thought it was a joke.

In the role of Nancy Reagan, Judy Davis was seen barreling comically through the White House screaming at the top of her lungs at everyone who crossed her path. Her unabashed scenery-chewing was reminiscent of Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest" - only Davis' performance was much worse and a lot funnier.

In contrast to Davis' raging first lady, James Brolin was seen playing the role of Ronald Reagan with all the emotion of a piece of wood - a style which has long been Brolin's trademark.

Funny as it all was, it was also seriously offensive. I thought CBS had taken leave of its senses.

Ronald Reagan will always have his detractors, but it seems that right now, at age 92 and suffering from Alzheimer's disease, he is by and large an admired figure, remembered as the man whose infectious enthusiasm restored Americans' confidence in their country following the upheavals of the 1970s - and who also finished off communism.

And for the millions who have watched a loved one being ravaged by Alzheimer's, Nancy Reagan is looking just as heroic.

CBS, however, is looking like a gang of idiots for deciding that now would be the perfect time to air a miniseries attacking this elderly couple beloved by millions. Maybe CBS got off easy, because I guarantee that, based on its production qualities alone, "The Reagans" would have been one of the most critically lambasted miniseries in many seasons.