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Mother (1970):

Ah bin up 'n down this ol' world some, an' walked to 'n fro upon it a piece, an ah seen some shit. Prob'ly seen more movies than ol' Roger Ebert has even heard of, an' ah reckon there's some mighty irregular shows in the mem'ries, but they ain't many odder 'n this 'un.

Law' a'mighty, this is some goofy shit! It is also known as Up Your Teddy Bear and The Seduction of a Nerd.

Back around 1970 or so, a fella named Don Joslyn saw that his acting career was stagnating, and decided that he wanted to direct. Before turning out his one and only film, he had to overcome a few problems, like (a) he had no idea how to direct a movie, and (b) if he could have learned how, he wouldn't have had enough money. In fact, to be more specific, he didn't have any money. To his credit, he did not let these minor issues stand in the way of assembling 90 minutes worth of footage featuring Wally "Underdog" Cox, Julie "Catwoman" Newmar, and a popular 350-pound former Shakespearian actor named Victor Buono. Like Newmar, Buono had played a villain (King Tut) on the campy Batman TV series. What a cast! Instead of watching them in a story, I felt like I should have been feeding them double-entendre questions.

"Wally, on the top left to block. Wally, where would you go to find the biggest fruit in the Caribbean?"

"I would go to Paul Lynde's cabana. (Audience response.) No, actually, I believe that would be Antigua."

As Newmar explains in an accompanying interview, it was a fairly simple process for Joslyn to make a film with three name stars and no money. He simply shot in all the locations without permission, and then failed to pay the actors. Newmar didn't explain how Joslyn came up with a camera and film, but I think we can imagine how that might have transpired.

The footage he assembled wasn't just random. It even had a plot - or at least a rough outline of a plot - to glue it all together. Catwoman plays "Mother," the ruthless head of a greedy corporate toy manufacturing firm. One day she spots a skillful street busker - a gentle puppet maker (Wally Cox) whose creations seem fascinating to children. She just has to hire this genius to make puppets for her company, but he resists her job offer, so Mother puts her grown but infantile son, Skippy (Buono), on the recruitment job. Skippy's detectives tell him that Underdog spends all of his free time following women around without ever approaching them, so the big fella becomes convinced that he needs a femme fatale to get the ol' Underdog signature on that management contract. The attempts and failures in this seduction process form the meat of the movie. Woman after woman tries and fails, and after each failure Mother berates Skippy for his incompetence. Turns out Underdog won't go for the chicks because he's in love with Mother herself. The film doesn't really have a conclusion, Underdog and Skippy show up in mother's office on day, sans contract, so Mother berates Skippy once more. Skippy grabs her throat and starts choking her. They do a long and violent dance which is somewhere between love-making and murder, whereupon Underdog says, "I see you two want to be alone," and closes the door as the end credits roll.

I suppose that was the point where the director ran out of the film stock he managed to cadge from somebody or another.

That plot summary seems almost credible by Hollywood standards, and that's really misleading, because the film just seems to meander from scene to scene. It could easily be edited to a five minute short without losing anything important.

What makes it so weird? Well sir, the highlights of the film consist of the following:

• The writer (Don Joslyn again, in his only writing credit) seems to think he can derive great humor solely from placing the gigantic Buono and the tiny Underdog in unlikely scenes together. For example, Buono is dazed and asks Underdog to assist him, whereupon the 5'6", 125 pound man shoulder-carries the 6'3", 350 pounder.
• When Buono is not playing the oafish fat man in his latter-day Laurel and Hardy act with Wally Cox, he is making a fool of himself on screen alone. There is a long, long sequence (I want to say about 89 of the film's 90 minutes) in which Buono tries to squeeze himself behind the wheel of a foreign sports car, and then another similar schtick involving his inability to use public phone booths.
• Additional comic hijinks occur from placing the two men in comically (?) inappropriate costumes. Buono wears a little league uniform. Underdog dresses up as a cowboy. Buono goes undercover as a hooker - and manages to interest a client!
• It is not well known that Underdog was a passable singer. His ordinary singing was nothing special. He could carry a tune, but he still sounded like Wally Cox, except a singing version. But Cox also had a fascinating novelty act. I'll bet even your TV and movie buff friends will be surprised to hear that Underdog is a fantastically good yodeler - he can do it very fast and his voice switches flawlessly every time. It's impressive - for about twenty seconds. Unfortunately, the writer/director loved that gimmick so much that he allowed Mr. Cox to lie in bed and Yodel an entire song, and then to sing two more songs later with intermittent additional yodeling. Strangely enough, the singing is about the only time you hear his voice. Cox has almost no spoken dialogue in the film.
• Oh, boy, I've been putting off mentioning this one, because it is just too embarrassing to type. This must be the only film in which Wally Cox does a nude sex scene. Cox keeps his pants on, but his lover is completely naked - and is played by Angelique Pettyjohn, a minor legend in sci-fi nerdology as Captain Kirk's green-haired lover in "The Gamesters of Triskelion."

I think you have the flavor. It is the Citizen Kane of Yodeling Underdog Porn Films.

I don't know about you guys, but I think it is wonderful that Troma finds obscure crap like this, remasters it, and  puts it out on DVD. It is an atrociously bad film, and yet it possesses a million dollars worth of period memories! I hated it, but I loved it as well. As a movie, it could not be much worse. If you call it an F, I have no rebuttal. But, damn, is it a helluva 1970 time capsule, buried back then and unearthed after lo, these many years. You have to watch it in fast forward because the timing is all off and every scene goes on too long, but you should see it - just for the nostalgia value and the sheer audacity of it all.

Julie Newmar (not nude) Angelique Pettyjohn some other chick

Other Crap:

Movie Reviews:

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

"Dirty Love"

Dirty Love (2005) is a so called comedy written by and staring Jenny McCarthy, and directed by husband John Mallory Asher. McCarthy, a poor fashion photographer, comes home to find her fashion model boyfriend humping another woman. The rest of the film is about her attempts to get even with him, and the frogs she kisses on the way to finding her prince. She gets help of dubious value from best friends Carmen Electra and Kam Heskin. The only bright spot in her life is a neighbor, played by Eddie Kaye Thomas, who drools over her.

This is gross, way over the top, and I don't know what audience it is aimed at, but it did get a couple of laughs from me. Here are some examples of cutting edge humor. She ends up slipping and falling into a pool of her own menstrual blood in a supermarket isle. A date vomits down her cleavage. She exchanges farts with her mother over the phone. A date goes into the bedroom to get ready for him. On the way, he takes a mysterious package from the fridge. She comes into the room to find a bass shoved half way up his ass.

McCarthy shows her generous breasts shortly after the vomit scene.

IMDb readers say 3.0. Ebert awarded 0 stars. Carmen Electra was a hoot, and Eddie Kaye Thomas was great, as usual. Other than that, I sat in amazement, wondering how this ever got made. It was ultra low budget, and had a disastrous 1 week theatrical release. It is not technically incompetent, given the budget, but I tend to agree with Roger Ebert on this one. D-.

Jenny McCarthy

"Lila dit ça"

Lila dit ça (2004) or Lila Says, a freshman effort from Ziad Doueiri (West Beyrouth), is a coming of age story set in a Muslim ghetto in Marseilles. It focuses on Chimo (Mohammed Khouas), a 19 year old. He feels trapped in his life along with his three best friends, but unlike them, has a talent -- he can write. One of his teachers is prepared to get him a scholarship to a Paris school for promising writers, if he can write a book to submit. Lila provides a subject for his book. She is 16, white, very blonde, and has been seen as aloof by Chimo's peers, as she won't give them the time of day.

Then she approaches Chimo in a park, and offers to show him her pussie. As they become acquainted, her talk is mainly sexual in nature. For his part, Chimo is terribly smitten with this nymphet (Vahina Giocante) as was I, but is not sure why she has chosen him, and is uncertain as to how to respond. Meanwhile, his single mother disapproves of this inter-racial relationship, and his peers are very jealous of the thought that she might like him. The closest they ever come to sexual contact is when she gives him a hand job while riding on her motor bike.

Chimo's friends try to break up whatever might be going on, as they would all like to bed Lila, and believe she is taking Chimo away from them. They goes as far as hiring a hooker (Barbara Chossis) for him, and accusing Lila of being a prostitute, only toying with him because "he seems exotic" to her. Lila lives with a very strange aunt, who loves staring at her pussie, but is also wildly religious. At one point, LIla even tells her aunt that the devil appeared to her and made her give him head. Then things go very wrong, and we learn the truth about Lila.

This is based on an anonymous novel from someone who only identified himself as "Chimo." It is beautifully shot, and superbly acted. From the plot summary, you would think it was full of nudity, but this was not the case. Barbara Chossis shows breasts in the prostitute scene, and the most we get from Giocante is pokies. We do see her character's pussie, and later buns, as she flashes Chimo, but both shots were brief, and pretty clearly a body double.

IMDb readers have this at 7.0. I agree. I, like Chimo, was totally captivated by Giocante's Lila, and didn't even mind the French with English sub-titles. The film is so full of messages, it is hard to cover them all, but themes include the idea that you can rise above your position in life, that popular opinions are not always correct, and sometimes your best friend's can be the worst thing in your life. It is truly coming of age, in that Chimo ends up escaping the ghetto, and gains self-reliance. This is a C+, or maybe higher.

Barbara Chossis Vahina Giocante

BOUNCING BABY BENNIFER
On Thursday, "Alias" star Jennifer Garner gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Violet...

* You can tell Ben Affleck is her father because she already sucks.
* Not surprisingly, the birth went straight to video.
* Ben vowed to always protect her from the horrors of the world, but it's inevitable that someday, she WILL see "Gigli".

SIX FLAGS DUMPS DANCING OLD GUY
Mr. Sick - The New York Post reports that Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder just took over the Six Flags amusement park chain, and his first action is to dump Mr. Six, the creepy, wildly-dancing geezer mascot with the bald head and big glasses. He wants to rebrand Six Flags from a hangout for teenage thrill-seekers to a family-friendly park, and he thinks recent commercials featuring Mr. Six luring teenage boys onto a Six Flags bus don't appeal to parents.

* Not many teenage boys were thrilled with it, either.
* Their new spokesperson: Michael Jackson.
* Apparently, one of the Six Flags they flew was the Freak Flag.

BUSH SKIPS JURY DUTY
But Then, Bush Has An Important Job - Sen. John Kerry recently did duty as a jury foreman, but President Bush is too busy. Bush got a summons to appear Monday for jury duty in Crawford, Texas. The White House said jury duty is an "important civic responsibility," but the president will have to reschedule. The local judge said, "I don't think I'll be sending out the sheriff to bring the president in."

* Democrats were extremely disappointed to hear that.
* The sheriff is too busy bringing in all the other Republicans in Washington.
* Too bad; Bush misses Crawford after being away for...what, four days?
* Kerry says Bush dodged jury duty while he not only did his jury duty, he won three Purple Hearts in two days!
* Kerry voted "Not Guilty" before he voted "Guilty."