Thursday

American Pie 6: Beta House

(2007)

I suppose there have been many failings in the American Pie sequels, more so in the straight-to-vid extensions than in the two theatrical sequels. American Pie 4: Band Camp has absolutely nothing to do with the first trilogy, and American Pie 5: The Naked Mile has absolutely nothing to do with American Pie 4. The decision to handle the series that way was not a good one on the part of the suits, for many reasons, the first and foremost being that first trilogy was so popular because of our identification with the characters. The next two promptly dropped that element of instant empathy to introduce two completely new casts (except for cameos by Eugene Levy).

American Pie 5 was better than American Pie 4 in that regard. Although it did not connect to its predecessor, it did establish at least a tentative connection to the characters in the theatrical trilogy. It introduced two new Stifler cousins, one very much like the original Stifler, the other the ... er ... white sheep of the family, the shy nice guy who is required in every coming-of-age comedy. American Pie 6 has the good sense to build on the new Stifler characters and to bring Levy back as a major character rather than to stick his face in for a cameo. In essence, American Pie 5 and 6 are the first two parts of a second trilogy, while American Pie 4 is stranded on its own, with no connection either to its predecessors or its successors.

I thought that American Pie 5: The Naked Mile was a fairly entertaining movie because it combined some raunchy antics and nudity with a fairly good little coming-of-age story that had a tidy and spectacular ending which carried the romantic formula beyond the quotidian and reached for a bit of icon-building in the manner of The Graduate or Jerry Maguire. It didn't reach those heights, but at least it made the effort.

The weakness of American Pie 6 is that the romantic stories (yes, plural - there are two this time), while sweet enough, aren't interesting at all, and they basically just end with kisses in the pool. In general, the scriptwriter ran out of steam at the end, and the film just sort of drifts off into the credits at some random anticlimactic time. Meh.

The strength of American Pie 6 is the raunch. The nudity comes on the screen just about non-stop and the bodily fluids never stop being expelled from any and all orifices. I suppose some people don't consider raunch a positive element, but if you do like lots of breasts and gross-outs in your comedy, this is probably the rowdiest, most ribald, grossest film I've seen this year. It's not all that funny, but it is consistently naughty. There's about as much nudity as in American Pie 5: The Naked Mile, and there may be even more drunken ribaldry. And that's a lot.

In the previous film our heroes were high school seniors checking out the college action. They must have liked it, because this time our heroes are freshmen in the same college, trying to pledge the legendary Beta House. The Betas are the party animals, the Delta House for a new century. The Betas have an enemy who seeks to halt its drunken antics and shut it down completely. Sound familiar? No, it's not Dean Wormer. In fact, there is no sign of any faculty or administration in this college. Their enemy is the kingpin of the snob fraternity. He's the rich guy in a suit, just as Greg Marmalard was in Animal House, but since this is the new millennium, the rich boys are all sons of computer geniuses and dot.com millionaires, so they are all nerds! Life has come full circle since the seventies, when the college movie nerds were the underdogs. Now they rule the roost. They even get the hottest chicks.

The bitter rivalry between the Beta Frat and the Geek Frat finally comes down to the Greek Olympics, which they play for each other's charters and domiciles, kind of a "loser leave town" match. The competitions include drinking beer, removing bras, and holding off on ejaculation as long as possible while being sexually taunted by the girlfriends or ringers provided by the other team. Another event is a riff on The Deer Hunter, a Russian Roulette game in which the two participants mimic the characters in the famous Cimino movie, and take the competition just as seriously as they did in the original. The difference is that instead of firing bullets into their temples, they are firing horse semen down their throats.

On that note, I think you probably have the general idea of the film, so let's get to the nudity. Here is just about all of it in a zipped file with 10 clips. Neither of the two female stars got naked, so the girls in the clips are all minor players or extras except for the fat chick "riding the white whale," who is Christine Barger. I should have been able to identify the sex addict chick, but I couldn't figure it out from the credits. (Stifler goes to sexaholics anonymous to pick up chicks, but ends up regretting it. He has to sneak out after fucking her three times, and the designated house animal has to finish her off when he stumbles in inadvertantly.)

American Pie 6 comes to DVD at Christmastime.

 

Ungodly

(2007)

Ungodly is a new take on the serial killer genre. Wes Bentley stars, playing a character so similar to the one he played in American Beauty that it seems like the same guy some years later, fallen upon hard times. As in American Beauty, he walks around with a camera all the time, filming everything while he looks for the big project.

He gets the big project, all right. He accidentally films a serial murder in the act, and identifies the man to boot. Does he go to the police? No. Instead he figures that the maniac will make the perfect subject for the documentary that will elevate him to the top of that field. He thinks even Ken Burns and Michael Moore will have to step aside and concede him to be the master of the genre when he unveils his documentary about a serial killer. Bentley arranges a meeting with the killer, and the two men form an uneasy pact in which the madman agrees to be interviewed on camera in return for Bentley's promise that his identity will be kept a secret until he is caught or killed.

That idea is not completely original. The script was probably inspired by a Belgian cult film called C'est arrivé près de chez vous," in that the filmmaker is deceived and manipulated by the serial killer in both films, causing the film to be controlled by its subject. In both projects, the filmmakers are amoral and are gradually sucked into more criminal liability of their own. That isn't the only thing that lacks originality in Ungodly. The killer has the usual flashbacks to extreme child abuse by his dead mother.

But but the script only starts with those familiar elements, and eventually uses the premise to develop both unique characters and a surprisingly suspenseful and complex. Because of his own miserable childhood, it turns out that the killer has a special soft place in his heart for children. He works with orphaned kids, dying kids, sick kids, and neighbor kids, and in each case his philanthropy is genuine and his contribution is worthwhile. Some people in his world think he is a saint. But when it comes to grown women, he is a completely different person. Basically he's the Will Rogers of murder. He never met a women he didn't like - to kill. His formative years made him both a generous, kind man and a monster, depending on whom he interacts with. In fact, since he at least has some positives, and since we can understand what made him what he is, we can conclude that he is probably a much better man in some ways than the photographer, who not only allows the maniac to commit more murders, but is also a junkie and an alcoholic, and may even be capable of worse things to come. (Just how far he will go is part of the film's hook.)

The script devotes a lot of energy to developing both of the main characters. They are both interested in philosophy, both cerebral men, and those elements lead to some interesting dialogue about some pretty heavy topics. ("I wish God would strike me down," says the maniac, "then at last I could believe He exists and is just.") In addition to deep characterization, the script also has some surprising plot twists. The two men obviously cannot trust one another, so each engages in various power strategies and cat-and-mouse games to gain control over the other. Underlying all of that is the filmmaker's well grounded fear that he, too, could be the next victim if the killer considers him too great a threat. All of those elements would have been enough for a sufficiently juicy and full plot with plenty of suspense, but the film also layers in quite a shocking and inventive surprise involving the killer's dead mother.

Of course the film is a relentless downer. It's virtually a two character play, and both of the characters, while interesting, are utterly detestable and amoral. The scenes often degenerate into loud chaos and brutal violence supported by cacophonous background sounds, making the film an extremely intense and unpleasant experience. Even the film's greatest strength, the depth of its portrayals, is a source of unpleasantness. After all, just how deep into the mind of a serial killer would you like to be? And as depressing as the main body of the film is, the ending makes the rest of the film seem like The Sound of Music.

All of that notwithstanding, in my opinion it's quite an excellent film. In fact, I found this film to be more engrossing than Mr. Brooks, the similarly-themed film with Dane Cook and Kevin Costner, and by that comparison I do not mean to disparage Mr. Brooks, which impressed me. It's just that this film is deeper, more intense, and better acted. My biggest surprise of 2007 is Mark Borkowski, who not only co-wrote the solid and interesting script, but turned in a powerful performance as the killer. Although Borkowski has virtually no experience as an actor, if you heard this film in the next room you would be absolutely convinced that you were listening to a forgotten Harvey Keitel movie. There would be no doubt in your mind. Borkowski doesn't look much like Keitel, but he sounds just like him, moves like him, and interprets lines so similarly that his performance seems like the work of a brilliant Keitel impersonator. Although Borkowski seems to be in his forties, I saw nothing in his exiguous IMDB entry to indicate that he was capable of this level of either acting or writing. He has written one 28-minute short, and has one acting credit, having starring in an obscure film seven years ago. To be fair, one IMDb reviewer said he was brilliant in that film, and I can believe it, but I have no idea what else he's done with his life in all these years.

But he surely did well here.

Add this to the ever-growing list of good films that I would rather not have watched.

Film clips:

Marina Gatell

 

 

 

* Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe).

* White asterisk: expanded format.

* Blue asterisk: not mine.

No asterisk: it probably sucks.

OTHER CRAP:

Catch the deluxe version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles, here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gold Braid

 (1990)

 

Gold Braid is a character piece about a single clock repairman and antique store owner played by Chris Haywood. Part of the reason he is a clock repairman is his fascination with the past, and he feels clocks are a link to the past. He buys a large cabinet to repair and sell, and finds a braid of golden hair hidden in a secret door. He begins to imagine who the hair belonged to, and the hair becomes a second girlfriend. That strains his real relationship with his married girlfriend (Gosia Dobrowolska), and matters get even worse when she asks him how many women he has had, and doesn't like his answer of over 100.

There is nothing wrong with the performances in this project, but the pacing is deliberate, the scenes take place mostly in dark rooms, there is little action, and much screen time is taken up showing the movement of clockworks.

Competent, but assuredly not my sort of film.

 

 

Gold Braid

 

Gosia Dobrowolska shows breasts and buns. (There is also full frontal male nudity from Chris Haywood.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


X312- Flight to Hell

(1971)

 

The Time Machine is off to 1971 for another film directed by Jesus Franco. "X312 - Flight to Hell". Kind of a lame movie and not quite as much nudity as usual for a Franco film, but we do get a little full frontal from both actresses.

Beni Cardosi with her "Tiny Tots".

Esperanza Roy shows it all off.

Esperanza and Beni have a little lesbo encounter.

 

 

 

 

 

Notes and collages

Next

Yvonne Strahovski

If you have not seen the new U.S. TV series "Chuck," I recommend it. Ms. Strahovski plays an FBI agent assigned to protect a computer nerd after his brain absorbs all the security files of the FBI and the CIA. The show is a fun action/comedy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Death Tunnel

5 girls who must spend 5 hours at the 5-story Vanguard Sanitarium with its 5 ghosts are part of some sort of college freshman initiation.

They are "kidnapped" from the club where everyone has gathered as part of the "Truth or Scare Night" party. Then their heads are covered with some sort of bizarre-looking bags with locks and the five of them are left on four of the five floors of the sanitarium. What they don't know is that several of the guys at the party have rigged up parts of the sanitarium in order to scare the girls. But what those guys don't know is that the REAL ghosts of the sanitarium have other plans.

 

Kristin Novak

Steffany Huckaby

Yolanda Pecoraro

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dorm Daze 2

(2006)

Lola Davidson

 

Heather Storm

 

Jasmine St Claire

 

Julian Wells

 

Marieh Delfino

 

Vide Guerra

 

unknown

 

Danielle Fishel and Jennifer Lyons

 

Fishel, Lyons, and Davidson

 

Davidson, Storm, and Wells

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recon 2022: The Mezzo Incident

 (2007)

Second installment of the Canadian grade-Z sci-fi franchise and only available on the Asian market via amazon.co.jp. A bit of trivia here: Heidi Hawkins was in the first installment, Recon 2020, only in a bit role added to satisfy the investors with a scene of gratuitous nudity. It was soon decided to cast her in a lead role in Recon 2022. The next installment will be "Recon 2023: The Gauda Prime Conspiracy."

... and after that "Recon 2024: So Very Tired".

Patricia Stasiak: hefmag cybergirl topless as virtual stripper.
Heidi Hawkins: topless again.
Carmen Echeverria: nude wearing only a coat of slime.
Gillian Leigh: sexy but dead.
Vanessa Matsui: showing cyber-hooter.
Cyborg: nice implants.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Here are more film clips that match up with LC's new collages

Two of the chicks from The Three Little Pigs

 

And Amanda Ryan in Sparkle

 

 

 

 

 

 

Man, this is hot. A film clip (two, actually) of Pam Grier in Hitman, one of her earliest major roles. This came before Coffy, Foxy Brown, or Friday Foster, but after her four "chained women" classics: The Big Bird Cage, Black Mama White Mama, Women in Cages, and The Big Doll House.

 I have never seen Hitman. In fact I've never seen any clips from it before, and never really even seen any good caps from the film , so this is a treat.

Plus one more collage of Jaime Murray in the last "Dexter"

A film clip of Amy Adams in The Wedding Date (sample below)