Best Nude Scenes of 2006:

Preliminary list. Please write me if I have forgotten any key scene.

• Anapola Mushkadiz in Battle In Heaven
• Maggie Gyllenhaal in Sherrybaby
• Salma Hayek in Ask the Dust
• Jacqueline Quinones in Hard Luck
• Jennifer Miller in Lucky Number Slevin
• Gretchen Mol in The Notorious Bettie Page
• Brittany Daniel in Rampage
• Bai Ling in Edmond
• Annabeth Gish in Brotherhood (TV)
• Jennifer Aniston in The Break-Up
• Barbara Nedeljakova in Hostel
• Kyra Sedgwick in Loverboy
• Sarah Polley in The Secret Life of Words
• Sophia Myles in Art School Confidential
• Katherine Heigl in Side Effects
• Amanda Righetti in Angel Blade
• Lauren Lee Smith in Lie With Me
• Robin Tunney in Open Window
• Kate Winslet in Little Children
• Leela Savasta in Masters of Horror:Haeckel's Tale (TV)
• Edie Falco in The Quiet
• Tara Fitzgerald in In a Dark Place
• Kristanna Loken in Bloodrayne
• Crystal Lowe in Final Destination 3
• Chelan Simmons in Final Destination 3
• Helena Bonham Carter in Conversations with Other Women
• Sarah Lassez in Mad Cowgirl
• Candace Smith in Beerfest
• Naomie Harris in Miami Vice
• Asia Argento in The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things
• Meital Dohan in God's Sandbox
• Meital Dohan in Weeds (TV)
• Monet Mazur in Stoned
• Monet Mazur in Whirlygirl
• Zara Taylor in Hollow Man 2
• Zara Taylor in Totally Awesome
• Abbie Cornish in Somersault
• Abbie Cornish in Candy
• Tuva Novotny in Stoned
• Tiffany Shepis in Abominable
• Irene Montala in Russian Dolls
• Anne Steffens in Russian Dolls
• Alice Braga in Lower City
• Susan Anbeh in Agnes and his Brothers
• Maria Botto in Only Human
• Vanessa Ferlito in Shadowboxer
• Jordana Brewster in Nearing Grace
• Olivia Colman in Confetti
• Sook Yin Lee in Shortbus
• Rinko Kikuchi in Babel
• Julianne Nicholson in Flannel Pajamas
• Rachel Bella in Jimmy and Judy
• Jolene Blalock in Slow Burn
• Stephanie Leonidas in The Feast of the Goat
• Joy Bryant in Get Rich or Die Trying
• Nora Zehetner in Conversations with Other Women
• Anna Friel in Niagara Motel
• Pell James in The King
• Samantha Noble in See No Evil
• Stephanie Sherrin in Kids in America
• Leonor Varela in Americano
• Samantha Mcleod in Snakes on A Plane
• Diora Baird in HotTamale
• Caroline Dhavernas in These Girls
• Holly Lewis in These Girls
• Pollyanna Mcintosh in Headspace
• Laura Bottrell in Huff (TV)
• Nicole Robinson in Huff (TV)
• Marisa Coughlan in Masters of Horror:Damned Thing (TV)
• Paula Malcolmson in Deadwood (TV)
• Sarah Pachelli in Deadwood (TV)
• Kattia Ortiz in Entourage (TV)
• Gina Torres in The Shield (TV)
• Misti Traya in Nip Tuck (TV)

JOYSTICKS (1983):

Joysticks isn't much of a movie, but it brings back a helluva lot of memories. As I look back on the early 1980s, there are two pop culture trends that stick out on my mind:

(1) The video game craze. There were hordes of teenagers hanging around in arcades, obsessed with the flickering images of Galaxian, Zaxxon, Space Invaders, Ms. Pac-Man, and all the rest of the arcade games of the second and third generation (Pong having been the first generation). It was a craze, perhaps not as pictured in this movie, but it was truly nuts. Convenience stores were ripping out more and more shelves every day to add video games. Bars without video games might as well have been without beer. Pac-Man made the cover of Time.

(2) Youthsploitation sex comedies. In the same era, sexy, youth-oriented comedies were gold. Porky's, Risky Business, Revenge of the Nerds, Ferris Bueller, and all their clones and sequels were bringing in dollars in theretofore unimaginable quantities. I think Porky's is still, to this day, the highest-grossing Canadian movie of all time, even though ticket prices are now about double what they were then.

Video games and youth-oriented sexploitation. Joysticks incorporates both.

Perhaps the worst of both.

A hunky young man is running a video game arcade in his grandfather's absence. He is assisted by the local nerd and the fat slob video game champion. Unlike some of the comedies of the era, the nerds and the cool guys all get along and encourage each other in this universe. All they want to do is have fun playing video games and getting girls naked, but there are those who oppose that way of life. In the 1980s they were not represented by Che or Osama bin Laden, but by Joe Don Baker, playing a stuffy local tight-ass who has made our hero's arcade the target of a shut-down campaign because he caught his daughter on the premises in some unsavory situations. The secondary baddie is an evil video game player called King Vidiot, who wears make-up like the Joker on Batman and travels with an entourage of four girls who pretend to be the Pac-Man ghosts. The story gets resolved when it is finally decided that the great battle between the video arcade and the uptight Joe Don will be decided by a game of Super Pac-Man, with King Vidiot playing as Joe Don's champion.

Sounds kinda lame, doesn't it?

Well, it's a lot worse than it sounds.

Even with such a lame premise, Joysticks might have been a fun little exploitation film if it had been pitched at the Risky Business level, but it just pitched everything at too low a brow and too young an audience. Although it is an R-rated film, the writers were obviously targeting the 11-13 crowd. Every character is exaggerated beyond cartoon proportions. Every situation is overacted with hammy disregard for credibility, as the actors engage in a clumsy struggle for the most juvenile laughs. The fat guy goes for leg-raising farts and food on his clothing. The nerd says "oh, golly" every other sentence and cleans the game screens while people are trying to play. The stock valley girl isn't even recognizable as a person. If you asked a bunch of seventh graders to act out their impressions of vals, video addicts, geeks and hippies, their interpretations would be no less subtle than those which Joysticks put up on the screen. It's just a really bad movie and the DVD makes it seem even worse. The disc has no features at all, not even a widescreen transfer, and has obviously been transferred from an old full-screen VHS print. And not even a good VHS print. There are innumerable lighting and color shifts, and some scenes are so dark that facial features can't even be seen.

The director, Greydon Clark, started in the business as an actor in grade-B biker movies and the like, and he eventually branched out into directing. And what a resume he assembled. Joysticks is actually in the top half of his career output!

1. (4.44) - Wacko (1983)
2. (4.33) - Black Shampoo (1976)
3. (4.30) - Without Warning (1980)
4. (3.56) - The Return (1980)
5. (3.36) - Joysticks (1983)
6. (3.29) - Satan's Cheerleaders (1977)
7. (3.01) - Uninvited (1988)
8. (2.87) - Skinheads (1989)
9. (2.83) - Lambada, the Forbidden Dance (1990)
10. (2.75) - Final Justice (1985)
11. (2.31) - Angels' Brigade (1979)

Any career that includes such diverse fare as Satan's Cheerleaders, Joysticks, and Lambada, the Forbidden Dance is OK by me. After all, there are plenty of guys who made bad movies, but can you name anyone who made so many different kinds of bad movies? Greydon is the Renaissance Man of crap.

Yes, Joysticks is awful, but what a strange load of 80s memories it stirs! It's the kind of bad movie that reminds one about everything that was wrong with movies in that era. In that respect, it symbolizes the seamy underbelly of early 80s films just as The Last Movie did for the hippie era. It does no less for the culture itself. In its unsubtle evocation of the video game craze, it encapsulates the feeling of the time with ... well ... unswerving inaccuracy, but an inaccuracy that now seems in retrospect to have caught one angle quite well, like a bad street artist's hastily drawn caricature which we stuff away in a box of memorabilia because it is too incompetent to frame, then find oddly compelling when we drag it out a decade later, because it does seem to say something about what we were almost like, or how some people might have viewed us.

In other words, Joysticks is a time capsule, but not one which limns the way we were. Rather it shows us the way we had barely enough sense to avoid.

Film Clips:

• Two long zipped .wmv clips with Kym Malin (blonde) and Kim Michel (brunette). In the first they flash their breasts at a nerd because they're playing a game that requires a picture of a nerd with his pants off. In the second, which is more than two minutes long as the only entertaining thing in the film.  The three main characters run a scam to get the two bims to run into the arcade topless.
• The nerd spies on an unidentified blonde in a hot tub. Zipped .wmv.
• Joe Don describes the den of sin he imagines in the arcade. Various anonymous topless cuties are pictured. Zipped .wmv
• Erin Halligan in a dark sex scene told in flashback. Zipped .wmv

Collages:

Kym Malin. The third collage of Kym has almost everything the Funhouse is all about: bare breasts and Joe Don Baker. If Bill Shatner were in this picture I would have it framed.

Kim Michel

Erin Halligan. If you look carefully at this frame, there may be a brief flash of crotch. The scene is far too dark and blurry to make it out, and the quality is so poor that there wasn't much I could do with editing.

Some hot tub bim.

Bonus: Corinne Bohrer is in this film (as the mindless valley girl) and didn't show any forbidden flesh, so I included Mr Skin's films of her in Dead Solid Perfect. Great, great nude scene (two zipped .wmvs), but tragically unavailable available on DVD. The old guy on the stairs is Dan Jenkins, author of Dead Solid Perfect and one of my favorite books, Semi-Tough. He's also a semi-famous sportswriter his own self. (Sports Illustrated.)

OTHER CRAP:

The Other Crap site has simply become too big and detailed to fit into my Fun House column. It contains far too much info, too many graphics, too many news feeds, and too many embedded videos to include here. Plus the scoopy.net version was always a day out of synch. You fans please catch the deluxe version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles, here.

MOVIE REVIEWS:

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

Convent of Sinners (1986)

Eva Grimaldi is raped by her father. Because of this lack of decorum on her part, she is forced to become a nun. After her novitiate, she is sent to a convent which is, surprise surprise surprise, filled with lesbians. Mother superior takes a liking to her, much to the chagrin of the second in command and former lover of mother superior. Eva discovers that the father confessor is also a reluctant cleric, and hopes to get free of her vows with his help.

The second in command, fearful of losing her power and position, tries to convince everyone that Grimaldi is possessed. Mother superior is sick in bed and can't help. The bishop hears that Grimaldi wants out, and realizes that she has a strong case, but decides that the church would not be served by the hearing, nor by her stories of rampant lesbianism and cruelty in the convent.  I don't want to give too much away, but the entire Catholic Church is a formidable foe for a young nun.

This is actually a Joe D'Amato nunsploitation film, but that label doesn't do justice to this effort.  D'Amato was too busy telling his story and attacking the Catholic Church to do much exploiting. People were forced into a religious life that they didn't want and were not good at. Politics kept the church from doing the right thing with a poor young girl. The convent was rife with rampant lesbianism and torture. These factors and more made this a highly shocking and political film.

As nunsploitation, this is a C-, with barely enough sex and nudity to satisfy genre requirements. However, it is also of interest as a legitimate indictment of the Catholic church, and earns a C as a muckraking drama.

IMDb readers say 5.9, not bad for the genre.

DVD: This is one of the best dubbing jobs I have ever seen, and the transfer is wonderful.

 

Eva Grimaldi is naked for much of the film, usually in clear light.

Several unknowns also show everything, mostly in the nunsploitation version of a shower scene.

There are a lot of strange things about this 2006 direct-to-video comedy. For one thing, the name Tara Ashleigh just doesn't fit the actress playing Carmen, but the credits list that name. For another, this thing is silly, goofy, slapstick, sometimes lame, with shaky acting and a weak script. One other thing it definitely is: funny. And funny overcomes the other problems.

The story revolves around the Hispanic family who owns a furniture store in the Bronx. To get away from his enraged, fanatically religious wife after she catches him with his mistress (Tara Ashleigh), Uncle Hector runs off and joins the army, leaving his nephew Jose and goofy cousin Raul to run the business. Think dumb and dumber with a slight accent.

Meanwhile, Jose discovers that the store's landlord plans to covert it into a disco unless the rent is paid up by the end of the month. All this while Raul has been happily running off customers so they won't disturb him.

Tara Ashleigh

Jane Birkin in Exzess und Bestrafung

Christine Kaufmann in Exzess und Bestrafung

We may never get to see real Winona, but here's cartoon Winona in A Scanner Darkly.