The Devil Inside Her (1976) is another strange hard core. Directory Zebedy Colt, who also appeared in the film, was "trying to turn porn into an art form." I suppose he succeeded too well, as he was not asked to direct again by the producer. Colt is a strict religious father. Both of his daughters have the hots for the same handyman. Father is against it. The younger believes the two are in love. It is hard to say, as the actor playing the handyman was so clearly gay it was not possible to believe he was in love with any woman. The father sees them kiss, and whips the daughter. Her older sister visits a witch and gets a love potion which supposedly will make the handyman fall for her. What it actually does is allow Satan to take on the appearance of everyone else in the film, and have sex with most of them.

The film has its share of kinky. We have the aforementioned whipping, masturbation with garden vegetables, incest, and golden showers in the closing orgy scene which was lit too strangely to capture. The daughters were played by Teri Hall and Jody Maxwell, and showed everything. There is also brief nudity from Nancy Dare as the mother. The film had remarkably few scratches, but was overexposed start to finish. For me, at least, this fails completely as a hard core bit of eroticism. It fares somewhat better as a "so bad it's good" effort. I will give it a C-.

William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (2004):

As I've mentioned before, that is the full title of the film. I can't imagine the logic behind including Shakespeare's name, since anybody who would have any interest in seeing The Merchant of Venice would know the author's name.

I can only guess that they had to include the full name to distinguish it from the competing film, "Mickey Spillane's The Merchant of Venice" which, while rather lacking in the niceties of iambic pentameter, did include many more action scenes with "booze-swilling broads" and "tough mugs packing their roscoes"

If I had been in charge of naming it, I would have called it Dirty Dancing at the Star Wars Canteen, in an attempt to get the all important "female tweener" and "male fanboy" audiences, which together comprise somewhere around 100% or 101% of the ticket purchases in America.

All kidding aside, this is one of the very best Shakespearian adaptations I've ever seen on film, and is certainly the best version of this play I have ever seen in any medium. I could cite many positives, like the beauty of the Venetian imagery and the music, but that is all really window dressing. My central argument all boils down to one thing: clarity. Under almost any circumstances, it is damned hard to understand Shakespeare. I have taken several courses in Elizabethan Drama, and have read a lot more on my own. I've seen a few dozen live performances and every major movie. I have read every one of his plays and have most of the famous passages memorized. Even given all of those facts, I normally have a hard time understanding many passages and scenes if I have not reviewed a Shakespearian play just before viewing the performance. It's just difficult to understand all the details, because Elizabethan English is virtually a foreign language to 21st century speakers.

This is probably a bigger problem for most of you than for me, unless you are really serious scholars like our occasional contributor Mick Locke. Because of the comprehensibility problem, we modern viewers are dependent on the actors and the directors to make everything clear to us. What we need from Shakespearian actors in modern times is not necessarily what was important to Elizabethan audiences. Since the play was in their language, 16th century audiences were able to follow the plot details and understand the jokes easily, so the most important task for the actors was simply to deliver the beauty of the language. Many Shakespearian performances are still delivered with that in mind, but that just doesn't work for us if we can't understand the words. Sure it's beautiful language, but it might as well be beautiful Swahili. The modern Shakespearian actor has to place the meaning above the rhythm and beauty of the language, and almost everyone in this film has done a marvelous job of that. I was able to understand not only the gist of it, but the details of virtually every sentence. Not only did they deliver the lines in a lucid manner, but they took great pains to think about how they viewed their characters and precisely what they wanted to project in terms of the characters' personality, accentuating all of that with distinctive vocal mannerisms, pauses, and gestures. Finally, the direction and editing of the film is such that the viewer is able to understand not only the precise mechanics of the plot and the attitudes of the characters, but is also able to learn much about the times in which the action takes place. There is an excellent attention to detail in the background activities of both the main characters and the extras.

My hat is off to director Michael Radford. He envisioned how he wanted this project to work, he cast the actors perfectly, he directed them to perform according to his consistent vision, he placed them in interesting settings, and he clarified every detail and nuance of the plot with editing and camera work.

I've liked just about every movie he's ever made, although that isn't many, since we're lucky to get one from him every four years. The amazing thing to me is that you'd never guess the following movies were all the work of the same guy.

1. The Merchant of Venice (2004)
2. Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000)
3. B. Monkey (1998)
4. Postino, Il (1994)
5. White Mischief (1987)
6. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
7. Another Time, Another Place (1983)

• Dancing at the Blue Iguana is a movie about strippers in which the actresses improvised much of their own characterization and dialogue. It has a kind of cinema verité, real-time feel to it which verges on docudrama.

• B. Monkey is a tightly scripted and poetic story about the unlikely relationship between a male kindergarten teacher and a hardened female criminal. (I called it the European version of Modern Romance).

• Il Postino - you may be familiar with this one, because it won a pile of awards -  is kind of a highbrow film about a postman who learns to love poetry as a result of making deliveries to a poet, and then uses his awakened soul to woo his ladylove. Unlike most arty films, it leads from the heart, not the brain.

• 1984 is the John Hurt version of the Orwell story, and it seemed to catch the spirit of the book beautifully

What do those films have in common with each other? Beats me. There are not many threads running through that list. But they are all pretty damned good. Of course, Radford tends to disappoint his audiences. Those who loved Il Postino had to be saying "WTF?" when they rented Blue Iguana because it had the same director. Obviously Radford likes to challenge himself. When he was 54, he made his wildest, freest, most innovative movie (Blue Iguana), the kind of spontaneous, experimental film that guys make when they are just out of film school. He then followed that up with a filmed version of Shakespeare, which requires the actors to deliver the lines exactly as written, allowing for no improv at all. I suppose Radford must be an interesting (and obviously very flexible) guy.

Anyway, this film is a must-see if you like Shakespeare. It should be made the absolute standard for people studying the play in school, simply because the play completely carries itself can therefore be shown uninterrupted. Nothing is more irritating than having the film stopped every 10 minutes for an explanation. (Well, it could be in schools, I suppose, except for the fact that there are background breasts everywhere, supplied by the Venetian prostitutes and courtesans!).

Yup, you heard me. All of this and a steady parade of topless chicks as well!

• Random Shakespearian tootsies (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Other Crap:

• U.S. produces 42% of the world's e-mail spam. South Korea and China another 22%.
• Has Paige Davis retreated from the public eye in response to "home sex tape" rumors? : "Has Paige Davis gone into hiding? The 35-year-old fix-it vixen - who presides over The Learning Channel's house-swapping show, 'Trading Spaces,' in which neighbors redecorate each others' homes - had been scheduled to go on the 'Today' show this morning for an interior-design segment. But Davis abruptly canceled the appearance after Lowdown reported this week that she's the object of hot cyberspace rumors concerning an allegedly steamy homemade video."
• Merry Christmas in 135 languages. As we say in Xhosa - "Siniqwenelela Ikrisimesi EmnandI Nonyaka Omtsha Ozele Iintsikelelo Namathamsanqa". Actually, that only means "Merry". The phrase for "Christmas" is longer than a Michener novel.
• The Sun presents the Top 10 e-mails of this week, some of them quite naughty
• Were you payin' attention? Take the USA TODAY 2004 quizzes
• There could be a Grease 3 - featuring Barbarino and Newton-John!
• WTF? The Tokyo ad for the DVD release of The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre.
• From one of NASA'a digital imaging specialists ... A monumentally large picture of Saturn formed from 102 smaller photographs. (Click on the word "download" inside the paragraph)

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

Click here to submit a URL for 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 Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

Scene of the Year

Words, pictures, and vids from ICMS

Sole Nudo (1984)  - day 2

• Tania Alves 5 (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped)
• Tania Alves 6 (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped)
• Tania Alves 7 (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped)
• Tania Alves 8 (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped)

First up from the Ghost today....'caps and clips from the low-budget indie, "Bar Girls" (1994).

• Nancy Allison Wolfe, topless in a lesbian love scene. (1, 2)
• Nancy Allison Wolfe zipped .wmvs (1, 2)

• Patti Sheehan topless in a hot tub (1, 2)
• Patti Sheehan zipped .wmv

Next up, a few video clips (zipped .wmvs) from the 1993 movie "Flesh and Bone", starring Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, James Caan and pre-fame Gwyneth Paltrow.

• Meg Ryan, brief breast exposure during a love scene with Quaid.

• Gwyneth Paltrow, topless.

• Barbara Alyn Woods baring her bum while lying in bed eating Clark bars and Moon Pies.

First up, scenes from one of the best movies of the year "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"

• Kirsten Dunst shows some semi-see-thru/pokies while dancing around in pink undies and a tank top. In link #5 we see an excellent side/rear partial breast view. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

• Kate Winslet. We see the "Titanic" star in a bra (link #2), flashing her undies in links 4 and 5, and getting groped in link #6. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Next up, here is the ultra-hot "Desperate Housewives" star Eva Longoria in scenes from the low-budget indie, "Snitch'd" (2003). Link #3 offers some upskirt undies views.

• Eva Longoria (1, 2, 3)

"Hitman's Code"
This 2004 drama features a very predictable plot, really poor acting, and an extremely bad script. In short, it's horrible.

An assassin who only accepts contracts for "bad people who deserve to die" is hired to kill a young woman. Supposedly, she is a drug runner who is reponsible for bringing great quantities of drugs into the country. Naturally, she isn't, and when the hitman finds this out, he falls in love with her and decides to save her life. You easily figure this whole thing out within the first five minutes of the movie.

There's only one saving grace in this movie, and that's Lana Antonova (credited in the movie as Lana Novac). She's pretty, is an OK actor, projects an nice personality, and looks pretty good in her short nude scene. Otherwise, skip this mess.

• Lana Antonova