Tiny Dancer – Joseph W. Sarno’s ‘Baby Love’ aka ‘Confessions of a Sex Kitten’ (1974)

My continuing bad luck with Swedish softcore porno’s has seen me watch 1974’s Baby Love, aka Confessions of a Sex Kitten or Girl Meets Girl, which left me nothing short of bored and bemused. Bibi (Marie Forsa) is a young student staying with various lesbians for the summer and spends her time engaging in activities with a multitude of them.

Sadly whatever charm Bibi uses to keep everyone under her spell doesn’t extend to the viewing audience. Baby Love is bland and tedious, moving at the same languid pace for its entire duration. Not even a spot of branch spanking out in the woods can redeem it. Whilst there’s more action here than in Ann and Eve (mainly restricted to vibrators galore), baby Love is still a massive disappointment. Two out of five maximum, and that’s out of politeness…

Nightcall – Curt McDowell’s ‘Thundercrack!’ (1975)

Where does one begin with a film like Thundercrack!? In all honesty, I’m not quite sure where, because the film feels like a dense two-hour plus epic of bizarre proportions. Once seen, definitely never forgotten. Essentially Thundercrack! is an ‘old dark house’ horror story with a tonne of gratuitous hardcore sex scenes thrown in for, what feels like some very strange, fun. Directed by Curt McDowell and written by Mark Ellinger and George Kuchar (the well-known American underground and avant-garde filmmaker), the feature is beautifully shot in black and white with frames composed to highlight the physical and mental mess of the characters minds and lives. Mess I might add is a bit of an understatment.

This is an entry I’ll keep incredibly brief because the film is one that really has to be seen to be believed. Do you like weird, quirky, sexual films with a heavy B-movie aesthetic even though the flick is question is probably lower than B on the movie scale? Great! This one is definitely for you. With a varied amount of highly strung and very over the top characters (Mrs Gert Hammond in particular), weird-multi stranded narratives and enough sex to shake your stick at, you can see why this film is a bit of a cult favourite. Not to mention one that has been unavailable in parts of the world until late because of its content (lots and lots of lovely hardcore shots including vaginal penetration, anal penetration, sex toys, erections, masturbation, oral sex, ejaculation…). Throw in a generous dash of black humour (very fake flashbacks, paper sets, someone inadvertently masturbating someone else, an incident with a gorilla…) and you’ve got an unforgettable film that is well worth picking up.

About Sex, But Not – ‘Creature From The Black Lagoon’ (1954)

ON THE SURFACE – The ‘Gill-Man’ creature of the Black Lagoon struggles to cope with a group of scientists surveying his habitat.

SCRAPING THE BARREL – A young boy in his bedroom struggles to cope with puberty. Don’t hate me for tarnishing a horror classic when it’s all there in front of you already. Creature from the Black Lagoon is all about a young boy (the ‘Gill-Man’) trying to get used to all the changes going on around him thanks to our good friend puberty. A young boy, ugly and ‘half-formed’, discovering (finally noticing the female form) and falling in love with a beautiful woman (Julie Adams)? Check. Jealousy and angst (trying to kill) from the boy towards the more ‘manly’, handsome and properly developed men that the woman is attracted to? Check. A young man desperate to actually touch some boobs? Just look at the way the Creature holds his arms out towards them, hyperventilating and dribbling like a loon! Black Lagoon is the ultimate masturbation fantasy movie, a film in which the young male audience can sympathise with ‘Gill-Man’s desire to be the ugly duckling that the beautiful woman finally falls for. Those beautiful underwater sequences focusing on Adams are so dreamlike and desirable, fetishising her legs and curves (the only woman in the whole film, just like when you fancy that one person so much that you end up not noticing anyone else…), that anyone would be a fool not to try reaching out and grabbing her, just like the Creature does on numerous occasions. At the end of the day, he’s only following example. The rest of the men in the film can’t leave their guns and spears alone (do I really need to spell that one out to you…) and they pop up every time Adams is in danger or needs protecting. The more experienced penis wins over the one that’s only just began to grow. The poor Creature. Just like many young boys, he didn’t know how to handle a beautiful woman, just himself.

‘Island of Death’ (1975) review

Where exactly do you begin with a film like Island of Death (Mastorakis, 1975)? Widely banned because of its content, if one film is going to make you wonder why on earth you sat down to watch something it’s going to be this. I was intrigued. So many people had told me to give it a go, ‘I think you’d really like it’ was the phrase mostly used. And so I gave in… And I’m still wondering why I bothered, and still trying to work out why so many people thought I’d really dig it (Answers on a postcard please). It’s not that the film was bad (although arguably many people won’t like it because of its themes), I’ve seen a lot worse, but it wasn’t any good either. It was just weird. Really weird.

Island of Death concerns a young married couple, Christopher and Celia, who go on holiday to a Greek island. Whilst looking relatively normal, normal isn’t a word they clearly understand and instead they slowly start killing off people they don’t like in a bid to rid the island of perversion and make it pure again. This is a little strange because they don’t come across as being overly religious either but since when did plot details start to become important to bad movies?

In fact, that’s the issue with Island of Death. There isn’t much of a plot, more like a threadbare story created to link together shocking set pieces (a little like the Saw franchise but less gory and a lot stranger…). So you get a scene like Christopher humping a goat because Celia is too tired to have sex with him (this is why so many of you told me to watch it isn’t it…). Or Christopher crucifying and poisoning a painter the couple befriend after he’s had sex with Celia. They kill a gay couple, a drug addicted lesbian barmaid, an older female socialite (with a pretty neat and inventive beheading scene involving a bulldozer). You get the idea. Pretty much anyone on the island they can kill, they do. Christopher also happens to be a photographer and likes to photograph scenes of the crime, both during and after, to masturbate over later. Sadly, there’s so much going on during the film that these scenes just aren’t as shocking as maybe the production team had hoped they’d be. It’s a bit like that saying, too many cooks spoiling the broth. At what point does shocking become not shocking? When you watch Island of Death.

Making a list of everything controversial about the film doesn’t really prepare you for the film itself. I’ll say it again, the film isn’t bad. It has some dodgy acting (what exploitation film doesn’t?!), some really cheesy one-liners (‘God punishes perversion. And I am his angel with the flaming sword sent to kill dirty worms!’) and some unintentionally hilariously awful scenes, such as an incredibly unsexy sex scene in a phone booth (True Romance did it better) and some fellatio techniques on a gun (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls did it better). The problem is it isn’t very good either but somehow has a bizarre charm about it, probably down to the cinematically naive director Nico Mastorakis biting at some big ideas he didn’t quite know how to chew.

Island of Death is a film that you can’t turn off, something about it is compelling and makes you watch it all the way to the end. It doesn’t repel you, it doesn’t make you laugh, it’s just a very strange film. I defy anyone who watches it to not feel confused, a little dazed and (although no one will admit to it) a little turned on. By the time you get to the final fifteen minutes of the film and find out that Christopher and Celia are brother and sister, it doesn’t surprise you. In fact, one you start watching the film you realise that it could throw anything at you and you wouldn’t be surprised. Hell, the only surprise for me is the fact that I don’t know how to write about it!

Island of Death is just… weird. If you like weird then maybe watch it once in your life. If you’re completely narrow-minded, easily offended and live in a sterile bubble of a life, I wouldn’t bother. The film stays with you, for days. If not forever…

Ever Fallen In Love With Someone You Should’nt’ve – Jonathan Yudis’s ‘Pervert!’ (2005)

I bloody love Amazon. It recommends me all sorts of exploitation goodness and sexy stuff thanks to what I buy every month. Sometimes Amazon gets it completely wrong and sometimes Amazon hits the nail on the head so perfectly I want it in plush form so I can give it some massive cuddle. The latest gem it pointed out to me was the 2005 Russ Meyer tribute Pervert! directed by Jonathan Yudis.

The film see’s college student James (Sean Andrews) return to his family’s desert ranch to help out his father, Hezekiah (Darrell Sandeen), for the summer. James finds that Hezekiah has gotten remarried to the rather busty Cheryl (porn star Mary Carey) but it doesn’t take long for Cheryl and James to hook up, only for Hezekiah to find out and fight with his wife over it. Then Cheryl disappears… Old man Hezekiah returns home from town with another voluptuous broad attached to his arm, Alisha, who also quickly falls for James. Then one night Cheryl turns up and dies in front of James, the same night that Hezekiah finds Alisha dead. What follows is a bizarre romp including bouncing breasts, a witch doctor, sculptures made of meat and a homicidal penis.

Pervert! is a horror-comedy-sexploitation film that Film Threat is quoted as saying ‘Smells like Russ Meyer’. Except that it doesn’t just smell of Meyer, the film reeks of it and for all the best reasons. For the seasoned Meyer fan, the film is full of references that will make you squeal with delight. The film opens with a mad preacher introducing the story that reminds you of Mudhoney (1965) and the evangelical preacher of Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979). Then there’s the desert ranch itself, a near copycat of the ranch in Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), complete with its own water tank (and, yes, Yudis even includes a scene of his leading lady washing by it that is shot exactly like Meyer’s shots of Lori Williams and Tura Satana doing the same). Mary Carey even has a scene which completely takes Satana’s corn on the cob eating scene from Faster Pussycat! and raises the bar a good fifty miles in the air. Not content with keeping the Meyer references at that, Yudis includes desert shots that look like they could have been lifted from Cherry, Harry & Raquel! (1969) and Supervixens (1975) and a rattlesnake gag and cool pick up truck that wouldn’t be out-of-place in Motorpsycho (1965). Those were just the really obvious references, I couldn’t be bothered to list all of them when making notes!

It’s not just the very well done references to Meyer’s films that make the film so successful but the realised grindhouse/exploitation tone of the whole piece. The script is great, full of one liners and innuendo that are found across the sex comedy and sexploitation genre’s in general; ‘I’ve handled a lot of fruit in my time. It’s one thing I’ve never minded, it’s a little bruises and spots’ (Hezekiah when spanking Cheryl), ‘You’re a rotten constitution in the court of man!’. There is, of course, plenty of nudity with female forms that hark back to a time when stick thin wasn’t the ‘in thing’ and breasts that Meyer would obviously stamp with a seal of approval. In other words, beautiful, bouncy and big. Even the film’s opening, with the grainy and faded logo for production company Stag Films and campy Horny-14 (‘Approved for all perverts by the director of this film. Pregnant women and men with an erection at this point in the film should leave now.’) feels legitimately vintage in exploitation glory.

Let’s not forget to mention the acting which is tongue-in-cheek in all the right places. Andrews as Sean is fantastic playing the naive and possibly cursed (?) role that so many cute boys played in 60s/70s sex-horror films, all puppy dog eyes and innocence craving life experience. Carey is great as the spunky (excuse the pun) and sex-fuelled Cheryl, pulling the innocent girl next door card when necessary and who would have been a perfect Meyer candidate if we were still in the 70s. The rest of the female cast are also terrific, their slightly wooden delivery perfect for a film of this ilk with special mention going to Lucia whose role as the Uschi Digard/Kitten Natividad montage girl is nailed perfectly. Best of all is Sandeen as Hezekiah who is clearly channeling Stuart Lancaster’s role as The Old Man in Faster Pussycat! but still manages to put his own memorable spin on it.

The real star of the show, however, has to be the stop-motion murderous penis who wrecks havoc in the last half of the feature. This is definitely where Yudis’s previous experience working in comedy and animation really come to shine, the penis animated with much personality and a rough and ready style that suits the spirit and tone of the picture.All in all, a fabulous homage to the B-movies of sexploitation and horror and a wonderful tribute to the ‘King of the Nudies’ Russ Meyer, Pervert! is a must watch for any fan who enjoys what exploitation and grindhouse cinema used to bring to the big (and small) screen!

Cynthia Myers 1950-2011 RIP

God bless the beautiful Cynthia Myers who sadly passed away a week ago. Myers was well-known for her role in Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and for her memorable pictorial’s for Playboy magazine during the 1960s.

Born in Toledo, Ohio on September 12th 1950, Myers noticed her buxom figuring developing at thirteen. After a brief attempt at becoming a competitive equestrian, at fourteen Myers decided to turn her head to modelling. Myers career first started in 1965 with swimsuit modelling before Playboy eventually came calling a few years later. Photographed by Pompeo Posar (a noted Playboy staff photographer) in June 1968, Myers was seventeen and Hefner had to hold on to her pictures and publish them once she turned eighteen as per Playboy policy. A few extra photographs, and months, later and Cynthia appeared as the Playboy centrefold and playmate in the December issue (her pictorial titled ‘Wholly Toledo!’). Her spread and front cover have become iconic, Myers dressed up as a Christmas tree with presents at her feet. And, boy, does she look beautiful. Full of innocence with a little hint of knowing, Myers comes across as the most perfect girl-next-door you could ask to have under your Christmas tree. Incredibly photogenic, her natural beauty, and assets, are  enviable and it’s easy to see why she became one of the most iconic Playmates of the 1960s. She was the most popular pin-up with American troops during the Vietnam War, her pictorial generating the most mail that Playboy had ever had up to that point in time. Myers made sure she wrote back to every Troop that had written to her. The centrefold itself even appears in the 1987  film Hamburger Hill. The pictures, however, caused an uproar in her home town. Raised in a close family and a pupil at a Catholic school, she was initially refused by Nuns to graduate with the rest of her class until they gave in following her high grades. Around the same time her feature was published, she left Toledo and was given an apartment at the Playboy Mansion where she also managed to get a job working at the Chicago Playboy Club.

Myers iconic Playboy cover for the December 1968 issue

Whilst working for Playboy Club, Hugh Hefner asked Myers to be in his television show Playboy After Dark which was being syndicated for a second season. Through the series, Cynthia was introduced to Burt Lancaster who offered her a role in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969). Memorable for being one of the marathon dancers, all her speaking parts were unfortunately cut from the picture. During filming she befriended fellow co-star Bruce Dern, with whom she undertook acting classes in a bid to learn the craft and be taken seriously. She has another entry listed on IMDB for an uncredited part in The Lost Continent which was shot the year before (1968). She will ultimately, however, be remembered most of all for her third feature, Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970).

 Myers (right) as Casey with Erica Gavin as lesbian lover Roxanne in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

Personally chosen by director Meyer to star in the film, Cynthia Myers is one of the stand out’s in the Beyond the Valley of the Dolls cast. She plays the role of Casey, bassist in a rock and roll girl band called The Carrie Nations, who becomes disillusioned with the hedonistic lifestyle the group become involved in. After drunkenly sleeping with her manager, throwing him out and then finding she’s pregnant with his child, Casey confides in new friend Roxanne (co-star Erica Gavin, previously seen in Meyer’s Vixen!) who persuades her to have an abortion. The two then fall in love and become a couple. Myers scenes with Gavin are particularly special as the two clearly had chemistry and developed a good friendship that lasted right up until Myers sad passing. Undoubtedly two of the most naturally beautiful women to ever grace a Russ Meyer film, their relationship is played out charmingly and sensitively. Their sex scene in particular is incredibly tender and very real. Especially as Myers decided not to fake the orgasm because she didn’t know how to; ‘If you’re worried so much about pretending just don’t pretend. Just do it.‘. 

Cynthia on the set of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls with director Russ Meyer (left), co-star Dolly Reed and Playboy founder Hugh Hefner (right) 

After taking one of the leads in Russ Meyer’s feature, Cynthia would appear in two more films in supporting roles, both pictures being Westerns. First up was Devil’s Canyon, a Mormon production that unfortunately was never completed. Second was Molly and Lawless John (1972) in which Myers played the girlfriend of prisoner Sam Elliott, a man trying to escape John Anderson’s jail. This was to be Myers last acting role. She had at the time moved in with her Beyond the Valley of the Dolls co-star Michael Blodgett and put her career to one side whilst they were together. It was also around this time that Myers started modelling for the Cerwin-Vega corporation who specialised in stereo equipment. She was the face of the company and their ‘Miss Earthquake’ campaign when they developed the Sensurround system for the 1974 films Earthquake and The Towering Inferno.

Since the 1980s Myers has been a regular on the Glamourcon and Hollywood Collecter Show circuit. In 1994 it was revealed that one of the pictures from her original pictorial had been enclosed in the checklist for the Apollo 12 mission and was blasted into space in the pocket of astronaut Al Bean. The year 2000 saw her voted ‘tenth most popular Playmate of the Century’ by Playboy magazine. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was released on DVD in 2007 with an audio commentary that includes Myers alongside the rest of the main cast. She also appears in some extra features talking about her time and thoughts on the film and a lovely little featurette with Erica Gavin in which they talk about playing the roles of Casey and Roxanne. In 2009 she was chosen by Schlitz Brewing Company to be the face of their ‘Back to the Sixties formula’ campaign, the photograph used still as striking now as it was when first published forty years ago.

Cynthia Jeanette Myers was born in Toledo, Ohio on September 12th 1950. She died in Los Angeles, California on November 4th 2011, aged 61.

About Sex, But Not – ‘Evil Dead II’ (1987)

ON THE SURFACE – During a weekend break in the woods, a young man battles an evil spirit force and the undead.

SCRAPING THE BARREL – During a weekend break in the woods, a young man battles with his masturbation addiction. Lets face it, we’ve all been there. Sometimes there are periods of time when it doesn’t matter how many times in the day you’ve already done it, you’ve just got to masturbate again. That evil force in the woods? That’s Ash’s constant wanting to bash another out. His girlfriend’s reanimated corpse? His mind searching through his past sexual experiences to find a scenario to masturbate to, perfectly illustrated by her biting his (prefered masturbation) hand whilst saying ‘Hello lover!’ (beginning of a new fantasy). The hand becoming possessed? Well that’s simply your unconscious sexuality. Just think, how many times have you found that your hand has worked its way down to your pants and you didn’t realise? Poor Ash, he just wants another orgasm so he can carry on with the rest of his day (beat the undead so he can leave the woods) but sometimes, the more you’ve already done it, the harder and longer it can be to climax again (look at Annie struggling to read out the curse at the most crucial time in the film). Still, once it’s happened, its worth it. Those Medieval Knights at the end of the film could probably do with a wank or two. That would banish that sexual tension-filled deadite terrorising them…

Evil Dead II – Dead By Dawn was screened alongside Nightmare on Elm Street on Halloween as part of Nightmares & Deadites – The Dark Art of Graham Humphreys. Hosted by horror writer and filmmaker Paul Davis, the double bill was a celebration and exhibition of the work of Humphreys, a graphic designer and artist responsible for some of the most iconic horror film posters of the 1980s. Davis will be hosting a Christmas horror triple bill in December. Nightmares & Deadites completely sold out so booking tickets in advance for December is highly advised.

I Do What I Do To Have You – Adrian Lyne’s ‘Nine 1/2 Weeks’ (1986)

Two gorgeous lead actors? Check. One fifth of Duran Duran doing the title song for the soundtrack? Check. A director who shot one of the highest grossing films of the 1980s behind the camera? Check. Whilst neither a commercial or critical success in America when released in 1986, Nine 1/2 Weeks would go on to be a huge hit internationally and attract a large fan base on video. Well known for its sadomasochistic content, the film charts the duration of a relationship between John Gray (a once gorgeous Mickey Rourke) and Elizabeth McGraw (Kim Basinger, also equally beautiful) from its initial flirtations to its eventual emotional breakdown.

John and Elizabeth’s relationship is instantly built on lust and attraction. The two characters meet when John introduces himself after a series of exchanged glances and flirtatious smiles. After having dinner, the two spend more time together which culminates in their first ‘game’; John blindfolds Elizabeth. Whilst she seems somewhat scared, she reluctantly agrees and following some play time with an ice-cube, she becomes excited by it. Over time, the ‘games’ continue and Elizabeth is pushed further and further to her limit, initially being weary yet gradually becoming more aroused by the power that John has over her. Over the course of the relationship Elizabeth realises that it has completely taken hold of her life and after one climatic night in which she tries to challenge John’s position, she leaves him, ending their affair.

John Gray (Mickey Rourke) and Elizabeth McGraw (Kim Basinger)

Admittedly, there’s not an awful lot going on in Nine 1/2 Weeks in terms of plot and narrative. Instead the film serves as a character study of the two leads, played extremely well by both Rourke and Basinger. The appeal of the film is to show the ‘kink’ in sex that ‘normal’ people can have. Think of how many films you have seen in which power play and forms of sadomasochism have been reserved for characters who were deviant; rapists, criminals, murderers etc. Lyne’s film showed that sex is subjective and shouldn’t always be applied to stereotypes. Both McGraw and Gray are ‘normal’, like the average audience watching the film, therefore showing the viewers a more believable approach to the beginnings of sexual relationships and how power play can develop.

Rourke is gorgeous and almost unrecognisable compared to how he looks now, the subsequent years he spent trying to graft a boxing career after the film was shot having taken its toll on his appearance. He downplays the role of John very well, subtle hints of sinister sadism only noticeable upon further viewings showing some depth to Gray’s role as the dominant one.  Despite his good performance, Rourke is ultimately upstaged by Basinger. She is completely believable as the unsure woman holding herself back, her nervousness and coy attitude mirroring the audience’s as she, alongside us, tries to work out what type of person John really is. Basinger’s growth and development throughout the duration of the film feels entirely natural, her steadily growing tolerance of John’s behaviour and how much she grows to be excited by it being one of Hollywood’s more ‘truthful’ approaches in depicting sexual relationships on-screen.

Nine 1/2 Weeks was released during the AIDS paranoia of the 1980s and was a good example of showing that sadomasochism, regularly linked negatively to homosexuality, also existed between heterosexual couples. The film also has a strong message in showing that people need to take responsibility for their behaviour and actions in sexual relationships. The ending of the film is somewhat downbeat. John finally opens up and tells Elizabeth that he loves her after she has walked away. Whilst he thinks she’ll come back to him, the audience knows that she won’t, his actions and hold over her proving too much with nothing to weigh it up against. John knows enough about Elizabeth to know what she’s like and how she’ll respond to him, but she knows nothing about him, only the dominance that he shows.

That aside, Nine 1/2 Weeks is ultimately a film made to show ‘good girls’ that being ‘bad’ can be so much fun. Who doesn’t like dressing up, having sex outside, playing with the bodie’s senses during sex and having some downright dirty fun with food? Honey has never been the same for me since…