DEEP THROAT FOR PRESIDENT

Peeping two sexy new releases from Dark Sky Films.

Star Trek may have led you to believe that the time-space continuum has no sense of humor—but note the eerie similarities between Paris Hilton’s recent political bid and Linda Lovelace for President (Dark Sky Films, 95 min), a bicentennial spoof starring another sword-swallowing quasi-celebrity.

Released at the height of the Roger Corman drive-in era, Lovelace was desperately trying to escape the success of Deep Throat and producers like Arthur Marks were willing to give the slut a shot. What spewed forth is a mix of Mel Brooks, Smokey the Bear jokes and more double-entendres than an entire season of Three’s Company (although you’ve gotta admit, “The first woman president to go down in history” is pretty goddamn clever). The sex itself is innocuous; Lovelace looks like she’s humoring her cut-rate co-stars, which include Mickey Dolenz and Scatman Crothers, rather than pleasuring them. And the opening sequence—Linda posed like Patton with a camel-toe in front of an American flag—is pretty much the only full-frontal we get to see.

As an attempt at mainstream stardom, Linda Lovelace for President is a bust. But jokes that fell flat three decades ago now have outrageous camp value on the cinematic market. Imagine a country that was naïve enough to make jokes about pedophiles or let a porn queen lead a parade down Main Street? LL for President is an embarrassment of riches that could only have sprung from the ‘70s. The fact that it was almost directed by Richard Donner (as mentioned in the DVD extras) makes it even sweeter.

However, Games Girls Play (Dark Sky Films, 88 min) is a much more authentic presentation of the softcore sitcom formula made popular in the day starring authentic sitcom regular, Christina Hart, who appeared in everything from Happy Days to Hawaii-Five-O.  Sent off to a British boarding school after sleeping her way through Congress, Bunny (Hart) challenges her new roommates to a sex game involving important visiting dignitaries: the first one to bed a foreign official and snap a picture wins.

Directed by Jack Arnold, a respected ‘50s sci-fi craftsman who at this point in his career was tackling The Brady Bunch, there’s not a moment of simulated sex in the entire film. Yet Games Girls Play is still a turn-on, mostly thanks to Hart’s non-stop nude scenes, which make it seem like you’re watching that secret episode of Three’s Company (a show Hart also appeared on) where Chrissie finally takes her top off. Supported by a cast of British hotbodies with good teeth and a knack for delivering punchlines, Games Girls Play is one of the better inoffensive smut films of the era.

Christina Hart sits down for an interview on the DVD extras. But if you want to keep the image of her as a pert-nosed California girl forever locked in your memory, don’t watch. The space-time continuum has not been kind.

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America—Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.

…TO BAKE COOKIES ON MICK’S BARE ASS

Martin Scorsese lights up animatronic rock dinos the Rolling Stones.

I think people have the wrong idea about Martin Scorsese’s Shine a Light (Paramount, 121 minutes), mostly because of the name in front of the title. Neither Scorsese nor the Stones have been culturally relevant in over a decade. Why should their IMAX concert film be any different? It’s little more than a public service to folks who can’t afford a C-note for the real thing; and with that in mind, it does a bang-up job. Gathering a dream team of camera men who light up New York’s Beacon Theater with enough bulbs to bake cookies on Mick’s bare ass, Scorsese captures the Stones at their animatronic best; one-time rebels who still managed to keep their self-respect. No one can ever accuse the group of not putting on a show. And that is the real point of Scorsese’s film: how a band that seemed destined to self-destruct managed to survive and thrive well past their prime. There are no direct answers to that question, although it’s posed to the group in countless flashback interviews—most amusingly when Keith Richards is told by a journalist that’s he’s the musician most likely to die next. “I’ll be sure to let you know,” he deadpans, as only a walking corpse can. Just as Scorsese knows that Shine a Light is only a snapshot in yet another cinematic coffee table book about band whose story is still being written. Shut up and enjoy the pictures.

As far as the guest artists go: Jack White is out of his league, Christina Aguilera is out of sync, and Buddy Guy nearly blows the walls out the back of the theater. Extras on Blu-ray include four extras performances and a supplementary featurette that delivers a better backstage vibe than the film itself.

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America—Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.

¡BASTARDOS!

Checking out another Tarantino influence.

For a man whose ego is so huge it dangles out a pantleg, Quentin Tarantino has rather selflessly goosed the careers of a half-dozen actors and raised the profile of innumerable obscure films. His stamp of approval on a DVD case is equivalent to Stephen King’s classic “I’ve seen the future of horror” quote… and about as reliable. But in the case of Enzo Castellari’s The Inglorious Bastards (Severin Films, 99 minutes), he’s actually performing a public service.

While it’s far from Castellari’s best film, it’s easily his most ambitious, full of elaborate miniature work and matte paintings that create a believable WW2 backdrop for his Dirty Dozen rip-off about US Army prisoners caught behind enemy lines who wind up accidentally turning the tide of the war. For an Italian exploitation flick, the story is surprisingly chaste: plenty of bullets, only a few drops of blood and one glorious skinny-dipping scene. But it’s easy to see why QT identified with the film enough to steal the title for his next project (as well as sit down for an interview with Castellari on the DVD extras): It has the typical band of bad guys; characters with a cinematic self-awareness that they are characters, determined to one-up the celluloid creations that came before them.

The three-disc set (one for the remastered film, two for the extras, and three for the soundtrack CD) includes the aforementioned interview and a lengthy documentary that revisits the shooting experience with input from everyone from Fred “The Hammer” Williamson to German Soldier #2.

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America—Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.

SPASTIC PLASTIC

You can’t intentionally make a cult film.

You can’t intentionally make a cult film. Like farts, they have to happen naturally. Which brings us to two new DVDs with spastic colons: Brutal Massacre: A Comedy and Forbidden Zone: In Color.

Featuring an all-star cast of horror has-beens like Gunnar Hansen, Ken Foree and David Naughton, Brutal Massacre (Anchor Bay, 95 minutes) is a bathroom BJ for the Fangoria set. (It even includes a mail-in rebate for 40% off an annual subscription.) But no matter how hard writer/director Stevan Mena’s mockumentary tries to mine the horror genre for yuks, it comes off as amateurish rather than endearing. Naughton plays a hack horror director with one last shot at low-budget redemption. His too-cutesy crew is made up of a clueless assistant director (Brian O’Halloran, Clerks), an over-qualified line producer (Ellen Sandweiss, Evil Dead) and a pint-sized Hindu director of photography with a taste for rough sex (Gerry Bednob, Walk Hard).

Crowds might eat this shit up at a horror convention, where the anticipation of ogling Linnea Quigley’s ass pushes everything to a fever pitch. But watching the Brutal Massacre shoot unfold at home is as painful as actually being there. Comedy is tough, no matter how effortless those Fresh Prince repeats make it look. And at least Mena’s last effort, the John Carpenter knock-off Malevolence, gave straight-up horror the old college try. Brutal Massacre is so eager to bend over that it loses your respect from the word “gore.”

Produced as a showcase for the theatrical noodlings of the brothers Elfman (Richard and Danny), Forbidden Zone still barely registers as a blip on the midnight movie radar even after nearly 30 years. This release (Legend Films, 74 min) might change all that, despite the fact that it’s been colorized at the behest of director Richard Elfman, who originally planned to have the negative shipped overseas and hand painted. The result is a pharmacological fantasy world, blending ‘20s silent cinema and kinky peepshows with a Rocky Horror aesthetic. It doesn’t hurt that little brother Danny contributes the musical score, including a couple of numbers that would feel right at home in Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas.

In fact, the whole production shares the Burton’s penchant for two-dimensional backdrops and animated interludes. There is some genius at work here. There’s also a lot of dry-humping performed by bearded Jewish wrestlers. Forbidden Zone often gags on its own quirkiness, but there’s an honesty and authenticity to Elfman’s bizarro universe that earns his film a free pass. Just hearing Herve Villechaize deliver the line, “I love feeling your nipples stiffen when I caress them,” earns this one a piece of cult film history.  

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America—Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.

PUTZ N’ RUINS

Casing The Bank Job and The Ruins.

Jason Statham is a putz. One or two bad films you can chalk up to a bad agent, bad script or bad karma. But when you knowingly take a role in an Uwe Boll film (In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale) you’ve essentially announced to the world, “I don’t give a shit!” Lucky for Statham that The Bank Job (Lionsgate, 110 min) came along, giving him another chance to polish his head and sharpen his British slang in a manner more becoming of the star of Snatch. Based on the true story of a gang of amateur thieves duped into retrieving compromising photos of a British royal from a safe deposit box, director Roger Donaldson spits out characters like Guy Ritchie (minus the quirky names) and sprinkles in enough of the ‘ol ultraviolence to keep the kids entertained. But deep down he’s a “substance over style” sort of guy, so it’s no surprise the film’s focus is on how the plan comes together (and subsequently falls apart) rather than on the Hong Kong tomfoolery of Statham’s Transporter saga. It’s only one rung up the ladder, but here’s hoping the British Bruce Willis can keep the momentum going. Extras on Blu-ray include a commentary, deleted scenes and facts on the real robbery which went down pretty close to how it was portrayed in the film.

Then there’s Scott Smith, whose first novel, A Simple Plan, was a solid piece of neo-noir literature, receiving almost universal acclaim. His long-awaited follow-up, The Ruins, took more than a decade to write and jumped immediately to the best-seller list.

Did I mention it was about a man-eating plant that sucks the life juices out of some teenagers in the jungle?

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But should it really take anyone 12 years to write a Stephen King knock-off that King himself could have vomited out in an afternoon? The Ruins read like a bloated screenplay. So it’s no surprise that the author himself turned it into one for first-time director Carter Smith, casting relatively unknown actors (with great abs and tits) in what is essentially a survival story with monster-movie tendencies. The performances are strong and the set-up is suitably ominous. But once the foursome gets stuck atop their pyramid prison, the story becomes a grim, humorless endurance-test, mixing trendy torture-porn and intermittently unconvincing computer effects. When your bad guy is a multi-tentacled vegetable, dude, you gotta crack a smile now and then. Blu-ray includes three separate Making Ofs, a commentary and deleted scenes all in HD.

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America—Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.

CITY BY NUMBERS

City of Men doesn’t measure up to God.

Fernando Meirelles’ City of God was an entirely different sort of gangster movie: tragic, violent and brutal, but with an agonizing loss of childhood innocence. It was every bit as brilliant as Goodfellas but subtitles kept it out of the mainstream. “If I wanted to read at the movies I’d a brought along a copy of Guns ‘n Ammo, goddammit!” Now City of Men (Miramax, 106 minutes) follows, a sequel in spirit that takes us back to the slums of Rio de Janeiro and introduces us to two teenagers about to hit manhood, even though one of them already has a kid. The moral choices are clear cut – work for a living or kill for a living. But director Paulo Morelli lacks Meirelles’ subtlety in fleshing out the gangbanging lifestyle, which is really no different from any American inner-city thug. Dissecting our culture’s epidemic of fatherless criminals is a noble effort—and the movie certainly does it in style. But City of God was a genuine work of art; its sequel is simply a paint-by-numbers forgery with a really nice frame.

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America—Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.

NOT-SO-DEADLY B’s

Would you rather watch Olivia rollerskate in a blouse or Ron Wood in a tight turtleneck? We chose Wood. Why? What's the significance? We... don't... know.

When crap like Xanadu earns itself a two-disc DVD release (the magical, musical edition in case you’re interested) you might be wondering if we’ve hit the saturation point. Are there are actually any titles left that haven’t hit video…and if so, should anyone be allowed to see them? I prefer to see the cup as half-full rather than half-empty. Sure, what’s left is a hodgepodge of martial arts flicks and lazy foreign erotica, but if you dig deep enough into the pile you’ll find a few curiosities left in the bin.

Phase IV (Legend Films, 84 min) is the only feature-film from Saul Bass, the man who designed the most memorable title sequences in cinema history, most notably Hitchcock’s Psycho and North By Northwest. His take on intelligent ants who wage war on a pair of scientists in the New Mexico desert is ripe for ridicule (it even got the MST3K treatment), but also insanely ambitious. With long dialogue-free stretches of macro-photography following these mini-mental giants into their network of tunnels, the ending finds humanity evolving into some human-ant hybrid. It’s Kubrick crossed with the Discovery Channel.

More insect terror awaits in The Deadly Bees (Legend Films, 84 min), directed by another Oscar winner, Freddie Francis, who brings a British sensibility to the “nature run amok” genre. After a musical intro that features Stones guitarist Ron Wood strumming for The Birds (not those Byrds, but a different group who prefer embarrassingly tight turtlenecks), a pop princess is sent out to the country to recuperate from a nervous breakdown, only to find herself caught between feuding beekeepers. Although things could have been resolved over a pint of Guinness, the bees end up stinging the shit out of anyone who’s been marked with the “scent of fear.” Which is actually just Old Spice and warm beer.

Hammer Films specialized in drawing-room horrors and The Man Who Could Cheat Death (Legend Films, 83 min) is a prime example of their chatty brilliance. Anton Diffring stars as a snobby sculptor who needs the extract of human glands to remain forever young. Christopher Lee gets to lose the fangs for a supporting role, helping Scotland Yard piece together a string of disappearances. In usual Hammer fashion, everything is resolved by burning down the joint, but not before we’re treated to some fine acting all around.

Then there’s The Sender (Legend Films, 92 min), a sedated psychological thriller that feels like David Cronenberg on an off-day. Confronted with a suicidal teen with telepathic powers, Dr. Gail Farmer (Kathryn Harrold) tries to sort through his mommy issues before he gets all Carrie on her ass. Other than a startling shock treatment sequence, the movie is too drowsy to inspire much interest. Director Roger Christian went on to helm John Travolta’s big-budget Scientology sermon, Battlefield Earth, so his “beingness” is obviously back on track.

All of the above titles are available exclusively at Best Buy through July.

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America—Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.

MEAT GROUP

Joe D’Amato’s Papaya: Love Goddess of the Cannibals is more of a sausage fest.

Not that the world couldn’t use another scathing expose on the dangers of nuclear power in third world countries—you just wouldn’t expect it to come under the title Papaya: Love Goddess of the Cannibals (Severin Film, 89 minutes). And certainly not from Joe D’Amato, a director whose previous career highlight involved a woman jacking off a Clydsedale. But this 1978 skin flick gets so sidetracked on social issues and island politics that it forgets to deliver on the title’s promise of death and debauchery. Things start promisingly enough with some foreplay involving the aforementioned tropical fruit and a surprise castration, but our guide through the overly plotted story, Sirpa Lane (infamous for her own animal act in Walerian Borowczyk’s The Beast), is far from masturbatory material. Co-star “Melissa” spends most of the film topless, but her sex scenes are such a timid touch ‘n grope act that the occasional flash of full frontal male nudity is actually a welcome break in the monotony. In the plus column, D’Amato composes some classy shots and the editing is intermittently inspired. That’s still not enough to make Papaya worth watching, but composer Stelvio Cipriani funktastic score makes the whole thing worth listening to, anyway.

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America—Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.

RECYCLE, REGURGITATE, RESURRECT

Reconstituted classics and quasi-zombies.

Sometimes it’s best to just grieve and move on. When Matt Groening’s second TV progeny, Futurama, passed away quietly during a Vikings/Packers game on the Fox network five years ago, I mourned just like anyone else. Yet, as much potential as the show had, it only rarely hit the sitcom sweet spot like its overachieving older sibling, The Simpsons. So why bring it back for a series of 90-minute mega-episodes premiering on DVD? In two words: Family Guy.

Realizing that an unwarranted cancellation, followed by a well-promoted resurrection, could spell lingering success for Groening’s creation too, Fox is now on their second Futurama movie, The Beast with a Billion Backs (20^th Century Fox, 89 minutes). The original voice-cast brings their A-game and every character of significance makes an appearance, but the jokes are stretched like a bad facelift. Large chunks of Bender’s shiny metal ass have been grafted here and there in an attempt to preserve the show’s dignity. But it’s pretty clear Fry, Leela and Zoidberg should have been left to orbit the Earth in peace.

Then there’s Jack Black, who wore out his welcome as a movie star the weekend School of Rock opened and hasn’t found another role to fit him since. Odds were a Michel Gondry film (director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) wouldn’t be his best bet, either. But that’s why they play the game, my friends.

Be Kind Rewind (New Line Home Entertainment, 102 minutes) is just the sort of Godard-meets-Walt Disney experiment Gondry specializes in. Working with a Hollywood wet dream set-up (Black and Mos Def accidentally erase all the videotapes in the store where the latter’s character works and have to reshoot the movies themselves), Gondry does his best to prove the auteur theory by turning the movie into an improv-amateur-art flick, satiating the suits with scenes of a low-rent Ghostbusters but keeping his camera focused on a higher purpose. Be Kind Rewind may be too sloppy for an Oscar, but it’s the biggest open-mouth kiss the movies have had in a long time.

Meanwhile, The Signal (Magnolia Home Entertainment, 103 minutes) cashes in on the apocalypse craze, borrowing the central idea of Stephen King’s Cell but managing to improve upon it with a meager budget of around 50K. Anyone caught watching the unexplained transmission (which looks like the psychedelic visualer from iTunes) goes soft in the head and starts cracking skulls. In the midst of this rage-induced rapture, directors Jacob Gentry, David Bruckner and Dan Bush divide a love-triangle into three parts, mixing mocha-black comedy with shots of straight-up horror. Call it brainwashing, but this is the best goddamn thing I’ve seen in weeks!

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America— Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.

A DVD blog for inveterate couch potatoes.

Greetings, spuds. For the inaugural installment of Live from the Couch, we’re gonna look at two DVD releases concerning the venerated, beleaguered band Joy Division. 

Frontman Ian Curtis was only two days away from taking Joy Division on a US tour when he committed suicide in 1980. The group that was next in line to be crowned Britain’s “Best Band in the World,” and the tour may or may not have put them over the top, but his death made them immortal. Based on the book by Curtis’ widow (Deborah Curtis, played by Samantha Morton) and directed by video auteur Anton Corbijn, Control (Genius Products, 122 minutes) takes a distinctly feminine perspective, painting Curtis as a conflicted husband/father and selfish sod. Shot in B&W—the cinematic equivalent of pressing on vinyl—Corbijn meticulously recreates the Joy Divison’s TV appearances and live shows, while actor Sam Riley does a spot-on impression of Curtis’ droning vocals and epileptic choreography. Control is as brilliantly unglamorous and working-class as the one-bedroom flat Curtis died in.

            Extras: Corbijn contributes a feature commentary and separate on-camera interview to go along with a Making Of featurette and collection of Joy Division music videos.          

Grant Gee’s documentary Joy Division (Genius Products, 96 minutes) is much more than a companion piece to Corbijn’s Control; it’s essential viewing to balance out the story. While the shadow of Curtis’ death looms large over the proceedings, there’s little here about the domestic drama that drove him to suicide. Joy Division looks at the big picture, made up of interviews, bootleg concert footage and TV appearances. From their formative years as Sex Pistols posers to rewriting punk rock diction—the rebellious “fuck you” agenda evolved into a more reflective “I’m fucked” in a matter of three short years. Gee gathers the remaining members of the band, along with Factory Records founder Tony Wilson, to relate the facts and lets the music speak for itself.

Extras: Over 75 minutes of additional interviews and a music video for Transmission.

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America— Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.

A POST MORTEM ON TWO PRE-FAB COMEDIES

Fool’s Gold lives up to its name; The Bucket List actually kicks a little booty.

Since it’s a slow week in the world of independent/underground/alternative cinema, let’s dissect that particular brand of Hollywood product known as the “pre-fab comedy.” Epitomized by the likes of Wild Hogs and anything starring Matthew McConaughey, the pre-fab comedy is a cheap slut dressed up like a high-class whore. There may be some curb appeal, but you get what you pay for. In the case of a Fool’s Gold (PG-13, Warner Home Video, 112 minutes), you’re lucky if that’s not some sort of cinematic STD.  

The pitch probably sounded good: Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey are a pair of bickering tropical treasure hunters whose marriage is rekindled by their wacky exploits in pursuit of a fabled shipwreck. Check that—it still sounds like the ass end of a late-night run for the border. But Hudson is hot in a flat-chested sort of way. And McConaughey specializes in this sort of “himbo” horseshit. Yet the very definition of the pre-fab  comedy is that all the work was done before the cameras even rolled. It’s all in the packaging; details are for critics and auteurs.

Still, it’s hardly worth mocking a movie that’s this intent on embarrassing itself. From McConaughey’s record-setting shirtless performance (honestly, even porn actors don’t find this many excuses to go bare-chested) to ex-Cosby kid Malcolm Jamal-Warner’s brilliant career makeover as a Rastafarian gangster, Fool’s Gold is a treasure map of potential Razzie Award moments. That being said, while the comedy is about as fresh as a Jeff Foxworthy HBO special, the action scenes are shot with more realistic verve than the new Geriatric Jones adventure. So, pat yourself on the back boys.

But just as a double-wide can make the perfect home for a new family and their Bob Seger-series Hummel figurines collection, a pre-fab comedy can hit the spot if the conditions are right. The Bucket List (PG-13, Warner Home Video, 97 minutes), bottomed-out for me before it even hit theaters, with its cutsey ad campaign pitching the idea of two terminally ill buddies (played by two terminally overexposed actors, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) who hit the road to live out their dreams before they die. You’d think that Nicholson setting off on this philosophical journey would resonate with the Easy Rider generation who watched him do the same thing on the back of a motorcycle 40 years earlier. But those selfish bastards sold their children for Humvees and hi-definition TVs. Don’t trust anyone over 60, man.

Morgan Freeman lays down a foundation of reassuring voice-overs while Nicholson paints the whole thing his usual shade of crazy. But there’s some meat left on the bones of Justin Zackham’s script, even after director Rob Reiner got done picking it clean. Amidst the sap and sentiment, both actors find a couple of moments to escape the blueprints and play someone other than themselves for the first time in a few movies. And in Hollywood’s pre-fab subdivision, that’s like putting pink flamingos in your fucking front yard.

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America— Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.