Movies About Girls

Honey Britches (1971)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:45:00 PST

AKA Shantytown Honeymoon, Honey Pie, Hillbilly Hooker, Little Whorehouse on the Prairie, Demented Death Farm Massacre
Rated R
USA

"These hillbillies are big, dumb, and strong. They got muscles they ain't even used yet. Especially in their heads."

Alright, so Kentucky-fried exploitation handyman Donn Davison wasn't the greatest filmmaker - even by my bottom-shelf standards, he's was a cinematic bungler - but he was fantastic at yo-yo tricks. A world champion, even. He was also a magician, specializing in grisly spookshow gags. He also ran the notorious Dragon Art Theater in California for a spell, did voice-overs on countless movie trailers and radio spots, and acted as producer, screenwriter, and director of promotions for Film Ventures International. He also released several helpful how-to books on hypnotism and magic tricks, and even wrote a novel. He might have also gone to the moon once. And listen, the poor fella died at the relatively tender age of 55, so who knows what else he might have accomplished had he lingered on a little longer? So let us cut him some slack on this movie directing thing. He clearly had bigger fish to fry than this goofy bullshit.

Davison shot Honey Britches in Alpharette, Georgia. From its friendly, easy-to-navigate website, the city has clearly grown into its own in the past 35 years. But as depicted in Honey Britches, it's pretty much just a clump of trees and a few shacks. Perhaps it's my Yankee upbringing, but there's something magical about the (non)set design in this movie. How could a place like this exist? Who would live there? You could take all the actors out of the movie and just film the decayed backwoods scenery, and I'd watch it, completely transfixed.

Ah, but you get more than a creepy travelogue here. You get a crime story!

A mismatched group of jewel thieves - Phillip (Mike Coolik), a stuffy, bearded, pseudo-Brit; Kirk (Jim Peck), sideburned slickster; and Karen (Pepper Thurston) and Susan (Trudy Moore), two sharp-tongued gangster molls - crash their getaway plane (!) in the woods of North Carolina. They decide to hole up in the nearest shack and wait until the heat is off before they make their next move.

Meanwhile, a couple of backwoods moonshine runners drop off their weekly shipment to Jessabelle's house of ill-repute. Jess (Valarie Lipsey, a hilariously bad actress) is a statuesque, Pam Grier-ish beauty with full command over her body and her business, which clearly confuses the backwards local yokels. Head shine-pusher Harlan P Craven (George Ellis, Legend of Blood Mountain) exchanges sharp words with the unlikely hillbilly hooker, but she quickly puts hypocritical Harlan in his place.

Interestingly, even though it looks very much like the movie will be about her and her relationship to the bigoted locals, Davison never returns to Jessabelle's house or her story. So why did we go there in the first place? It's as if he changed the entire plot mid-stream, just because he found a girl with bigger tits. It couldn't have been her atrocious acting. There's plenty more of that in here.

Anyway, the blundering robbers ditch their jeep in a clump of trees and then wander through the forest until they come upon the shack of Reba Sue Craven (Ashley Brooke, who is listed as a one-time actress, but looks hauntingly familiar to me. I'm guessing obscure 70's porn starlet?), Harlan's inexplicably gorgeous young wife. She offers them some meager hospitality, and the eagerly take it. As the Craven's do not have any indoor plumbing, Karen and the Amazonian Susan throw on bikinis and head over to the nearby pond to bathe. Reba-Sue is thrown off by their big-city immodesty, but she rolls with it.

Harlan comes home from a busy day hustling corn liquor to find his wife innocently entertaining the two city fellas. This does not make him happy. Along the way, he found their abandoned Jeep and appropriated it, so they're not so thrilled with him, either. But then Harlan gets an eyeful of Susan's magnificent rack, and everything gets smoothed over. Harlan lets the strangers stay the night. He even lets the girls take his bedroom. He and Reba Sue bed down on the kitchen floor, but when his new wife strips down to her underwear and tries to get it on with her hubby (showing off her cesarean scar in the process), the drunken, conflicted Harlan just pushes her away. Clearly, this pop-eyed old fellow has problems.

Speaking of problems, the next morning, Harlan listens to the radio and hears a news report about the missing jewel thieves. Even in his alcoholic haze, he figures out that the culprits are his new house guests. Phillip pulls a gun on him and tells hem that they'll be staying a while. He also orders Reba Sue to rustle up some clothes for them so that they'll fit in with the mountain-folk.

Later on, while Karen, Harlan and Phillip are out doing god knows what, Kirk sits at the kitchen table, bickering with Susan. He finally tells her to get the fuck out, because he's got pressing business with the lady of the house. He barges in to Reba Sue's bedroom, startling the half-naked hillbilly. Then he forces himself on her. When Karen gets wind of it - they're a couple, apparently - she goes bananas, and she and Reba Sue get into a vicious catfight on the kitchen floor. The scuffle ends when Reba Sue cracks Karen's skull with a moonshine jug, killing her. When Kirk announces that Karen's dead, Reba Sue stares directly into the camera and lets out a throaty scream. It's pretty awesome.

So now the robbers have Harlan over a barrel. If he makes a peep about their whereabouts, they'll spill the beans about Karen. He agrees, and buries her in the backyard. Inside, Reba Sue confesses to Kirk that she was forced to marry Harlan because her father owed him $200. Kirk shows her his stash of diamonds and promises to take her with him when they split, if she, you know, plays her cards right.

Meanwhile, Kirk and Phillip cook up a scheme to further wreck Harlan's life. Kirk figures that Harlan must have a stash of moonshine profits somewhere in the house. He tells Phillip he'll start tagging along with Harlan on his runs to keep him away from the shack, while Phillip roots around for the cash. Phil also instructs Susan to use her powers of seduction to weaken Harlan's resolve, so that perhaps he'll just tell her where the money is hidden. So, that's the plan.

Kirk shows up for his first day of work, and Harlan promptly jams a pitchfork through his neck. I did not see that coming. Phillip finds out and gives chase. Somewhere along the way, Big Tits Susan gets run over by the Jeep. Phillip chases Harlen through the woods, and they wrassle. And then Phillip kills the smart-alecky bastard. He comes home to find Reba Sue rifling through the dead city-slickers belongings, which includes a handgun and a million dollars worth of diamonds. Harlan reckons he can take that shit to his shifty pal in Charlotte, who will give him a pretty penny for it. A pretty penny, indeed. "With all the money I'll have, I can make a new start," says Harlan.

Reba stares at him quizzically while fondling the handgun. All the money you'll have? Fuck that.

One of the more stubbornly artless offerings from the 70's drive-in canon, the only element that elevates Honey Britches from Super 8 home movie level is the fact that it was actually shot on 35mm. It does have a surprising amount of blood for 1971, but its also got a surprising dearth of nudity. Reba-Sue briefly flashes boob when Kirk's molesting her, but molested-boob hardly counts, does it? Otherwise, the film is quite chaste. So what are we left with? Well, as with all choice nuggets of badfilm, Honey Britches is a full-immersion experience. Nothing - not the badly scratched print, the woeful acting, the eyeball-offending ugliness of the shacks and the barren woods, or even the tomato sauce gunshot wounds - can pull you out of this movie's hypnotic spell. For the 80 or so minutes that it ever-so-slowly unspools, you can't help but to be fully engrossed in this lurid melodrama, acted out by clueless non-actors in some strange and distant land nearly 40 years ago. It is fitting that most of the cast came and went with this movie. The better to imagine them as ethereal spirits of the Georgian woods, who somehow managed to manifest themselves for Davison's cockeyed camera, and then slipped back into the darkness of the undergrowth. I haven't seen anything so oddly soothing yet vaguely troubling since the last time I chugged an entire bottle of Nyquil and spent 36 hours snoozing away on the couch.

I'm not sure if that's a recommendation for Honey Britches or Nyquil, but I'd certainly try one of 'em this weekend, if I was you.

By the way, in the mid 80's, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers helmer Fred Olen Ray edited some random John Carradine footage into Honey Britches and sold it to Troma, who released it as Demented Death Farm Massacre, and hyped it as "Deliverance Meets A Fish Called Wanda". Holy smokes, they are fucking crazy at Troma.

Honey Britches is available from Something Weird Video.

Clip: Honey Britches trailer!

- Ken McIntyre

Murder World (2009)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:20:31 PST

AKA Pearblossom
Directed by Ron Carlson
Starring Sophie Monk, Anya Lahiri, Charles Napier
Unrated
USA

"You rotten bitch. You killed my little friend!"

First off, I think our Bad Actress of the Year Award has to go to Sophie Monk. She's incredibly awful. If she was walking around in some other, less blinding sack of skin, she would have been laughed out of the audition. But she is blessed/cursed with a million-dollar-pout, long legs, and a top-shelf rack, so until her beauty starts to fade, every man that stumbles into her vortex - including, clearly, director Ron Carlson - will continue to tell her she's wonderful, even though she's pretty much the exact opposite of wonderful. I suppose in one way it's fitting that she got this role - that is her character, after all - but seriously, she's on the Ed Wood acting troupe level. Her line reading is so wooden I'm still plucking the splinters out of my eyeballs.

But hey, one bad actress can't derail a whole movie, can she? Let us find out. Murder World begins, as many groovy scenes do, in 1968, at a swinging house party held by one Warren James (Justin Shilton). Apparently James is some sort of movie star. He's also a cad and a creep, as evidenced by the scene in which he coaxes naïve Southern belle/would-be actress Carrie-Lain (Scout Taylor Compton, Rob Zombie's Halloween) into his bedroom to "Run some lines", and once he gets her in there, threatens to beat her face in with a bar of soap in an old gym sock. She is saved from this ugly fate by Brooke (Sophie Monk), a statuesque blonde runway model/frenemy of Warren's. Outraged at his behavior, she stabs him in the neck, leaving him to choke to death on his own blood. And then she gets the fuck out of there.

And so, into the night zooms Brooke and her lesbian lover Rhea (British/Finnish/Indian model-cum-actress Anya Lahiri), in a break-neck run to escape Brooke's star-killer fate. From the get-go, Rhea is too twitchy and over-dramatic to handle a situation of this gravity, so she's already nearing a full-blown panic. Then she finds some kind of flower stuck under their windshield wiper (a Pearblossom? Who knows), which really freaks her out, for some reason. Then they run over a possum, which puts her right over the edge. She demands they pull over, so that she can catch her breath and sputter incoherent, pseudo-Christian jibber-jabber.

"Rhea, you are overreacting," barks the agitated Brooke. And indeed she is, blubbering about signs and portents. But just then a gust of wind shows up and starts throwing blondie around. She actually tries to fight the wind with a stick, but it knocks her out. And then she dies. And then God shows up in the guise of a hot lesbian vampire, and gives Rhea a smooch. Then she turns her into an angel, and at Rhea's whiny behest, brings her gal-pal back as a monster. Or something. And then there's more making out.

Flash-forward to New Years Eve, 2008. The girls - in muddy lingerie - are "Reborn" via garbage bags buried under the sand at the beach. First order of business? Make out, naturally

Cut to the sheriff of Pearblossom - for that is where they are -wiling away the night at the precinct, watching a TV show where chicks in bikinis chase chickens around. Said sheriff is essayed by none other than legendary character actor Charles Napier, in full asshole mode.
His deputy is a little person, Felix Shoe (Danny Woodburn, AKA Mickey from Seinfeld) which you don't see everyday. Clearly, given an 80 year old Sheriff and a four-foot tall deputy, this is not a town that sees much action.

Cut to: Rhea and Brooke, figuring out what happened. Turns out they're immortal now, and they've been sleeping for 40 years. Brooke figures out pretty quick that she's some kind of vampire/cannibal, so she eats a fat, high-voiced Bob Ross lookalike who was on his way to a bowling tournament. Then she eats a honcho mustache dude who was hanging around, for good measure. Brooke realizes that she derives both pleasure and power from eating people. So that pretty much dictates her behavior. Lesbo-Jesus warned Rhea that this would probably happen, and that it's her job to not only keep Brooke from eating innocent bystanders, but from destroying evil creatures like her whenever she finds them. Given Rhea's hysterical reactions to everything around her, she doesn't particularly seem up to the job.

It's almost dawn when Brook is through eating people, so the girls hole up at a gas station run by young Dan (Patrick Renna, AKA the fat kid from The Sandlot) At first our man Dan is alarmed, assuming they are there to rob him, but then he goes with it when he thinks he might get laid.

Meanwhile, Deputy Half-pint finds the girls' leftovers strewn all over the road, and calls it on to the boss.

Rhea begins to feel weak. She realizes that she needs to feed off of Brooke. Who knows why. So, she bites her neck and sucks out some life-juice. Later on, they watch a true crime show on the "F" channel. The episode happens to be about the Warren James murder. Turns out that Brooke wasn't saving the other chick at all, she was just into killing the dude. We find this out via an interview with the now 60 year old Scout Taylor Compton, in hilariously shoddy old-age make-up. Brooke shrugs it off and tries to eat Dan, but Rhea stops her, and so, they have a lesbian wrestling match. Brooke appears to strangle Rhea to death, and then she chases poor Dan around the store. A loudmouth Persian guy (Marshall Manesh) shows up and foils Brooke's plans. Dan nearly manages to escape, but she bites his leg as he bails. And then Brooke's face gets half-melted by the sun. And then she kills the Iranian dude, and eats his wife.

Dan runs into Felix on the road and explains what's up. Vampires, lesbians, the whole bit.
Felix assumes Dan's gone bananas, but he checks it out anyway. The gas station, by the way, is called Murder World. That's an odd name for a gas station. Anyway, clearly, things aren't going to work out for the pint-sized policeman. It's up to asshole sheriff to save the day...or the night. Whatever.

But that doesn't work out either. Brooke kills everybody and takes off in an SUV.

But guess what? Rhea's not dead. Or maybe she was, but God-disguised-as-a-hot-lesbian shows back up (in a see-through top!) and kisses her back to life. So she hops into the cop car and takes off after Brooke. She catches up with her, and they make up. And then make out. Or do they?

Much like the equally frustrating Lesbian Vampire Killers, with which this film obviously shares some similarities, Murder World suffers from an inability to realize how absurd it is. There was all the potential in the world for a campy, gory, and most importantly funny movie somewhere in the mess, but it's lost in a tedious, talky script and hobbled by Monk's non-acting. It never really delivers on its lesbian premise, either: the girls peck each other, sure, but there's no full-on girl-on-girl action, and God is the only one who shows her boobs - and even then, they're under a layer of gauze and smoke and bullshit.

While the film is otherwise competently produced - the high-end digital video picture is crisp, and the supporting cast members are all fine in their roles - Murder World stubbornly refuses to deliver the goods. I'm not sure how he did it, but Ron Carlson actually made an unwatchable lesbian vampire movie. Congratulations, Mr. Carlson. You've achieved the impossible. I can't wait to see what sub-genre he fucks up next.

PS: Just so you know, if I ever meet Sophie Monk in person, I'm going to tell her I was just goofing, and that she's actually a very talented actress. I won't want to, but I know I will.

- Ken McIntyre

Movies About Girls Podcast Episode 40

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:01:38 PST

Hello, everyone! Just in time to usher in your week, it's the new episode of the Movies About Girls Podcast! This week, Ken, Seth, Stacey and Cherrybomb are joined by Mike Demonik and Joey Sinn from Born of Thunder. First, we tackle 2007's blaxploitation/puppet-porn epic Black Devil Doll starring the fetching young starlet, Heather Murphy!

Then, we wade through the thorny world of Harry Novak's 1973 softcore/killer plant mash-up, Please Don't Eat My Mother, starring 70's skin-queen Rene Bond!

Plus! Weird News, the Top 5 Bottom 5 DVD releases of the Week, Songs About Girls, Listener Feedback, Streakin' Weekly, and lots more! I know, you want in. But how? Well, it's easy! You can Subscribe on I-Tunes, Click on the banner, listen on the Pickle Player, or just listen below.

Thanks for checking us out!

PS: Bands played on tonight's show:
The Ghetto Ways
Frank Popp Ensemble
Teenage Bottlerocket
The Nomads
The Malakas

PPS: Love us? Hate us? Love us but also hate us? Call our voicemail and let us know! 206-426-6504!

Please Don't Eat My Mother (1973)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:42:27 PST

AKA Glump, Hungry Pets, Please Not My Mother, Please Release My Mother,
Sexpot Swingers
Rated X
USA

"You hate your mother?"
"No, I love her."
"That's very unusual."

Carl Monson (RIP) was a low-rent grindhouse auteur who wrote, produced, directed, and acted in a fistful of memorable trash-films in the early 70's, many of them, including this one, for slime-cinema legend Harry Novak's company, Box Office International. His most productive year was clearly 1973; besides producing, directing, and acting in Please Don't Eat My Mother, he also produced A Scream in the Streets and The Booby Trap, two ultra-violent and very strange crime flicks, the very same year. Monson's trademarks were bright, vivid colors, ugly actors and uglier production design, and awkward sex scenes randomly crowbarred in whenever possible. All of those are in ample evidence in Please Don't Eat My Mother, an absurd soft-core reworking of Roger Corman's infamous three-day wonder Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

Henry Fudd (Buck Kartalian) is a creepy middle-aged schlub who lives with his overbearing mother, works at some unknown menial job, and spends his lunchtime ogling women. Not a bad cat, really, but clearly an underchiever.

A word, before we continue, about the great Buck Kartalian. Buck was born in Detroit, in 1922. He grew up in New York City and was drafted into the Navy during World War II, where he served on a Destroyer in the Pacific. After the war, Buck became a bodybuilder. He won the Mr. New York contest, and was a Mr America runner-up. Later on he became a professional wrestler, and was a fan favorite on the regional circuit. One day, he tagged along with some actor friends he knew at the gym and blundered into a blind audition. He got the role, and was quickly bitten by the acting bug. Although he is well-known for his low-budget exploitation films, it should be known that Buck has appeared in many high-profile and well-loved films and TV series, including Cool Hand Luke (1967), Myra Breckinridge (1970), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), and 70's Saturday morning kid-classic The Monster Squad (1976). Buck is still active in his late 80's, appearing most recently in How I Met Your Mother (2005) and National Lampoon's Cattle Call (2006). Regardless of the budget or artistic merit of the role, Buck always delivers an honest and believable performance, including his portrayal of Henry Fudd. The great thing about Buck's performance here is that he often plays it like straight drama. You actually felt for the guy, and you believed that Buck was Henry, despite the fact that Buck-the-actor is a much more accomplished human being than Henry could ever hope to be.

So, there's our man Henry, content to wile away his afternoons watching an amorous couple have fumbling car-sex while chomping on a ham sandwich. One day, he passes by an odd flower shop. It appears to be built into a construction site, and they've only actually got one plant for sale. It's a very special plant, however - it talks. Sure, the flouncing florist doesn't hear it, but Henry does. He takes his new friend home and dutifully feeds it plant food. It responds well, and starts to grow. His meddling mother suspects that Henry's up to something, and so when he heads off to work, she snoops around his room. At this point, however, there isn't much to see, except for an exceptionally ugly plant.

Eventually the plant starts talking to Henry in a seductive voice. She tells him she wants to eat some flies. So he catches some, and she starts growing even larger. And then she wants to eat a frog. So, you see where this is going. Henry is just happy to have some female attention, even if it is just with a plant. He complies with her wishes, even though they get more complicated, and even though his affair with the plant is beginning to cause a rift between him and his mother.

The plant soon graduates to dogs. Henry gets a job at the pound to accommodate her, bringing home strays to feed to her. She, naturally, grows bigger with each meal. Their relationship continues to develop as well, in bizarre and uncomfortable ways. For example, at one point, they have a very awkward discussion about Henry's late-night boners.

This ugly little scenario goes on and on until, finally, mom and the plant have a stand-off.
Guess what? Despite the polite request offered by the film's title, the plant eats Henry's mom. He is slightly upset, but not, you know, devastated or anything. By the way, you can hear that stupid dog he fed to the plant earlier barking through that entire scene.

Henry thinks he might have gotten away with the sorta-on-purpose murder of his mom until a detective, Officer O'Columbus (director Monson) shows up and starts asking questions.
A neighbor reported Henry's mom as missing, so he came by to get to the bottom of things. While he interrogates a panicked Henry, the plant starts yapping. Assuming that it's actually mom, O'Columbus goes into the bedroom to investigate, and the plant eats him. The paper mache monster is really starting to fall apart at this point,which adds some unintentional yucks to the proceedings. After the plant eats the cop, her relationship with Henry ceases being a partnership, and turns predatory. When Henry protests and threatens not to feed her anymore, the plant spits out the cop's gun and badge. If Henry wants to play rough, the plant is quite willing to do so. After all, who would they arrest? Henry or a plant?

The plant decides she doesn't like the taste of men, so she wants Henry to go find her some girls to eat. Since he's a loser, he doesn't know any, so he has to hire a hooker. When said hooker shows up, she insults Henry, which makes it easier for him to feed her to the plant. By the way, it should be noted that every woman in this movie, including Henry's mom but excluding the hot blonde hippy chick, are all redheads. It's not a plot point or anything, but I just thought you should know. Anyway, after writhing on the bed for awhile, the hooker gets chomped. The plant likes the taste, and demands that Henry gets s0me more. He hits the streets to look for more girls, but it causes him many problems, and most of the time, his requests are met with punches in the stomach.

And then, Henry tries to fuck the plant. Why not, at this point? She tells him it's not going to work out, and sends him back to the gay florist to get another plant like her, so she can breed. Amazingly, the florist has one. Also amazingly, he's male. He's also homophobic and an avid TV watcher.

The man-plant settles in, and the girl-plant shows him the ropes. Henry, of course, is forced to bring back more live girls for them to eat. And then we go back to the fucking couple. Throughout this ordeal, there's been a couple having hippy sex in the woods. Henry would often stop by to watch. This time he pulls a gun and makes them go back to his place to feed the plant. The blonde, as previously mentioned, is seriously hot. There's a lot of penis involved in the scene, though.

And then the plants fuck while Henry tries to shoot himself in the head. Then he goes out and spies on a neighbor couple (70's porn star Rene Bond and her boyfriend and frequent co-star Rick Lutze) while they have sex. They just got home from watching a porn flick, and they're feeling quite amorous. Things go south after the love making, however, and then they go berserk. At one point, the guy says, "You're no surprise package yourself, you know."
She pulls out a gun on the guy and she shoots him. You shouldn't call a girl "Stupid broad" when she's got a gun aimed at you.

Henry, who watched then entire drama unfold from the bedroom window, makes a deal with her to take the body. For some reason, it turns the chick on to watch her boyfriend get eaten by the plant. And so, finally, Henry gets laid.

Or does he? Please don't eat the busty redhead!
By the way, you get a serious shot of Buck's erection in that scene.

Clearly not for everyone, Please Don't Eat My Mother is an acid-gobbling piece of no-fi sexploitation junk that stands out both for the shabbiness of its monster and for its oddly affecting protagonist, a teeth-gnashing, chronically masturbating man-child fleshed out into a living, breathing hunk of sweaty desperation by Buck Kartalian, one of exploitation's most sadly unsung character actors. Boner-seekers will be out of luck, since the sex scenes are ineptly staged and boring to watch, but the sniveling characters, eye-scorching sets and inept creature construction are just too bizarre to miss. High weirdness awaits you in perhaps the most ill-planned porn remake this side of Edward Penishands.

Please Don't Eat My Mother is available from Something Weird Video.

- Ken McIntyre

Heart Strings (2002)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:02:40 PST

Directed by Chloe Nicole
Starring Chloe, Daisy Chain, Kylie Ireland, Tyler Wood
Rated XXX
USA

"Now, that was punk rock."

Heartstrings-the-movie is a Beyond the Valley of the Dolls style rockudrama about a mostly girl band from Hollywood determined to claw their way to the top. Plus, it's got explicit anal sex. Heartstrings-the-band is an all porn star supergroup consisting of 10 foot tall blonde deity Daisy Chain on guitar, the ever-present Kylie Ireland as the punk-in-Vixen's clothes 'Brinks', skinny, red-headed ball o' fire Chloe on bass, and some dude in silver pants named Tyler Wood on vocals. It looks like Wood picked up the Buckcherry Halloween costume at Wal-mart for his rock star outfit, and the puffball flash metal-lite the band is heard playing at the film's opening sounds better suited for one of those dumps in New Hampshire that the Bullet Boys still play at than LA, but I'm not here to review fake rock bands, I'm here for the pussy.

As our story unfolds, the Heartstrings are tearing up Tinseltown with their signature brand of estro-glam. It's rock and rollin' business as usual at the club, complete with groupies- or at least one of them. Aria, a dramatic looking brunette in a panty-less pink miniskirt and fake bulletbelt, sits at the bar, licking her lips over the power-ballad king on stage. After a little classic power-brokering, she's sent to the men's room by Kyle, the Heartstrings' sleazy manager, with a promise to meet Tyler later- if she's lucky.

There's no time for the 'ol in and out now anyway, as Kyle has big news for the band. Seems a certain sideburned son of a bitch by the name of Forrest Black (Eric Masterson), also known as the head honcho of Black Note records, has his eye on the Heartstrings. "He wants to hear your demo for consideration", Kyle tells them excitedly. "You're as good as signed!" Only in Hollywood. As the band chatter amongst themselves about their inexplicable stroke of luck, Kyle sneaks off to the bathroom and the waiting groupie. She services him in every way possibe. As she wipes the man-goo from her lips, she asks, hopefully, "Is Tyler going to be here soon?" Kyle snorts. "Tyler left already. Maybe next time." And then he splits, leaving her humiliated.

Welcome to rock and roll, baby.

Meanwhile, back at the Heartstrings ranch, Tyler and Daisy are discussing their precarious relationship.
"It's an unwritten rule", she says. "No fucking between band members. Look what happened to Pat Benatar!"
"Pat Benatar? They're still together."
"You know what I mean."
They fuck anyway.

Ever resourceful Kyle has a surefire plan for inking the deal with Black Note. He wants to offer up his woman to Forrest Black. "You want me to what?!" asks an incredulous Mya (Wendy Divine), his long suffering girlfriend. "It's sleazy, I don't want to do it." Kyle puts on his best snake charmer voice. "Baby, that's just the way this business works. It's how we cement the deal." Listen, I know plenty of record label guys. Sleeping with one of those fuckers is way beyond the call of duty.

But Mya is dedicated to the Heartstrings cause, so she reluctantly agrees to the foolish plan. Foolish because there might not even be a band by the time she gets Black's pants off.
"I can't do this anymore", Chloe says, 5 minutes into rehearsal. "I have to go home and fuck my boyfriend." And she does.

"Gen X porn star" Chloe, instantly recognizable as the Poison groupie in half a dozen VH1 specials on...well, either Poison or groupies, has her gratuitous sex scene, and it's a revelation. I have never seen anybody fuck like this, outside of a badly supervised methadone clinic, maybe. Chloe channels demons when she screws. Her eyes roll back in her head, she murmers in strange tongues, and she convulses as if hit by lightning. She even manages to wrangle a little crazy girl tenderness out of the anal portion of the proceedings. Chloe is my new favorite porn star. If there is any brilliance to having sex on film, she's beholden of big fistfuls of it.

Meanwhile, at the (literal) workshop, Brinks and Daisy are happily sanding down guitars. Normally, this would not be an erotic activity. But these are not normal girls. Suddenly voraciously horny, they launch into an audacious lesbo scene, with neon colored dildos conveniently popping up all over the place. Brinks even has one sutured to a guitar. Of course she doggy styles Daisy with it, stretching the 'guitar as a phallic substitute' metaphor to it's logical extreme. And while we're getting poetic about it, later on, Brinks backs up ass-first onto a big pink dildo attached to a vice. Vice. "Vices". Like the Circus of Power record. Kick Axe, too. Rock and roll, right?

Then Mya meets up with Mr. Black. Instead of screwing her, he takes her out to lunch, and they fall immediately in love. "I've already decided to sign the band", he tells her. She fucks him anyway.

Then everybody in the band quits.

Then Daisy plays an acoustic hippy chick song. Who would've thought that underneath the Warped tour tattoos and the Amazonian, Ozzfest chest, lies a Lilith Fair heart?

With their future hanging in the balance, pragmatic Chloe pulls everyone together and saves the day. "If this was a movie, what would we do now?" Daisy asks. I'm sure you know the answer.

Heartstrings is rife with all the loopy line delivery and threadbare plot development you'd expect in a porn flick, as well as plenty of lovely young things having seriously athletic sex. That much you knew already. But is it an accurate portrayal of life in a Hollywood rock and roll band? I dunno, I've never been there. But it's probably pretty close to the truth. I mean, something's got to explain the career of the Beautiful Creatures, right?

File this one under 'Rock and Fucking Roll'. Literally.

- Ken McIntyre

Baba Yaga (1973)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:45:50 PST

AKA Kiss Me Kill Me, Black Magic, Devil Witch
Directed by Corrado Farina
Starring Isabella De Funès, Carroll Baker, George Eastman
Rated R
Italy

"Even Snoopy, in his own way, is anti-establishment."

In Russian fairytales, Baba Yaga is an ugly old witch, but in this Italian-French arthouse/grindhouse pic, she's a MILF-y blonde in black lace (played by foxy American ex-pat Carroll Baker in old age makeup) who takes a shine to goldfish-eyed photographer Valentina (De Funès) after nearly running her over. Ms. Y plays hardball to get into Valentina's size 0 pants, starting with unexpected drop-bys and harassing phone calls and later progressing to a curse on her camera which causes people to drop dead after having their picture taken. Valentina decides to settle this hash at Baba Yaga's spooky old mansion (which features a bottomless hole in the middle of the floor), but she quickly finds herself overwhelmed on the receiving end of a whip.

Director Corrado Farina's adaptation of the comic series by Italian artist Guido Crepax emphasizes the surreal stream-of-conscious narrative and fantasy reveries (Valentina interprets her stress and confusion over Baba Yaga's attention by imagining herself as a prisoner of Nazi torturers or as part of a Prussian firing squad); he also attempted to focus on the comics' anarchist leanings, but much of it was removed by the film's producers prior to release, which proved to be a good thing, as it clashes with the witchcraft/sex angle like toothpaste and orange juice (the disc features a deleted scene involving Valentina and her pals doing an anti-US performance piece in a graveyard that should bring back painful college theater memories for some viewers). Though hardcore pain maniacs will be disappointed that the comics' sado elements are relegated to the closing whipfest, Eurocult fans will appreciate the film's pop-art groove; horror hounds and sleaze beasts will appreciate the creepy atmosphere and abundant nudity.

Extra points for: Ely Galleani as Annette, Baba Yaga's sexy, whip-toting henchwoman who also moonlights as a toy doll; Valentina's bedroom roll with commercial director Arno (George Eastman-The Grim Reaper his own self), which unfolds in slowly dissolving B&W photos that evoke comic style and framing; and the mixed combo photo shoot, in which Valentina instructs her black male model to "forget his schooling" or something like that and show his real "primitive" side (the shoot wraps with the white female model remarking offhandedly that next time they should fuck for real; moments later, she drops dead). Blue Underground's disc offers a collection of deleted and censored scenes (one of which features a full-frontal scene by Baker, looking yummy at 42); an interesting subtitled documentary about Crepax and the history of Italian comics and a interview with director Farina as well as the original trailer and a poster/still gallery.

-Paul Gaita

Black Devil Doll (2007)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:03:39 PST

Directed by Jonathan Lewis
Starring Heather Murphy, Precious Cox, Natasha Talonz
Rated X (By an all-white jury!)
USA

"Ya'll got some big ass titties, but you ain't got no muthafuckin’ brains!"

Written and produced by two of the internet’s biggest hucksters/loudmouths – Brawlin’ Broads visionary Mitch Mayes and Rotten Cotton’s own Shawn Lewis – Black Devil Doll has been hyped in horror mags and blogs for what seems like decades. In actuality, the film was produced in ’07, and has steadily made fest and midnight screenings for the past two years. It’s finally on DVD, and now the world-at-large can see what all the moral outrage and panic the streets is about. Ostensibly a mash-up of 84’s weirdo camcorder epic Black Devil Doll from Hell and the Zuni fetish doll segment of infamous 1975 TV movie Trilogy of Terror, Devil Doll also throws in odes to Soul Vengeance, Faces of Death, Combat Shock, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, and any interracial gonzo porn video from the past ten years. It’s the tender tale of a lonely girl with a huge rack and the mass-murdering, rape-happy ventriloquist’s dummy she falls in love with.

Our story opens with Mubia Abul-Jama, a 60’s era black power revolutionary, getting the electric chair. At some point he went berserk and raped/murdered a slew of white women. During the execution, he appears to be wearing a salad bowl on his head. I believe the scene is supposed to resemble the electric chair scene in Faces of Death. Anyway, he gets fried.

Meanwhile, a curvy chick named Heather (Heather Murphy) sits around watching TV, bored. She calls up her friend Natasha (Natasha Talonz), but she’s busy with a gang bang. Heather finally opts to play around with an Ouija board. She happens to experiment with it the same time as Abul- Jama gets executed, and he channels her through the board. Somehow his spirit shoots out of the board in a ball of fire and turns the ventriloquist doll she’s got sitting on the sofa into…that’s right, a black devil doll from hell.

Heather’s not all that shocked by this strange turn of events. But then her best friend is a gang-bang girl, so probably nothing rattles her at this point. Abul-Jama maintains his innocence, and Heather seems to be ok with it. And then she blows him. They develop a relationship, signified by a montage of days at the beach and the playground set to a slow jam. There’s a lot of girl/puppet sex too, which affords us ample opportunity to ogle Heather’s ample charms. So that's good.

The Devil Doll informs Heather that he cannot be happy with just one girl, and when she protests, he beats her about the face with his puppety arms. The puppet gets Heather to call her slutty friend Natasha and invite her and her friends over for a party. Devil Doll tells her to get her friends liquored up, and when he gives her the signal, she’s supposed to split. Go to “McDonalds or some shit”, he says. So then a bunch of big-assed porn chicks show up and, for whatever reason, wash a car. Then they head into Heather's. They even brought wine coolers.

There’s a plug for Rotten Cotton in there. One for Brawlin’ Broads, too. And then everybody shows off their giant boobs. One of the girls notices the puppet, but Heather just tells her she was thinking of taking up ventriloquism. Seems valid.

Then they all play Twister. Halfway through, Heather gets her cue to split. The other girls take the opportunity to shower, bathe, and tan. Why not? The puppet spikes Buffy’s (Precious Cox) drink and then puppet-rapes her. And then stabs her to death. Candy (Christine Svendsen) gets it next. He tosses a hairdryer into her bath and electrocutes her. Then he mouth-rapes her. While he does this, he flashes back to his days as a Black Panther style revolutionary.

Meanwhile, Heather’s ex-boyfriend Harold (Martin Boone) – AKA would-be rapper White T - is so distraught by Heather’s rejection that he vomits. He decides he’s going to kill the midget she’s going out with. He thinks the doll is a midget. He has not heard of reanimated fuck-hungry death-puppets. Also meanwhile, the puppet does a bunch of drugs. Then he beats another girl (Erika Branich) to death with an aluminum baseball bat. And then he fucks her.

Harold shows up and meets the puppet. They have a stand-off. Harold flashes his gun, but before he can shoot it, the puppet pulls out a blow-gun and shoots him the neck with a knock-out dart. When he wakes up, Puppet strangles him to death with a rope. And then he fucks him.

Natasha’s the last one left. She slips on her way out of the shower and smashes her head, but manages to snap out of it and fight with the puppet, Trilogy of Terror style. This affords us the opportunity to watch her naked ass jiggle as she runs around the apartment trying not get killed by the puppet. The Devil Doll tries to sweet-talk her out of the bedroom she’s locked herself in, but when that doesn’t work, he squirts acidic diarrhea against the door until it melts. And then he bangs her. I think he hypnotizes her first, though. And then, guess what? He kills her. He got the devil in him, this doll.

Heather comes home to find her friends dead. She pulls out a gun and starts shooting at him, but he smooth-talks her out of it. Or does he?

Listen, there’s no subtext or hidden meaning here. It’s just gut-bucket exploitation, with junky HG Lewis-style gore, moronic adolescent humor, and lots of fat asses and enormous jugs. While Black Devil Doll clearly aims to offend, it is very unlikely that anyone outraged by puppet-rape and cheap gore would watch it in the first place. It’s not like Black Devil Doll is going to sneak up on you next Saturday on Creature Double Feature. The film’s knee-jerk will to provoke is probably its weakest point – the shit and semen gags are more eye-rolling than shocking or funny – but director Jon Lewis makes up for it with a grisly handbag’s worth of cheap visual tricks – scratches, washed-out colors, split-screens – that quite often give off the illusion that you're actually watching slimy, early 70’s drive-in trash.

He also knows when to call it a day- the film clocks in at an economical 70 minutes. While it is not the quite the sick-fuck flick it aims for, Black Devil Doll is consistently entertaining, and should please blood-hungry sleaze beasts, especially those of us with an affection for big, floppy tits. Which is all of us, as far as I know.

- Ken McIntyre

Lucifera - The Demonlover (1972)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:58:39 PST

AKA L'amante del demonio
Directed by Paolo Lombardo
Starring Rosalba Neri, Ferdinando Poggi, Edmund Purdom
Rated R
Italy

"We heard this was the House of the Devil. Can we stay the night?"

Sometimes, with these old 70's Euro-sleaze mish-mashes, you get the feeling that the translator is just fucking with the guy who taps out the subtitles, that he's making the whole thing up as he goes along after gulping down a handful of Mescaline and washing it down with half a bottle of cherry Nyquil. That's got to be the case here. If it's not, than Paolo Lombardo is insane, because nothing about The Demon Lover makes a lick of sense.

It all starts out beautifully, though. A mini-skirted Rosalba Neri and two of her groovy-mod pals visit a creaky old mansion for kicks. They are greeted by a friendly young caretaker who attempts to give them a historical tour of the joint. They are quite uninterested in his jibber-jabber, however, and Neri bluntly tells him to knock it off. She just wants to know if the devil really lives there. That's the rumor about the place. The caretaker is non-committal about the house's current occupants, but invites them to stay for dinner anyway. They eat boiled eggs at a giant dining room table. There's a set place on the other end for the mysterious owner, just in case he shows up. He does not, unless he's already there. You know, if he's invisible.

The girls stay the night, and head off to their individual bedrooms. During the night, there is much crashing and bashing, as their often is in these sorta of situations. Neri wanders the hallways to investigate the noise, and sees a portrait of a girl engulfed in flames. The girl in said portrait looks exactly like her. "I burn," mutters Neri, clearly shaken by the image. "I burn. I burn!"

Our previously wisecracking young friend goes pale from panic and passes out. She wakes up to find herself in a pastoral 16th century German village. In this village, she is Helga, the most beautiful virgin in all the land, and she is engaged to Hans (Ferdando Poggi), a dashing young so-and-so with such charm, he can pluck birds from their nests and storke their tiny heads while they coo appreciably.

These scenes - flashbacks, perhaps, or some alternate reality, or maybe just vivid fever dreams - are shot in like some sort of bizarre fairy tale, with ridiculous costumes that aim for "Period piece", but land somewhere around "Early 70's high school production of Mother Goose". Initially, I assumed this sudden sideways detour to the Renaissance Faire would be over quickly, so we could get back to the haunted house and the go-go boots, but alas, we are stuck in this old-timey purgatory for 95% of the film. Bummer.

Anyway, whoever these villagers are, they've been slugging the Nyquil nearly as much as the film's translator, because nothing at all happens for long stretches, and the dead-eyed denizens of this gloomy glen simply mill around town, playing flutes, "checking barrels", and carrying baskets of food to market. Even a bizarre sword fight in a tavern ends in a shrug-worthy truce. The only thing that seems to perk folks up is the impending marriage of Helga and Hans. In one pivotal scene, Helga's mom finishes sewing her wedding dress and presents it to her, warning her that only Hans can see it before the wedding. If any other man should lay their peepers on it before then, Helga will be cursed. "It's like a form of the 'Evil eye'," she tells her. When Helga holds it up to her voluptuous body in front of an open window (to see her reflection, I'm assuming. Perhaps they owned no windows), a dude in a red hood suddenly pops up, spooking her and, naturally, damning her with the evil wedding dress curse.

Not wanting to start off her marriage on a bad note, Helga goes to visit the local witch - a young blonde wearing a putty nose - who tells her that to lift the curse, she'll have to show up at the top of a local hill that evening with two of her virginal pals, and then recite a bunch of gibberish. She does exactly that, but her two friends lose their way in the darkness (again, this is where I think things may have been lost in translation - it's bright daylight, but the girls complain about it being too dark to see where they're going) and they get absconded by the witch and her hooded minions. The whole ritual was just a ruse, turns out. The girls get dragged to some cave where they are forced to take part in a Satanic orgy led by a topless blonde lesbian witch/vampire. So that's pretty awesome.

Then the devil/Dracula (Edmund Perdom) shows up and sinks his fangs into Helga's pals, turning them into his slaves. Later on, they stumble into a confused Helga. They bite her in the boobs, and she spends the next day wandering around in a silent trance. Nobody really notices, though.

A with-it local girl, who also happens to be madly in love with Hans, tries to warn the other villagers that Helga is now a slave to Satan, but Helga chains her up and tears out her tongue first. It's a fruitless effort, since the villagers find her mid-murder, and sentence her to be burned alive. Helga throws herself upon the mercy of the local priest, but when she looks under his hood, she is horrified to find that...well, no spoilers, but if you've read seen any other horror movie in your entire life, than you can guess the ending. Both of them.

Despite a story that flirts with all manner of perversity and hints at unspeakable violence, nothing much happens in The Demon Lover.Witless and bloodless (but with a generous helping of nudity), this meandering snoozer would be a complete waste of time were it not for the breathless beauty of Rosalba Neri. Neri's doe eyes and exquisite curves are so captivating that it doesn't particularly matter what else is happening on screen. And that's good, because most of the time, nothing else is. Disciples of Rosalba, rejoice. Everybody else, hold out for more interesting Satanic orgies.

Clip: Assorted scenes from the film.

- Ken McIntyre

Movies About Girls Podcast Episode 39

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:36:24 PDT

Well, hello!
Happy Halloween!
This week, Ken and Jim and Stacey are on deck.
Tonight, we are joined by Alex Eruptor, who helps us navigate through the strange world of Voyage of the Rock Aliens starring the adorable and awesome Pia Zadora!

Oh, but that's not all! We also dive into the Wild Wold World of Batwoman!

Plus, the Weird News and the Top 5 and Bottom 5 DVD releases of the Week! Plus, Songs About Girls, and at least twice as much humor and hijinks than most podcasts would ever dare to offer!

I know, you want in. Well, it's easy! Click here or the banner. Or, if you'd like, you can subscribe on I Tunes. Or, you can listen on the Pickle Player. Or just listen below. We don't care how you do it. We just want you to do it.

PS: Like us? Hate us? Like us but also hate us? Leave us a voicemail! 206-426-6504!

Thanks for listening!

99 Women (1969)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:46:06 PDT

Prostitutes in Prison, Island of Despair
Directed by Jess Franco
Starring Maria Schell, Herbert Lom, Mercedes McCambridge, Maria Rohm
Rated R
Spain

“Love and hate are never far apart, and sometimes, they go together.”

Heavy-minded kinksters with a taste for ladies in chains, hard labor, and other penal sex delights might be a bit disappointed by the relatively tame quality of Jess Franco’s Women in Prison picture 99 Women. Sure, there’s a smattering of viciousness on hand, including a brief whipping scene, a gal hung from her wrists in the “punishment cell,” and some girl-on-girl-behind-bars action, though the latter is strictly soft velour, with lots of slow dissolves and tight close-ups of gasping mouths and questing fingers. But 99 Women still deserves a viewing by fetish fans and grindhouse hounds alike for several reasons. For one, it’s really the template for all the women’s prison movies that followed in its wake in the ‘70s – Roger Corman and Jack Hill’s Big Doll House, Caged Heat, and Hellhole, to name but a few, all sprang from 99 Women’s supercharged combination of jailhouse movie grit and the tireless and stylized cruelty of European S&M literature. The films that followed in its wake may have been more graphic (even Franco himself made harder and more outrageous WIP movies, including Sadomania, Ilsa the Wicked Warden, and the lunatic Barbed Wire Dolls), but 99 Women set the tone, and its considerable box office success sparked the international desire to see more of its type.

Second, it’s probably the best-looking of the entire WIP genre – Franco makes the most of his locations, which include scenes in Brazil and Spain -- and largely free of the weird visual tics that make many of Franco’s films such frustrating experiences (Jess can’t give up that roaming zoom, but he does make excellent use of lighting and editing on a limited budget, especially during an alarming gang-rape flashback). 99 Women also benefits from its strong cast, led by Mercedes McCambridge and Herbert Lom as the prison’s vicious bulldyke warden and governor, respectively; their performances, rich with menacing dialogue about the joys of discipline (“This is a place where we perform PUNISHMENT for crimes!”) suggest more severity and pain than any torture scene could accomplish. The prisoners, which include producer/screenwriter Harry Alan Towers’ girlfriend Maria Rohm, Euro sex starlet Rosalba Neri, Elisa Montes, and Luciana Paluzzi in a brief cameo, all accomplish the difficult task of looking foxy while suffering mightily.

Ever mindful of their audience’s need for the most complete presentations of filth on film possible, Blue Underground has released two DVD versions of 99 Women for their jaded eyes to feast upon. The one reviewed here is the unrated director’s cut, which offers the movie in widescreen and with enough extras to fill a punishment cell; the best among these for Franco-philes is an interview with El Jefe himself, in which he discusses the film with obvious affection. A battery of deleted scenes give an extended look at the surreal gang-rape flashback, with Jess himself lurking in the shadows; there’s also an alternate ending from Spanish TV, and a bizarre scene (which Franco didn’t film) from a Greek bootleg that starts with Rosalba Neri’s flashback, and then spins straight into the Twilight Zone with a backstory about Neri’s sister (!) enacted by a completely different cast. The uncut version extras are rounded out by the original American release trailer (“Whisper to your friends that you saw it!”) and an impressive collection of international one-sheets, lobby cards and stills. Sadly, we didn’t receive the other 99 Women disc, but what I can tell you is that it’s the “X-rated” cut, which integrates hardcore footage (again, not shot by Jess) into the movie. You’ll be able to easily tell it apart from the uncut version – there’s a big red X on the cover. Either way, it’s a hot time in the Big House for all.

– Paul Gaita

Lust in Space (2005)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:47:10 PDT

Directed by John Bacchus
Starring AJ Khan, Darian Caine, Alexia Moore, Jackie Stevens
Unrated
USA

"Are you Jamaican? Because you're Jamaican me crazy!"

This 'Lust in Space' is not to be confused with the 80's porn flick of the same starring Ron Jeremy and Lana Burner. I kinda doubt you would confuse them, because this one has even less plot than the assfuck movie. It's the fourth film in the epic "Erotic Witch" series, a never-ending jiggle-fest starring various Seduction Cinema contract girls and their taut nipples in a variety of loopy situations. This time around, it's the year 2069 (You saw that coming, didn't you?) and three vapid spacegirls (the exotic AJ Khan, vampish Darian Caine, and giant-titted newbie Alexia Moore) all poured into skin-tight silver "space" bikinis, travel back in time to thwart the deadly "erotic witch" plague. This long and traumatic journey back to 2005 mostly involves the girls lounging around in their spaceship, which appears to be somebody's kitchen, if their kitchen was made of cheese, and melted. Sometimes they lick each other's nipples, and AJ yells a lot. When they finally make it back to our time, they wander around somebody' s backyard in those groovy outfits for the rest of the movie.

At some point, newcomer Jackie Stevens shows up, and has a l-o-n-g softcore sex scene with some dude inside the spaceship, which is now a hallway covered in tinfoil. The scene is a bit on the tedious side, but Stevens possesses a real girl-next-door sexiness. She sorta resembles a young Lynda Carter, and given the right roles, would make a great b-movie starlet in the Claudia Jennings vein. In this one, however, she has almost zero to do, besides dry-hump. That's all anyone does, really. There's no subplot to speak of, but there's plenty of the usual dumb, drooling redneck gags to pad the time between the 15 minute long lesbo romps.

If you came to gawk, then this is clearly a winner, as it's pretty much wall-to-wall pseudo-sex from end to end. But if you're looking for story, or plot, or anything engaging, forget it. The promo blurb on the back cover is probably longer than the script was. Still, even with so little to do, the up-for-it cast occasionally shines, especially Darian and AJ, who are quite amusing as the clueless space-bimbos.

- Ken McIntyre

The Wild World of Batwoman (1966)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:58:16 PDT

Directed by Jerry Warren
Starring Katherine Victor, Lucki Winn, Suzanne Lodge
Unrated
USA

"She a real wildcat. I'd like to belt her one."

Jerry Warren (RIP) was a 1940's actor who became a 1950's exploitation flick huckster. He directed a handful of monstery snoozers like The Incredible Petrified World (1957) and Teenage Zombies (1959), and scissored together Mexi-horror imports like Attack of the Mayan Mummy (1964). He made his most audacious move, however, with this goofy hunk of junk, a crass and witless attempt to cash on Adam West-y Batmania. The film starred Katherine Victor (RIP), a minor 50's scream queen who was already well into her forties when she donned the ill-fitting Batwoman leotard. Her "Bat Girls" were plucked right off the street when a fleabag strip club suddenly shut down, leaving a dozen exotic dancers with nowhere to shake their moneymakers. And so began the epic superhero spoof/crime caper/serial homage/incomprehensible mess known as The Wild World of Batwoman.

It should be noted that Miss Victor concocted her own outfit, a hideous jumble of lycra, fake fur, and feathers. As Batwoman, she is the head of a very screwy crime fighting operation, one manned entirely by zonked hippy chicks who may or may not also be vampires. One thing's for sure, they like to dance. There's easily half a dozen dance breaks in this film. Some of them also look like White Panther styled revolutionaries, but I have no proof of their political affiliations.

Anyway, nefarious supercreep Rat Fink (Richard Banks) has one of Batwoman's girls kidnapped by two of his well-dressed goons. They take her back to his secret lair where a mad scientist, Doctor Neon (George Mitchell, shooting for a German accent, but landing somewhere near Apu from the Simpsons) and his Igor-esque assistant Heathcliff (Lloyd Nelson, RIP) keep her locked in a cage and occasionally feed her "Happy pills" to keep her docile.

Mr Fink nabs the girl's two-way... um, bracelet... and uses it to tell Batwoman herself what's up. Seems he needs her expertise for some bullshit, and he plans on holding her girl until she helps him out. What can she do? She flaps on over to the hideout and drinks chocolate milk and eats cookies with the bad guys until Rat Fink gets on his videophone and gives her the full skinny. He wants her to steal an atomic hearing-aid prototype from the 'Ayjax' corporation so that he can listen in on every phone conversation in the world. Just then, the doc plops a goofball into BW's milk, but she's on to him and switches the glasses. He ends up dancing drunkenly around the room, which affords our heroine the chance to drop a few smoke bombs, grab her girl, and vamoose. She gives the Ajax corp a call to let 'em know about Fink's nefarious plot.

They send Flanagan (Steve Brodie, RIP), their legal guy, over to BW's hideout to sort shit out. I know, that sounds underwhelming, but that's what happens. When he gets there, Batwoman is randomly mashing the keys on an organ while her tranced-out batgirls sit in thrall. It's a real wigged-out scene, man. Dude tells her the implications of the Atomic Hearing Aid - something about Cobalt liquid and the end of privacy as we know it - so she agrees to guard the precious item for him. As it's in the vault at the Ajax Corp, she heads over there with her girls, all of them brandishing pistols and shotguns. It's a very Patty Hearst sort of scene.

Doctor Neon and Fink's henchmen show up wearing goofy press-on mustaches and hand the girls chicken salad sandwiches. Vault-guarding is hungry business, so they greedily accept the food and chomp away. Problem is, said sangwiches are laced with happy pills, so they promptly drop their guns and start frugging furiously to the go-go beat in their heads. The crooks make off with the hearing aid.

For some insane reason, Batwoman decides that they best way to find out where the hearing aid went is to hold a séance. Unfortunately, the spirit she contacts doesn't speak English, so that's not much help. BW's Plan B is to send the girls out to find the mussing earpiece, but they get distracted by a beach party.

Meanwhile goofy henchmanTiger (Mel Oshins) captures the same Batgirl from the beginning again and locks her back up. She convinces him to take her to her apartment so she can pick up some records and teach him how to dance properly. I know, but that's what happens. To get there, they have to go out through the backdoor - a cave filled with skeletons. It's also got monsters!*

Somehow or another (I'm pretty sure somebody's dog ate the script by this point), Rat Fink ends up capturing all the Batgirls and chaining them up in Neon's lab. He wants to breed them with Neon's monsters. Seems valid.

Alas, he is thwarted when Batwoman shows up with her raygun and frees the girls. She attempts to unmask Fink, but he has another trick up his sleeve - a "Body Divider". He clones half a dozen Rat Finks and they all run amuck in the lab.

So, how does it all end? Like a particularly retarded Scooby Doo episode, pretty much.

A very odd superhero spoof, this no-budget hodge-podge undid Jerry Warren when DC Comics decided to sue him over the unlicensed use of the "Bat Woman" name. Not surprisingly, DC won, forcing Warren to retitle the film the even more ridiculous She Was a Hippie Vampire. Warren went broke soon after, and didn't make another film until 1981's Frankenstein Island, which also starred Katherine Victor. Anyone who thinks Wild World of Batwoman is a bad movie should take a look at the truly wretched Frankenstein Island. WWOB is a sparkling gem in comparison. Mystery Science Theater dissected Batwoman in 1993, which boosted its stature significantly. They needn't have bothered, however. The movie already lampoons itself quite nicely.

One of the all-time great jawdroppers, The Wild World of Batwoman manages to be horrible and awesome at the same time. And it's way better than Catwoman (2004), too.

*Said monsters were borrowed from The Mole People (1956).

Clip: Wild World of Batwoman trailer!

- Ken McIntyre

Movies About Girls Podcast Episode 38

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:09:28 PDT

Well, hello!
After two long weeks in the abyss, we triumphantly return!
This week, Ken and Seth are on deck. And it's our all Wynorski episode!

Tonight, we interview the great man himself!

We also review two of his epics. Jeff from It Came from the Basement joins us to rant n' rave about 1983's classic teen sex romp, Screwballs!

And then, Ken and Seth break down 2003's cheapo slasher Cheerleader Massacre!

Plus, we recap our adventures in Florida, Chicago, and Arizona. We also review (sorta) a host of new flicks, including Zombieland, Whip It! and Paranormal Activity. Mostly, we discuss the Paranormal Activity chick's boobs. They are epic.

You can't see 'em here, really, but trust me.

Plus, Stacey and Cherrybomb join us for the weird News and the Top 5 and Bottom 5 DVD releases of the Week! Plus, Songs About Girls, and at least twice as much humor and hijinks than most podcasts would ever dare to offer!

I know, you want in. Well, it's easy! Click here, or the banner. Or, if you'd like, you can subscribe on I Tunes. Or, you can listen on the Pickle Player. Or just listen below. We don't care how you do it. We just want you to do it.

PS: Like us? Hate us? Like us but also hate us? Leave us a voicemail! 206-426-6504!

Thanks for listening!

KillerNun (1978)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:17:17 PDT

Starring Anita Ekberg, Joe Dallesandro, Paola Morra
Directed by Giulio Berruti
Rated R
Italy

“I think Sister Gertrude could freak out at any second.”

I know all about mean and crazy nuns – one of the sisters at the Catholic school I went to told my mom that if I wasn’t kept busy at all times, I’d grow up to be a psychopath (true story) – but a Killer Nun is a different cup of communion wafers altogether. The phrase is a particularly pungent one that conjures up images of a wild-eyed Mother Superior rapping kids’ knuckles with a lead pipe instead of a ruler, or forcing naughty schoolgirls to say their Hail Marys on a rosary made from barbed wire. And while nothing that gruesome happens in the course of this Italian-made, based-on-a-true-story grinder, it also doesn’t stray too far from that extreme.

The chief contender for the title of Killer Nun is Sister Gertrude (‘50s sexbomb Anita Ekberg), who, as the quote above notes, is definitely on the verge of a total freakout, thanks to a raging addiction to morphine. But the insane and infantile patients at the hospital where she works surely aren’t helping her mood, nor is the grumpy doctor (Massimo Serato) who refuses to re-up her pain meds. And to make matters worse, her roommate, Sister Mathieu (Italian Playboy Playmate Paolo Morra, who is H-O-double-t hot) is hopelessly in love with her.
So what’s a stressed-out, smack-hungry sister to do when she needs to let off some steam? Well, terrorize the shit out of the patients for starters, which includes stomping on one old lady’s dentures. And if that doesn’t get Gertrude’s rocks, she whips off her wimple, throws on her slinkiest dress, and heads into town for some anonymous booze and sex (“I think I’ll start off with a man—excuse me, I mean a cognac”) and to pawn jewelry for dope.

Sister seems to think that this arrangement is just fine, despite the fact that she constantly seems on the verge of hysteria or total collapse. But when the patients start dying from cotton balls shoved down their throat or pins shoved into their eyes or being thrown off the roof, guess who catches the blame? The crazy junkie nun, of course, and to make matters worse, Gertrude can’t remember committing the killings, only that she always seems to have blood on her hands…

As expected from any movie featuring morphine-addicted nuns, gruesome murders and wild sex in a rainstorm between a fat old guy in a wheelchair and a mental patient, Killer Nun is all about the sleaze, and it frequently rises to genuinely offensive levels, much to its credit.

Some DVD trashhounds might find that a bit too much screen time is devoted to Sister Gertrude whining about her dope cravings and not enough of her getting down and dirty in the big city, but scenes like Paola Morra licking the crotch of Little Joe Dallesandro’s pants should really move any fencesitters to declare this one firmly in the in-poor-taste-and-loving-it department. The British certainly thought so, seeing as how they banned it as part of their notorious “video nasties” campaign in the early ‘80s.

-The Most Reverend Paul Gaita

Cheerleader Massacre (2003)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:55:29 PDT

Directed by Jim Wynorski
Starring Charity Rahmer, Tamie Sheffield, Summer Williams, Lunk Johnson
Rated R
USA
“This pep squad has nothing to cheer about!”

Mcpherson (John Colton) is a ruthless, serial killing beast of a man running loose in the ‘woods up north’. Bodies are piling up in the campgrounds and the sheriff is on the hunt. Meanwhile, a group of jiggly 29-32 year old high school cheerleaders are getting picked off, Slumber Party Massacre style, in their own locker room. And if that’s not bad enough, they are headed - you guessed it -up North.

But first, an ass-first shower scene to get the juices flowing.

Written by longtime Wynorski cohort Lenny “Lunk Johnson” Juliano - AKA annoying reality show host/perv Cliff Probate from Bare Naked Survivor - and littered with Wynorski’s usual gang of booby girls, Cheerleader Massacre is theoretically the fourth film in the Slumber Party Massacre series. Hence, the SPM poster redux, and the opening locker room kill scene, which pays homage to Brinke Stevens’ similar demise in the 1982 original. Stevens even returns as her original character in a brief, witless cameo. However, there is no slumber party. You’d think that would be the first plot point you’d write in. Perhaps that’s why the title changed midstream from “Slumber Party Massacre IV” to “Cheerleader Massacre”. Of course, that title is a little misleading as well. The main characters are, theoretically, cheerleaders, but they don’t have uniforms, and they never actually perform any cheers.

But, you know, let’s not get bogged down in ephemera.

Detective Demarco (caustic Lusty Busty Babe-a-Que host Melissa Brasselle) peers at a Fresno map (fun fact: Cheerleader Massacre was actually shot in Alaska) and promises the chief that she’ll get her man by the end of the day. Meanwhile, busty hiker Debbie (Nikki Fritz, Bikini Drive-in, Evil Toons), still rocking an ‘87 era Walkman as she strolls the woods, gets a frantic phone call from her mother about the killer in her midst. Mom wants her to hoof it home the short way - via the rickety rope bridge. Against her better judgment, top-heavy Fritz does exactly that, but is undone by McPherson, who cuts the rope and sends her sailing to her death on the rocks below. This effect appears to have been achieved by tossing the camera off the bridge.
Buzzy (Juliano) has foolishly agreed to drive the cheerleader squad to their game up north. Clearly, his intentions are carnal - he figures if her plays this right, he can score with the fetching Coach Hendricks (knockout Tamie Sheffield, who is not only a former cheerleader, but attended Fresno State University - clearly, she was born for this role).

Unfortunately, his boner parry is put on hold when the van is stopped at a highway roadblock.. Seems there was a nasty accident, so he’ll have to find an alternate route. Luckily, he knows a shortcut - right through the woods, naturally.

There is a lot of police procedural bullshit in this movie. You should probably know that up front. Half of the movie is dudes in rented cop uniforms getting in and out of their cars. This is a shame, because there’s a whole van full of superhot girls (Charity Rahmer, April Flowers, Erin Byron, Summer Williams) who could be taking showers or lez-zing out, instead.
Speaking of which said van runs out of gas before the crew reaches the highway, forcing them to brave the cold and snow (Is Fresno in the arctic part of California?) on foot.

One of the rangers figures out that the murders at the high school and in the woods are all related. Basically, Mcpherson is responsible for every murder in California, including several of the cops who are chasing him around in the woods. He even steals a cop car. Holy smokes.

The ranger heads over to see Linda (Brinke Stevens), Mcpherson’s first victim from Slumber Party Massacre. She clearly died in that movie, but whatever. At least it affords us an opportunity to watch a five minute clip of the first film. Ah, remember production values? After the flashback, the ranger splits. Did we learn anything? No. Well, we learned that Brinke Stevens is pretty far away from her shower scenes days at this point. That’s about it.

Rahmer, Flowers: "So, we can't find a phone...but we did find some board games!"

So, the cheerleaders stumble upon sheriff Monty’s cabin. Monty is the one who caught Mcpherson in the first movie. He’s not the same actor, though. Neither is Mcpherson. Anyway, he’s not home when they get there, so they guzzle his booze and play Scrabble.

46 minutes in, Wynorski awards you for your patience with a glorious Tami Sheffield shower scene. It’s as if he knew that you were about to shut this drivel off to surf Tube 8. Jim Wynorski knows what he’s doing, man.

Slasher movie hijinks ensue. Former porn starlet Flowers has a pretty good sex scene and then a headless guy knocks on the door, prompting the girls to find whatever weapons they can and prepare for a battle to the death with the crazed killer from 1982.

You know the rest, right? No need to belabor the obvious. There’s a goofy twist and the inevitable sequel set-up.

Cheerleader Massacre is a slapdash slasher with no gore to speak of, bizarre seasonal changes from one scene to the next, no real connection to the films it’s supposed to be following up, and a look that suggests consumer grade camcorder. In other words, just another lost weekend in the wild, wild world of Jim Wynorski. Trash fiends will dig its junky flavors, Fritz's prat-falling, and Sheffield's breathtaking rack. Anyone expecting anything featured in the poster, however - chainsaws or cheerleaders or an actual massacre - are in for a disappointment. You’ll get over it, though.

Clip: Cheerleader Massacre trailer!

- Ken McIntyre

PS: Late breaking news: Cheerleader Massacre 2 will be out soon! And it's X-rated!

Poor White Trash (2001)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 11:53:37 PDT

Directed by Michael Addis
Starring Sean Young, Jaime Pressly, Jason London, William Devane
Rated R
USA

“But mom, our lawyer was hammered!”
“Yeah, well, sober lawyers are out of our price range.”

Jaime Pressly is a unique actress. She is boner inducing and terrifying in equal handfuls, and she appears to play herself - pissed-off, sexually ferocious, chain-smoky - in nearly every role she takes on, from My Name is Earl's trailer park princess Joy to a host of snarly maneaters in B- flicks as diverse as the Jerry Springer-driven Ringmaster (1998), the horny college idiot-fest Tomcats (2001), and the Spade-d mullet-riot Adventures of Joe Dirt (2001). So far, she has shown virtually no real ability for Some would call this typecasting. I would call it authenticity. Suffice to say, just about anything she’s been in is worth seeking out, especially if you're big on hayseed floozies in skintight jeans with attitude problems. And who isn’t?

Jaime does not star in Poor White Trash, even though it sure does sound like something she’d star in. This is a bit misleading on the part of the filmmakers, since she is, after all, the focal point of the cover, staring out at you with hateful, glassy eyes, a cigarette between her fingers, a shotgun on her shoulders, and her taut belly glistening in the sun. There are tiny little figures behind her, but they seem insignificant. I mean, they are tiny, after all. The whole package looks like a non-stop barrage of Pressly-led redneck mayhem. However, Jaime’s only in like, 3 scenes, for a total of about 10 minutes of PWT’s running time. Bummer.

It’s ok, tho, because the movie still rocks. It’s a rip-off, but it’s a good one. Poor White Trash (not to be confused with the backwoods b-movie of the same name from 1957, or any of my relatives from the sticks) involves a frazzled MILF (Young), her dumb-ass teenage son, his buddy, their high school arch-nemesis (also mom’s boyfriend), a crooked lawyer (also buddy’s grandpa) and his slutty young wife (Pressly, also MILF boyfriend’s old girlfriend) and their ham-fisted, week-long crime-spree. It’s as incestuous as you might expect a movie called Poor White Trash to be, and it’s also a rollicking good time, with plenty of snarky laughs. The plot goes kinda like this:

Mike (Tony Denman) is a college-bound kid slumming around for one last hot lazy summer with his pal Lenny (Jacob Tierney). I dunno where they’re supposed to be, as they never really say, but it looks like it could be, uh, Kansas? Reno? (I’m from Boston, man, so I can’t really tell.) Anyway, one day the fellas are messing around at the convenience store, trying to score some brew, when they have a run-in with the counter guy, and end up blowing up his car. They get busted, and, to pay for legal fees, they decide to rob the local Mr. Snack. And since they are dumb-asses, their mom (and her youngstuff boyfriend) decide to help them out. However, there are several double-crossers in their ranks, and thusly, comic chaos reigns.

The best part of Poor White Trash is all the great snippets of dialogue peppered throughout the story. Grampa Ron Lake, the mall lawyer (the awesome William Devane), introduces his foxy new wife (Pressly) to grandson Lenny with a pleasant, “So, dickhead, what do you think of your grandma’s ass?” Lenny, in a moment of weakness, confesses his attraction to his best friend’s mom (Young), with “Linda, I think you’re hotter than donut grease.” Lake hears the whole sorry crime story in his office and shakes his head. “To be honest, my resolve to keep these two gorgeous young boys out of jail is…weak”. Stuff like that.

The script is just a rapid-fire series of Foghorn Leghorn-styled come-backs and put-downs, and ya gotta watch this one at least twice to catch ‘em all. Plot-wise, it’s piffle, but the lines are killer, Pressly - when she’s actually in the movie- is hot like a tin-trailer roof, the ageless Sean Young is manic and sexy, and Devane is super-cool. Oh, and it’s also got Danielle Harris, the little girl from the Halloween 4 and 5 (and Rob Zombie's Halloweens, all tramped-up as a Mr. Snack girl.

Although Poor White Trash is rated “R”, there’s very little in it to justify the rating, really. There’s no tits or blood to speak of, just lots of cussing, drawled-out in regionally unspecified hick-ese. Usually I’m not big on flicks that don’t deliver the grosseries, if ya know what I mean, but this ‘un managed to charm me anyway. If rural hipster hijinx and evil redneck chicks with shotguns sounds like a good time to you, then check out Poor White Trash for yourself. And I don’t mean your next-door neighbors.

- Ken McIntyre

Shock-O-Rama (2005)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:46:26 PDT

Directed by Brett Piper
Starring Misty Mundae, AJ Khan, Julien Wells Unrated
USA

Brett Piper’s previous flick, the giant (well, not giant, maybe ‘sorta big’) spiders VS. druggy strippers epic Bite Me, has become pretty much the high water mark for E.I./Shock-o-Rama cinema, an imprint usually content to just present one faux-lesbian tit mauling after another for an hour and a half. Which is not to say that Bite Me didn’t have plenty of that, but it had other stuff, too. Like spiders. So that was cool. This time around, Piper (who, let us not forget, also made the astounding Troma mess Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell) throws in every genre convention possible, fabricating an old-fashioned anthology flick with a wraparound story that cleverly mocks itself.

Said wraparound story involves perennially put-upon naked starlet Misty Mundae playing perennially put-upon naked starlet Rebecca Raven, who gets booted from her studio after a shrieking fit and heads to the hills for some rest and relaxation. But in a comic book-y twist, her rural getaway turns into a nightmare as a house-bound zombie menaces her. Meanwhile, back at the studio, the producers are desperate for the “new” Rebecca Raven, so they screen a few clunkers on the pile, looking for their next titty girl. Roll tape for the two anthology segments.

First up is Caitlin Ross (in tight jeans and belly shirt, natch) and her dopy boyfriend stuck in a junkyard fighting a gleefully retro-Sci Fi stop-motion pile of tin foil, Christmas lights, and random garbage from outer space. Fun in a dumb monster movie sorta way, with a screechy perf from the luscious Ross and a cool, loony, painstakingly animated UFO-creature.

The second mini-movie is a more typical EI romp, with MILF-y Julian Wells and some monster brain running a school for wayward girls and, of course, exploiting them for their twisted sexual desires. Ok if you like endless girl-girl nipple rubbing. And the brain is pretty awesome.

Oh, and let us not forget plucky, cupcake-breasted Misty and her zombie problem. Suffice to say, chainsaws are involved.

A bit jumbled, this one, which is bound to happen when you bundle a bunch of disparate elements with nothing but Misty Mundae to glue them all together, but there’s enough goofy humor, monsters, and bare-breasted girls to keep things interesting. As usual, there’s plenty of extras, including an illuminating Q&A with Caitlin Ross that reveals her to be totally unlikable. Which is sexy.

-Ken McIntyre

Monster of Camp Sunshine (1964)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:59:16 PDT

Directed by Ferenc Leroget
Starring Deborah Spray, Sally Parfait, Harrison Pebbles
Unrated
USA

"The motion picture that follows is a fable. In it there are many nudists, but only one monster. In life, it is generally the other way around."

Marta and Claire are two mismatched roommates. Marta (Sally Parfait) is a nurse in a lab that experiments on mice and rats. Claire (Deborah Spray), on the other hand, is a full-of-herself model, a blowhard that says stuff like "Does it shock you, that I pose topless?" to couldn't-care-less photographer's assistants. One fateful day at work, Marta accidentally lets a white super-rat escape from his cage. He and a few of his buddies go berserk, and hop all over the jittery nurse. In her panic to get away from the rodents, she falls out the window, and ends up hanging by her fingers, several stories up, from the ledge. Luckily, a doctor, Harrison (James Gatsby), comes rushing in at the last moment to save her.

Clearly frazzled by the experience, Marta tries to relax at home. Claire can see her friend is at wits' end, so she schedules a quick vacation to their favorite spot - a nudist camp, Camp Sunshine.

Turns out that the prim and proper Marta is actually a long-time nudist, and recruited the formerly uptight Claire into her alternative lifestyle the year before. In fact, Claire owes her success as a model to Marta. Without her and Camp Sunshine, she would have never let go of her inhibitions.

We flash back to Claire's first visit to the camp. At first, she is too shy to frolic naked, but after fortifying her nerves with some cigarettes (there's a lot of smoking in this movie), she drops her towel and lets it all hang out. She feels pretty good about waltzing around starkers, but she is somewhat disturbed by the one non-nude member of the camp - a leering fatty named Hugo (Harrison Pebbles).

Susanna, who runs the camp, explains to Claire that Hugo is her dimwitted but harmless brother. The way he menacingly waves his shears around would suggest otherwise, but whatever. Susanna keeps him around to do gardening and maintenance work, and it's just better for everybody if he stays buttoned-up.

So, that was last year. Meanwhile, Marta runs into the Dr Harrison on the street. He explains to her that the incident in the lab was a million to one event. Seems as though the rats were exposed to an accidental chemical compound that made them aggressive. He assures her that said compound has been destroyed. And by "destroyed", he means he dumped a jar of the stuff into the harbor.

Naturally, the chemicals end up leaking into the lake at Camp Sunshine. Also naturally, this happens while dumb ol' Hugo is wading in the water, trying to spear fish with a stick. Thirsty, he sucks up a handful of water and starts screaming like a gorilla.

Unaware of the mayhem going down at Camp Sunshine, Claire and Marta prepare for their trip. Before they leave, Claire calls her photographer friend Ken and tells him that she'll model that 'topless bathing suit' he asked about. "After all," she says, "I am a nudist." He asks her to bring his timid secretary along with her. He thinks it might break her out of her shell. I think Ken just wants to see his secretary naked. Claire agrees. More the merrier, and all that.

The girls show up at Camp Sunshine (which, by the way, is just somebody's front yard) to find it abandoned. Marta wanders around looking for Susanna or some sign of life while Ken, Claire, and his prissy assistant set up camp. They get a hibachi going, and a topless Marta plays a zither. Susanna shows up and they all try to goad the secretary into stripping. She refuses and wanders off.

Meanwhile Hugo, who is now some sort of bewigged mutant, chomps on a cucumber while chained to the wall of a shed. Hearing voices, he struggles to break free of his bonds. Eventually, he snaps the chains and gets outside. He grabs an axe and trundles off into the woods.

Miss Non-nude, enjoying her solitude, finally feels good enough to peel off her clothes and go skinny dipping. Then she suns her naked flesh on the grass, while Hugo, axe in hand, looms in the background.

Susanna finds out that her brother has gotten loose, and tells Marta about the chemical spill. Marta smartly suggests they talk to a doctor, pronto. And so they do.
Marta calls Harrison and tells him what's up. Turns out he's just about finished with his antidote for the rats, so he takes a jug full of the stuff and hauls ass over to Camp Sunshine. Harrison also calls his army buddy to back him up.

Susanna and Marta decide not to tell the others about the monster, because they don't want to ruin the evening. Besides, it's Claire's birthday, so they have to throw her a little moonlit outdoor party. Unfortunately, as the curious silent film title tells us, "The monster invited himself" to the shindig, as well.

Hugo and his axe fuck the party up but good, but he has no idea what hell he's unleashed. In a finale too incredible to accurately describe, Hugo finds himself battling a gun toting guy in his underwear, naked women with banana cream pies, a paratrooper, mortar fire, and an entire army division. Despite this apocalyptic climax, everybody lives to frolic in the nude again. Well, except for Hugo. He gets turned into a rock.

Fun, dumb, and mostly incomprehensible, Camp Sunshine is low-grade 60's trash sure to please monster-nudie fans. And who doesn't like a good (or bad) monster nudie?

PS: The credits list the camerman/men as Motley Crue!

Clip: Monster of Camp Sunshine trailer!

Monster of Camp Sunshine is available from Something Weird Video.

- Ken McIntyre

Virgins from Hell (1987)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:44:37 PDT

Directed by Ackyl Anwari
Starring Enny Beatrice, Yenny Farida, Dicky Zulkarnaen, Harry Capri
Unrated
Indonesia

“You should have seen look on that bastard’s face when I shot him between the legs! But you know, he’ll never miss ‘em – he never had any to begin with!”

After watching Virgins from Hell, I’m firmly convinced that this Indonesian exploitation title is one of the greatest films ever made. But you know, I’m given to making ridiculous statements like that, so I’ll give you a rundown of the goings-on in the movie, and you can decide for yourself. The Virgins from Hell are an all-female motorcycle gang who dress like aerobics instructors circa 1985 and wage war against drug kingpin Mr. Tiger (Dicky Zulkarnaen, the Indonesian Billy Drago). Tiger, it seems, murdered the parents of #1 Virgin Sheila (Enny Beatrice) and took their palatial home as his own fortress of evil, and now Sheila and the rest of the Virgins carry out fully armed commando strikes against his holdings, which include a gambling den which gets thoroughly demolished before the opening titles.

Flush with success, Sheila rallies the rest of the Virgins to strike at the heart of Tiger’s empire and re-take her home, but the plan goes south and the whole gang is captured. Once locked away, the film takes a direct offramp onto the Women in Prison highway, with Tiger subjecting the girls to unspeakable tortures (one gal gets roasted over a spit like a pig at a luau, and another is tossed into a bag with a live mongoose) and using them as guinea pigs to perfect his super drug – an atomic Spanish Fly of sorts that will allow Tiger to corner the “aphrodisiac market.”

With all this going on, plus regular rape and abuse from Tiger’s brutish henchmen (not to mention the boss man himself, who’s partial to whip torture and pouring wine over helpless women), the Virgins start to come apart at the seams, and we’re treated to at least three knockdown, drag-out cat fights, including one in a pool of filthy water. But then fellow captive and medical student Larry (Harry Capri), who, it should be noted, is also a martial arts expert, daredevil motorcyclist, and ace marksman, rallies the Virgins to fight against their captors and bring down Mr. Tiger’s… aphrodisiac business.

Yeah, aphrodisiacs, which doesn’t seem all that awful, but Tiger is definitely a bad man, what with the whips and the wine and the mongoose (and let’s not forget Sheila’s parents…), so it’s only fair that the whole thing comes down to a battle royale in the finale, full of flying motorcycles, exploding guard towers, rocket launchers, machine guns, chicks with rocket launchers and machine guns, the works. If that’s not entertainment with a capital E, then brother, you may have stumbled on to the wrong site.

A term for Asian movies that whip together disparate elements into one heady mix is “masala,” which is borrowed from the Indian model of tossing together singing, action, romance, and countless other genres into a single picture. I don’t have the foggiest clue what they eat in Indonesia, but the masala on display in Virgins from Hell is almost too rich to eat at one sitting.
Everything in the film is delivered at a fever pitch, from the costumes (in addition to the Virgins, Mr. Tiger is particular to gaucho outfits and brightly colored pantsuits) to the tortures and action (why blow up one guard tower when you can destroy three?). Even the most stereotypical role is exaggerated to a level that transcends comic book and becomes almost pharmaceutically surreal – the standard issue predatory-lesbian guard (here named Dutch) is a king-sized mammer jammer who gives a sleeping Sheila a full body tongue bath.

Add to that a thick coating of Indonesian cultural peculiarities, like the scene in which a local medicine man uses a snake to extract a bullet lodged in Larry’s leg (he pushes the reptile into the wound, and it pops out with the round in its mouth… honest), and what you’ve got is nothing short of jaw-dropping. Virgins from Hell may not be as explicit as other Women in Prison movies (despite plenty of hands-all-over maulings and one weird, implied doggy-style rape, there’s not a bit of nudity, or even kissing – Larry gives Sheila a grandfatherly peck on the cheek at the close-out), but it’s definitely bizarre and packed with more berserk action than most of what passes for low-budget genre pictures of late, so really, you’re only hurting yourself if you don’t check it out.
Virgins from Hell is a Mondo Macabro DVD release, and if you’re familiar with that company’s catalog at all, you know that they go the extra mile and then some to showcase their obscure movie finds in the best and most well-annotated way possible. And in the case of this title, they’ve gone way past the call of cult film duty by presenting it in a double disc set that serves as an excellent introduction and primer to the weird world of Indonesian exploitation. The first disc serves up the film in a beautiful anamorphic transfer; it’s dubbed into English with no subtitle options, but unless you’re a complete stick in the mud, that won’t bother you.

Disc Two features a 25-minute documentary presents a short history of Indonesian exploitation from the ‘70s to the present, with lots of eye-popping clips from movies like Mystics in Bali, Dangerous Seductress, and Lady Terminator (all of which, it should be mentioned are available from Mondo Macabro) and interviews with local directors and distributors. The second disc is rounded out by an incredible 70-minute barrage of trailers of films from Virgins’ distributors, Rapi Films, and if you’ve never seen an Indonesian exploitation picture, you’re gonna be begging for one after you check out this trailer gallery. See Indonesian superstar Barry Prima slice guys in half in mid-air and lop off the heads of ratty-costumed crocodile men; get an eyeful of Balinese versions of The Exorcist and The Evil Dead; and if Virgins left you with a hankering for more Asian ladies in peril, you’ll be happy to see a preview for Escape from Hellhole, which looks as over-the-top as Virgins, but minus the leotards.

And if you feel like reading (that’s something you can do with your eyes instead of watching movies, believe it or not), there’s also an excellent history of the Women in Prison genre from author and Mondo Macabro headman Pete Tombs, which features lots of priceless promotional art, including an Indian newspaper ad for Virgins that’s crowned with the no-messin’-around tag line, “Women are Raped! Women are Killed!” Yikes – well, let’s not dwell on that. Anyway, if you’ve always heard that Indonesia was the lost treasure trove of cinematic trash, but could never track down any of its elusive titles, your sleaze dreams have been answered with Virgins from Hell.

- Paul Gaita

Movies About Girls Podcast Episode 37

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 20:02:20 PDT

Well, hello!
Holy smokes, it's time for another dose of hyperactive audio antics from the Movies About Girls cabal.
This week, Ken and Jim Ether are on deck.

This week: ride 'em cowgirl! We take on 2003's all-girl bank-robber fiasco, Gang of Roses!

Gang of Roses Stacey Dash Monica Calhoun Jean-Claude La Marre | Movie Trailers

And then we strip down 1964's Monster of Camp Sunshine! It's got topless girls blowing out candles!

Still not convinced? we've also got the great Mike Fischer of the Streakin' Podcast on deck for the latest installment of Streaking Weekly!

Plus, Weird News, our Top 5 and Bottom 5 DVD releases of the Week, the second installment of our Podcast Outreach Program, Songs About Girls, and at least twice as much humor and hijinks than most podcasts would ever dare to offer!

I know, you want in. Well, it's easy! Click the title, or the banner. Or, if you'd like, you can subscribe on I Tunes. Or, you can listen on the Pickle Player. Or just listen below. We don't care how you do it. We just want you to do it.

PS: Like us? Hate us? Like us but also hate us? Leave us a voicemail! 206-426-6504!

Thanks for listening!

Poison Sweethearts (2008)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:16:02 PDT

Directed by Andrew and Lucas Campbell
Starring various Cleveland area vagrants
Unrated
USA

"Beautiful women. In this city, they are sweet candy in the eyes of sour men."

Couple of brothers cobble together a loose, hour-long anthology of women’s-revenge stories, shot, with great effort, to look like gritty 70’s exploitation fare, ala Thriller, Tenement, etc. Unfortunately, the stories ramble and never come to satisfying endings, the acting is mostly-miss, and the whole thing is too wobbly and ass-broke to really look like more than a trumped-up student film.

On the plus side, it does show you what a junky mess Cleveland can be on a bad day, and it does, occasionally, slip into moments of high weirdness (evil street-dancers?). Also, the bitchin’, bright-pink packaging is almost worth the price of admission alone. Basically, a great idea and a solid attempt, but the Brothers Campbell shot a bit too high and, like Icarus, melted.

The trouble with girls: Poison Sweethearts' trailer

- Ken McIntyre

Teeth (2007)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:22:27 PDT

Directed by Mitchell Lichenstein
Starring Jess Weixler and her vagina
Rated R
USA

"Dentata."
"What?"
"It's Latin for teeth."

Dawn (Weixler) is the last American virgin. She’s a star speaker in her school’s weird celibacy club and thinks only pure thoughts. She’s also breathtakingly beautiful, in a fresh-faced, corn-fed sorta way, and so sexually ripe you can practically smell her pheromones through the movie screen. Obviously, something’s gotta give, and once she decides to get amorous with a deceptively harmless-seeming member of her Jesus-freak club, she finds out that her vagina is lined with razor sharp teeth that turn whatever is invading her personal girl-space into pulp. This is very bad news for all the men in her life, including her pervy gynecologist and her ass-fuck happy step-brother.

On the surface, Teeth seems like an 80’s gross-out horror-comedy in the Basket Case/Street Trash vein, but it’s actually much more subtle. Although it has more than its share of extremely graphic penis dismemberment, it’s a wickedly dark comedy, full of wry humor and just the right touch of social commentary.

The performances are pitch-perfect, especially Weixler, who exudes a wide-eyed innocence even after the third or fourth rape attempt. I don’t think there’s ever been a character as unlucky-in-love as our girl Dawn, and she shows considerable pluck in even the darkest circumstances. You will fall completely and totally in love with her by the time the film is over.

Which is bound to cause you considerable pain, given her condition.

Great stuff from first-time director Lichtenstein (son of painter Roy), who walks a thin line between John Waters and HG Lewis, without tipping too far over in either. Of course, you will probably never have sex again without demanding a full vaginal inspection, but that’s a small price to pay for art.

-Ken McIntyre

Movies About Girls Podcast Episode 36

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 02:10:43 PDT

Well, hello!
It's that time again. Time for another dose of hyperactive audio antics from the Movies About Girls cabal.
This week, Ken and Seth are on deck. Together we interview the lovely and talented Jessica Graham, star of Devil Girl!

Oh, but that's not all. We also review lurid late 60's lesbian melodrama The Girl With the Hungry Eyes, starring punky wonder Vicky Dee!

Need more? Well, we also take an in-depth look at the new porn-centric comedy Deep in the Valley, starring the gorgeous Kate Albrecht!

Still not convinced? we've also got the great Mike Fischer of the Streakin' Podcast on deck for the latest installment of Streaking Weekly!

Also, Cherrybomb and Stacey join us for the Weird News of the Week!
Plus, our Top 5 and Bottom 5 DVD releases of the Week, the first installment of our Podcast Outreach Program, Songs About Girls, and at least twice as much humor and hijinks than most podcasts would ever dare to offer!

I know, you want in. Well, it's easy! Click the title, or the banner. Or, if you'd like, you can subscribe on I Tunes. Or, you can listen on the Pickle Player. We don't care how you do it. We just want you to do it.

PS: Like us? Hate us? Like us but also hate us? Leave us a voicemail! 206-426-6504!

Thanks for listening!

Deep in the Valley (2009)

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:54:47 PDT

Directed by Christian Forte
Starring Denise Richards, Tracy Morgan, Chris Pratt, Brendan Hines, Kate Albrecht, Rachel Specter
Rated R
USA

"Before you know it, you might find yourself on the rub-out highway to Nowheresville."

From first time director Christian Forte comes (ahem) this fractured fairy tale about what it would be like if regular, porn-loving slobs like you and I were somehow whisked away to a sticky neverland where every dude is a pizza delivery guy, or a pool cleaner, or a stern headmaster, and every girl is an eager to please cheerleader, candy striper, or giggly co-ed. It's star-studded (well, sorta; does Denise Richards still count?), candy-coated, and painted in a throbbing neon palette of hot pinks and valentine reds, but ultimately, is a comedy about porn as entertaining as...well, actual porn?

Two tight bros from way back when find themselves at a crossroads in life. Lester (Chris Pratt, Jennifer's Body) is a booze-guzzling, porn loving slob who works at a liquor store and sells cigarettes to twelve year olds. His best pal Carl (Brendan Hines) is about to get married to a rich, emasculating shrew. One night, while the two get drunk and reminisce about their heady grammar school days, a mysterious package arrives with a loud thump outside Lester's door. At some point in his alcoholic haze of a week, Lester entered a porn sweepstakes, and he won the grand prize - a vintage "Diamond Jim" peep show booth.

Diamond Jim (Christopher McDonald) is a mysterious skin-flock mogul who revolutionized the industry back in the 80's with his innovative use of nurse, cheerleader, and sorority girl themes. However, during the filming of his 'experimental' epic Sorority Surprise, things started to go wrong for Jim. Some say he went mad while making the film. It was never released, and existed only in hushed whispers. That is, until now.

After some prodding, Lester convinces Carl to enter the comfy, two-man stroke-station with him. They pull the curtain and check out the films on offer. Rather magically, one of them happens to be the long lost Sorority Surprise. How can they resist? Lester punches in his selection, but instead of a wobbly film loop, the two men are suddenly whisked off, ala Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, to another time/dimension.

They end up in "Deep Valley", a bizzaro world where every situation comes straight from the script of a cheeseball porn flick. They are in Deep Valley for mere seconds before two busty cops show up and arrest them. Lester is interrogated by Rod Cannon (Scott Caan), a well-endowed stud who shows off his package in too-tight trousers and speaks in porn-flick gibberish.

He is later tossed into a cell with two angry-but-horny hellcats. Meanwhile, Lester gets a good grilling from S&M queen/cop Suzi Diablo (Bianca Soto). Being an aficionado of stroke cinema, Lester figures out that there are somehow in a porn flick, so he goes along with the script, hoping to score with Suzi, but Carl busts in and convinces him to scram.

The two escape from the police station (not hard to do in a porn flick) and go on the lam, with Rod and Suzi (in a pin-striped 70's Charger) in hot pursuit. They hide out in the bushes in front of a sorority house filled with bubbly blondes splashing each other with hoses. Lester points out some of the girls - Autumn Bliss (Denise Richards), the house mother, Daphne (Kate Albrecht), the always-up-for-it coed, and Bambi (Rachel Specter), the 'good' girl. He knows them all because they're the stars of Dirty Talking Co-Eds, one of Lester's favorite movies. Given the circumstances, Lester naturally assumes that they somehow died in the booth, and now they're in Heaven.

Just then, Diamond Jim pops in to tell them that they are not dead, just in another dimension. The porn dimension. And that they can't go home until they fulfill their mission. Unfortunately, he cannot remember what their mission is. And then he splits.

The fellas hide out in the all-pink coed house, but are soon discovered by Daphne and Bambi. Carl explains their strange plight, and the girls decide to help them.

They hide them when Rod shows up, but Lester and Carl both end up hurting themselves in the process, so they get rushed off to the hospital, which is manned - or perhaps more accurately wo-manned - entirely by sexy, short-skirted nurses, doctors, and candy stripers. Porn-y antics ensue, but once Suzi Diablo shows up to give Lester an unscheduled enema, it's up to Carl to impersonate 'Dr Jellybrick' to get them the hell out of there.

They make it back to the Coed house. Lester tries to bang Daphne, and Carl, being the sensitive one, attempts to teach Bambi about love. That's the plan, anyway. But things never seem to go right in Deep Valley. After another disastrous run-in with Suzi, the fellas decide to hide out somewhere where nobody will ever find them - the girl's locker room at Deep Valley College. Meanwhile, Bambi confesses to Autumn that she may be falling in love with Carl. But Carl's engaged. And from another dimension. What a predicament!

Back at the college, Lester dons a visor and a mustache and joins in as a judge at the cheerleader tryouts. So that's pretty fun.

Unfortunately, Rod's goons Lance and Dick show up to bust the boys. Luckily, they are distracted by a shower scene, which gives Lester and Carl enough time to escape.

Lester thinks he's solved their problems. He knows about about a porn producer named Busta Nutt (Tracy Morgan) who collects vintage arcade games, including old peep-show booths. Lester and Carl put on gangster-y outfits to fool Busta's doorman (Kim Kardashian), and sneak into his house to find a time-travel porno booth to get them home.

"I love your work," whispers Lester on his way in, in a sly reference to Miss Kardashian's career-making sex tape. Lester guzzles champagne and makes fast-friends with Busta and his booty girls while Carl skulks around looking for a booth. He finds one, but it doesn't work. And then the cops show up, so the boys have to vamoose.

Carl's at the end of his rope at this point. He freaks out and calls Carl, his best bro, a loser. And then they split up. Classic two-guys-on-a-journey sort of stuff.
Things go even worse for our hapless heroes, so they get back together and head over to Diamond Jim's mansion, where he's having a pool party. Jim's got another booth somewhere in the mansion. They plan on finding it, and then getting the hell out of this cock-blocking porno-planet. That is, unless Suzi and Rod get to them first.

Oh, and what about Bambi?

Hey man, it's a porn flick. It's got to have a happy ending.

In conclusion: Deep in the Valley a light, frothy time-waster that boasts two gorgeous leads in Albrecht and Specter and a bright and sunny tone that, despite it's message of true-love over pornographic lust, really does come off like a warm and fuzzy valentine to the porn industry. Maybe it's not all hard-drugs, teenage runaways, mob ties, and mental illness after all. That's worth looking into. In the meantime, this overlooked and quickly dismissed little film offers up plenty of boobs and a reasonable amount of yucks. Is it as good as porn? No. Nothing is as good as porn. It's still pretty good, though.

Clip: the boys meet the girls...

- Ken McIntyre

Interview: Kelli Maroney

Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com (Moviesaboutgirls@gmail.com) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 06:36:46 PDT

Kelli Maroney is the undisputed queen of mallsploitation. Her twin-titan roles both took place in empty shopping malls during the height of the excess-is-best 1980's. In 1984 she
played Samantha, the gun-toting, curly-haired cheerleader fending off the advances of cosmic zombies while looking for love at the end of the world in Night of the Comet. Brought to brilliant, bratty life by the young, enthusiastic Maroney, Comet remains the actress's high water mark. Who else could so effectively pout "Dad would have bought us Uzis!" while taking potshots at mutants in a cheerleader outfit? Two years later, she returned to the mall as Allison in Jim Wynorski's cult favorite Chopping Mall, the unlikely tale of Dalek-ish mall security robots gone awry. Both films are perfect snapshots of the dayglo decade, and remain late night cable TV and weekend movie rental standards, largely because of Kelli's sunny presence.

So where did this heavily armed valley girl come from, anyway? Well, from Minnesota, of course. Kelli grew up in the Midwest, moved to New York while still in her teens, and landed her first acting job at the tender age of 17, playing hot-to-trot lolita Kimberly Harris on soap opera Ryan's Hope. In 1982, she got her first movie role, as the optimistic cheerleader in the landmark teen comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It was her Fast Times appearance that ultimately led her to Comet, Chopping Mall, and enduring cult actress status.

A plucky blonde with an endearing, gum-snapping chirp and a generous smile that could melt a glacier, Kelli's slim-but-substantial resume is rife with memorable B-movie roles, many under the fast n' furious direction of trash maestro Jim Wynorski, who utilized her in a variety of quirky roles, from Angie Dickinson's grand-daughter in Big Bad Mama 2 (1987), to a potentially other-worldly nurse in his 1988 remake of Roger Corman's Not of This Earth. Whatever the role, Kelli always brought her impish charisma and easy grace with her, and the cult of Maroney grew. As the 1990's wore on, she slipped into television roles, doing guest spots on shows like the Pretender and Chicago Hope, effectively leaving the world of killer robots and teenage comet zombies behind her. And then, at the dawn of the next decade, she disappeared from the Hollywood radar completely. At least for awhile. So where did Kelli go, and more compellingly, why did she come back? Well, as the ever buoyant Ms. Maroney tells us, it all started with a maddeningly catchy song.

"It was a literal shock that someone wrote a song about me." Kelli says. Said song, the provocatively titled "Kelli Maroney Don't Exist No More", was written by German punk band Almost Charlie, and spilled the beans about Maroney's defection to Planet Normal. Fearing that she would never break away from her b-movie status, Kelli changed her name to Zoe Kelli Simon and left acting completely for a spell in the early part of this decade. And she thought she got away with it, too. Until the song started making the rounds.
"See, I decided to go off and see if I could do something else with my life besides be an actress. I started out so young that I didn't know if I could do anything else. So I did that, but part of what I had to do was change my name so I didn't have to hear 'Hey, you're that girl from the Comet movie...how come you're not doing that anymore?' wherever I went. So I did that, and the next thing you know, there's this song."

Ultimately, the song drove Kelli back to her first love, but not before she spent a few years outside the crazy walls of Hollywood.
"I went on a spiritual quest." She says. "I just wasn't as successful as I wanted to be as an actress. I tried every single avenue that I could think of, and I just wasn't making a living at it, honestly. And I thought, am I just doing this because I don't know how to do anything else?"

Determined to test the waters, Kelli legally changed her name to Zoe Kelli Simon, and began to work as a massage therapist. "I did well at it", she says, "but the problem was, you don't want to be like, 'Hey, I got a massage from that girl from Night of the Comet! By the same token, you don't want to hire somebody that works in holistic health care to play a part. They don't coexist well."

I suggest that there are plenty of people that would pay extra to get a massage from the Night of the Comet girl.
"Well, see, that would be the wrong reason." She laughs. "So, I tried something else, and now I feel validating acting, because I feel like it's my choice. That song was really the kicker for me. I thought, well, why don't I come back? Who am I kidding anyway? I proved what I had to prove to myself. Honestly, that's what I am, that's what I do Plus, I had to grow into my age range, too. I had a very tough time getting out of that image, you know, 'I'm a teenager and I chew gum', because that's what I was famous for. I was a Lolita on the soaps, then I was the snotty cheerleader, and it was hard for me to grow up."

Kelli is still well known for her days as a torrid teenage soap opera actress, a role that took her by surprise.
"I left home to study acting in New York", she tells me. "Even though I was still very young, I was finished with high school when I got there. I was a smart kid. I was going to conservatory school in upstate New York when I got the job. It was completely unexpected. One minute I'm walking around town, the next minute I'm on television, and it's huge."

Sudden fame was not an easy transition for the young actress.
"Oh my god. People would come up to me in the deli and go, 'You're terrible!', she laughs. "I understand it, though. My character was the pits. It was dreadful. Everyone hated me. And this was my first job! I didn't have the self esteem for that all. Still, I was acting, so that was cool."

Emboldened by her early success in television, Kelli decided to take a stab at the movies.She managed to score a couple of juicy roles, including her wide-eyed cheerleader in Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982, and a surprisingly dark character in the obscure 1983 thriller Slayground.

"In Slayground, I play this jailbait hitchhiker", she tells me. When I get picked up, you think that I'm toast, but I'm actually a killer. They play "Bad to the Bone" beneath me. I'm wearing cowboy boots and smoking a cigarette, I was trying to look tough. Trying to give Jodie Foster a run for her money!" She laughs.

Night of the Comet was released in 1984 to little fanfare, but it became a surprise hit. The story's premise is deceptively simple: one night, a comet shows up, and turns everyone in the world into dust, except for a lucky few who happened to be enclosed in metal containers at the time. Two such lucky specimens include 18 year old Regina (Catherine Mary Stewart) and her 16 year old cheerleader sister Samantha (Maroney). The sisters set out looking for survivors, and boyfriends, all the while dodging a sinister governmental agency and the occasional green skinned zombie. Eventually they hole up in an abandoned shopping mall, and hilarity and horror ensues.

Kelli says she got involved in the film because the director had seen her in Fast Times.
"Initially, my character was supposed to die in the movie, so they wanted somebody real obnoxious, like my cheerleader character in Fast Times. I had no idea any of this was going on. I wanted to read for Regina, because I thought it was a cooler part. And they said 'No, you're not doing that.' So then I went back to New York, as I'm wont to do, and I didn't think anymore of it. Then they called me up asking me where I was, because they wanted to start shooting. No one bothered to tell me I got the part!"

Despite it's paltry $750,000 budget, the film still managed to impress, thanks to its achingly funny script and it's effortlessly sunny protagonists. In the original script, Kelli's character Samantha was killed by evil government agents midway through the film, but as the cameras rolled and Kelli shined, Samantha was granted a last-minute reprieve.
"The reason that I didn't die is because one of the producers said, 'If we kill this character, the audience will walk out.' So they changed the script on the spot."

Despite a thumbs-up from Siskel and Ebert and brisk box office business, Night of the Comet had a very brief theatrical run. Still, it became a certified cult classic once it began playing on cable television, and fans have been clamoring for a DVD release ever since. In 2008, MGM finally got around to doing that, but not in the way Kelli might have hoped.

"I would always get these letters on my website no less than five times a week asking, 'When's the DVD? Where's Part 2? And there was some weird thing with the rights every time. Tom wanted to do a cartoon of it, people have always wanted to do a sequel, this and that, and no one could ever get it together. A lot of the letters would go, Can't you do something about it? I thought, why can't I? If nobody else wants to dig this thing up, why don't I? So I lawyered up, we called MGM, and I said I wanted to buy it. Everything was going along, and then a couple days later they called me and up said, 'We're going to release it ourselves.' I was crushed. They released it with no extras, and they didn't have a budget for a DVD launch party, nothing. There was nothing in the budget for publicity or anything at all. They don't even know it's a cult classic. I think when somebody offers to buy back their property it makes them aware of it. I think all I did was tip them off. And they made good money off it. It was in their top 100 sales. At least they released it under MGM-Turner Classics. Chances are, they might do another release with extras, but I don't know what their plans are, they don't share them with me." She laughs.

Two years after her pioneering work in Comet, Kelli was called back to the mall to appear in Chopping Mall, a low-budget slasher directed by Jim Wynorski and produced by Roger Corman, featuring Kelli, Barbara Crampton, an array of bad hair and worse clothes, and a few dumpy garbage can robots with lasers. Low on finances and brains but high on cheese and goofy charm, it remains a guilty pleasure for 80's trash-film fans.
"It was had a blast playing Samantha in Comet, and I guess Jim Wynorski had seen that and tapped me for Chopping Mall", Kelli remembers. "I was all excited to do this movie because Robert Short designed the robots. He also did Darryl Hannah's tail in Splash. He's a huge special effects guy. So I thought this was going to be a really classy movie. So we're doing some dialogue, and suddenly it dawns on me - once again, I'm on a comedy shoot."

Chopping Mall was shot entirely in a shopping mall. Filming was done after hours, which made for a very memorable shooting schedule.
"We had to set that thing back up every morning", she remembers. "They were still using that mall. We couldn't get in there until they shut down all the stores and we had to have it spic and span for them to open it in the morning. That was tough. I don't know how the crew did it. They would go over this place with a fine tooth comb."

Another memorable aspect of the Chopping Mall shoot - also recounted on the DVD's commentary track - was its underwhelming catering.
"It was Mama Cajun's catering company", Kelli vividly remembers. "They're no longer in business." She laughs. "We couldn't tell what it was they were feeding us. We couldn't figure out what was on our plates, we called them possum patties and weasel strips. The one time I hit critical mass on the catering was...you know those little pill cups you get in the hospital? So they were all spread out, like a million of them. They had whipped cream on top, and I figured there was a cookie or a piece of something underneath. Nope. It was just a little dollop of whipped cream in a pill cup. That was dessert. It was a real tragedy. There was one time during filming when Wynorksi had all the air let out of his tires by the crew. It wasn't much of a surprise."

Still, despite the low-budget limitations, Kelli enjoyed working with Wynorski, and they went on to collaborate on several other projects throughout the 1980's.
"He'd call me up when he needed something fast", she says. "He'd say, "I have Traci Lords down here, I want to put you guys in matching nurse outfits, can you do that?" and I'd say sure, and we'd got and do it. So we racked up quite a few films together without noticing it. I always got along great with him."

While Kelli enjoyed her work in b-movies, she continued shooting for the stars.
"If I told you all the things I was almost in", she sighs. "Like, while I was doing Night of the comet, I got cast in a Woody Allen picture, but I couldn't do it, they wouldn't let me go to New York to do it. It was Purple Rose of Cairo. I was going to be the actress in the movie, the Jean Harlow type. I try not to dwell on that stuff, though. That's just the way this business is, either you've got no roles, or you've got three of them."

Frustrated with her lack of A-level success in the movies, Kelli spent the next decade back where she got her start, in television. And it was during one notable guest spot where she finally defined herself as an actress.
"As I got older, people were always throwing me these victim roles. I wanted to scream 'Haven't you seen my work?!' Because they hadn't. Someone would tell them I was in this zombie thing, and they'd make an assumption. The last thing I did before I was hung up my towel the first time was I did Chicago Hope in 1999. Mark Harmon's character had flashbacks of his growing up to explain what his problem was. So I played his mother in black and white flashbacks. And I killed myself because I couldn't take the abuse that was going on in the house. I was a total victim. It really turned me off. I decided I didn't want to act if I had to play victims. I have that unlikely hero instinct, and I feel there's enough people crashing and burning, we don't need to see that. My contribution to this art form is the triumph of the human spirit, not the despair of it."

And so Kelli took her indomitable spirit and left the business. She began working for day spas, got married in 2001, and settled into her new life. And then that damned song showed up, and it all unraveled. These days, she's single again and back to what she loved doing so much in the first place - playing spunky characters in quirky movies.

"I love horror movies." She says. "I love supernatural stuff as opposed to gore. The one I'm doing now, Nightmare Carnival, my dream is for it to be one of those movies that really scares you. One that makes you go, I wish I hadn't seen that, because now I'm alone in the house and I'm scared! Movies like that always involve a mind-twist. It's not just about bloody stumps."
Kelli's other current project is called Shadow Land.
"Shadow Land is very Twin Peak-ish, very X files", she says, with a hint of mystery. "So that's fun. I'm in pre-production on both of those."

Not only is Kelli working again, she's also embracing her fanbase in a way she never has before, from maintaining an active Myspace page to making the convention rounds.
"There was no budget for Night of the Comet, so I started doing some conventions." She explains. "MGM doesn't even give me any DVDs for them, but I wanted to promote the movie. I'm a grassroots actress, and that's my favorite part of it. There's no studio forcing me down anyone's throat. People like me because they want to. Then, some friends suggested I put up a MySpace page. So I did that, and it was like Boom! I had no idea, really. This was right around the time that they started showing my soaps again, and I was invited to do a few chats with soap opera fans. I had no idea there were so many people who still hated me, to this day! But once they realized it was me, they couldn't talk bad about me anymore." She laughs. "But yeah, it's really cool. I had no idea so many people remembered me."

And so, things come full circle, a rare occasion in the slash and burn world of Hollywood. Kelli Maroney is back, and more enthusiastic about life than ever. When she's not acting, she's heavily involved in charity work, from the SPCA to Special Olympics. "I feel very blessed. I have no complaints at all", she says.

-Ken McIntyre

For more, check out Kelli Maroney's official website