THE IMP-PROBABLE MR. WEEGEE (1966) ** ½

Arthur “Weegee” Fellig was a famous photographer in the ‘40s and ‘50s who was known for his sensational pictures.  He was able to parlay that notoriety into appearing in a handful of movies like Jules Dassin’s The Naked City.  By the early ‘60s he was appearing in nudie-cuties.  A few years later, he was headlining this one. 

Weegee gets busted for trying to marry a mannequin.  At the police station, he tells how he came to be enamored with his companion.  He leaves the streets of New York for London to investigate a supposedly haunted house.  From there, he heads to Paris where he climbs the Eiffel Tower and peeps into women’s windows using his telephoto lens.  Next, he appears on a Danish cooking show before finally setting out to become an artist. 

This is a weird fucking movie.  I’m not sure who the audience is supposed to be as there’s not enough factual information to make for a biopic of Weegee and not quite enough skin to score as a solid nudie-cutie.  The comedy bits (like Weegee’s run-in with a barber who doesn’t speak English) are uniformly unfunny, and the wraparound scenes at the police station are only there to pad out the running time.  However, if you enjoy antiquated oddball oddities like this, you might dig it.  It’s certainly never boring, and it even manages to be fun in spots. 

I guess this movie was ahead of its time.  Weegee’s love for his mannequin seems like the blueprint for today’s generation of people who are getting into romantic relationships with sex dolls.  Thankfully, we never get to see him consummate the “marriage”. 

If the nude scenes weren’t so darn brief, this might’ve skated by with ***.  The highlight is a great sequence where an enormously breasted woman shaves her legs in the nude.  Too bad moments like this offer more tease than please. 

Weegee is definitely an oddball character.  With his scrunched-up face, he kind of looks like Popeye (a resemblance that only intensifies during the scene where he’s chewing on a long, skinny pipe).  Real pictures taken by Weegee are also used, ranging from crime scene photos to shots of New York street life to celebrity snapshots.

If you’re looking for more movies about Weegee, Joe Pesci played a fictionalized version of him in The Public Eye. 

RED MIDNIGHT (1966) **

A man has an accident while waterskiing.  A doctor on a passing boat tries to be a Good Samaritan and helps him, little realizing he’s a foreign agent plotting to detonate a nuke on American soil.  The man’s co-conspirators kidnap the doctor who convinces them a coordinated attack on the country’s fire departments, combined with mass arson would be a wiser strategy in the long run.  Really, he’s trying to string them along so he can find the nuke and disarm it. 

Red Midnight contains its share of moments.  I enjoyed the opening credits sequence where the titles appear as newspaper headlines that are slowly burned away, kind of like on Bonanza.  There’s also an icky part where the doctor is forced to perform an impromptu cancer surgery on his captor. 

The plan itself is pretty interesting.  Too bad you are forced to sit through long scenes of people explaining it all again and again.  After all that, once the “Red Midnight” attack finally occurs, it’s underwhelming.  It also suffers from too much stock footage of firefighters, out of focus shots, and scenes of random indeterminable objects in flames that are supposed to represent (I guess) burning buildings. (The sequence detailing the inevitable fallout runs way too long too.)  Then again, what do you expect from a low budget flick dealing with such large-scale destruction? 

You also have to deal with lots of dull narration, amateurish acting, awful ADR, and choppy editing (including several jump cuts).  The film is packed with padding too, although some of the filler is kind of fun.  I’m thinking specifically of the perplexing side jaunt to a night club where characters inexplicably hop on stage and break out into song and dance numbers.  I mean, performing cheeseball music acts in a chintzy night club isn’t the kind of behavior you want to engage in while you’re secretly plotting terrorism on a massive scale.  (Granted, it’s against your will but still.)  The scenes of sexy go-go dancers shaking their moneymakers helps somewhat too.  These moments don’t save the movie, but they do prevent Red Midnight from being a total bomb. 

I, A WOMAN (1966) ***

While waiting for a lover to drop by, Siv (Essy Persson) flashes back to a time when she was shy, innocent, but curious about sex.  The fact she had an uptight fiancé didn’t help much.  While working as a nurse, she catches the eye of an older, experienced, and married patient named Heinz (Preben Mahrt) who deflowers her and encourages her to explore her sexuality.  She soon breaks things off with her fiancé and moves to the big city where she finds more lovers to satisfy her needs. 

I, a Woman was one of the pioneering films in the first wave of Swedish sexploitation.  Directed by Mac (Around the World with Fanny Hill) Ahlberg, it contains a solid structure for this sort of thing.  The nudity is tastefully done too with Persson mostly being seen in the buff via her reflection in the mirror or through a lacy curtain.  Ahlberg does some stylish stuff along the way too, like superimposing a church choir over Essie’s first sexual experience as a way to contrast sexual and religious ecstasy.  I also enjoyed the ending, which stops short of making any moral judgments on Essie’s actions, but merely presents where they have led her. 

While Ahlberg shows restraint, it’s almost to a fault.  Since it was an early version of the genre, it was able to skate by at the time with artiness and tastefully done sensual scenes.  That’s a double-edged sword though because that also means being among the first of its kind, it unfortunately lacks a lot of the unbridled horniness and rampant T & A that hallmarked later iterations of Swedish smut.  The trade off, and it’s an acceptable one, is that we learn what makes Persson’s character tick.  We understand her motivations and desires and because of that, it works as a fleshed-out character study, even if our character doesn’t show off a ton of flesh. 

Best line:  “You have erotic delusions of grandeur, my dear!”

Two sequels, both helmed by Ahlberg, followed. 

BUGONIA (2025) ****

Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos reteamed for yet another modern classic.  I haven’t seen Kinds of Kindness yet, but with The Favourite, Poor Things, and now Bugonia, they have cemented their place among the greatest actor-director combos of the 21st century.  While I still think Poor Things is my favorite of the bunch, this is an awful close second. It’s an unpredictable, audacious, and outrageous jolt of cinematic insanity. 

Stone stars as a CEO who is targeted by a crazy beekeeper (Jesse Plemons) and his autistic cousin (Aidan Delbis) who kidnap her and lock her up in their basement.  Thinking she’s an alien, they shave off her head and cover her head to toe in lotion because… uh… reasons.  Then they demand to be taken to her mothership.  It doesn’t take long for Emma to realize she’s in deep shit as she must try to figure a way to outwit her captors. 

Part of the fun of Bugonia is the way Lanthimos slowly reveals just how nuts Plemons is.  Plemons is excellent as he plays his character as a sad and broken man, but he’s often hilarious and proves once again that he has some terrific comic timing.  (Although anyone who saw Game Night could’ve already told you that.)  Delbis is also ten pounds of hilarity in a five-pound bag as his reactions to the insanity around him (which are often only a word or two) gets some of the biggest laughs of the movie. 

Bugonia belongs to Stone though.  She once again proves to be one of the most fearless actresses of her generation.  She gives a command performance and the way she refuses to back down to her captors will have you cheering.  Even when the movie Goes There®, she continues to kick all kinds of thespian ass.  The totally bonkers ending will leave you shaking your head and doubting your sanity. 

In short, this is a special movie.  Probably the best of the year.  I’ve got to get on Kinds of Kindness ASAP. 

THE LOVERS’ GUIDE (1991) *** ½

This documentary, the first in a popular series, originally aired on British television.  It showed a surprising amount of sex and nudity, including some hardcore action.  Thanks to the clinical and “informative” nature of the special, they were able to escape the scissors of the censors.  In that respect, it kind of reminded me of those old nudist camp movies where everyone stands around playing volleyball naked because, you see… it’s a “documentary”.  I mean, no one in their right mind would watch a documentary just to see a lot of T & A.  Right?

After a brief segment on courtship, we go right into the bedroom.  (Or the bathtub as the case may be.)  There are informative sequences on Arousal (masturbation), Sensual Massage, Fantasies, Oral Sex, and Sexual Positions.  Since it’s essentially made for couples, there’s also a bunch of stuff about keeping things new, exciting, and stimulating for each partner. 

The dry narration about coupling and mating habits straddles the line between educational and cheeky (in a manner of speaking).  Classic words of wisdom like “Get to know your genitals… both aroused and unaroused!” make for some good laughs.  (My favorite bit of narration was when they referred to a guy who ejaculates prematurely as a “Trigger-happy man”.)  Speaking of laughs, wait to you see the part where the actress has to explore the “Male G-Spot”!

This might be a documentary and all, but the camerawork and lighting scream Skinamax.  It takes a while before we get to them, but the surprisingly graphic scenes of women playing with themselves is where the fun really begins.  The only downside to that is that out of the interest of fairness, that also means we are subjected to shots of dudes with rock hard dicks yanking their cranks.  Once we move into the sexual arena, things get XXX graphic.  While the film strives to be clinical, it still manages to be kinda hot. 

So, in the end, The Lovers’ Guide accomplishes two things simultaneously.  It manages to be the manual for lovemaking it was advertised to be, while also containing enough spank material for single viewers.  Because of that, I’d say it deserves high marks. 

LAST OF THE AMERICAN HOBOES (1970) ** ½

Ray Dennis Steckler regular Titus Moody directed this “semi-documentary” about hoboes.  You really don’t hear about hoboes anymore, and I guess they were slowly fading away at the time, which is probably why Moody made the movie.  Inspired by hearing his grandfather’s tales of hobo life, Moody decides to go undercover as a hobo for himself (wearing a ridiculously fake looking beard).  Moody mixes in real documentary footage of soup kitchens, hoboes who still ride the rails, and interviews with skid row inhabitants along with staged sequences of hobo stories.  We also learn how to read hobo messages and even meet a rare “Woman ‘Bo”.  His journey culminates with a hobo convention that features music, parades, and the crowning of the King and Queen Hobo. 

Even though there is a note at the beginning stating that some of the dialogue had to be redubbed, I have to say it’s pretty poorly done.  However, what the film lacks in technical proficiency it makes up for with sheer earnestness.  It’s meant as a tribute to men who were lost in their own generation, and in that respect, Moody accomplished what he set out to do. 

The scenes with real hoboes trying to get by are interesting.  The staged segments are the weakest parts though.  I’m sure Moody stretched his budget thin with all the period settings and recreations of true hobo accounts.  It’s just that these scenes have a tendency to drag (especially the long segment devoted to the “Hobo Kings”). 

Last of the American Hoboes is an uneven, but fascinating curiosity item to be sure.  Previously thought lost, it was revived by Vinegar Syndrome who released it as part of their Lost Picture Show Blu-Ray box set.  A soundtrack album featuring such bangers as “Christmas in Hoboville” and “There’s No Depression in Heaven” was available at one time.  Do you have your copy?

AKA:  The Last American Hobo.

THE VELVET TRAP (1966) ***

Julie (Jamie Karson) is a truck stop waitress who is raped by her sleazy alcoholic boss.  She then runs off and marries her photographer boyfriend Brad (Alan Jeffory) in Vegas.  When his model is a no-show for his new photoshoot, he asks Julie to pose for him ON THEIR WEDDING DAY!  But it gets worse for poor Julie.  The no-good lout runs off on her the very next day!  Stranded in Vegas, she tries to get a job as a showgirl but is accosted on the casting couch before getting Shanghaied into a life of prostitution. 

And I thought my week was bad. 

The Velvet Trap isn’t as tawdry as some of the sexploitation dramas from the era, but the fine location work makes it a cool little time capsule of Las Vegas in the mid ‘60s.  Scenes take place at the old McCarran Airport, the Stardust pool, and there’s a montage set on Fremont Street.  If you’ve watched so many of these things that take place in crummy New York apartments, the Vegas scenery will offer a nice change of pace. 

Although the skin quotient is kind of low for this sort of thing, The Velvet Trap is nevertheless engrossing, if only to see what predicament our poor heroine will find herself in next.  Try to keep track of all the times she goes out of the frying pan and into the fire.  It’s enough to make your head spin.  It all culminates in one of the bleakest and most depressing endings I’ve seen in a long time.  That’s saying something. 

Karson is very good as she tries her damnedest to stand up to her tormentors but just can’t seem to ever catch a break.  She only appeared in one other film, which is unfortunate.  Based on her work here, she could’ve gone places.