IN THE HEART OF THE SEA (2015) **

In the Heart of the Sea tells the story behind Moby Dick.  It begins with Herman Melville tracking down the last survivor of the Essex, the notorious ship that was attacked by a giant white whale.  There was a smidgeon of a good idea here, but unfortunately, the story it inspired is a lot more entertaining than the real deal. 

Is there a reason to tell this tale?  Did anyone really ask for a realistic version of Moby Dick?  I mean who UNDERSELLS a fish story?  Fish stories are SUPPOSED to be tall tales that are larger than life.  What the fuck, Opie?

Thor, Spider-Man and Scarecrow go out into the middle of the ocean looking for whale oil.  The captain is a rich boy who’s never captained a boat before. They run into the monstrous whale that attacks the boat and shipwrecks the crew. 

What surprised me most about In the Heart of the Sea was that the whale attack happens halfway through the film.  From there, it becomes a tale of survival.  Think Alive in a lifeboat.  This could’ve worked, but Howard is too much of a nice guy to go all out during these scenes.  I mean, if you’re going to have cannibalism in a movie, show the damned cannibalism!  Don’t pussy out and cut back to the narrator.  

I get why this material resonated with Howard.  It’s thematically similar to Apollo 13.  It’s another historical tale of survival.  That doesn’t mean it’s very good though.

The camerawork is often odd.  He uses a lot of weird camera angles aboard the boat for no good reason.  (Unless Howard was trying to make us seasick.)  It’s also a really ugly looking movie too.  Much of the film has a garish yellow tint to it.  It almost looks as if someone pissed on the camera lens or something.

There is one gnarly moment when Spider-Man crawls into a dead whale’s blowhole to dig out the last bits of oil.  If anything, Howard does a good job showing the lengths men would go through to get oil back in the 1820s.  It’s a good thing men stopped doing shady shit for oil after this incident.

As far as Ron Howard movies go, it’s no Gung Ho.

SHARK EXORCIST (2015) * ½

A killer nun (named Linda Blair!) makes a human sacrifice at a lake.  One year later, a giant shark with glowing eyes starts eating swimmers.  A trio of friends go to the lake, and one of them is bitten by the phantom shark.  Her bite miraculously disappears a few days later and she begins acting strange.  A priest, whose brother was also a victim of the shark, comes to town looking to send the shark’s spirit back to Hell.

The early scenes have sort of a screwball charm to them.  Unfortunately, the plot is all over the place, and things get increasingly incoherent as it goes along.  It sometimes feels like writer/director Donald (Hooker with a Hacksaw) Farmer just strung a bunch of unrelated short films together as he keeps introducing more and more characters who never intersect (and very few of them were even necessary).  

The most memorable character is Nancy (Roni Jonah), a sexy redhead reality show host.  She’s the star of “Ghost Whackers” and tries to make a mental connection with the shark.  The sight of Jonah (who kind of looks like Bella Thorne) writhing around on the ground, arms flailing, and yelling, “Spirit, come inside me!” is amusing, but that’s about as good as it gets, I’m afraid.

The shark itself isn’t bad, especially compared to the sharks featured in so many of the other movies from the ‘10s that have the word “Shark” in the title.  It just doesn’t have a lot of personality.  We also don’t see enough of it to make much of a difference anyway.

Farmer spends most of the running time on the various subplots.  Once he finally sets his sights on the usual Exorcist-type shenanigans (there is a pea soup-puking scene), it still comes up short.  The big exorcism finale winds up being nothing more than a priest exorcising a girl who’s possessed by a shark.  This is disappointing, especially for anyone hoping the priest would be exorcising an actual shark.

Shark Exorcist is far from Farmer’s worse, but it never lives up to the potential.  It also suffers from offscreen kills and skimpy gore.  (In one scene, a shark bite is signified by a dollop of fake blood on a girl’s leg.)  It’s only seventy minutes, but it feels much longer.  There’s not one but two post-credits scenes (one features a girl wandering around an aquarium gift shop), which helps to pad out the running time. Both of them are equally pointless.

As bad as most of Shark Exorcist is, I have to tip my hat to Farmer for writing such howlers as, “That’s the thing about almost dying, Emily:  It’s a real buzz kill!”

NOTHING PERSONAL (1980) **

Donald Sutherland stars as a professor who is outraged that baby seals are being bludgeoned with baseball bats by the government who want to install a military base on the seals’ breeding ground in Alaska.  No one wants to take on the big corporation holding the government contract, so he resorts to looking in the phone book for a lawyer.  He winds up choosing Suzanne Somers and together they team up to stick it to the man and save some seals.

Nothing Personal is a weird movie.  I don’t know who the intended audience was.  It seems like an ‘80s updating of a ‘60s counterculture comedy with a dash of ‘70s political thriller, but the subject matter is so specific that it’s hard to generate any laughs.  

What you’re left with is the sight of Somers flirting with Sutherland in between causing a ruckus with corporate execs over the seals.  They aren’t bad together either.  In fact, they’re interesting enough to make you wish they had better material to work with.  (There’s a scene where Sutherland goes on and on about Somers’ pussy that is surprising, considering the PG rating.)

The reason why none of this works was probably because it was never intended to.  It was made as a Canadian tax shelter movie (the accents are a dead giveaways), so the producers could write it off and still come out ahead, even if it was a flop.  The ending is a washout and some scenes feel like they were almost stapled together.  Perhaps there was a longer cut somewhere that got whittled down because so much of it is choppy.  (Obviously looped dialogue like, “Let’s stop back at the hotel and change our clothes” is clumsily added in to prevent obvious continuity errors in between scenes.)  

Director George Bloomfield also did a lot of episodes of SCTV, which explains why Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, and Joe Flaherty appear in bit parts.

EDUCATING NINA (1984) ** ½

Nina Hartley and her friends put out a personal ad offering to act out people’s kinkiest desires.  They then videotape the fantasies and sell them directly to the customer.  It’s all under the guise of a college study of sexuality, but we know it’s just a way for Nina and her pals to get their rocks off.  

The first scene has a guy watching his wife (Karen Summer) get it on with their maid (Nina) while he eats his breakfast in bed.  Nina looks hot in her outfit, although she doesn’t stay in it for very long.  Summer and Hartley are clearly enjoying themselves and their chemistry helps to elevate this scene, which is the easily the best of the bunch.

In the next sequence, Nina goes to a strip club where the dancer pulls her up on stage, strips her down, and bangs her in front of the entire club.  Nina is hot once she finally is able to do her thing.  (I liked it when she looked directly at the camera while performing oral.)  Unfortunately, the stuff with the male dancer strutting around the club and collecting tips just goes on far too long.  Besides, the sight of his legwarmers alone is enough to keep anyone from getting a chub.

A guy comes home early from work and finds his wife getting double teamed by two gardeners in the next scene.  Naturally, he doesn’t get mad.  He’s actually proud of her!  This scene has a nice unrushed feel and features a foxy turn by Lili Marlene as the sex-starved housewife.

Karen Summer appears once again in the next sequence.  She seduces a jogger in the park and takes him back to the ladies’ locker room for a quick romp.  Summer’s enthusiasm is infectious, but that doesn’t disguise the fact that this is a fairly ordinary scene in just about every way.

In the last scene, a phone sex caller gets his wish when he gets it on with Juliet Anderson (who also directed) and Marlene.  This scene has a good set-up, but it’s undone by some truly shitty camerawork.  Juliet must’ve been too busy having fun in front of the camera to worry about quality control behind it.

Educating Nina has all the quirks (I hesitate to use the word “charms”) of an early ‘80s production.  The camerawork is cheap, and the editing is rough in places.  The music sounds like it came out of a local morning talk show, and the computer-generated titles are chintzy.  Still, as an early look at a legend in the making, it’s sort of fun.  Hartley is quite hot here, and she’d only get better as time went on.  So, if you’re a fan of Nina, you’ll probably want to check out the flick that got the ball rolling on her long-lasting career.

PRISONER OF PARADISE (1980) ***

Joe (John C. Holmes) is an American sailor who washes ashore on a deserted island after a German U-boat sinks his battleship.  He decides to explore the island and finds a stream where two nude women (Seka and Sue Carol) are bathing.  He follows them back to their camp where he is disgusted to learn they are Nazis.  (That would be just my luck too.)  They, along with their superior (Heinz Mueller) get their kicks by torturing American women POW’s and forcing them to have sex.  Joe tries to help the POW’s, but after a failed escape attempt, the Nazis have their way with Joe too.  

Directed by Gail Palmer and Bob Chinn, Prisoner of Paradise has a couple of wild scenes that help to catapult it to the top of the Nazi porno charts.  I’m thinking specifically of the scene where a POW is tied up and the Nazis make her say, “I love the Fuhrer!” while Seka eats her pussy.  Later, Seka put a gun to John Holmes’ head and makes him fuck her while “Ride of the Valkyries” plays.  (This came out a year after Apocalypse Now.)  Meanwhile, Carol watches them as she masturbates using the butt of her pistol.  Before poor John can finish, Seka yells, “Don’t you cum in me, you American swine!”  

Seka, it must be said, looks incredible in her Nazi uniform, although I’m not sure gold belly chains were standard issue for Nazi women soldiers.  I mean I’ve always had a thing for Seka.  I’ve always had a thing for a woman in uniform too.  Because of that, Prisoner of Paradise was kind of right up my alley.  

Even though Holmes had the biggest cock in the business, he still becomes the butt of many funny jokes.  The best moment comes when Seka searches him and mistakes his dick for a concealed weapon.  She also degrades him by calling him names like, “American wiener schnitzel” and “American frankfurter”, which is pretty funny.

You have to give credit to Chinn and Palmer.  The decent production design and use of extras in the flashback scenes make Prisoner of Paradise almost look like a real movie.  At least for a while, as the dilapidated shack on the island is right in line with a porn budget.

If you’re in the mood for kinky, dirty, nasty Nazi sex, along with a healthy dose of S & M, Prisoner of Paradise should fit the bill.  There are times throughout the film where you get the feeling that maybe you shouldn’t be watching it, which is about the highest praise you can give a Nazi porno.  Too bad about the awful theme song though.

AKA:  Nazi Love Island.  AKA:  Nassau.

FRAULEINS IN UNIFORM (1973) ** ½

It’s Recruitment Day at the SS.  Young girls are lining up in droves to join Hitler’s army.  Dr. Kuhn (Carl Mohner) gives them a cursory look-see and deems many unfit for duty.  As a consequence, he is thrown into active service and his daughters Marga (Elisabeth Felchner) and Eva (Karin Heske) are forced to join the army.  They join the SS girls and board a train on their way to the front where horny German soldiers are only too eager to take them to the bathroom for a quickie.  The girls then decide they like serving officers and ask Himmler for permission to keep the German end up, so to speak.  They then spend most their time jumping on Jerry’s jimmy.  

Director Erwin C. Dietrich, the legendary sleaze merchant who produced many Jess Franco movies, gives Frauleins in Uniform a light touch.  I know a Naziploitation flick with a “light touch” is sort of an oxymoron, but it makes sense since it was a German production.  To them, this must’ve seemed just like an ordinary army sex comedy.

I mean, you still get some of the usual Nazi movie clichés.  There are shower scenes, forced lesbianism, not-so forced lesbianism, balling on the battlefield, and rape.  Naturally, all this Nazi nastiness leads to an outbreak of VD throughout camp.  It’s not quite as outlandish and depraved as your typical Third Reich raunch-fest, which may disappoint some viewers.

The examination scene early in the film where the girls are forced to strip is a classic though.  One of the recruits refuses to take off her garter, and the matron asks her if she’s wearing a chastity belt.  She replies, “Yes!  I’m saving myself for the Fuhrer!”

Ultimately, most of this is just too all over the place to work.  The scenes of rampant Nazi sex are sometimes interrupted with an inexplicable bout of seriousness (like the leukemia subplot) that runs against the grain of the silliness.  For every dramatic scene, there’s at least two or three moments of sheer stupidity (like the scene where the Frauleins get it on with some Nazi officers and rub their guns suggestively until they symbolically fire in the air).  I mean it’s hard not to like any movie in which Nazi schoolgirls turn their headquarters into a brothel.  

At a hundred minutes, it’s probably about ten minutes too long.  The fractured plot spins its wheels a bit too much in the second half too.  It particularly falls apart whenever it tries to become a serious war movie late in the game, and the ending is abrupt.  

The best line comes when a Nazi phone operator gets all hot and bothered while looking at dirty pictures and her co-worker chastises her by saying, “You’re going to strain an ovary!”

AKA:  She Devils of the SS.  AKA:  Frauleins Without Uniform.  AKA:  SS Cutthroats.  AKA:  The Cutthroats.  

SWAMP ZOMBIES 2 (2018) ** ½

I only watched the original Swamp Zombies because I bought the DVD from Jasmin St. Claire at a horror convention.  It wasn’t bad, but I remember it being long as fuck.  Returning director Len Kabasinki obviously heard my criticism because this thirteen-years-later sequel runs a tight seventy-two minutes.  

The plot is one of those Escape from New York deals where a dangerous criminal is sent into hostile territory to complete a suicide mission.  In this case, Swann (horror host Mr. Lobo) sends Jack (Kabasinki) into a zombified zone to retrieve Mouse (Crystal Quin), the leader of P.E.T.Z. (People for the Ethical Treatment of Zombies.)  She has information that could potentially halt production on Swann’s zombie reality show, so he wants her silenced.

Swamp Zombies 2 is fun for a while, but it ultimately loses steam once the action switches over to the villain’s dark warehouse compound.  Still, it’s a big improvement on the original in many ways.  The fake commercials are especially funny and help lighten the mood.  The gore (which includes head squishing, gut ripping, face ripping, and more) is quite juicy, and the topless zombie (complete with nipple piercings) from the opening scene is probably the sexiest zombie lady since Mindy Clarke in Return of the Living Dead 3.  As someone who’s sat through a slew of bad shot-on-video zombie comedy sequels, you learn to appreciate one that almost gets it right.

Mr. Lobo gets the best line of the movie when he refers to a zombie’s walk as “The Pittsburgh Shuffle”.