SELF SERVICE GIRLS (1975) ** ½

German softcore grandmaster Erwin C. Dietrich wrote and directed this sexy anthology skin flick.  The wraparound sequences (**) involve a pervert dropping pennies in a porno viewer and watching assorted smut.  It’s a thin, but serviceable framework for this sort of thing, I guess.  The segments themselves are about ten minutes long each, and the best ones are weighted towards the beginning.  

The first segment (*** ½) revolves around a flirty babe (Rita Waldenberg) playing duckpin bowling.  When she excuses herself to “wash her hands”, she strips down to nothing and waits for the male bowlers to sneak into the bathroom to fuck her.  This sequence is fun and steamy, and benefits from a sexy performance by Waldenberg, even if the climax is a bit of a… ahem… wash.  

Sequence two (*** ½) has a hot nurse (Christa Free) assisting a doctor performing a circumcision.  She then takes it upon herself to make sure the patient’s dick still works after the operation and fucks him.  This story has some hilarious dubbing (“How you doing, lamb chop?”), and a sexy performance by Free as the horny nurse.  

A sexy sculptress (Marianne Dupont) picks up a dude with a big dick in a coed sauna in the next segment (*** ½).  She then takes him back to her studio and fucks him.  Like the last story, it benefits from a hot performance by the leading lady, and some wonderfully cheesy dialogue, which only adds to the fun.  

The fourth tale (**) involves a horny passenger who bangs a sexy stewardess (Claudia Fielers) in an airplane bathroom during a flight.  This story is the most basic of the bunch as it’s got a lame set-up and a ho-hum payoff.    While it continues the theme of sex in a public bathroom from the first segment, it’s nowhere near as hot or fun.  

The fifth story (** ½) is about a guy who watches vintage porno cartoons before spying on his hot to trot neighbor (Esther Studer) as she masturbates.  Your enjoyment of this sequence may hinge on your tolerance for all the old-timey adults-only animation.  I have to be honest when I say, it didn’t do a whole lot for me.  I guess if you ever wanted to see a cartoon where a guy goes to a gloryhole and gets pleasured by a cow, here you go.  At least the flesh-and-blood stuff features some graphic close-ups of Studer playing with herself.  There’s also a brief vintage hardcore segment where Santa Claus hooks a woman up to a fuck machine.

After that, it’s time for the sixth segment (**).  A musician practices his violin, and his hot neighbor (Monika Rohde) gets so turned on by his playing that she has to play with herself.  This one, like the stewardess story is all set-up and little payoff and suffers from déjà vu from the previous segment of horny neighbors masturbating.

The final story (**) is yet another tale of horny neighbors.  This time out, a guy can’t get any sleep because the couple next door keep fucking all night long.  He sets out to get revenge on them, but naturally, it backfires.  This one would’ve been okay if it didn’t go on so long and wasn’t the third one in a row about horny neighbors.  It’s not bad, but it doesn’t exactly end the movie with a bang, so to speak.  

AKA:  Tempting Roommates.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #26: ONE MISSED CALL: FINAL (2006) ** ½

(Streamed via Midnight Pulp)

I watched One Missed Call 2 during the early days of this thirty-one-movie watching project.  I figured why wait to close out the trilogy?  As it turns out, it’s the best of the trio.

A group of Japanese schoolkids bully a classmate until she finally cracks and tries to commit suicide.  The indifferent brats then head to South Korea on a field trip.  During their sightseeing tour, the students begin receiving ominous phone calls that portend their impending death.  

There are a couple interesting elements here that help to separate Final from the other films in the One Missed Call series.  The first is the fact that the ghostly girl is aided in her quest for revenge by a friend who helps select the order of the victims from a class photo.  Another new wrinkle is the fact that the would-be victims can escape their death by forwarding their deadly phone call to another student.  This adds to the animosity and distrust among the circle of classmates.  Because of that, the horror comes not only from the ghostly girl, but seeing how the classmates turn on one another.  This helps give this installment a unique energy.  Another cool thing is that the deaths sometimes feel like they came out of a Final Destination movie (especially the one involving a live wire), which might explain the subtitle.  Although some of the deaths are more effective than others (the scene where the guy pukes feathers is kind of lame), they work reasonably well for the most part.  

I was intending to give this a favorable review until the third act rolled around.  The subplot involving people trying to stop the ghostly girl’s reign of terror by flooding her inbox with emails containing “positive messages” made my eyeballs roll back into my fucking skull.  That dumb scene definitely knocked the movie down a notch in my book.  However, even with that supremely shitty sequence, One Missed Call:  Final is easily the best film in the franchise.

AKA:  One Missed Call 3:  Final.  AKA:  The Call:  Final.  AKA:  Final Call.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #25: GORGON VIDEO MAGAZINE (1989) ***

(Streamed via B-Zone)

Michael Berryman hosts this horror video magazine from the good people at Gorgon Video.  He’s pretty amusing too.  Dressed in his Hills Have Eyes get-up, Berryman really gets into his introductions and helps make this uneven compilation worthwhile.  

The first segment is a good interview with Wes Craven.  Much of the discussion revolves around Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes.  We also see him in behind the scenes footage of Shocker.  (Wes calls it, “the purest film Wes Craven has ever done”.  LOL.  Sure, Wes.)  Next up is an interview with KNB Effects.  They talk about some of the films that inspired them before taking us on a tour of their studio.  Then, we have a segment devoted to Linnea Quigley.  Naturally, they show her immortal “Dance of the Double Chainsaws” from Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers.  There are also scenes from Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout, and the iconic lipstick scene from Night of the Demons.  Next, is a look inside Troma Studios.  Lloyd Kaufman is his usually gregarious self, although he’s slightly more subdued here than he’d later become.  Scenes from The Toxic Avenger, The Toxic Avenger 2, and Rabid Grannies are also shown.

There’s also a review corner that features reviews for Cameron’s Closet, Henry:  Portrait of a Serial Killer, Bad Taste, and Vicious.  Then Berryman talks about drive-in classics like A Bucket of Blood and Attack of the Giant Leeches that turns into a plug for Sinister Cinema.  Things wind down in the end with concert footage of GWAR and trailers for Death Spa, Girlfriend from Hell, and Judgment Day.

As a clip show/horror digest, it’s fun.  It probably would’ve been better as a forty-five-minute video rather than seventy as it begins running out of steam near the end.  It’s not quite up to snuff with the likes of the Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors or Stephen King’s World of Horror videos, but it’s a breezy seventy minutes of blood, gore, and info.  (I especially enjoyed the segments on Craven and Quigley.)  

EROTICISE (1983) ***

In the ‘80s, workout tapes were all the rage.  As was softcore smut.  Writer/director Ed Hansen, the genius he is, hit upon a million-dollar idea:  Why not combine the two?  Thus, Eroticise was born.  

What is Eroticise, you ask?  Well, it LOOKS like the average workout tape your great aunt would watch.  However, stick with it past the first twenty minutes or so of fully clothed stretching, warm-ups, and exercises and you’ll be treated to long workout routines performed by sexy naked women on someone’s deck (probably Hansen’s).  Except for all the thigh-high legwarmers and sweatbands, of course.  I mean, this was the ‘80s after all.  

What makes Eroticise worth watching, aside from the au natural aerobics?  Well, the fact that Kitten Natividad is one of the performers makes this an immediate classic in my book.  Just watching the impossibly busty Kitten bounce, gyrate, jiggle, and cavort around totally nude is enough for me to recommend this wholeheartedly.  (Natividad and Hansen went on to collaborate on the Takin’ It Off series, which are also well worth watching.)  The scenes with the other ladies are pretty good too, and the routines in which they all participate in the exercises together are a lot of fun.  (I’m thinking specifically the part where they all lay in a circle and do bicycle kicks.)  The final cooldown sequence where the ladies splash around in a hot tub pouring champagne on each other is the perfect capper on an already awesome hour of non-stop fun.

Will anybody ever use Eroticise as an honest to God workout tape?  Unless the only muscle they intend on exercising is their forearm, probably not.  (For many… okay… me, that’s exercise enough.)  There is nothing in the way of actual instruction and/or informative substance here.  What there is plenty of is scenes of Kitten Natividad and company naked, and for me, that was enough.  

GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE (2021) ***

Freshly evicted from their New York apartment, a single mom (Carrie Coon) and her two kids (McKenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard) move to her father’s dilapidated farmhouse in the middle of nowhere to start anew.  One thing she never told her kids:  Their grandfather was a Ghostbuster.  He also left behind clues to prevent a major supernatural cataclysm the likes that hasn’t been experienced since 1984.  It’s then up to the kids to save the town (and possibly the world) from the evil spirits.  

Ghostbusters:  Afterlife was co-written and directed by Jason Reitman, son of the original Ghostbusters director, Ivan.  What makes the film work is that he gives the film his own unique comedic spin while very much honoring what came before.  When the movie is doing its own thing, it works rather well.  The early scenes of the kids finding the proton pack, PKE meters, and traps is a lot of fun, as is the scene where they take the old ECTO-1 out for a test spin to bust their first ghost.  

When Reitman leans into the nostalgic aspects of the story, he leans perhaps a little too hard, hammering many of the callbacks to the first film squarely on the nose.  While it suffers from the occasional “member berries” moment, when Afterlife clicks, it’s enormously entertaining.  Fans of the original may be dismayed that it takes a while for the OG Ghostbusters to make their entrance, but it’s well worth the wait.  Again, some of their schtick relies too heavily on what they did thirty-seven years ago, but there is at least one huge laugh to be had during their brief reunion.  Do I wish they had more to do?  Yes.  Do I wish the editing was a little tighter in the second act?  Sure.  However, Ghostbusters fans will no doubt get a kick out of much of the busting that takes place.  

The performances are all around great, which helps give this iteration in the franchise its own identity.  Coon is fun as the world-weary mom whose main advice to her kids is “Don’t be yourself”.  McKenna Grace is a star in the making.  Much of the movie rests on her shoulders and she gamely carries it in stride.  Finn Wolfhard isn’t quite as successful, but that’s mostly because his role is just the classic older brother cliché character.  Even then, he still gets his share of moments.  

It’s Paul Rudd who completely steals the movie as the kids’ teacher who nerds out when he sees the Ghostbuster equipment.  He also gets the biggest laugh when he shows his class a very inappropriate film.  If there is a sequel (and the post-credits scene suggests there might), I hope he becomes a full-fledged Ghostbuster because he is the best thing about the flick.  

Overall, it’s not quite as memorable as Ghostbusters 2, but it’s certainly more fun than the recent reboot.  It arguably has as much heart as the original as I will freely admit it hit me in the feels a few times.  While I wish Reitman didn’t rehash so much of the plot of the original (especially in the third act), Afterlife proves there is plenty of life left in the Ghostbusters franchise.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #24: SEXY CAT (1973) **

(Streamed via Otherworlds TV)

A cartoonist is incensed when an unscrupulous producer steals his comic book character, Sexy Cat, so he hires a private detective named Mike Cash (German Cobas) to find proof he’s the real creator.  Since a Sexy Cat television show is in the works, the artist stands to make a fortune if he finally receives credit.  Naturally, he gets bumped off by someone wearing a Sexy Cat costume in the same manner as characters in the comic strip.  Despite the fact his client is dead, the private eye decides to see the case through to the end and bring down the killer.  

The Sexy Cat character is sort of like a mix between Catwoman and Barb Wire.  They were definitely riding on the coattails of the Batman TV show, but despite the title, it’s much more like a giallo where a killer murders their victims during bloody, over the top set pieces.  Daggers, snakes, plastic bags, and cat claws are all used to make mincemeat of the murderer’s targets.  Director Julio Perez (Hot Panties) Tabernero gives the film a fun, colorful, poppy vibe that at least makes it visually interesting whenever the plot starts spinning its wheels.  

After a fine set-up, things slow down to a crawl once the film settles into a rhythm of Cobas interrogating the various suspects (including a stereotypical comic relief “dress maker” who is accompanied by a whimsical music cue).  It’s here where it starts to feel like a ho-hum TV detective pilot.  The movie particularly loses a lot of flair once Dyanik (The Hanging Woman) Zurakowska is killed off.  At least she looks great and has a couple of nude scenes before meeting her demise.  

Bottom Line:  Whenever it concentrates on the comic book killer offing her victims, it's enjoyable.  When it gets bogged down with a lot of talk, it’s decidedly less than purr-fect.    

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #23: KILLER BARBYS (1996) ***

(Streamed via Kino Cult)

Jess Franco directed this fun and gory rock n’ roll horror flick.  The Spanish punk band, The Killer Barbies are on their way to a gig when their van breaks down.  They wind up spending the night in a nearby creepy castle owned by a bedridden Countess.  As it turns out, she is a centuries-old vampire who intends to drink the band dry in order to regain her youth.

It’s easy to see why Franco would want to work with The Killer Barbies as lead singer Silvia Superstar looks dynamite on stage wearing nothing but a skimpy bikini while screaming about sex, murder, Troma, and comic books.  It’s a match made in Heaven if you ask me.  The movie itself kind of has the feel of an R-rated Scooby-Doo episode (or maybe Josie and the Pussycats since it features a rock band led by a sexy singer).  Even though it was made in the mid ‘90s, there are some sequences here that look like they come straight out of a Franco film from the ‘70s as the fog-drenched outdoor scenes, grimy special effects, and Vaseline-smeared camera lenses harken back to Franco’s golden era.  One particularly memorable sequence finds the Countess’s minions chasing a nude groupie through the woods, ending on an unlikely (but highly enjoyable) note.  

I think my favorite moment though was the awkward dinner party where the Barbies do some simple math and figure that their sexy hostess should be about a hundred years old.  Slightly miffed, she whips out her tit at the dinner table and says, “Is this the breast of a woman of one-hundred?”  What makes this scene even better is the fact that the Countess is played by none other than Burial Ground’s Mariangela Giordano!   Remember the sexy MILF who breastfed her zombie kid in that movie?  She still looks great too.  Oh, and to answer her question, I have to say her breast looks much better than any hundred-year-old (or sixty-year-old, which is how old she was when she made the movie) breast I’ve ever seen.  Later in the film, Giordano seduces a band member and looks simply incredible while writhing naked on top of him, proving that age is just a number when it comes to being wickedly sexy.  

While there are flashes of brilliance here and there, the film does kind of dawdle when it enters the homestretch.  It’s here where things devolve into an endless series of scenes of Silvia Superstar wandering down the smoky corridors of the castle.  Since she does so while wearing Spider-Man Underoos, it’s hard to complain too much.  Fortunately, Franco sends us off on a high note by delivering a great death by steamroller and what has to be one of the most hilarious scenes of defenestration ever captured on film.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering why the movie is called Killer Barbys and the band is called The Killer Barbies, it’s because Mattel, who owns the Barbie copyright sued Franco and made him change the title—No, seriously! 

Franco and the Killer Barbies reunited six years later for a sequel, Killer Barbys vs. Dracula.

AKA:  Vampire Killer Barbys.