TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRAMAN ZEARTH (1996) ***

After recently enjoying Shin Ultraman and being a fan of the original series, I thought this column would be a good opportunity to catch up on some of the Ultraman movies.  Fortunately for me, Tubi has scads of them.  So, prepare yourself.  The next week or so is going to be Ultraman-centric.

An underground monster with the unlikely name of Cotton-Poppe is stealing gold and eating it.  (Including an Ultraman statue!)  Team Mydo (who use a gas station as their cover) goes into action in their jet Skyfish to investigate.  Turns out, Cotton-Poppe is just using the gold to power up the big-brained Alien Benzene that’s out to destroy Earth.  Meanwhile, Ultraman Zearth comes to Earth but unlike other iterations of the character, he has poor aim and suffers from OCD!  Every time he gets a little dirt or muck on his hands, he has to compulsively wash them!

 

Ultraman Zearth is short and sweet (under an hour long) and has more comedy elements than your typical Ultraman series.  Because of the shortened running time, it sort of feels more like an episode of the TV show than an actual movie.  That’s part of the charm though.  It moves like lightning and has no fat on it whatsoever, something that’s kind of essential for a Japanese giant rubber monster movie. 

I also liked that this Ultraman is a germaphobe, which gives him an interesting and surprisingly human weakness.  Not enough Japanese giant spacemen have mental disorders if you ask me.  Having him use his electric toothbrush to turn into Ultraman was a neat touch too.

Sure, Ultraman Zearth isn’t perfect.  While the original Ultraman theme remains a banger, some of the music in the final battle is grating as hell.  (It’s just someone saying, “Yeah!  Yeah!  Yeah!” on repeat.)  The shitty music kind of prevents the finale from really taking flight as the monster mashing in the third act is of the solid, if unspectacular variety.  That said, there’s still a lot of silly fun here, and the kooky touches help to distinguish it from the (many) other iterations of the franchise. 

TUBI CONTINUED… FORBIDDEN ADVENTURES (1972) **

Forbidden Adventures is a costume softcore comedy anthology flick from the director of Playgirls and the Vampire.  Like most anthologies, it’s uneven as all get out.  Like most Italian sex comedies, it’s not very funny.  That said, it’s an innocuous slice of cheesy ‘70s skin cinema. 

In the wraparound segment, “Tribunal” (**) various women are brought before the court and put on trial for their various sexual transgressions.  These scenes wouldn’t have been all that bad if they weren’t mired with unfunny comedy bits and slapstick schtick.  Overall, it’s a serviceable but undistinguished way to tie all the stories together. 

The first “case” is “The Naughty Nun” (** ½).  A sexy babe (Angela Covello) is on the eve of becoming a nun in a convent.  This cheeses off her boyfriend, Enrico (Franco Agostini) because that means they can’t screw anymore.  After one night in the habit, she sends for Enrico to come and make love to her.  Let’s just say it doesn’t go as expected. 

Like with the wraparound segments, the comedy is painfully unfunny.  However, the surprise twist at the end is genuinely amusing.  If only it had a bit more T & A, it could’ve been a winner. 

Up next is “The Trick” (**).  A lowly housekeeper named Lisa (Orchidea de Santis) becomes privy to the fact that the lady of the house (Shirley Corrigan) is sleeping with the handsome new butler under her husband’s nose.  Turns out, she and the butler are in cahoots and have an elaborate blackmail scheme in motion.  Naturally, it all winds up going south. 

This tale is more or less straightforward.  Fortunately, it doesn’t have as much comedy as some of the other segments do.  A healthy dose of skin certainly helps too.  However, the twists are predictable, and it all seems to get wrapped up way too quickly in the end.

Femi Benussi stars in the next tale, “4 Wives” (** ½).  She’s an unhappily married woman who gets tired of her husband drinking and gambling with his friends at all hours of the night.  After a bout of drunken antics, he and his pals like to take turns plowing the local farm girl.  Femi spies on them one night and tells the men’s wives the next morning.  The ladies then hatch a plot to get back at their husbands once and for all. 

This one is thematically similar to the other stories.  (People having sex with someone posing as another person.)  It works slightly better than the others, thanks to its light comedic touch and the reliance on durable bedroom farce cliches.  That doesn’t exactly translate into actual laughs, but Benussi’s performance (and nude scenes) is fun to watch. 

The final tale is “The Miracle” (**).  Betta (Rosemarie Lindt) leaves her loutish priest husband to be with a hunky friar.  When his order catches him giving Betta the old in-out, they coerce him into joining in on the action.  Problems arise when she becomes pregnant. 

Again, this story covers a lot of the same ground as the others that preceded it.  The religious sex scenes are similar to the ones found in The Naughty Nun, except with the roles reversed.  (Nuns are swapped out for Friars.)  Ultimately, it suffers from an overall lack of humor (not to mention skin), which makes it a cut below the rest. 

AKA:  Tales of Erotica.

TUBI CONTINUED… VIDEOVERSE (2021) **

A sexy babe named Maya (Anna Claire Clouds) finds a videotape buried in her backyard.  She and her husband (Ian Mark) watch the mystery movie and are shocked to learn it’s a porno from the ‘80s starring the dead adult actress Cassandra Essex (Lexi Luna), who used to own the house.  Before long, they and their hot-to-trot houseguest Doreen (Jazmin Luv) begin to lose touch with reality and find themselves in Cassandra’s “sex dimension”.

 

Videoverse is a breezy, if forgettable 21st century Surrender Cinema flick.  The idea is relatively sound, but the set-up is a little more complicated than necessary for something as silly as this, and even at a scant sixty-seven minutes, it still feels a tad longwinded.  The ‘80s porno scenes are kinda fun though, even if the filmmakers really don’t take full advantage of the concept.  (The aerobicizing scene had potential, but it ultimately goes nowhere.)  At least the house makes for a rather amusing setting as it’s chockful of Full Moon posters and paraphernalia.

On the plus side, the ladies are all easy on the eyes, even if they do have a little trouble with the admittedly clunky one-liners and unfunny zingers the script gives them.  They also have a habit of getting naked at the drop of a hat, which helps to make up for many of the film’s storytelling problems and failed attempts at comedy.  Jayden Cole in particular looks fine as hell as the sultry fortune teller.  Clouds and Luv are equally hot as the babes in the woods who are slowly seduced into the ‘80s era of erotic excess.  Luna, on the other hand, seems to be trying too hard as she overdoes it with her silly accent.  That said, she still looks great in a variety of outfits (including a dominatrix get-up).  While the ladies do disrobe at a decent clip, all the lesbian scenes end abruptly before they even have a chance to gather steam, which is unfortunate.  

AKA:  Cassex.

TUBI CONTINUED… “2” – I, A WOMAN PART 2 (1969) ***

Siv (Gio Petre) is a lonely housewife married to an eccentric antiques dealer named Hans (Lars Lunoe), who is mired in debt and is perpetually hounded by creditors.  That still doesn’t stop him from showering her with jewelry and taking nude pics of her.  One night, he makes her wear a fancy dress and invites a friend over for dinner and pimps her out to him.  More degradation follows until Siv finally learns his shocking secret. 

While I acknowledge I haven’t seen the first one (when has that ever stopped me from watching something with “Part 2” in the title?), I assume it features more of the same. Director Mac Ahlberg does a fine job with all the sex and nude scenes.  They are all tastefully done, and are, dare I say, even a bit artistic.  Then again, Ahlberg’s a cinematographer by trade (who went on to work for everyone from Stuart Gordon to Sean S. Cunningham to John Landis), so it’s no wonder the sex scenes look first rate, even if they aren’t exactly out and out steamy. 

The plot stuff is mostly your standard melodrama sort of thing.  The big difference is the unusually complex relationship our heroine has with her mother in-law, which is something you don’t normally see in this something like this.  If I’m being honest, “2” – I, a Woman Part 2 is kinda hit-and-miss for the first seventy-five minutes but stay with it.  If you do, you’ll be treated to a totally bonkers twist ending, which helps bump this one into the win column.  Like, I knew the husband was gonna be nuts, but I didn’t think he was gonna be THAT nuts.  It makes for the perfect capper on what otherwise would have been a fine, if forgettable sex flick and makes it something of a minor classic. 

Man, I might have to track down Part 1 (and 3!) now.

AKA:  I, a Woman Part 2.

TUBI CONTINUED… TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN REVISITED (2019) * ½

In the dystopian future, a group of radical feminist scientists treat young Billy Hampton (Bill Paxton) like a human guinea pig, swapping his genders and sexual preferences on a whim using a mixture of surgery, shock treatment, and hypnosis.  They then use their devious techniques to brainwash him into becoming a killer and send him off to Wales to assassinate one of their political opponents.

Co-written by none other than William S. Burroughs, Taking Tiger Mountain was originally released in 1983.  It has since been cleaned up and re-edited, with new scenes added and/or old scenes modified.  The results were re-released shortly after Paxton’s death in 2019.  Shot in black and white, it drags like a son of a bitch, and often feels like an overlong, needlessly pretentious student film.  Despite a fine performance from Paxton, it’s basically a slog from the word go. 

The filmmakers gamely try to create a post-nuke world on a shoestring budget.  However, the surveillance camera footage sequences and the constant droning from radio broadcasts detailing the fallout of World War III are more monotonous than anything.  Even though it’s little more than an hour long, it feels much longer due to the fractured narrative.  This is one of those movies that were so dull that it took me several days to get through.  I’m sure there are folks that have climbed actual mountains in shorter time.

 

If you’re a fan of Paxton and want to see him early on in his career, you might want to give it a shot.  (Or, if you just want to see his dick, as it makes several appearances.)  Even as a curiosity piece, it’s still dreadfully unsatisfying.  Honestly, if I ever a hankering to see a youthful Paxton doing something weird and arty, I’ll just watch the Barnes and Barnes “Fish Heads” music video (which he directed).

TUBI CONTINUED… SEX AND THE LONELY WOMAN PART II (1971) **

Gregg (Sergio Regules, who was also in the first movie, but playing a different character) is a struggling television writer who picks up a sexy stranded motorist named Carolyn (Barbara Mills) on the highway and brings her back to her swinging Palm Springs mansion.  She tells him all about how her studio honcho hubby is in the closet and denies her much-needed sexual affection.  Gregg and Carolyn hit it off and soon become lovers.  Their bliss is short lived when she is raped and kidnapped by a gang of thugs. 

As with Sex and the Lonely Woman, this was directed by Ted Leversuch.  It was actually made BEFORE the first one (as The Perfect Arrangement) and was just retitled here in America.  They’re totally unrelated, other than the fact that they’re both about Regules banging unhappily married women.  The first one was sort of a variation on an Armando Bo movie.  This one feels like a low budget version of a Joe Sarno flick.  You know, the whole “Sexual Misadventures of Well-to-Do Housewife Stuck in a Loveless Marriage and Imprisoned in Her Boring Domestic Life” bit.

 

Mills is very good at playing the lonely longing wife and is quite sexy.  Sadly, Regules is kind of a dullard this time out.  To make matters worse, he doesn’t have a whole lot of chemistry with Mills, which causes the sex scenes to be more fizzle than sizzle.  The good news is there are a lot of them in the second act, including a bathtub scene, a slow motion underwater skinny-dipping sequence, and even a From Here to Eternity-inspired sex scene on the beach. 

The big problem is that the third act is needlessly convoluted and downright mean-spirited.  In fact, it seems more like a knee-jerk moralistic punishment from the screenwriters for the heroine’s free love lifestyle than a realistic extension of the story.  It’s especially weird that even though he’s top billed, Regulas virtually disappears from the narrative after the second act.  Oh, and if you thought the ending of the “first” one went on forever, wait till you see Part II’s longwinded (and dull) finale.

AKA:  The Perfect Arrangement.

TUBI CONTINUED… SEX AND THE LONELY WOMAN (1972) ** ½

Marta (Susana Groisman) is an unhappily married woman stuck with an uncaring husband Ricardo (Freddie Deacon).  Her world is turned upside down when an unconscious escaped convict named Paul (Sergio Regules) washes up on the shore of her beachfront home.  She secretly nurses him back to health in the basement and the two eventually fall in love.  Complicating matters is the fact that her husband is also the warden of the prison where Paul has escaped.  Things go from bad to worse when Ricardo’s sleazeball friend (Romolo Bondi) finds out about the lovebirds and blackmails Marta.

Groisman is quite beautiful and has a sort of budget version Isabel Sarli type quality to her.  Voluptuous and sultry, she is quite fetching even while playing such a sad sack character.  Likewise, Ted Leversuch’s direction sort of feels like he was going for a watered-down version of an Armando Bo melodrama.  It’s all sort of hit-and-miss, but fortunately there’s just enough drama to keep you invested in the characters and just enough nudity to placate the exploitation crowd. 

The nude scenes are all tastefully done and give the audience an equal measure of tease (there are lots of side boob shots in the early going) and please (Groisman’s bathtub scene is a real eye-opener).  They also occur with enough frequency to keep you from losing interest whenever the pacing slows.  It’s a shame that the final chase/escape scene goes on forever.  It’s almost as if Leversuch thought he was making a “real” movie for a minute.  Had he cut the finale in half, Sex and the Lonely Woman might’ve skated by with a *** rating.  His sporadic artsy-fartsy touches aren’t really all that successful either (like the yellow-tinted love scene).  Actually, the scratched-up, jumpy print gives it a fun Grindhouse quality, and makes it feel a little more down-and-dirty than it probably is.  Because of that, it works better as a straight-up skin flick than a softcore drama with stylistic aspirations.