POOR THINGS (2023) ****

Poor Things popped onto my radar when I saw someone on Twitter describe it as “Arthouse Frankenhooker”.  Incredibly enough, that’s a pretty spot-on description.  This has got to be one of the dirtiest, sexiest Oscar-bait movies in some time. 

Emma Stone stars as Bella Baxter, the undead, baby-brained creation of mad scientist Godwin (Willem Dafoe).  As she slowly improves her speech and motor skills, a funny thing happens:  She becomes sexually aware.  Big time.  After being promised to Godwin’s meek assistant (Ramy Youssef), she is charmed away by a smooth-talking lawyer (Mark Ruffalo), who basically just wants to bang her.  Soon enough, he learns he is unable to keep her fulfilled, and she goes off on a quest of sexual self-discovery. 

By having Stone’s character having a newborn’s grasp on sexuality, gender politics, and the war of the sexes, it enables director Yorgos Lanthimos to shove a lot of social commentary into the mix without being (overtly) on the nose about it.  It helps that the film is frequently hilarious, and that Stone has no qualms whatsoever about dropping her panties at a moment’s notice. 

This is one fearless performance.  Stone throws herself headlong into the role and embraces the character’s childlike sense of wonder.  Her many nude and sex scenes are eye popping to say the least, and her enthusiasm for doing the deed (which she calls “furious jumping”) is admirable.  Dafoe, looking and sounding like a cross between Scrooge McDuck and Marv from Sin City, is quite good as her godlike father figure.  Ruffalo is a hoot as the pathetic lothario who acts like a mix of Charlie Chaplin, Pepe Le Pew, and Hercules Poirot. 

The world building and set design is also delightful.  The film often looks like a Dr. Seuss version of a Harlequin romance novel.  The costumes are something else too, and Stone looks terrific in and out of her many kooky outfits. 

Oh, and was it just me, or is Poor Things just Barbie in reverse?  Except… you know… With a lot more boobs?

Essentially, it’s about a human doll who learns she has a vagina, leaves a world dominated by men, has to deal with an annoying boyfriend, is confronted by the struggles of the real world, goes on an existential journey of discovery, and comes to her dream house dominated by women.  Did I miss anything?  Oh yeah.  Boobs.

In short, Poor Things is one of the weirdest, wildest, and sexiest films of the year.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: BOUNTY HUNTERS (1997) ***

FORMAT:  DVD

After directing Lorenzo Lamas in three classic Snakeeater movies, George Erschbamer teamed up with Michael Dudikoff for a pair of pretty fun Bounty Hunters films. 

Dudikoff plays a down and out cigar smoking bounty hunter named Jersey.  Lisa Howard is his tough talking, high kicking rival, B.B.  While fighting over a high dollar fugitive, they stumble upon a hooker who witnessed a Mob hit.  Jersey reluctantly agrees to lend her a hand when the mobsters kidnap his young sidekick. 

Bounty Hunters is a pleasant, if a tad forgettable affair.  It doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is refreshing.  It’s the kind of movie where the hero finds himself in a chop shop where all the mechanics seem to know Kung Fu.  That right there should be the litmus test of whether you will enjoy it or not.  It all adds up to a bunch of empty calories, but it’s amusing more often than not even if it leans toward the disposable side. 

Dudikoff does a fine job in the lead.  He fares well playing a looser, funnier version of his typical screen persona.  I liked the running gag where he rigs up an extensive collection of booby traps in his home to ward off disgruntled collars.  Of course, this naturally comes in handy when the Mob sends their goons after you.  Howard is solid too as his counterpart who is more than capable of delivering an ass whooping.  They both seem to be having fun playing off one another, and there is a sizeable amount of chemistry between them.

My favorite moment though was when Dudikoff goes into a video store that prominently features posters for Erschbamer’s Snakeeater 2 and even Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS!  Now that’s my kind of place!  There’s also a funny moment where Dudikoff inadvertently winds up on the set of a sci-fi sex flick.  I wish this sequence had more of a payoff, but I’m still glad it exists.  I guess the same can be said for the entire film.

VIRGINITY (1976) *

Anthony (Vittorio Gassman) is a boorish Sicilian restaurateur in London who receives an anonymous phone call informing him he must pick up his sexy Italian cousin Lucia (Ornella Muti) at the airport.  After he drops her off, he gets another phone call stating that it’s in his best interest to make sure her purity remains intact.  Since Lucia is out and about in the city (not to mention drop-dead gorgeous), Anthony has to track her down and see that she stays a virgin.  Problems naturally arise when Anthony starts developing feelings for her. 

Virginity is a lame comedy that suffers from a laborious and unfunny set-up.  Once the premise is finally established, there is very little in the way of laughs to be had.  The single joke of the movie is that our hero’s family members are also “Family” members, as in the Mob.  This joke wasn’t funny the first time and it sure as shit wasn’t funny the twentieth.  Maybe this crap had them rolling in the aisles in Italy, but it’s thoroughly lame and painfully unfunny here in America. 

If you’ve seen Flash Gordon, you know that Ornella Muti is one of the hottest babes in cinema history.  Too bad they keep her covered up from head to toe for most of the movie.  The only fun part is when she tries to “prove” to our hero that she’s still a virgin.  Sadly, the filmmakers never give her many other opportunities to live up to her sex bomb nature.

The scenes of Gassman cavorting with a comic relief stable hand that sounds like Speedy Gonzalez are the pits.  Other potentially humorous moments, like Gassman praying to his dead mother and she actually responds fall flat in record time.  The part where he finally meets the Mob boss (who is also played by Gassman) is pretty dreadful too.  Adolfo (Thunderball) Celi also shows up for a bit, and it’s obvious that Blofeld’s Number 2’s comedic timing is thoroughly Number 2. 

AKA:  Pure as a Lily.

THE CHEERLEADER SLEEPOVER SLAUGHTER (2022) ***

The Cheerleader Sleepover Slaughter is a surprisingly spry and entertaining little chiller.  It’s a throwback to the Golden Era of slasher films of the ‘80s, with a touch of the Cheerleader movie craze of the ‘70s.  It’s only an hour long, has a solid body count, and features a bevy of skin.  What more could you honestly ask for?

A bunch of snotty high school cheerleaders plan a big slumber party.  Trouble is someone is killing them off one by one.  Could it be the goodie two shoes girl who will do anything to make the team?  Or the nerdy guy who is always taking pictures of the cheerleaders during practice?  Or is it the strict cheerleading coach?

The Cheerleader Sleepover Slaughter offers up a fair amount of blood as the killer slits plenty of throats in an hour’s time.  It also gives us a little bit of old-fashioned T & A as there are scenes of the cheerleaders taking showers, having sex in a hot tub, and changing in the locker room.  There are even some newfangled 21st century skin-and-bare-it situations like cheerleaders sexting their boyfriends, which means this will appeal to modern audiences as well as fans of old school slashers and/or cheerleadersploitation flicks. 

Overall, this is a film that proves you don’t have to reinvent the wheel provided you know how to keep the wheel rolling.  That said, even though it’s just barely over an hour long, there’s still some padding here and there.  Since said padding mostly involves the cheerleaders holding a twerking competition and shaking their Pom Poms on the field in slow motion, it’s hard to get too upset.  Plus, The Cheerleader Sleepover Slaughter contains what I believe is the only scene in cinema history in which someone gets stabbed with a Pom Pom knife, so if that doesn’t scream “Highly Recommended”, I don’t know what does. 

VIRGIN CHEERLEADERS IN CHAINS (2019) * ½

A failed screenwriter is tired of playing the Hollywood game, so he and his girlfriend decide to shoot their own independent feature, Virgin Cheerleaders in Chains.  Once they finally are able to raise money for their movie, they venture to a rundown house in the middle of nowhere to begin filming.  Little do they know the owners of the house are deranged snuff movie-making killers who are all too eager to cut the filmmakers to ribbons. 

This is one of those frustrating bait and switch numbers as the title refers to the movie within the movie.  It’s almost as if the filmmakers are rubbing our noses in the fact that we wanted to see a movie called Virgin Cheerleaders in Chains in the first place.  Then again, that’s always been the name of the game in exploitation filmmaking.  Lure the suckers in with a terrific title.  It doesn’t matter if the film lives up to it or not.  As long as you get their money.  (I fooled them.  I streamed it for free on Fawesome.)

It doesn’t help that the bulk of the film is primarily about the ups and downs of low budget independent filmmaking.  We see the characters try to write the script, crowdsource the budget, and call in favors to get their dream project off the ground.  The problem is it isn’t entertaining, funny, or insightful, and the whole “meta” approach falls flat and isn’t very clever.  Plus, the interview segments that play like DVD bonus features are kind of useless too. 

The film also drags its feet getting to the “real” horror (as opposed to the “reel” horror).  Sadly. It just isn’t worth the wait.  There is some OK gore here.  We get severed fingers and heads, but it’s really nothing to make it all worthwhile.  Besides, most of this is completely nullified by the lame twist ending. 

AKA:  Cheerleader Horror Movie.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: BLOODSUCKING FREAKS (1976) ****

FORMAT:  4K UHD

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on July 17th, 2007)

BLOODSUCKING FREAKS  (1976)  ****

Director Joel M. (Night of the Zombies) Reed’s masterpiece is still as jaw dropping now as it was when it was first released.  It features extreme nudity, gore, and healthy doses of S & M, proving once again, that they just don’t make ‘em like they used to.  

The plot has the Great Sardu, (Seamus O’Brien) and his little Latino midget Ralphus (Luis de Jesus) putting on an Off-Broadway torture show.  The first night he crushes a woman’s skull and cuts off another girl’s hand.  Ralphus finishes the act by cutting out her eyeball and eating it.  When a hoity toity theater critic is left unimpressed, Ralphus gets out his blow gun and kidnaps him.  Sardu tries to impress the critic by running 500 volts through a girl’s breasts before putting her to work in the bathroom, (where he says, “Her mouth will make an interesting urinal!”).  When the critic still doesn’t cotton to Sardu’s “art”, he decides to kidnap a world class ballerina and incorporate ballet (!) into the act.  They tie her up and brainwash her by having Ralphus bang cymbals nonstop.  When they give her too much hot cymbal action she passes out and they get a doctor to revive her.  In lieu of a fee, they let him torture one of Sardu’s girls.  He rips out her teeth one by one before performing “elective neurosurgery” on her, in which he drills a hole in her skull and sucks out her brains with a straw!  Pure genius.  Sardu then throws the doctor to his caged crazy women he keeps on hand to sell on the black market, and they promptly rip his heart out and rub it all over themselves.  

Meanwhile, Sardu convinces the ballerina to perform by cutting off her rival’s feet.  In the film’s best scene, he puts a woman in a guillotine and makes her hold the rope connected to the blade in her mouth.  Ralphus whips her until she screams out, letting go of the rope and the blade comes down and decapitates her.  THEN Ralphus gets himself a little head, if you know what I mean.  When the ballerina’s football player boyfriend and a crooked detective comes looking for her, all hell breaks loose.  He tries to rescue his true love, but since she’s effectively brainwashed by Sardu, she brains him with a sledgehammer.  The detective shakes down Sardu for some of his white slavery cash and since he keeps his money in the cage with all his crazed cannibalistic cuties, they kill him and break free, massacring everyone until the last shot of a cannibal chick chomping down on a severed penis hoagie.  

It’s that kind of movie folks.  

So, what did we learn from all of this?  

1.  If your uptight ballerina girlfriend wants to perform in an Off-Broadway torture show, LET HER.  

2.  When putting on an Off-Broadway torture show, you have to throw in some kind of upscale theatrics like ballet because your audience will not respond to sadism alone.  

3.  Brains CAN be sucked out from a straw.  

4.  If you don’t have a dartboard handy, a woman’s ass is an acceptable substitute.  

5.  Most importantly, if you keep a lot of cash on hand from trading women on the white slavery circuit, do NOT stash your cash in a cage full of hungry naked cannibal chicks.  Get a piggy bank instead.  

AKA:  The Incredible Torture Show.  AKA:  The House of the Screaming Virgins.  AKA:  Heritage of Caligula.  AKA:  Sardu, Master of the Screaming Virgins.  AKA:  Sardu.  AKA:  Sardu, Master of the Theatre of the Macabre.  AKA:  Heritage of Caligula:  An Orgy of Sick Minds.

QUICK THOUGHTS:

Bloodsucking Freaks (although the print Vinegar Syndrome used for their restoration retains the original title, Sardu, Master of the Screaming Virgins) has always been one of my favorite sleaze flicks of the ‘70s.  I pretty much said it all in my original review years ago.  This time around I was mostly just enjoying it yet again, as I hadn’t seen it in a while.  Taking in the wealth of T & A, gore, and of course, the wonderful performance by Luis de Jesus as Sardu’s demented eyeball-eating henchman, Ralphus, it’s about as close to Grindhouse Heaven as one can get.  This is one of those movies that start off so great that you think they won’t be able to keep up that kind of breakneck pace throughout the rest of the picture.  Somehow, it keeps all the human dartboards, guillotined head sex, and Kung Fu ballerinas coming at a steady clip.  Oh, and after owning this movie on virtually every home format known to man, I hope that this will be the last time I’ll have to upgrade it for my collection again. 

4K UHD NOTES:

While this may not be the sharpest or most impressive 4K restoration that Vinegar Syndrome has done, it’s still crisp enough to make all the blood and gore pop, not to mention pick up the stray visible boom mike here and there.  Then again, you don’t want a movie like Bloodsucking Freaks to look TOO polished or it would lose some of its scuzzy charm.  Still, it looks pretty good in all its HDR (Head Drilling Repugnance) glory. 

SILENCE OF THE GRAVE (1976) **

I never turn down an opportunity to watch a Jess Franco movie, even if it turns out to be a rather middling one like Silence of the Grave. 

Members of a film crew congregate at the remote island home of a famous actress named Annette (Glenda Allen) and her mentally unstable sister Valerie (Montserrat Prous).  The mood of the party is quickly dampened when Annette’s son is kidnapped.  Eventually, the kidnapper resorts to murdering the guests one by one. 

Silence of the Grave offers a slight variation on the durable Old Dark House/Ten Little Indians scenario.  While it’s certainly watchable, it’s not nearly as tawdry or disgusting as Franco’s best stuff.  In fact, this is one of his tamest efforts, which doesn’t exactly help matters.  Even the murder scenes, when they finally do arrive, are mostly bloodless.  However, it has a sturdy enough set-up and is certainly more competent than dozens of other Franco films.  That’s not to say that a little sleaze or gore here and there couldn’t have livened up the proceedings. 

The biggest issue is that the plot frequently spins its wheels and at times, the pacing has a tendency to drag.  Fortunately for the Franco faithful, there are a few highlights to be had, so it’s not a total loss.  I liked the scene where Valerie sizes up the party guests and through her thoughts/narration, she clues the audience in on how much she hates each one of them.  The performances by Prous playing the cuckoo Valerie and Kali Lansa as the sultry housekeeper Laura are also quite good.  Silence of the Grave also has a lot of the cinematic hallmarks (pointless zooms, lazy camerawork, etc.) you’ve come to expect from Franco, which means die-hard fans of Uncle Jess may be able to find something here to enjoy.  The casual viewer, on the other hand, is undoubtedly sure to meet it with a disinterested shrug. 

AKA:  Slience of the Tomb.