GIANT HERMAPHRODITE HEROINE: PLANET WOMAN (2010) ****

Aliens land on Earth and send giant monsters to stomp on Tokyo.  Luckily, Giant Hermaphrodite Heroine is there to kick their butt.  The evil alien leaders then decide to turn into giants themselves and do battle with our overgrown, androgynous heroine.  After defeating her in combat, they shrink her down and bring her back to their ship where they learn she’s been keeping a shocking secret (well, from the audience at least). 

My quest for bizarre Tokusatsu entertainment has led me to some strange places.  This might be the strangest.  The surprising thing about Giant Hermaphrodite Heroine:  Planet Woman is that the effects are excellent.  The model cities are extremely well done given the budget and the costumes are equally impressive.  Giant Hermaphrodite Heroine herself is basically a riff on Ultraman, complete with chest timer and an off-brand Spacium Beam, and the costume in a fairly close knockoff. 

Oh, and did I mention this is actually a porno?  I honestly didn’t think it would go as far as it did, seeing how the first half of the movie is mostly spent on fetishized scenes of a giantess struggling against a dominant man in a rubber suit while the camera closes up on her butt.  Things get down and dirty in the second half though as we get a long bondage scene, and when there is penetration, the offending body parts have been blurred out.  I have a suspicion it was all faked though.  I mean the rubber monster costumes were more convincing than the rubber wang.  

Once the film “goes there”, you will either turn it off or do like I did and continue to watch in stunned disbelief.  And you know what?  It’s been a while since a movie put me in a state of stunned disbelief.  Because of that, I can’t help but give this nutty masterpiece the highest rating possible. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE FLAMING URGE (1953) * ½

FORMAT:  VHS

People online complain incessantly about “Nepo Babies”, famous people who more or less own their career to their even more famous family members.  I hate to break it to them, but that isn’t exactly a new phenomenon.  Just look at The Flaming Urge.  It stars the son of silent comedy legend, Harold Lloyd, the aptly named Harold Lloyd Jr.  Do you think he could’ve landed this role without his name recognition?  Based on his performance here, probably not. 

Lloyd stars as Tom, a meek guy who moves into a small town and gets a job in a department store.  Tom has a problem though.  Every time he hears a fire alarm, he runs off to watch the firemen put out the blaze, even if it means leaving his job unattended.  Luckily, his boss is a fellow “fire chaser” and tries to break the young man of his habit.  However, when a rash of fires break out, Tom is suspected of arson, thanks to his obsession with fires.  He then sets out to prove his innocence. 

Was “fire chasing” a real thing back in the day?  I mean everyone has their thing, but it just seems odd.  It particularly seems like a really niche ailment to base an entire movie on.  Much of the problem lies with the supporting characters, who all seem to understand Tom’s problem and go out of their way to help him.  It just all rings false and even worse, zaps the film of any potential drama it might’ve had.  It also doesn’t help that a random ass Irish tenor breaks into song halfway through, stopping the already lethargic movie dead in its tracks. 

Lloyd isn’t exactly leading man material either.  He looks and sounds like his old man though.  Fortunately, he doesn’t try to ape his dad’s brand of physical comedy, or things might’ve been even more painful. 

LUCKY BASTARD (2014) ***

How Betsy Rue didn’t become a bona fide Scream Queen is one of the greatest mysteries in recent cinema history.  After her stunning performance in My Bloody Valentine 3-D you would’ve thought she’d become a household name.  (Well, she IS a household name in the Lovell household.)  Sadly, for whatever reason that didn’t happen.  However, she did manage to find time to appear in this surprisingly not bad Found Footage horror flick set in the porn world. 

Betsy stars as Ashley Saint, a porn star hesitant to appear on the “Lucky Bastard” website where fans get to live out their fantasy by fucking a real porn star.  When the nerdy uptight fan (Jay Paulson) winds up shooting his wad too early, he is roundly humiliated by the crew.  He then sets out to get revenge. 

I’ve never been much for the Found Footage genre.  However, one surefire way to get me to watch your Found Footage movie is to put Betsy Rue in there.  Heck, making it a mock porno doesn’t hurt either.  (The fact that it was produced by Jim Wynorski is another bonus.)  It also helps that it moves fast and that there are a variety of cameras that the footage is culled from so we aren’t always relying on shaky-cam bullshit to tell the story. 

At the heart of the film is Rue who gives a great performance.  Not only can she play sexy and alluring, but she is also quite good during her more vulnerable scenes.  As with My Bloody Valentine, she does some of her best acting while completely naked.  She also kicks ass when she has to, and she keeps you watching even when the film is more or less going through the motions.  Don McManus also delivers a fine performance as the asshole film director who pushes his amateur star over the edge. 

KILLING IN ISTANBUL (1967) ****

This is the movie that put Turkish B movies on the map.  Apparently, Turkey is lax when it comes to copyright infringement laws, so their movies tend to blatantly steal from American cinema.  However, the way they adapt the material can often be straight-up nutty (as anyone who’s seen 3 Giant Men can attest).  That said, Killing in Istanbul is quite simply a fantastic hodgepodge of horror, crime, and superhero movies. 

Kilink (Yildirim Gencer) is a dastardly supervillain who wears a skintight skeleton leotard and skull mask.   He was a popular character in Italian comics, but something tells me that nobody bothered to pay for the rights to feature him in this movie.  Kilink kills a professor and steals his formula, which will allow him to rule the world.  While the professor’s son mourns over his grave, a wizard appears and grants him the power to turn into a superhero (uh… who’s name is… uh… “Superhero”) whenever he says the magic word, “Shazam”!  He then battles Kilink to avenge his father’s death and save the world. 

What I love about this movie is the way it simultaneously steals from other sources but manages to find a way to completely make it its own.  Yes, it blatantly rips off the Captain Marvel serial.  However, the costumed hero is actually a mash-up of Superman and Batman.  Speaking of serials, Kilink himself is basically a riff on the old Crimson Ghost serial.  Instead of a skull head and hooded body, he wears a skintight outfight that feels equal parts scary and sexy.  The way he seduces women in particular is kind of creepy.  Oh, and the theme song is just needle drops on old James Bond soundtracks, which adds to the fun. 

The movie’s biggest asset is that it moves like lightning.  That has something to do with the choppy print, but it often feels like someone took all the dull parts out and just left in the good stuff.  Not only do the fight scenes occur at a zippy pace, the dialogue scenes whizz by too.  The breakneck action also helps the film harken back to the old timey serial days, except you don’t have to wait a week to see how Kilink (who is really more of the main character after all) will get out of his latest jam. 

Oh, and the scenes where “Superhero” flies are fucking terrible.  And by “fucking terrible” I mean “I loved every second of it”. 

Some may be put off by the non-ending, but that’s okay because the sequel, Kilink vs the Flying Man picks things up right where this one left off. 

AKA:  Kilink in Istanbul.

CENSOR (2021) **

Enid (Niamh Algar) works for the British Board of Censors and spends her days watching horror movies and cutting out all the material she deems offensive.  When she sees a new movie called Don’t Go in the Church, it reawakens a repressed memory of her sister’s disappearance.  She then sets out to find the mysterious director responsible for the film looking for answers.  Predictably, it leads her down a path of long buried secrets, and eventually, murder.

Censor is set in England in the ‘80s at the height of the “Video Nasties” scare.  I’ve watched a few documentaries about the Video Nasties, but I think this is the first narrative film I’ve seen about them.  While the central mystery Enid is trying to unravel isn’t exactly involving, the way director/co-writer Prano Bailey-Bond evokes the niche era in time that the film depicts is extremely well done. 

Despite the movie’s dedication to recreating the time period and a setting that is ripe with horror and old school VHS history, I found it strange that it doesn’t quite work as a horror flick itself.  Maybe if it leaned heavier into the Video Nasty aesthetic and delivered on the gore, it would’ve eked by.  Other than a gruesome accidental death and a decapitation, the gore is kinda weak.  (It often feels like it’s trying to be one of those “elevated” horror flicks.)  One thing is for sure:  If this was released in the ‘80s, it wouldn’t have had any trouble with the censors.

At least the movie is bolstered by a strong performance by Algar as Enid.  Even when the plot is spinning its wheels, you feel compelled to watch just on the strength of her performance alone.  It would be interesting to see what she could do with a script worthy of her talents.

BIG BOOBS BUSTER 2: ADVENTURE SUMMER (1990) ** ½

Two Japanese schoolgirls follow a chesty classmate into a magical portal.  Once inside, they are transported to a weird island inhabited by a variety of oddballs.  There, the gals are almost cooked alive by a tribe of cannibals and get chased by a female flamenco dancer who throws exploding roses.  Elsewhere, a mad scientist uses a ray to enlarge women’s bust lines. 

As far as I can figure, Big Boobs Buster 2:  Adventure Summer is completely unrelated to the first film.  It also has a lot more plot, which isn’t exactly a good thing when the copy you’re watching doesn’t have any subtitles.  While it does continue the superhero theme which made the original so endearing, it also adopts a manic, grab bag, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink kind of approach.  While some of this is admittedly inspired, needless to say, the results are decidedly mixed. 

There’s also less nudity here than in the original, which is a tad disappointing, but what we do get is pretty entertaining.  There’s a T & A music video where a pop idol has a wardrobe malfunction in front of her fans (who are all mimes for some reason) and a segment with a topless firebreather.  That’s just enough to compensate for some of the various missteps along the way.

I will say this:  Big Boobs Buster 2 sure does cram a lot into its seventy minutes running time.  However, the overreliance on cheap looking special effects (which resemble something out of a ‘90s music video) gets to be a bit much at times.  Still, there are some winning moments sprinkled here and there.  For instance, I liked the scene where our heroine used a super plunger to stab a bad girl in her boobs.  And besides, the scene where two superheroines shoot lasers out of their boobs at one another is almost worth the price of admission.  Almost. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE EROTIC WITCH PROJECT (2000) * ½

FORMAT:  DVD

In the early 2000’s, erotic spoofs of The Blair Witch Project were all the rage.  All you needed was a video camera, a forest, and a couple of actresses willing to get naked and you were all set.  As far as these things go, director John (Playmate of the Apes) Bacchus’ The Erotic Witch Project isn’t a patch on Jim Wynorski’s The Bare Wench Project (which wasn’t even all that good to begin with), but at least it features a horny guy wearing a gorilla costume, so there’s that.

Darian Caine and her college coed friends go into the woods of Bacchusville, New Jersey looking for the mythical Erotic Witch armed with only a video camera.  The witch supposedly emits a powerful sexual energy that makes anyone who enters the woods horny.  The girls find dildos and naughty stick figures in the woods and realize they’re on the right trail.  They soon fall under the spell of the witch and get it on with each other every chance they get.    

The Erotic Witch Project falls well short of some of Bacchus’ other Seduction Cinema parodies.  Even as far as Blair Witch rip-offs go, this is one of the weaker ones.  It does the bare minimum with the idea and Bacchus doesn’t milk the concept for all its worth.  As with most of these things, the interviews with the redneck locals who claim to have seen the witch are the roughest part.  They go on too long, aren’t funny at all, and get in the way of the lesbian sex.  

The sex scenes themselves offer more fizzle than sizzle.  Most of the time is devoted to girls fondling each other while one of them holds the camera.  Even if the camerawork wasn’t of the shaky-cam variety, there still wouldn’t be much to recommend here as most of the scenes go on too long and aren’t very sexy.