NOCTURNE (2020) **

Sydney Sweeney stars as Juliet, a gifted musical student whose talent is always overshadowed by her twin sister, Vivian (Madison Iseman).  When the student picked to deliver the senior solo at the end of the year recital dies under mysterious circumstances, the school decides to hold auditions to replace her.  Violet has a nasty fall and is unable to play the recital, which leaves the door open for Juliet to steal the spotlight.  Juliet also finds the dead student’s music book, which is filled with oodles of ominous looking doodles that are possibly some sort of supernatural incantation.  I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, right?

Nocturne was produced by Blumhouse for Amazon Prime Video, and it’s easy to see why it went straight to streaming as I don’t think anyone would’ve really rushed out to see this in theaters.  It’s a slow burn horror movie and it takes its sweet time building up.  It’s not bad, nor is it exactly engrossing.  It just needed a little more oomph to propel it over the pokey patches.  It also doesn’t help that the horror touches are just too subtle to make much of an impression one way or another. 

The set-up kind of reminded me a little of The Perfection. It doesn’t have that film’s tension, but it’s similar in that both movies are about how the desire to be a skilled musician leads to horrific things.  At least that flick delivered on its slow burn build-up with some sizzle at the end.  The same can’t be said for Nocturne.

Overall, this was a bit of a slog.  However, since it featured my girl Sydney Sweeney, I was able to stay with it for the most part.  She spends most of the movie all buttoned up and prim and proper like, but the way she really gets into her piano playing is sort of hot.  She does a good job during her freak-out scenes too, even though the movie never quite gives her a chance to really go for broke.  Her fine performance at the very least prevents the film from feeling… ahem... one note. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: ALL AMERICAN HUSTLER (1972) * ½

FORMAT:  DVD

A hooker named Carol (Mickie Lynn) breaks up with her boyfriend and goes to a party at the airport where she shoots up in the bathroom.  Elsewhere, Carol’s friend Candy (Candy Kay) makes it with a lucky dude that dresses like every third Match Game panelist in the ’70s.  Meanwhile, Carol takes on a slew of clients (including one guy who just wants to rub one out on her underwear).  Later, she and Candy go to a New Age commune where they drink from a coconut and bang two creepy cult dudes.  Eventually, Carol has a mini breakdown about the way her life is going (and who could blame her?  I mean did you SEE those cult dudes?) and commits suicide. 

The guy who plays Carol’s abusive boyfriend in the beginning is none other than Video Vacuum favorite, Michael Pataki.  He’s been in everything from biker movies (The Sidehackers) to low budget horror gems (The Grave of the Vampire) to big budget blockbusters (Rocky IV).  I think they may have used a stunt cock for him in his sex scene though.  While it’s fun seeing him pop up, sadly his presence is the best thing All American Hustler has going for it. 

I’ve got to tell you, this is one scummy skin flick.  I guess the idea here was to deglamorize the profession of prostitution.  That may have been a decent concept if there was any artistic merit on display.  Also, did we really need to see the scene where junkie Carol shoots heroin into her arm in graphic close-up?  Again, I think the aim was to make a realistic portrayal of a working girl, but just bluntly showing drug use without much context comes off as exploitative and crass more than anything else.  The downbeat ending is borderline tasteless too.  I wonder how the raincoat crowd reacted to this in the theater back in the day. 

This probably wouldn’t have even been much fun even if the sex scenes were hot.  I’ve seen worse to be sure, but there’s nothing here that will exactly get your pulse racing.  In fact, I have a suspicion that the filmmakers were trying to make a purposefully anti-erotic movie.  Why else would you play a Richard Nixon speech over a sex scene?  Or include a random scene with the annoying folk musician?  Well, if that was the goal, all I can say is… mission accomplished! 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: CARNAL GO-ROUND (1972) ** ½

FORMAT:  DVD

A hooker named Alice (Becky Sharpe) recruits her friend Minnie (Carmen Olivera) into the world’s oldest profession.  After she teaches the fledgling streetwalker the tricks of the trade (so to speak), they head to a big orgy held by a swinger who looks like Jeff Garlin cosplaying as George Wendt.  When Minnie’s boyfriend Arnold (Rick Lutze) finds out she’s a hooker, he breaks up with her.  Alice then swoops in to bang him. 

Carnal Go-Round has its share of memorable moments.  The scenes of Minnie and her John are fun.  They are intercut with Alice addressing the camera and giving pointers like, “Always get the money up front” and “Leave them wanting more!”  This kind of makes it feel like a bargain bin self-help seminar for sex workers.  The funniest bit is when Lutze and Sharpe bang on a bed adorned with Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote bedsheets!  (Lutze also wears a Donald Duck shirt in the final fuck scene.)

Although there are some bright spots sprinkled throughout, Carnal Go-Round never quite comes together in the end.  (Pardon the pun.)  The big problem is that the camerawork is really erratic.  It would be one thing if that camera was only shaky during the scenes of cars going up and down Hollywood Boulevard.  It’s another thing when the camera can’t keep still in the bedroom while people are trying to get it on.  (The constant zooming in and out during the orgy scene is especially hard to take.)

The oddest thing about the movie is that even though it was shot with sound, there are still silent movie title cards that frequently pop up.  Weirder still is the fact that they all look like they were written on a strawberry Fruit Roll-Up with a white crayon.  Then again, all this is just weird enough to make the flick memorable. 

The good news is, Sharpe and Olivera have a lot of chemistry.  Their charisma holds their scenes together, despite the overall technical shortcomings of the film.  The three-way scene where they gang up on a client is particularly strong thanks to the way they bounce off one another.  (Both literally and figuratively.)  Their antics make the otherwise so-so Carnal Go-Round worth a go. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE TOUCH (1973) **

FORMAT:  DVD

John Holmes stars as a sleazy drug dealer named Mario who is looking to make one last score.  He blackmails a sexy associate to do his dirty work for him and sell off his remaining stash of coke.  She then goes around to her various contacts and friends unloading the white powder and collecting the dough.  Whenever her clients snort the South American booger sugar, the druggies get so turned on they wind up banging the closest gal they can find.  Eventually, our heroine makes a play to get out from under Mario’s thumb once and for all. 

The Touch is an unspectacular porno marred by a lack of budget (there are multiple boom shadows on the wall).  In fact, it might’ve been totally forgettable if it wasn’t for the participation of the legendary John Holmes.  In one scene, the King uses his Pythonesque pecker to bang a sexy French maid.  Later, he has a three-way with some ladies of the evening.  His on-screen trysts aren’t great or anything, but Holmes’ star power is evident, even during the perfunctory dialogue scenes. 

The scenes that don’t involve Holmes are a mixed bag.  Nearly all of them have a bright spot or two (like when the secretary put coke on her boss’ dick), but for the most part, they are indifferently shot, contain lackluster performances, and are not very erotic.  The big problem is that a third of the movie is plot (and by “plot” I mean someone buying drugs), another third is devoted to sex, and the final third is nothing but people snorting coke.  It all gets repetitive in a hurry. 

It’s not all bad though.  I did like the scene where our heroine sold her wares to a nudist hippie commune.  I’m sure it saved the production money in the wardrobe department.  Unfortunately, moments like these are few and far between.  To put it another way, The Touch never really grabs you. 

BUNNY YEAGER’S NUDE CAMERA (1963) ***

Famed cheesecake model turned cheesecake photographer Bunny Yeager stars as herself in this nudie “documentary” from director Barry (The Beast That Killed Women) Mahon.  Bunny gets a flat tire on the way to her latest photoshoot.  As luck would have it, Bunny spots a new ingenue at the bus stop and invites the girl to model for her.  (“I think if a male photographer had approached this girl, she would’ve run the other way!”)  However, the new model is shy and has to run the idea past her boyfriend first.  Meanwhile, Bunny deals with a creep who keeps calling her studio looking to arrange “dates” with her models. 

Along the way, Bunny Yeager’s Nude Camera captures:  A woman modeling a bath towel (and nothing else), a model in a Native American headdress, a model covering herself with a big fan, a gal in a Viking outfit (!), a set of sisters in a fountain, nudes wearing Halloween masks, harem girl outfits, and a calendar girl in a giant old bathtub. 

It’s all handled very tastefully.  The plot is too loosey-goosey to work as a narrative film and the slice of life scenes of Bunny taking photos is too thin to work as a documentary.  While it’s not exactly a rallying cry for equality, it does show Bunny thriving and succeeding in a male-dominated industry.  So that’s something.  All this is fun for a while, but the plot has more holes in it than Swiss cheese.  (What happened to the housewife who wanted Bunny to take pictures of her for her husband?)  The gratuitous parade footage also helps prevent it from being a classic.  At least it’s only an hour long. 

Oh, and this is one of the jumpiest prints I’ve ever seen.  On top of that, you can even hear the director yell “CUT!” in some scenes.  It all just adds to the overall charm of the picture though. 

Yeager isn’t much of an actress, but she does have screen presence, a carryover from her modeling career.  She does handle her dialogues quite well, especially such howlers as, “Men are vain, egotistical, and possessive.  Bless ‘em!”  Mahon even appears as himself to fly Bunny to a pirate convention. 

Screenwriter Sande N. Johnson later directed the incredible Teenage Gang Debs. 

Bunny Yeager’s Nude Las Vegas followed the same year.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: SHOT ON LOCATION (1972) ***

FORMAT:  DVD

Rick Lutze is a sleazy movie producer who wants to double cross a rival in order to make his dream project.  His plan is to get an underage wannabe porn starlet (Sandy Dempsey) to seduce the competition so he can blackmail him.  Lutze then promises the young ingenue a part in their latest picture (a porno western).  Problems arise when the director accidentally casts the wrong actress in the lead role.  Things eventually work themselves out when everyone involved decides to have a big orgy. 

Some sources list Shot on Location as being directed by Ed Wood.  That kind of makes sense because there is a reference to Criswell.  However, the consensus seems to be it was directed by Donn (Alice in Acidland) Greer.  Either way, it’s a fun slice of old-time smut.  

The cast is particularly charming.  Rene Bond takes the acting honors as the production’s sexy secretary/script girl.  She looks terrific as always and delivers a top-notch BJ scene.  Dempsey really gets into her sex scene on the casting couch and is a lot of fun to watch throughout.  The big orgy sequence has a lot of energy too. 

I do wish they had taken advantage of the western outdoor setting though.  I mean you’ve got everyone in their Native American garb, you might as well put them to good use.  Oh well, at least the final pun works surprisingly well as it really ends the movie with a bang in more ways than one. 

The music is also good for an unintentional laugh or two.  One scene uses music from (what sounds like) the Barbarella soundtrack and others are accompanied by Muzak versions of “It’s Impossible” and “Those Were the Days”.  The dialogue is great as well and features some real humdingers, like when Lutze sees a starlet naked and says, “What I wouldn’t give to be a goose pimple!”  My favorite line though was “If you can’t join ‘em, lick ‘em!”

Greer later went on to direct the immortal Rare Blue Apes of Cannibal Isle. 

LIZZIE (2018) ***

Indie darlings Chloe Sevigny and Kristen Stewart star in this retelling of the Lizzie Borden story.  We all know the old rhyme.  “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks, and when she saw what she had done she gave her father forty-one.”  Right away, we know the film is going against the “print the legend” philosophy because we learn her mother is already dead and her father has remarried.  I guess “stepmother” didn’t sound as good in the rhyme. 

Bridget (Stewart) is a maid who comes to work in the Borden household.  Daughter Lizzie (Sevigny) is prone to “spells” and her headstrong antics exasperate her strained relationship with her stern father (Jamie Sheridan from The Stand).  Dad is a sleazeball by the way.  Not only does his shady business practices make him enemies all around town, but he also likes to force himself on Bridget at night.  Bridget and Lizzie form a friendship that soon blossoms into a romance.  Naturally, her father’s increasingly erratic behavior threatens to separate them.  When he and his wife are murdered the fingers are all pointed at Lizzie, but did she really do it?

Sevigny and Stewart are both excellent.  The film is more interested in exploring their relationship than wallowing in the details of the grisly axe murders.  (We don’t see them till near the end.)  For a while, it works extremely well.  Things start to become sluggish though once the movie enters its third act.  Still, the strength of the performances keeps things glued together, even when the narrative dawdles.  It also helps that the murders themselves pack a punch, as it will appeal to true crime buffs and Celebrity Skin aficionados equally.  (Spoiler Alert:  They occur while the killer is totally nude!) 

It’s not perfect, but I liked the film’s feminist spirit.  It frames Lizzie’s plight as not as much of a crime but rather a women’s and/or gay rights issue.  She is often shown to be ostracized not only by her family, but by society for who she is.  It’s little wonder why someone would snap and start hacking away at the people who hold her back and stand in the way of her happiness.