Short Takes: 'Delitto carnale' (1983) ★ 1/2

The amoral family of a wealthy man gathers prior to his funeral at the hotel he owned, but the next funeral any of them is likely to attend will be their own. So, might as well get laid!

This movie’s a.k.a.’s include Killing of the Flesh and Sex Crime, but it should be known as Drink, Fuck, Repeat, because that sums up about two-thirds of this sleazy giallo from director Caesar Canevari. As intriguing as that sounds—it was enough to get me to seek out a gray market copy—the actual movie is a slog. Save for some lesbianism and incest, the couplings are pretty much vanilla and very repetitive. One gets the feeling that most of the script just instructed actresses to walk into a room, take off their clothes and act hysterical until a fellow fully clothed actor falls on top of them. Oh, yeah, this is yet another softcore movie where sex only requires women to remove their clothes. Then again, only a couple actors — Marc Porel and poor man’s Franco Nero Vanni Materassi — piqued my prurient interests, and mildly at that. If you like staring at tits and vaginas, however, Delitto carnale has plenty of them (future porn star Moana Pozzi is one of the featured cast members). It’s an even worse giallo, with the murders not happening until well-past the movie’s halfway mark, as if Canevari suddenly decided he wanted to make a giallo instead of a sex film. If you like your giallos on the sleazy side, check out Giallo a Venezia or Play Motel instead. They’re not much better but at least they aren’t as boring. If you like looking at tits and vaginas, well, you know where to go. 

The Sony Walkman Giallo

“The ulitimate hi-tech thriller” only if you think
Pong is the ultimate video game challenge.

A future murder victim; a future sit-com star-turned-Fat Actress-turned-QAnon conspiracist; a future Star Trek counselor; two established actors with rapidly dropping Q Scores grabbing a quick buck and a Greece vacation on their way down— all appearing in one of my favorite genres, the giallo. And all of them brought together by a director whose most notorious film featured, among other things, a man pissing in a wealthy socialite’s face and fucking a goat.

These were the ingredients that drew me to Nico Mastorakis’ 1984 thriller BLIND DATE (a.k.a. Deadly Seduction). So, why was I so bored watching it?

Things start off well enough. A young woman in serious need of some dental work leaves her amusement park date and takes a cab home. We already know before she closes the car door that the cab driver has sinister intentions as the camera is careful—in the beginning, at least—to only show his hands and feet. And, sure enough, as our young woman is showering (tits at three and a half minutes in; Nico doesn’t waste time) the cab driver is letting himself into her darkened apartment because his victim—like so many characters in thrillers and horror movies—hasn’t bothered to turn on any lights for the sake of maintaining a spooky atmosphere. When she steps into the living room, certain she’s heard something but still not switching on a single lamp, she’s grabbed from behind, her mouth covered by a chloroform-soaked cotton pad. A second later she’s in the cabbie’s makeshift operating theater, about to get dissected. If only she’d thought to flip a light switch.

Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk,
I’m a woman’s man, no time to talk.

Suddenly we’re watching Joseph (The Black Hole) Bottoms strutting through the streets of Athens, dressed in a tan suit and a white t-shirt reading “I ❤ My Dentist” (your guess is as good as mine). Bottoms plays Jonathon, an American marketing executive whose job seems to consist of boning his assistant, Claire (a pre-Cheers, pre-weight-gain and, presumably, pre-batshit Kirstie Alley) and watching commercial photo shoots. It’s during one such photo shoot for a travel company promotion that Jonathon thinks he recognizes one of the models, Mary Ann (the late Lana Clarkson, who gets an “introducing” credit even though she had already been in a few films prior), his former girlfriend from the U.S. Except the model’s name is Rachel, and the U.S. Embassy has no information about her under either identity. 

“My E-meter is all warmed up and ready for you.”

So, what’s a guy to do? Maybe approach her and ask? Something as simple as, “Excuse me, you look like someone I knew in the States. Are you…?” should do the trick. Worst case scenario, she misreads this as a lame pick-up line—and most likely would, given Jonathon comes across as a smug asshole—and tells him to fuck off.

Or he could stalk her, which is exactly what Jonathon chooses to do. The movie tries to explain away Jonathon’s decision with a few quick flashbacks to when Jonathon and Mary Ann were attacked on the beach by a group of thugs, who beat the shit out of Jonathon and raped Mary Ann. The incident resulted in Mary Ann landing in a psychiatric hospital and Jonathon barred from seeing her lest his presence trigger memories of that night. Yes, this is the movie’s logic: approaching Mary Ann/Rachel directly could traumatize her; better to stand outside her apartment building with a pair of binoculars and spy on her instead.

Lana Clarkson has a Nice Guy looking out for her.

Meanwhile, a hooker (Marina Sirtis) turns her last trick when she takes the scalpel-wielding cabbie back to her place. 

Counselor Troi in more traditional Betazoid wedding attire.

Jonathon’s stalking blows up in his face when Rachel’s boyfriend Dave (James Daughton of Animal House fame) catches him watching them at a mountainside make-out spot. Jonathon eludes Dave in a chase only to run face-first into a tree branch, which may not have been intentionally funny, but I laughed anyway.

Somehow, this collision with a tree blinds Jonathon even though, as his doctors stress, there is no damage to his optic nerves. “You should not be blind,” says specialist Dr. Steiger. Dr. Steiger is played by Keir Dullea, perhaps best known for starring in the sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, so it’s only fitting that his appearance marks Blind Date’s hard left into sci-fi territory, if “sci-fi” were short for “Science? Fuck it!”

The doctor has invented a way for Jonathon to “see” that bypasses the eyes, implanting a “minute, platinum electrode plate” in his skull that interprets Sonar-like signals sent to his brain as images, something he calls CompuVision. (Isn’t interesting the number of sci-tropes that hinge on an ableist mindset?) And how are these Sonar-like signals received? Perhaps with a small device that’s worn like a hearing aid. Or maybe Dr. Steiger must remove one of Jonathan’s eyes and replace it with a glass one that contains all the necessary technology for receiving the necessary signals. Or, if you’re Nico Mastorakis, you could just give Johnny a Sony Walkman and a bunch of bullshit and hope nobody notices.

“And after we hook up your CompuVision device we’ll get
you a Swatch watch for the pain.”

Seriously. There isn’t even an attempt to disguise the Walkman and headphones with different casing or decals or just wrapping the fucker in tin foil. Nope, it’s just a Sony Walkman with all its branding in place. Though Dullea is clearly phoning it in, he deserves an honorary Oscar® for maintaining a straight face as he explains how the fast forward button activates the device and the rewind button activates the cassette inside the unit. Despite Dullea’s efforts, his explaining how this Sony Walkman is really a CompuVision device was the moment I gave up on this movie.

Vision restored!

Joseph Bottoms, the Not-Quite-Blind Avenger.

Alas, there’s a lot more movie to go as we watch Jonathon try out his new “eyes,” starting with his resuming his creeping on Rachel, going so far as breaking into her apartment and watching her nude slumber (just a reminder, he’s our protagonist). Then he heads to the subway avenge his beating and robbery by three sexually ambiguous hoodlums prior to his being outfitted with the magical Walkman. He handily beats the shit out of them with a lead-filled cane. He also plugs his, um, CompuVision device into his video game console, apropos of nothing, nearly giving himself a brain hemorrhage in the process.

In case you’re wondering, the movie hasn’t forgotten about its killer. While Jonathon is taking his special Walkman for a test drive, the homicidal hack is still killing his fares, including a young couple on a date, whom he politely allows to enjoy one last orgasm before slicing them up. The cabbie has to get in line before he can attack his next victim, who comes home to discover doddering old man hiding in her bathroom hoping to sneak a peek, something that’s played off as harmless fun instead of a dial 112 situation (seriously, movie, what is wrong with you?) As always, our killer waits until the victim gets in a gratuitous nude scene before whipping out his scalpel.

It’s OK, he’s just a pervert, not a killer.

Except, this time the Jonathon happens to be strolling by the victim’s apartment building when she screams. Jonathon runs inside to investigate, but he’s not in time to prevent the woman’s murder, and he nearly gets killed himself trying to escape the killer. However, he does inadvertently get some clues to the killer’s identity, and the audience does, too, when the camera shows the back of the murderer’s head and his distinctive hair color.

Prepare for more bullshit: It turns out that when Jonathon nearly fried his brain plugging into his game console, he gained some extra abilities, like being able to hear voices from within the passing cab and get more detailed images when he rewinds the tape in his Walkman/CompuVision. Yeah, the movie is pulling more things out of its ass than a Club Inferno Dungeon video, but I still found Jonathon’s sudden development of special abilities easier to believe than that goddamn seeing-eye Walkman.

Jonathon is also able to determine—via the special ability of knowing his thriller tropes— that the killer cabbie’s next victim will be none other than Rachel. If only he can get to her apartment without killing himself or anyone else as he speeds through the streets of Athens in his Renault Farma.

The Renault Farma: Giving the small pickup the meter maid
cart makeover drivers didn’t know they wanted.

Eager to Sleaze

On the surface, Blind Date seems like promising trash. As always, Mastorakis is eager to sleaze. Though the murder scenes are fairly restrained, the movie makes up for the scant amount of blood with liberal amounts of skin and misogyny, with the camera lingering over a victim’s bare breasts while the killer prepares to cut into them. There is also plenty of what-the-fuckery, such as when Claire plans a surprise birthday party for Jonathon, arranging for guests to arrive while she and Jonathon are fucking, which, “Surprise!”

Also, get the fuck out!

Lana Clarkson (right) wears the finest
’80s street(walker) wear.

And then there’s the cast. At the time Blind Date was released, Joseph Bottoms and Kier Dullea were the “big” names in the cast, but viewers today will likely be more interested in getting a peek at Kirstie Alley and Marina Sirtis before they became TV stars and Lana Clarkson before she became a tragedy. Unfortunately, none of the women get much to do. Sirtis doesn’t do much beyond stripping down to a pair of bikini panties and screaming, but if you’ve been wanting to see Counselor Troi topless, I guess that could be enough. I’d like to say that Clarkson, who achieved greater fame when she was murdered by Phil Specter in 2003 than she had for any of her film and TV roles, is a standout as Mary Ann/Rachel, but her role is largely decorative, most of her time on screen spent modeling swimwear and some of the worst of early 1980s fashions (the clothes in this movie are so atrocious I suspected actresses requested nude scenes to limit the amount of time they had to spend wearing them). She was undeniably attractive, but she showed more acting chops in Barbarian Queen.

Only Alley gets much to do, and she does it fairly well, though her character is largely on the sidelines (and not really necessary to the story, in all honesty). For the past couple decades Alley has gotten more attention for her struggles with her weight, her devotion to Scientology, and being someone next to whom Sean Young stands to appear sane by comparison, so it was nice to be reminded that she was once a gifted comic actress, something Mastorakis must have picked up on as Claire is often this movie’s comic relief.

A pre-fame Valeria Golina also makes an
appearance, and this is as much of her that appears.

But for all its WTF storytelling and pre-fame celebrity titties, Blind Date is only intermittently entertaining. Like Mastorakis’ 1990 erotic thriller, In the Cold of the Night, Blind Date wastes too much time on extraneous scenes that only bloat the runtime and slow the movie’s momentum, while completely ignoring other story points introduced earlier (i.e., it’s not entirely clear if Rachel is Jonathon’s ex Mary Ann). At 90 minutes, Blind Date would be a trashy good time, but it’s 103 minutes and by the time you hit the 40-minute mark you’ll feel every one of them. In the end, watching Blind Date is better than going on one, but like a real blind date, you’ll be wishing it ends much earlier than it does.

RANDOM TRIVIA: The end credits tease a sequel to Blind Date — Run, Stumble, Fall — that never materialized. However, I’d argue that In the Cold of the Night, with its mix of tits and cheap sci-fi, is its spiritual sequel. Further bolstering that argument is that Cold star Shannon Tweed was originally cast in the role of Claire.

A Gay Man Watches Straight Porn #4: ‘Roommates’

Roommates, the Beaches of adult movies.

Well, this was unexpected: a pornographic chick flick.

I don’t mean “chick flick” as a pejorative — honey, I love chick flicks — it’s just surprising to encounter one in the genre of adult film, especially one made in 1982, two years before Candida Royalle founded Femme Productions, and directed by a man. Of course, the director in question, the late Chuck Vincent, was gay, so maybe it’s not that surprising that he’d make a movie that’s reminiscent of A Life of Her Own or a less outrageous Valley of the Dolls.

ROOMMATES is the story of three young women — yes, roommates — trying to make it in New York City’s entertainment industry. There’s Joan (Veronica Hart), a naïve drama student who moves to the city to pursue a career in theater, even though she’ll be separated from her married college drama instructor, with whom she’s having an affair. Sherry (Kelly Nichols) is a model who’s decided to stay in NYC because she’s “tired of those Hollywood jerkoffs.” Billie (Samantha Fox) is an ex-call girl embarking on a career as as an assistant producer of TV commercials, taking in roommates so she can remain in her chic-for-1982 high rise apartment.

Billie tries not to be intimidated by her former madam’s
(Gloria Leonard) hat.

We immediately get a sense of each of the three characters in their first scene together. Billie is friendly but understandably guarded. Sherry is a bit cold, more interested in taking advantage of the city’s club scene than making new gal pals. Joan, on the other hand, desperately wants to make friends, and she tries several times to engage Sherry in a conversation, never picking up on the fact that the model has little patience for her sunny optimism. Joan is also the most sheltered of the women (when Sherry asks for Jack Daniels straight up, Joan says she’ll have the same thing “with orange juice, please”), clearly not realizing you try to take a bite out of the Big Apple, the Apple bites back.

Fortunately for Joan, she’s kind of the comic relief character so the Apple’s bite isn’t too deep. There’s a funny audition montage where we see Joan calibrate each succeeding reading or interview answer based on her previous audition (e.g., after giving her age as 25 she’s told she’s too old for the part; at the next audition she gives her age as 21, only to be told they’re looking for someone “with a little more maturity”). After a string of rejections, she ends up at a small showcase theater where she meets Eddie (Jerry Butler, the hottest guy in the cast), who gives her a little coaching before she auditions, advising her to lose her glasses because this movie, like its Hollywood analog, believes women only wear glasses to look frumpy.

Then again, Joan’s glasses are fucking hideous.

Joan pleads for her lover (Don Peterson) to
give her the courtesy of a reciprocal orgasm.

Joan gets the part and develops a friendship with Eddie, her mind put at ease when he tells her he’s gay (spoiler alert: not really). He even gets her a waitressing job at the restaurant where he’s a maître d’. Life is going great for Joan. If only her college professor lover (Don Peterson, billed as Phil Smith) would leave his wife. Or, at the very least, stick around long enough to get her off.

Things aren’t going as smoothly for her roommates. Billie impresses her co-workers, especially Jim the jingle writer (Jack Wrangler, a fixture in gay porn but cheerfully eating pussy nonetheless). But it turns out Billie’s sleazy boss Marv (Bobby Astyr, Fox’s real life boyfriend at the time) is a former john, something you’d think she’d have discovered during the interview process. He proposes that she could make additional cash by “entertaining” prospective advertising clients — that is, if she values her job. To add insult to injury, the first man Billie is whored out to is Ron Jeremy.  

And this is Ron Jeremy when he was at his most fuckable.

Sherry’s story is the bleakest, her growing drug addiction leading her down some dark roads. In one grueling scene, Sherry, stoned out of her mind, is gang raped in a vacant building. The rapists take their turns, urinating on her and even shoving a bottle inside her (neither act is shown, mercifully), until they’re chased away by Paul (Jamie Gillis). Paul cleans the spooge and piss from Sherry’s body, but he’s not one of the good guys. “Did they hurt your pretty pussy?” he asks before whipping out his cock and jerking off on her. Soon, Paul is stalking Sherry, coercing her to go on dates with him and goading her to remove her panties while they’re dining at a restaurant, similar to how William Baldwin got Sharon Stone to do the same thing in Sliver, except in Roommates the scene is uncomfortably tense instead of stupid.

Jamie Gillis has Kelly Nichols’ panties as an appetizer.

Our three heroines are all pushed to the brink in various ways, with Joan again having the softest landing. While serving her professor/lover and his wife at the restaurant where she works, Joan learns the couple are going to have a baby, ergo Joan will always be the side piece. Eddie is there to give her a shoulder to cry on, and a few scenes later, a new man to love, Eddie evidently not that gay. (My first thought was, Great, Joan’s gotten herself into another doomed relationship, but then I remembered that Wrangler was happily married to a woman, though in the documentary Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon, he described their sex life as “masturbatory.”)

If Eddie took the time to light all these candles, you know
he’ll take time to find Joan’s G-spot.

Meanwhile, Marv leases Billie out to a bachelor party, then pressures her to give him a BJ in the men’s room—during the filming of a cat food commercial, no less. Billie puts on a smiling face for the guys at the party, but there’s no masking her feelings when the groom shows up (you get one guess who the guest of honor is). Billie isn’t the first person to reassess her career while getting fucked, though for most of us that’s a figurative, not literal, fucking.

Samantha Fox’s I’ll-bite-your-dick-off face.

Sherry has it worse still, getting violently attacked by Paul while she’s alone in the apartment. It’s a pretty harrowing scene, with Gillis so convincingly terrifying that I wondered if Nichols was acting or if she really was afraid for her life. Sherry survives the encounter and decides that she needs to make some changes if she expects to see her thirtieth birthday.

A Great Adult Film, Sub-par Porn

Critic Judith Crist praised Roommates
for its “frankness, humor and heart.”
Presumably she had no issue with
the movie having only two cumshots.

 

Roommates has all the trappings of a “real” movie, with high production values and an involving story with real characters brought to life by convincing performances (Hart is generally singled out, but Fox and Nichols are equally impressive, while Gillis solidifies his reputation as the best actor in porn). It even has a Streisand-esque theme song. It’s not surprising it got good notices from the likes of mainstream movie critic Judith Crist. Were it not for the scenes of hardcore sex, I’d think I was watching an indie drama, something that might be distributed by New World Pictures or Crown International. That’s the movie’s greatest strength, and also its biggest weakness. 

As good as it is as a film, I don’t see it appealing to my straight brethren. The sex scenes, while plentiful, are brief, allowing more time for all that character and story development. Also, unlike most porn movies, the sex scenes are actually part of the storytelling and not just inserted (so to speak) to get the audience jacking, meaning their tone is dictated by the narrative, and considering that sex for our three main characters is usually unfulfilling, transactional and/or abusive, that tone is usually less than erotic (unless you’re a misogynist asshole). There are, in fact, only two scenes in the whole movie — the one with Fox and Wrangler, the other between Hart and Butler* — that are truly romantic, and they go by so fast that only guys suffering from premature ejaculation or still in their teens will be able to get off before they’re over. 

“Ta-da!”

According to A History of X: 100 Years of Sex in Film, Roommates, wasn’t a huge success when first released as the thoughts of Judith Crist aren’t generally considered by men seeking masturbation material. “Somebody looking to get off would rather see five barrels of cum on some girl’s face than emotion or drama,” the book quotes Jerry Butler. 

Sexy? (via GIPHY)

Five barrels of cum? That’s... gross, actually, but Butler’s point is well taken. I wonder if the movie would’ve fared better marketed to women, or, more accurately, if the porn industry and American culture at the time (this was back when WAP meant something entirely different) acknowledged that a female market for porn even existed.

Joan and Sherry say good-bye to their security deposits.

I didn’t watch Roommates with masturbation in mind, so I had no problem enjoying it as a movie. In fact, I think it would have worked better as a softcore film. It really is an X-rated movie with an R-rated heart. So, I guess it’s no surprise that the bulk of Vincent’s output during the 1980s was R-rated fare like Hollywood Hot Tubs, Warrior Queen and Bedroom Eyes II, with his last film being the sexploitation comedy New York’s Finest (also featuring Veronica Hart) before his death of AIDS in 1991.

*Interesting that the two sex scenes that appear mutually enjoyable involve a performer who identified as gay IRL and a gay character. I wonder if this was intentional on Vincent’s part.

Race to the Middle: Ginger vs. Traci

 “Ginger, do you really think they’re going to give you an Oscar? You suck cock for a living, for God’s sake!” 

— Amber Lynn, reacting to Ginger Lynn’s
decision to pursue a mainstream acting career

The above quote came from the podcast Once Upon a Time in the Valley, which, besides revealing Amber Lynn as a surprising voice of reason, sought to uncover the mysteries behind the Traci Lords scandal. Though the podcast ultimately generates as many questions as it answers, it’s still worth a listen.

1980s-era Ginger Lynn,
photographed by Suze Randall

But back to Amber’s comment. While porn stars won’t necessarily be barred from mainstream entertainment, they’ll be lucky if they’re able to make it as far as the D-list. Sure, Sibel Kekilli’s porn past as Dilara didn’t keep her off Game of Thrones, and Sasha Grey was the lead in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience, but they are recent exceptions. The sad truth is, if you suck cock for a living, you’ll not only be denied an Oscar®, you also could be denied a spot on a network reality show.

Still, as long as they make peace with the fact that they’ll never be awarded a gold statuette or know the respect attendant to reality show fame, porn stars can transition to mainstream careers. Inspired by the Once Upon a Time in the Valley podcast, I thought I’d take a look at a couple of the legit movies made by Ginger Lynn and Traci Lords, two of the biggest porn stars of the 1980s and fierce rivals (seriously, Ginger hates Traci), and see if they have the talent and star power to carry a film without sucking any cock (or doing DPs, or anal, or girl-on-girl...).

Right off the bat, I’ll say Ginger Lynn is at a disadvantage. While she has been in some bigger mainstream movies like Young Guns II and The Devil’s Rejects, those roles were too small to provide much of an impression. Also, I fucking HATED The Devil’s Rejects and have no intention of watching it again, ever. How much did I hate it? At least as much as Ginger hates Traci. I hated it so much that I watched two VICE ACADEMY movies instead.

The Vice Academy franchise is the brainchild of writer-director Rick Sloane, the man behind Hobgoblins. Suffice it to say, these movies aren’t exactly going to launch anyone’s career. If anything, the Vice Academy movies are the kind of cinematic dross that leads actors to give up on their Hollywood dreams and just do porn, so I really have to wonder what Ginger Lynn was hoping to achieve by appearing in them. Maybe she just welcomed the opportunity to appear in movies that didn’t require her to fuck Ron Jeremy, which, fair enough.

Ginger Lynn begins to wonder if maybe
Amber had a point.

VICE ACADEMY (1989) is terrible, but it is better than Hobgoblins, if only because its campy sensibility comes off as intentional rather than a byproduct of incompetence. In this Z-grade Police Academy rip-off, Ginger, using her serious actress moniker Ginger Lynn Allen, plays Holly, the stuck-up daughter of the police chief and the top of her class in the titular vice academy (mitigating factor: the combined I.Q. of all the characters in Vice Academy is 35.) Holly’s adversary is DiDi (scream queen Linnea Quigley, squawking all her lines), who, along with friends Shawnee (busty Karen Russell) and Dwayne (Ken Abraham), a character whose sole reason for existence is a repeated nut shot joke, is among the worst students in the class. In a twist, DiDi is the horny one while Holly is Miss Goody-Two-Shoes, though she dresses only slightly more modestly than DiDi. This twist means that it’s DiDi who goes undercover to bust a porno ring and later a prostitution ring. BTW, it also means Quigley is the one showing any skin. You want to see Ginger naked, watch a Ginger Lynn video. Ginger Lynn Allen is above such crass exploitation—for now, at least.

Karen Russell (center) provides half the gratuitous nudity
in Vice Academy.

Linnea Quigley provides the other half, her breasts taking
priority over including her scene partner,
Steven Steward, in the shot.

Ginger Lynn Allen isn’t in Vice Academy to do much of anything, it turns out. With the bulk of the movie devoted to DiDi’s undercover work, Vice Academy is more Quigley’s movie than Ginger Lynn’s. The few scenes featuring the leads together are often commandeered by Jayne Hamil, who cranks it up to eleven in the role vice academy instructor Miss Devonshire. The scenes not overpowered by Hamil are handily stolen by Russell and, in the role of criminal mastermind Queen Bee, Jeannie Carol — or, more accurately, Carol’s wig. Ginger Lynn gets left on the sidelines.

No one can upstage Jean Carol’s wig in Vice Academy.

Marina Benvenga is a slightly less awesome
villain in Vice Academy Part 2.

This dynamic changes in VICE ACADEMY PART 2 (1990), which has Holly and DiDi, both now officially on the police force, being assigned to take down the diabolical Spanish Fly (Marina Benvenga, looking like Ann Magnuson parodying Siouxsie Sioux), who has threatened to poison the nation’s water supply with, well, Spanish fly unless she’s given $20 million by… the LAPD? The details don’t matter. The point is, Holly and DiDi must try to infiltrate Spanish Fly’s lair at the Vicerama, which is, per Miss Devonshire, “the sleaziest, seediest and vilest nightclub in town!” (“That place isn’t so bad,” DiDi says. “They have good drink specials at happy hour.”) So, they set out to go undercover as strippers, only to find out that the Vicerama’s single job opening (“I hope you girls realize there’s only one position available,” drools the club manager) is for a bookkeeper.

When Holly and DiDi fail, the LAPD implements its newest weapon: BimboCop (Teagan Clive, of Alienator, um, fame?). BimboCop’s first assignment? Switchboard duty, proving herself to be more competent than the current dispatcher, Jeannie (Jo Brewer), who spends more time making dates with horny truckers and satisfying the sexual demands of Officer Petrolino (Scott Layne) than doing her job. Determined to show their worth to the vice squad, Holly and DiDi return to Vicerama, this time under the guise of being strip-o-gram dancers, ensuring gratuitous nudity from Quigley and Ginger Lynn. But they’re cover is soon blown, as is Miss Devonshire’s when she shows up to fill the bookkeeper job, and Petrolino’s when he just shows up. It’s up to BimboCop to save the day. Too bad Jeannie has sabotaged BimboCop’s programming (that’s what happens when you include an easily accessible “worthless” setting). Can Spanish Fly be stopped? Can the Vice Accdemy series? Rick Sloane kept on making these things, ending with Vice Academy Part 6 in 1998. I chose to stop at Part 2.

Holly braces herself for a night of #MeToo with Officer Petrolino.

Introducing BimboCop (groan).

 It’s not just the women providing the gratuitous nudity this
time around.

That may not be a cucumber in his pants.

Vice Academy Part 2 has slightly higher production values (it features a real police car!) and a lot more skin (in addition to Quigley and Ginger Lynn, Toni Alessandrini, as Vicerama stripper Aphrodite, and future Playgirl model Layne do their parts to increase the movie’s flesh quotient), but Vice Academy has more laughs. These are movies to watch with bong in hand.

The many faces of Jayne Hamil.

But how to judge Ginger Lynn’s acting ability in movies where no one gives a real performance? I’ll say that while neither Quigley nor Ginger Lynn are particularly good, they do work well as a duo, and that Ginger Lynn doesn’t stand out as egregiously terrible. But no one should really have their talent judged on their performance in a Rick Sloane movie. Ginger Lynn did get positive notices for her star turn in Bound & Gagged: A Love Story, a 1993 indie comedy co-starring Chris Mulkey and Karen Black, though the movie itself is reportedly painful to sit through. It’s also not yet available for streaming. Ginger Lynn made enough of an impression to be considered for the female lead in Martin Scorsese’s Casino, but the studio wanted Sharon Stone for the role — at least, according to Ginger Lynn’s IMDb bio; the Casino IMDb page reports that a different ex-porn star was considered for the part.

From Scandal to the C-List

 Traci Lords, 1980s

Unlike Ginger Lynn, Traci Lords had to leave the adult industry, burning so many bridges on the way out that she either had to pursue a career in mainstream entertainment or go back to being Nora Kuzma. She chose the former, obviously. While I’m sure it wasn’t easy for her to establish a mainstream career, Lords didn’t have the same burden as Ginger Lynn. Not only could Lords’ porn past be blamed, rightly or wrongly, on predatory adults taking advantage of a stupid teenager (who nevertheless was smart enough to get a fake I.D. to enter the business of adult entertainment), much of the evidence of that career had been scrubbed from the marketplace. Lords was essentially starting in Hollywood with an almost-clean slate.

(One of the theories put forth in the Once Upon a Time in the Valley podcast is that Lords’ underage porn career was part of a long con; that she intended from the beginning to report her underage status when the time was right and escape the porn business as a “survivor.” It’s an interesting theory that I don’t entirely dismiss. I certainly don’t believe Lords was an innocent teen exploited by the industry, as she reportedly portrays herself in her 2004 autobiography, but I doubt she had formed this Machiavellian scheme when she first started as a nude model.)

Lords never made the A-list, but she’s done OK on the C-list, kicking off her mainstream career by starring in the 1988 remake of Not of This Earth, directed by schlockteur Jim Wynorski, but getting even more attention for appearing in John Waters’ 1990 comedy, Cry-Baby. There were guest appearances on Married…with Children, Melrose Place, and Roseanne, as well as a role in the TV mini-series The Tommyknockers. She even released an album, 1,000 Fires, in 1995. But most of her Hollywood career has been spent starring in direct-to-video fare. Among those DTV movies was EXTRAMARITAL (1998).

Traci Lords: Journalist.

Lords plays Elizabeth, an aspiring journalist (just go with it) interning at We@r magazine, where she must endure her editor Griff (Jeff Fahey, showing off what he learned in the Kevin Spacey School for Portraying Sleazy Southerners) belittling her at every turn. Elizabeth — who sometimes goes by Beth, sometimes Lizzy — is married to Eric (Jack Kerrigan, looking like an alcoholic Mark Ruffalo), who is not altogether supportive of Lizzy/Beth pursuing her dreams, especially since she gave up a high-paying job to do so, jeopardizing their chances of getting a loan to finish renovations on their L.A. home. Nevertheless, Eric takes Elizabeth to the airport so she can fly to San Francisco to interview “a city big-wig who’s been implicated in a huge sex scandal.”

On her flight Elizabeth meets Ann (statuesque Marìa Dìaz), traveling from her Malibu home to Napa Valley where she and her husband have a ranch. The two women later bump into each other in San Francisco when they discover they’re staying at the same hotel. What are the odds? Ann is accompanied by Bob (child actor-turned-hot cub Brian Bloom), who is most definitely not her husband. And just to make doubly sure that Elizabeth understands that Bob is her side piece, Ann and Bob get the foreplay started in full view of the reporter before they’ve even opened the door to their room, which is, in yet another coincidence, right next door to Elizabeth’s.

Though mystified by Ann’s unapologetic adultery, Elizabeth is also fascinated. Isn’t it convenient that We@r magazine is doing a sex issue, allowing Elizabeth to use Ann as a source? Ann is positively eager to answer the budding reporter’s questions. When Ann isn’t telling Elizabeth about her extramarital activities, she’s showing the audience, meeting Bob at an apartment for some afternoon sexy time. It’s during this encounter that we learn Ann likes to videotape their trysts and Bob likes to spice things up, paradoxically, by wearing a cunnilingus-impairing rubber mask that makes their sex scene look like a Halloween porn parody.

The mask is supposed to be of Ann’s favorite actor,
so... Ray Liotta after suffering a debilitating stroke?

Is this sudden introduction of videotapes and Michael Myers cosplay really just a shoe-horned in plot-device? You bet your cheap champagne and lace thong it is! As is Ann’s calling Elizabeth so the reporter’s answering machine can record Ann getting plowed by her masked lover (as one does). But, oops, instead of a hot cock Ann gets penetrated by the cold steel of a knife, repeatedly.

Even if is the first erotic thriller you’ve ever seen, it should be no surprise that all of these coincidences aren’t that coincidental, that Elizabeth is being used, and that Bob is being set up, but by whom? Well, rest assured, Elizabeth will figure it out, right after she samples some of Bob’s lovin’ for herself.

Serious actresses don’t show their nipples.

“I’m not laughing at you, Jeff, I’m laughing ...
OK, you got me. I’m laughing at you.”

Extramarital was released by PM Entertainment, so it goes without saying that it’s not very good. It does more closely resemble a professionally made(-for-TV) feature than the Vice Academy movies, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Extramarital is better, just more polished. Screenwriter Don O’Melveny’s story is a bit of a mess, implying that Ann was somehow complicit in setting up her own murder, and it never quite clears one of the potential suspects. Jeff Fahey, the actor you call when Eric Roberts is busy, gives the movie a needed injection of camp, but not enough to boost the Extramarital’s entertainment value. 

As for Lords, she’s fine. She holds her own against the talents of Fahey and Bloom, and she’s Meryl Streep in comparison to Dìaz, who delivers all her lines as if she’s dubbing a Doris Wishman movie. But while Lords’ is a competent actor, she isn’t a very compelling one. It’s not surprising that the bulk of her acting work has been confined to the small screen; she just doesn’t have a movie star’s magnetism. She’s got sex appeal, but Extramarital, and likely Lords herself (she’s credited as an executive producer), has little interest in playing that up. I get it, she’s playing against type and, you know, trying to distance herself from her porn notoriety, but this is an erotic thriller, so the audience can’t be faulted for having certain expectations. Alas, there are Lifetime TV movies that have hotter sex scenes than those featured in Extramarital.

Final verdict? Lords is the better actress in her bad movie, but Ginger Lynn is a lot more fun in hers.

Despite Lords’ assertion, per her IMDb bio, that she still bears the stigma of her porn years, she continued to be cast in TV shows (Profiler, First Wave) and movies (Blade, Zack and Miri Make a Porno). Ginger Lynn, who wholeheartedly owned her porn stardom, never gained much traction as a mainstream actor. Her TV roles were sporadic (guest appearances on NYPD Blue and Silk Stalkings) and her mainstream movies were mostly direct-to-video dreck like The Stranger. Predictably, Ginger Lynn returned to porn in 1999. Today, both women’s careers face a far bigger roadblock in Hollywood than their involvement in the porn industry: getting old.

Striking Terror in the Hearts of Homophobes

It’s Halloween so I feel compelled to review something seasonally appropriate. The works of Romero, Carpenter and Craven are typical fodder for this sort of thing, or I could look at a couple of Frank Whale and Jacques Tournier films if I wanted to get all New York Times about it (I don’t). Instead, I thought I’d explore a different type of horror director, one who pays homage to horror conventions yet puts his own unique spin on the genre. This Halloween, I’m delving into some select works from David DeCoteau.

No one should watch a David DeCoteau horror movie expecting to be scared. Even his best ones are standouts not because they succeed as horror movies, but because they possess that so-bad-it’s-good magic. Yes, DeCoteau is that kind of filmmaker, occupying the same strata as Fred Olen Ray.

Like FOR, DeCoteau is extremely prolific, with 165 directorial credits to his name as of this writing (FOR only has 159, but he has more writing and acting credits than DeCoteau). Also like FOR, DeCoteau has worked in numerous genres, from hardcore porn to family-friendly Christmas movies. Yet, regardless of the movie’s genre, the era in which it was made, or pseudonym the director uses, there are certain signifiers that reveal a movie as being a DeCoteau product, signifiers that I’ll highlight in the movies below. Though many of these themes and techniques aren’t unique to the director on their own, they are hallmarks of a DeCoteau product when combined with some very specific, recurring tropes.

DREAMANIAC

The moment Thomas Bern realized he
didn’t want to be in movies anymore.

DeCoteau’s first horror movie was this 1986 Nightmare on Elm Street cash-in (one of the movie’s taglines was, “You Don't Have to Live on Elm Street to Have Nightmares”). Adam (Thomas Bern, in his screen debut/swan song), an aspiring heavy metal musician who is never shown playing or listening to it, agrees to let his girlfriend’s snooty sister Jodi (Lauren Peterson) rent his place to host a party for her prospective sorority. When Jodi’s guests arrive it’s soon evident that the sorority she wants to join is Phi Kappa Kunt. “Do I know you?” Jodi’s sister Pat (Kim McKamy) asks Francis (Dixie Carter lookalike Cynthia Crass), a sorority member bedecked in a giant foreskin. “I doubt it,” Francis sniffs. “I went to private schools all my life and I’m rich as shit.” The men attending this party don’t fare much better, being either dorky, goofy or smarmy. Only Pat is remotely likable, though I found her initial interaction with Adam to be borderline abusive.

Julia Sugarbaker goes to college.

Luckily for the good of humanity, Adam’s also into black magic (don’t let that Def Leppard tee fool you) and has summoned a succubus, Lily (Sylvia Summers), who’s down to fuck and/or kill the party guests, though she drags her feet doing either. Among the notable-but-improbable kills: Lily entices one of the hotter guys, Ace, to strip down to his tighty whities, wraps an extension cord around him and electrocutes him, somehow. Another head-scratching kill scene has a character getting decapitated by a power drill.

Though Dreamaniac has a few OK practical effects (it’s one of DeCoteau’s bloodier movies, though that “too gory for the silver screen” tag on the poster art is total bullshit), whatever schlocky potential it may have had is dashed by Helen Robinson’s lame script, the high school play-caliber acting and heavily padded runtime. That it was shot on video doesn’t help, though the quality of its cinematography is more early ’80s porn movie than shot on shitteo. That said, the picture is still pretty murky and fuzzy, making it even more of a chore to watch. 

What makes a David DeCoteau film unique? Exhibit A.

Story-to-Runtime Ratio: Barely 40 minutes of story to an 82-minute runtime. (I swore when I first watched it the movie was 1 hour, 42 minutes, but maybe it just felt that long.)

Method(s) Used to Pad Runtime: Repeated footage; footage of people walking/running; repeated footage of people walking/running; slooooow pans; even slower opening and end credits.

Kim McKamy considers whether porn
might be less demeaning.

Has Been/Porn Star in Cast: Kim McKamy took the name Ashlyn Gere in 1990 and had a long career in adult video.

Homoerotism Level: Lower side of medium, though after executive producer Charles Band screened the movie someone from his office called DeCoteau and asked, “Are you gay?”

Percentage of Runtime Male Cast Members in Underwear: Less than 10%, though Dreamaniac has more male nudity than other DeCoteau titles.

Will it Scare Homophobes? They may bitch about the amount of man-ass on display, but otherwise, no.

THE KILLER EYE

Ryan Van Steenis never saw the Eighth
Dimension coming.

DeCoteau takes the 1950s drive-in creature feature into the craptastic direct-to-video market of 1999, spicing it up with a heavy helping of homoeroticism and a generous side of naked women. Right off the bat we have “mad” scientist Grady (Jonathan Norman) hiring a hustler (pouty twink Ryan Van Steenis) to be his lab rat. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather screw, Doc?” the hustler asks. “’Cause my rates are the same.” Unfortunately for him, Grady wants a test subject, not a blowjob. The scientist administers eye drops that should, if successful, give the subject a view into “the Eighth Dimension.” Instead, the drops transport an entity from the Eighth Dimension into the blonde twink’s eye, causing it swell so large that it pops from his head and becomes sentient. (I just wrote that!)

Grady, however, was too busy arguing with his horny wife Rita (“You want to talk about you and your orgasms now?”) to notice any of these developments. It’s only after Rita (Jacqueline Lovell) leaves to have a three-way with their downstairs neighbors, hunky stoners Tom and Joe (David Oren Ward and Roland Martinez, respectively), that Grady notices his subject is now dead. So, he calls his assistant Morton (Kostas Koromilas), who conveniently lives in the same building, to, well, assist him, much to the chagrin of Morton’s young wife Jane (Nanette Bianchi). Though it would seem that a giant floating eyeball would be hard to miss, quite some time passes before it’s discovered, even though it’s frequently hovering only a few feet away, using its phallic-like optic nerve to get Rita off while her two stoned studs doze on either side of her, then feel up Jane while she showers. 

A typical night with Jerry Falwell Jr., his wife
and their pool boy.

Meanwhile, Creepy Bill (Blake Adams, billed here as Blake Bailey), a guy who, near as I could tell, just hangs out in the apartment building’s attic, happens upon the dead hustler’s body. Because Bill’s not quite right in the head, he has no interest in blackmailing Grady (“When you tell on others, you’re just telling on yourself,” he says). Instead, he joins the search for the titular Killer Eye, which at this point is more accurately described as the Creeping Molesting Eye. Rita, Tom, Joe and Jane join their efforts to trap the giant eye, to no avail. (“It’s been floatin’ and fucking for hours, so it’s got to be getting tired,” observes Creepy Bill.) But it soon becomes quite obvious that one member in their group has no interest in stopping the sentient eyeball.

The giant, phallic eyeball from
the Eighth Dimension.

This one’s kind of fun, actually. The movie knows what it is and does what it can within its limited budget, managing to deliver a few laughs in the process. It doesn’t do it efficiently, however. For all the amusing moments, there are just as many sluggish, pointless ones. The acting is weak, but still leagues above what was seen in Dreamaniac, with several cast members delivering semi-professional performances.

Story-to-Runtime Ratio: Really only enough story here to support 70 of this movie’s 90 minutes.

Method(s) Used to Pad Runtime: Extended PG-13 sex scene; extended R-rated shower scene; repeated footage, especially of that big rubber eye; slooooow pans; even slower end credits.

Has Been/Porn Star in Cast: Jacqueline Lovell worked in adult film under the name Sara St. James.

Homoerotism Level: High (see below).

#NoHomo

Percentage of Runtime Male Cast Members in Underwear: David Oren Ward and Roland Martinez never once put on pants, so a good 30-40%.

Will it Scare Homophobes? They’ll definitely be nervous, though Lovell and Bianchi are well utilized as the movie’s beards.

VOODOO ACADEMY

The spirit of Voodoo Academy
possesses Chad Burris.

Much like this movie’s young protagonist when he enrolls in the Carmichael Bible College, my husband and I didn’t fully know what we were getting into when we rented this DeCoteau offering in the early 2000s. We knew it was trash, of course, and our expectations were appropriately low, but then we started watching it and soon realized we’d happened upon a true hidden gem.

Like The Killer Eye, this 2000 release takes a premise that would’ve been common on the movie screens of yesteryear and pulls it into the 1990s, with DeCoteau putting his own, unmistakable spin on the material.

Christopher Sawyer (Riley Smith) is a devotee of Rev. Holice Carmichael’s “Neurocystic Christian Church” (a mix of Catholicism and Scientology, as one character describes it), so he’s thrilled to be accepted into the reverend’s bible college. Of course, the school’s extremely small, all-male student body — Christopher would be the school’s sixth student — is a bit of a red flag, but Mrs. Bouvier (Debra Mayer), the school’s sole administrator, explains that’s only because Carmichael Bible College is still an experimental institution. The school isn’t even accredited yet, another red flag, as is Rev. Carmichael’s sudden introduction of confessional booths. And seeing how the Rev (Chad Burris, who looks like he could be Jeff Stryker’s little brother) interacts with his students — placing hands on their muscular thighs, fixing his seductive gaze on their young, handsome faces — you just know those booths have a glory hole. 

Kevin Calisher looks over Carmichael
Bible College’s newest student.

It’s not until Christopher’s hunky classmates succumb to the effects of drugged wine (Christopher, a staunch teetotaler, abstained), and begin writhing in masturbatory torment that the devout new student decides to investigate. When one of the students, Rusty (Huntley Ritter), walks, zombie-like, upstairs to Mrs. Bouvier’s apartment (“That’s it, Rusty, follow your urges,” Mrs. B intones), Sawyer follows and discovers the truth: Carmichael Bible College isn’t a religious school at all—it’s a front for a voodoo priestess, and its students are all sacrifices to Macudo!

Simply put, Voodoo Academy is DeCoteau’s masterwork, second only to his one stab at indie legitimacy, 1997’s Leather Jacket Love Story. While the acting isn’t that good (it’s still a DeCoteau movie), the male cast gamely sells the homoerotism, especially Burris and, as class smartass Billy, Kevin Calisher. What’s amazing about this movie is that though its content is relatively tame, it’s so heavily suggestive that by the time the final credits roll you’ll swear you saw the guys suck each other off.

The boys of Voodoo Academy can’t fight the feeling.

Story-to-Runtime Ratio: Though 92 minutes is a wee bit longer than it needs to be (80 minutes is closer to the mark), Voodoo Academy doesn’t overstay its welcome. 

Rusty is swiftly punished for following his urges.

Method(s) Used to Pad Runtime: Lingering shots of guys writhing in their underwear; repeated footage; extended opening credits; slooooow pans.

Has Been/Porn Star in Cast: Despite all the guys in the cast looking like they were plucked from Chi Chi LaRue’s stable, none of them have done porn. Debra Mayer was in several Full Moon films prior to her death in 2015, but no porn.

Homoerotism Level: Were it any higher it would be hardcore gay porn.

Percentage of Runtime Male Cast Members in Underwear: Oh, 60%, easy.

Will it Scare Homophobes? They’ll be fucking terrified.

EDGAR ALLEN POE’S HOUSE OF USHER

Frank Mentier and Michael Cardelle make
awkward, awkward love.

With his 2008 retelling of the famous Poe tale, DeCoteau doesn’t waste time with mere homoeroticism. This one’s motherfuckin’ gay! What’s more, he made it for Here! TV, the gay network that gave us the wonderfully terrible series Dante’s Cove and The Lair. Was I giddy at the prospect of watching this? You bet your Tommy Hilfiger boxer briefs!

Unfortunately, Here! TV didn’t get the director of Voodoo Academy; it got the director of the 1313 series. DeCoteau’s interest in the material doesn’t go much further than cashing a paycheck, so what should have been a campy homo horror is a boring slog. He couldn’t even be bothered to eliminate the street traffic noise from scenes that are supposed to be taking place in the gardens of a remote country estate.

Part of the movie’s undoing is its casting. Frank Mentier, as the eccentric Roderick Usher, and Michael Cardelle, as his childhood friend Victor Reynolds, are emblematic of DeCoteau’s erotomania: buff, smooth and young. While Cardelle does look good in boxer briefs — because of course DeCoteau’s going to get him stripped down to his underwear — it’s nigh impossible to believe that his character has traveled the world and seen some shit when we suspect the actor playing him is filming his scenes during his high school spring break (and, based on Cardelle’s performance, between bong hits). Mentier, looking and sounding more bored than stoned, appears to be slightly older — he was possibly on his spring break from university — but not much more believable. These characters needed to be played by men who could act, not boys who could not. Jaimyse Haft, as Roderick’s sister Madeline, tries to deliver a real performance, bless her heart, but, alas, she just doesn’t quite have the acting chops to pull it off.

Who farted?

OK, I know better than to watch DeCoteau’s movies for the acting, but when so little regard is shown for all other production aspects (the script, art direction, the pacing) you become less forgiving. The one possible saving grace House of Usher had was its sex scenes, something to appease the viewers until there’s a Next Door Studios’ House of Usher, but again DeCoteau drops the ball. Mentier makes out with both Cardelle and a blonde whatsisname, yet it barely qualifies as softcore. The actors never even remove their underwear, instead yanking them below their buttocks but keeping their genitalia covered. You’d think a man who has directed gay porn would have a better grasp of the mechanics of sex. I wasn’t expecting to see any dicks, but I thought we could get sex scenes that reached the same level of explicitness as a Shannon Whirry erotic thriller, or, you know, Dante’s Cove.

Unless you share DeCoteau’s fondness of cute guys walking around in their underwear, House of Usher isn’t even worth hate watching. Better to stick with Roger Corman’s 1960 adaptation. Or try your luck with this 1989 adaptation or this one from 2006, both movies looking like they deliver the fun kind of bad DeCoteau didn’t. If nothing else, the acting should be better.

Michael Cardelle reminds us we’re watching
a David DeCoteau movie.

Story-to-Runtime Ratio: Though there should be enough story to flesh out an 84-minute movie, Simon Savory’s uninspired script, coupled with the sluggish pacing and bad acting, make House of Usher barely tolerable for one hour.

Method(s) Used to Pad Runtime: Repeated footage; lingering shots of guys in their underwear; people walking; extended softcore sex scenes; slooooow pans.

Has Been/Porn Star in Cast: Jill Jacobson of Falcon Crest fame(?) has a cameo so inconsequential it’s insulting.

Homoerotism Level: Extremely high.

Percentage of Runtime Male Cast Members in Underwear: 50%, augmented with some male rear nudity, but neither helps.

Will it Scare Homophobes? Yes, but they’ll be bored soon enough. 

Boo!

Dreamaniac and The Killer Eye are currently streaming on Tubi.