Showing posts with label B Movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label B Movies. Show all posts

Friday, February 19, 2021

What if Tyler Perry Directed a Male Stripper Movie?

Poster art for CHOCOLATE CITY and CHOCOLATE CITY 2: VEGAS

“Y’all seen Magic Mike, right?” Michael Jai White asks an audience of screaming women during the opening scene of CHOCOLATE CITY (2015). “Now we’re gonna add a little chocolate.” 

Consider that bit of dialog Chocolate City’s thesis statement. You’ll be reminded several more times throughout the course of the movie that this is supposed to be the Black Magic Mike. Writer-director Jean-Claude LaMarre even went so far as to name his movie’s protagonist Michael. It’s good to have goals.  

The story is pretty boiler plate. College student Michael McCoy (Robert Ri’chard) is trying to focus on academics, but he can’t ignore his family’s financial struggles. His mother Katherine’s hours have been cut at her job, and Michael’s part-time job flipping burgers at a local diner doesn’t even net him $150 a pay period. Not helping matters is Michael’s older brother, Chris (comedian DeRay Davis, quickly wearing out his welcome), who lives at home but doesn’t work. “You’re thirty and still living under my roof,” snaps Katherine (Vivica A. Fox, a long way down from Kill Bill but leagues above Cool Cat Saves the Kids). “Get a J-O-B! What’chu waitin’ on?”

“’Til I’m forty?” replies Chris, his first and only line of genuinely funny dialog. 

Vivica A. Fox and DeRay Davis in scene from CHOCOLATE CITY
“Hey, weren’t you in Cool Cat Finds a Gun?”

A solution to the family’s financial woes comes in the muscular form of Princeton (White, phoning it in yet still too good for the movie), who sizes Michael up — in the men’s room of a strip club, no less — and hands him a business card, suggesting Michael contact him if he “ever thinks about making some paper.” Were this a different kind of movie I’d think Princeton was coming on to Michael, and that would be a movie I’d very much like to see. But this is a movie from the creator of the Pastor Jones films, so we just get a few lame gay panic jokes instead.

Michael Jai White in a scene from CHOCOLATE CITY.
Michael Jai White literally phoning it in.
Michael, with Chris tagging along, pays Princeton a visit at the club he manages, the titular Chocolate City, discovering that — gasp! — it features male dancers, the brothers seemingly baffled by the very concept. Conveniently, it’s amateur night, and Michael, predictably, refuses the offer to get on stage, then just as predictably reconsiders. Before he performs the house DJ (a pointlessly cast Carmen Electra, but then, isn’t she always?) asks for a stage name. Unfortunately, she asks Chris, and hence Michael becomes Sexy Chocolate.  

And so a star is born. In no time Michael is taking home gym bags full of cash, paying off the family’s debts and buying himself a new Merc. Pretty impressive when you consider that the Chocolate City dancers seldom take off their pants, the ladies in the audience lucky if the dancers bare their asses. And you can just forget about seeing any dick in this movie.

A screen grab from the 2015 movie CHOCOLATE CITY.
This is as close as you get to seeing a cock in Chocolate City.









Robert Ri'chard in a screen grab from the 2015 movie CHOCOLATE CITY.
Robert Ri’chard tries to make the White Man’s
Overbite sexy.
Life as Sexy Chocolate does have its share of problems. Michael falls behind in his studies, specifically in his French class, the only class he’s ever shown attending (presumably so action movie never-was Xavier Declie has some screen time as Michael’s professor). His girlfriend Carmen (Imani Hakim, uncredited for some reason) is starting to ask questions, which he deflects with a lie about working with children. His God-fearing mother suspects he’s dealing drugs.

On top of all these pressures in his personal life, Michael has to deal with the resentment of Chocolate City’s one-time headliner, the aptly named Rude Boy (Tyson Beckford). While Rude Boy is an unpleasant character, I have to say I was in his corner. Michael’s young and cute, sure, but he isn’t all that. Adding an uneasy subtext to his stardom is that Michael is lighter than all the other dancers. In lieu of exploring this uncomfortable nuance, the movie chooses to have Rude Boy enlist a few guys to beat the shit out of Michael and steal his gym bag of money. 

Tyson Beckford in a screen grab from CHOCOLATE CITY.
At least Rude Boy knows why we watch male stripper movies.

It takes more than a beating to keep Sexy Chocolate off the stage, however. But then Carmen joins her friends DeeDee (Eurika Pratts, who should be informed she’s not as endearing as Rosie Perez when she talks like that) and some other chick for a night out at Chocolate City, on the exact same night Sexy Chocolate performs with his face covered by a gladiator helmet to insure a more dramatic/contrived unmasking. Rest assured, neither Michael inadvertently revealing his secret identity to his girlfriend nor his unsatisfying confrontation with Rude Boy is going to stand in the way of Chocolate City’s happily-ever-after. 

Robert Ri'chard and Imani Hakim in a scene from CHOCOLATE CITY.
A puzzled Carmen watches her boyfriend Michael
fellate a soft-serve cone.

Chocolate City is nowhere near being a Black Magic Mike, coming off more like Magic Mike XXL if it were directed by Tyler Perry, only not quite that awesome. LaMarre employs Perry’s same approach to storytelling, mixing lurid subject matter, religion (LaMarre shoehorns his Pastor Jones character into the story), broad comedy, melodrama, racial stereotypes, and regressive sexual politics, and then throws a wet blanket over the whole thing. The movie is too tame to be titillating, too by-the-numbers to be engaging, too competent to be so-bad-it’s-good, and yet it somehow made enough money to justify a sequel.

Less Nudity, More Assholes

I don’t want to make generalizations, but I think the quality of a movie is automatically suspect when the writer and director is listed by their Instagram handle, as LaMarre is in the opening credits of CHOCOLATE CITY 2: VEGAS (a.k.a. Chocolate City: Vegas Strip, as it appears on Netflix; or Chocolate City: Vegas, as it’s listed on IMDb). Most of the principles reprise their roles in this 2017 sequel, which finds the Chocolate City nightclub struggling to keep its doors open (no reason is given, but I’d hazard a guess that it has something to do with their strippers not really stripping). Princeton’s financial troubles are compounded by his ailing father’s mounting medical bills. Foreclosure is imminent. In the face of all this adversity, Princeton does what any man would do: turn the whole mess over to Scary Spice.

Mel B. in a scene from CHOCOLATE CITY 2: VEGAS
Mel B. let’s the boys know they’re fucked.

Ernest Thomas in a scene from CHOCOLATE CITY 2: VEGAS
Ernest Thomas is allowed one more moment
of dignity...
Ernest Thomas in a regrettable scene  from CHOCOLATE CITY 2: VEGAS
...before doing whatever this is, because comedy.
All is not lost, however. If the guys enter the upcoming National Male Exotic Competition in Las Vegas, they have a shot at winning a problem-solving — and highly improbable — $500,000. Securing sponsorship from Michael’s former employer, diner owner Mr. Williams (Ernest Thomas, his role expanded to the actor’s detriment), Sexy Chocolate & Co. head to Vegas, a city teeming with assholes.

After a run-in with some racist rivals (“Obama really got y’all believing anything is possible, huh?”), the Chocolate City guys discover that one of their former dancers, Pharaoh (Ginuwine), has become a celebrity exotic dancer in Vegas, even though his physique, undoubtedly the best in his bowling league, is not exactly jacked. Interestingly, Pharaoh’s troupe, the Hippz—which, because a poor font choice in the group’s advertising, I thought were the Nippz—includes the very same racist white guys who taunted the Chocolate City team earlier. Our protagonists aren’t all that concerned about Pharaoh gyrating with the Alt-Right, but they are seriously pissed that he stole their moves, which I can’t say looked all that unique. Now they have to re-choreograph their entire act.

But first they avail themselves of all a green screen Vegas has to offer. The next morning, hungover and still half asleep, they seek out the help of—I’m not making this up—Best Valentine (Mekhi Phifer), the “player who shows other players how it’s done” (i.e., he’s an arrogant asshole), who in turn and puts them in touch with former dancer Carlton Jones (Marc John Jeffries). Carlton isn’t as big of an asshole as Valentine, at least, and hearing Jefferies’ delivery of the line, “The women associate your sexual prowess with buuuulge and definition,” almost justifies the movie’s existence.

A screen grab from CHOCOLATE CITY 2: VEGAS
And the award for Best Cinematography goes to...

Michael/Sexy Chocolate squanders a night in Green Screen Vegas.

Rattling around elsewhere in the movie, Pastor Jones’ chubby son wants to pursue a career in exotic dancing; Michael’s ex-girlfriend Carmen, now an insufferable bitch, heads to Las Vegas, accompanied by DeeDee, their gay friend Kevin, and some other chick, to become Sexy Chocolate’s manager now that his brother Chris is out of the picture; and Michael’s French professor goes to great lengths to ensure his failing pupil takes his “state exam” (in this movie’s universe, not even France values the French language as much as much as Michael’s home state, which turns out to be Georgia, the same place that put this crazy bitch on the national stage). With the exception of the pastor’s son’s ill-chosen career aspirations, these subplots have no purpose beyond giving actors from the first movie another paycheck and letting the audience know that, even though it looks like it’s set in Los Angeles, Chocolate City was set in Atlanta all along (but filmed in L.A.). 

Pharaoh stands amidst his Alt-Right dancers and proudly
displays his one-pack.

Much of Chocolate City 2 is padded with footage of that male exotic dancing competition, which achieves the rare feat of making scenes of hunky men suggestively undulating boring. We already know who will win, anyway, so why stay awake until the end? There’s certainly no reason to start watching Chocolate City 2. Its predecessor, while not an example of masterful filmmaking, at least showed some technical proficiency. Chocolate City 2 is worse in every way, and on top of all that it has even less nudity. Clearly, @JeanClaudeLaMarre needs to stick to his Pastor Jones franchise and stop trying to make inspirational sexploitation a thing. 

Screen grab from the 2017 movie CHOCOLATE CITY 2: VEGAS
One of only two scenes of gratuitous nudity in Chocolate
City 2: Vegas
, a movie allegedly about male strippers.

A screen grab from the 2017 movie CHOCOLATE CITY 2: VEGAS.
I’m suddenly in the mood for kielbasa.
The Chocolate City saga didn’t end with this shitty sequel, however. LaMarre went on to executive produce Vivica’s Black Magic, a reality show in which, per IMDb, “[r]enowned actress and icon Vivica A. Fox starts on a new project: creating the first all-male exotic dance group.” (Really, the first one?) The show only lasted a season, ending with lawsuits and accusations of homophobia. LaMarre continues the Chocolate City franchise — sans Fox — with Chocolate City 3: Live Tour, in post-production as of this writing. I’m just going to stick with This One’s for the Ladies, thank you. At least those guys know what I want to see.

A screen grab from CHOCOLATE CITY 2: VEGAS.
Pharaoh — but most likely not Ginuwine—flashes the crowd.

Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Race to the Middle: Ginger vs. Traci

Vice Academy_Vice Academy 2_Extramarital Posters
 “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.

Ginger Lynn in the 1980s
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.

Screen grab from the 1989 comedy VICE ACADEMY
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.

Screen grab from the 1989 comedy VICE ACADEMY
Karen Russell (center) provides half the gratuitous nudity
in Vice Academy.

Screen grab from a scene in the 1989 comedy 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.

Screen grab from the 1989 comedy VICE ACADEMY
No one can upstage Jean Carol’s wig in Vice Academy.

Screen grab from the 1990 movie VICE ACADEMY PART 2
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.

Screne grab from the 1990 comedy VICE ACADEMY PART 2
Holly braces herself for a night of #MeToo with Officer Petrolino.

A scene from the 1990 comedy VICE ACADEMY PART 2
Introducing BimboCop (groan).

Screen grab from the 1990 comedy VICE ACADEMY PART 2
 It’s not just the women providing the gratuitous nudity this
time around.

Screen grab from the 1990 comedy VICE ACADEMY PART 2
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.

Jayne Hamil in scenes from the 1990 movie VICE ACADEMY PART 2
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 in the 1980s
 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).

Screen grab from the 1998 movie EXTRAMARITAL
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.

Screen grab from the 1998 movie EXTRAMARITAL.
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.

Screen grab from the 1998 direct-to-video feature EXTRAMARITAL
Serious actresses don’t show their nipples.

Screen grab from the 1998 direct-to-video feature EXTRAMARITAL
“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.

Saturday, November 7, 2020

Cigars, Loud Jackets and Poontang

The current cover art for the 1993 movie SOUTH BEACH
This an instance where you can judge
a movie by its don’t-give-a-shit cover art.
There were many ways I could’ve spent the U.S. Election Night: Obsessively checking my phone for updates, watching TV news to see how many different ways anchors could say, “No, not yet,” or just getting drunk. I chose to watch a shitty 1993 direct-to-video thriller, SOUTH BEACH.

Fred Williamson stars as Mack Derringer, a retired pro football player who now runs a private investigation agency with another ex pro football player, Lenny (Gary Busey). When we meet them, they’re playing a round of golf, smoking cigars and talking shit. The two pals are seemingly without a care in the world, even though they have plenty of reasons to worry. As Lenny points out, they haven’t had a case in five weeks, a payment is due on Mack’s houseboat and their bar tab at their favorite watering hole, The Sports Page, “is as long as a tapeworm.” Mack isn’t worried, though, telling Lenny that “big things can happen at any time.”

Then Lenny leaves for a Jamaican vacation, and though his timing is questionable his departure helps ensure the amount of Gary Busey in the movie is kept to a tolerable level. Mack then takes his wheelchair-bound mom (Isabel Sanford) to the mall. He leaves her parked outside a store while he goes shopping in what looks like a Hallmark card shop, but Mama Derringer just can’t stay put, rolling to the jewelry store next door, where she witnesses a robbery in progress. 

Gary Busey and Fred Williamson in the 1993 movie SOUTH BEACH
Fred Williamson chews more cigars in South Beach, but
Gary Busey chews more scenery.

An alarm goes off and Mack rushes out of the Hallmark store, his gun drawn, though he has no idea the reason for the alarm. I mean, for all he knows, it’s a fire alarm. Anyway, Mack blows away the mullet-headed robbers, police Det. Coleman (Robert Forster, who worked with Williamson in the far superior Vigilante) lets Mack know he’s sick of his shit, and Mama Derringer hams it up for the local TV news.

Meanwhile, Mack’s ex-wife Jennifer (Vanity), who manages a phone sex business, is being stalked by one of her callers, a guy identifying himself as Billy. Jennifer dismisses the stalker as an annoyance, until she shows up at work one day, wearing a slinky black dress with matching opera gloves, as one does, and discovers the naked corpse of her dim-bulb co-worker Suzi on the office floor. 

Vanity in the 1993 movie SOUTH BEACH.
It was Nightclub Wednesday at the office.

You might think, as I did, that hunting for Suzi’s killer/Jennifer’s stalker would become the main driver of South Beach’s story, but that’s merely a B-plot. At the Sports Page, while cutting up with his buddy Jake (a barely recognizable Peter Fonda), yet another former pro ball player, Mack is approached by Francesca (Sheree Deveraux, who, despite what her name and acting style suggests, did not do porn). She wants to hire Mack to protect her from a jealous ex-boyfriend. He reluctantly agrees, because pussy, and accompanies her to a party aboard a yacht.

It’s a set-up, of course, and before the party is over Francesca has disappeared and Mack is framed for a murder. With Jake’s help, Mack goes hunting for the person who framed him, getting occasional too-convenient-to-be-true assists from Lenny. He might also try to find out who’s after Jennifer, and, what the hell, go after the people behind that jewelry store robbery since the helmet-haired daughter of the store’s owner (Shay King) so obviously wants to get into Mack’s Dockers. 

Shay King offers herself to Fred Williamson in SOUTH BEACH
Shay King’s movie career consists solely of
supplying South Beach’s nudity.

These three storylines—Mack being framed, Jennifer’s stalker and the jewelry store robbery—are loosely wrapped up by the end, but don’t ask me to explain how because the movie sure doesn’t, not coherently, at least. But South Beach isn’t about the destination; it’s the meandering journey, during which our leading man models loud jackets, chews through about thirty cigars and considers all the sweet poontang he’s offered, including the well-seasoned meat pocket of Stella Stevens (watching the 54-year-old throw herself at Williamson is only slightly less cringey than the scene featuring Marquis Ross’s beachside rap performance).

Stella Stevens and Fred Williamson in SOUTH BEACH
Stella Stevens is actually a more age-appropriate partner for
Fred Williamson, but the movie pretends she still looks
like her 1960s self (right).

A Black Burt Reynolds

South Beach seems to be going for a vibe similar to one of Burt Reynolds’ ’80s crime movies, a mix of gritty action and smartass humor. It certainly sold me on the idea of Williamson as a Black Burt Reynolds. His ’stache isn’t as iconic and he lacks a signature laugh, but Williamson projects the same blend of no-bullshit machismo and easy-going humor as Burt. I could easily see him playing the lead in Stick or Heat.

Peter Fonda and Fred Williamson in SOUTH BEACH
Peter Fonda and Fred Williamson are just
a couple of zany bros.

Unfortunately, I could just as easily see Reynolds in South Beach, which more closely resembles the DTV shit he was making by the late 1990s. Michael Thomas Montgomery’s script, with its muddled plotting and underwritten characters, is partly to blame for the movie’s poor quality. I say partly because I suspect there were more than a few sequences that were improvised, e.g., the opening golf scene. And, honestly, can any scene involving Gary Busey really stay on script? Casting Busey in a movie after his 1988 motorcycle accident is like giving your best man a microphone at your wedding reception after he’s downed his sixth glass of Prosecco with a cocaine chaser. Semi-coherence is the best you can hope for.

But most of the blame goes to the director… Fred Williamson (IMDb lists Alain Zaloum as a co-director, though his name doesn’t appear on the movie’s opening credits). As cool as he is in front of the camera, Williamson isn’t so capable behind it. South Beach is sloppily made, with flubbed lines and visible safety rigging. There’s also an over-reliance on close-ups and waaaaay too many shots of Williamson grinning into the camera and handling a fucking cigar (seriously, I think he’s a fetishist about those things). 

Visible safety rigging and film equipment in SOUTH BEACH
One of the few scenes in South Beach that’s not
shot in close-up, and it captures the stunt man’s safety
rigging and filming equipment in the background.
  


South Beach has an interesting cast, at least. The movie can now boast that it stars three Oscar® nominees (Busey for The Buddy Holly Story, Fonda for Ulee’s Gold, and Forster for Jackie Brown), plus an Emmy winner (Sanford for The Jeffersons) and a Golden Globe winner (Stevens, but the category was Most Promising Newcomer, the Hollywood equivalent of being crowned homecoming queen). Vanity never won any awards but she boned Prince, so that’s got to count for something. I always found her a welcome screen presence, and wish she was more of one in South Beach, her next to last movie before she quit cocaine and show business to become an evangelist (no one ever turns to God when things are going great). Rounding out the cast are cameos from Henry Silva and Flash Gordon star Sam J. Jones. The movie also has the distinction of having a high body count amongst its cast: Sanford, Forster, Fonda, and Vanity are now all deceased, and yet Busey is still with us.

Unless you’re a fan of the lead actors you could probably skip this one and re-watch one of their better movies. That said, there were worse things I could’ve watched on Election Night.

Stella Stevens and Vanity posed for Playboy and Fred Williamson and Sam J. Jones posed for Playgirl
Fun fact: South Beach features four actors who have posed
nude for Playboy/Playgirl: Stella Stevens, Fred Williamson,
Vanity, and Sam J. Jones.

Friday, October 30, 2020

Striking Terror in the Hearts of Homophobes

Posters for DREAMANIAC_THE KILLER EYE_VOODOO ACADEMY and HOUSE OF USHER

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
Thomas Bern made his first and last appearance on screen in 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.

You will hate Cynthia Crass' character almost as much as you hate her sweater.
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. 

David DeDeCoteau puts his own stamp on the slasher flick.
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 (with Thomas Bern) before she moved on to a more dignified genre.
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 in 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. 

Jacqueline Lovell_David Oren Ward and Roland Martinez in a scene from THE KILLER EYE.
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 titular KILLER EYE.
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).

David Oren Ward and Roland Martinez have some alone time in THE KILLER EYE.
#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

Chad Burris feels the spirit within him in David DeCoteau's 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 in VOODOO ACADEMY
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 can't fight the feeling in VOODOO ACADEMY
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. 

Huntley Ritter is ready for the sacrifice in VOODOO ACADEMY
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 love in 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.

Jaimyse Haft attempts acting in HOUSE OF USHER
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 in David DeCoteau's HOUSE OF USHER
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. 

Even the ghosts in the HOUSE OF USHER wear boxer briefs.
Boo!

Dreamaniac and The Killer Eye are currently streaming on Tubi.