Wednesday, April 6, 2022
A Gay Man Watches Straight Porn #5: ‘A Woman’s Torment’
Monday, March 14, 2022
Short Takes: ‘Operation Hyacinth’ (2021) ★★★★
Though I flippantly compared it to Cruising, Operation Hyacinth has more in common with the paranoid political thrillers of the 1970s—like a homoerotic version of The Parallax View, or Three Days of the Condor if Jan Michael-Vincent were cast in the Faye Dunaway role (you’re welcome.)
Robert (Tomasz Zietek) is a young officer on Warsaw’s police force in 1985, when Poland was still a communist country and being an out homosexual meant having a target on your back (not that it’s much better today). At the beginning of the film Robert and his boorish partner Wojtek (Tomasz Schuchardt) are investigating the murders of two gay men. The murders are quickly pinned on a pimp who crossed paths with both victims. Robert, however, isn’t convinced they got the right guy. He appeals to the captain (Marek Kalita) to leave the case open for further investigation. The captain, who is also Robert’s father, tells him to take the win and move on. Robert instead elects to conduct a more thorough investigation on his own.
It’s during a raid of a notorious Warsaw tearoom—part of the real “Operation Hyacinth”—that Robert meets Arek, one of the fleeing “suspects.” When young art student mistakenly assumes Robert is also running from the police and not chasing him, Robert lets the assumption stand and begins cultivating Arek as an informant. That Arek quickly develops feelings for Robert is no surprise (Zietek does rock that mustache), and Robert exploits that attraction. But as the movie progresses, Robert—who’s engaged and regularly hooks up with his fiancée Helinka (Adrianna Chlebicka)—begins to regard Arek as more than just an informant.
Though Operation Hyacinth is primarily a police procedural, the movie’s setting makes the gay romance just as tense. Robert not only runs the risk of his identity being found out by Arek, but the risk of being outed to his colleagues and family is even greater. A scene of Robert and Arek narrowly avoiding discovery by Robert’s father are just as suspenseful as when Robert is almost discovered by the suspected killer he’s investigating.
Sunday, March 6, 2022
Short Takes: ‘The Female Bunch’ (1971) ★★
The ranch is run by Grace (Jennifer Bishop), a whip-wielding heroin addict. Sure, Grace may be a bitch, but she does take the girls along on drug runs to Mexico, allowing them to fuck the men at the bar while she meets with her connection. One of those men at the bar is Bill (Russ Tamblyn, better known today as Amber’s dad), who makes the mistake of accepting an invitation to visit one of the girls at the ranch, getting branded on his forehead for his trouble. He didn’t even get off first! Bill makes an even bigger mistake when he comes back for revenge. With shit getting real, Sandy reconsiders her membership to this gang of sexy, horseback riding criminals, but escaping might result in her getting buried for good.
The Female Bunch was directed by Al Adamson, so it goes without saying that it’s bad (Al had some help from John Cardos, but Cardos’ involvement doesn’t affect the movie’s quality one way or the other). That said, it’s not one of Adamson’s worst. Sure, the storytelling is sloppy and there’s only a passing concern for continuity and keeping shots in focus, but The Female Bunch manages to scrape by on sheer enthusiasm alone. Few of the females in this bunch can act, but that doesn’t stop them from biting into their bad-girl roles.
One of the females in that bunch who deserves special mention is trans actress Aleshia Brevard (billed as A’lesha Lee), who plays Sadie. Aleshia is generally overlooked by reviewers, most dwelling on how sad it is that this was Chaney’s last film. Hard to believe, given that once you see Brevard it’s pretty hard to forget her. Not only does Aleshia stand a foot taller than her co-stars, gaining extra height from big, flaming red bouffant (only Adamson's wife Regina Carrol’s hair is bigger), her performance is bigger, too. The way she channels her drag queen roots in portraying Sadie had me wishing she’d been made leader of The Female Bunch instead of Bishop. It would certainly be a more interesting movie if she had.
I read Aleshia’s first autobiography when it came out in 2001 (she published a follow-up shortly before her death in 2015) and was excited to finally see her in action. She may not have gotten many good roles (The Love God? and The Man with Bogart’s Face are two of Aleshia’s bigger films), but I’d like to think her work in exploitation films helped pave the way so trans actors like Laverne Cox could get more significant parts today. Though Aleshia is no longer with us, her website is still active and worth a visit for the photos alone.
Thursday, February 17, 2022
Double Takes: 'Madame Claude' (1977) ★★ ½ / (2021) ★★★
Unfortunately for Grudet, that theatrical film, 1977’s Madame Claude, was directed by Just Jaeckin, the same man who gave the world Emmanuelle. While Jaeckin does provide some biographical details about the Parisienne madam (excellently portrayed by Françoise Fabian), such as her acting as a police informant in exchange for police protection, he primarily uses her as a framing device for setting up a series of softcore sex scenes. The movie seems more focused on the character David Evans (Murray Head, post-Sunday Bloody Sunday and pre-“One Night in Bangkok”), a sleazy photographer being used by police to get incriminating snapshots of Mme. Claude’s girls with their clients. Another story thread focuses on Elizabeth (a better-than-usual Dayle Haddon), the madam’s newest recruit who is alternately too headstrong to tolerate the controlling madam’s bullshit, yet too naïve to realize she’ll never be more than a whore to her clients. The movie also features Robert Webber as a JFK stand-in and Klaus Kinski as a hedonistic business tycoon (don’t worry, neither of them get naked).
As one might expect from fashion photographer-turned-erotic filmmaker Jaeckin, Madame Claude looks great and it has a few spirited sex scenes, but the movie’s tone is all over the place, bouncing from frothy sex romp to sexy drama to political thriller. The movie is further hampered by its disjointed narrative, which is often hard to follow. Only Fabian’s performance as the steely Claude gives the movie any real dramatic weight. Jaeckin may have been going for something a little more substantial than his previous softcore outings, but ultimately the movie is less Klute with a French accent and more akin to The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington remade as a French drama.
Madame Claude did spawn a 1981sequel, Madame Claude 2, directed by François Mimet, though its a.k.a., Intimate Moments, is more fitting as it has even less to do with the infamous madam than the first movie. It’s pure Skinemax trash. No, Mme. Grudet didn’t get a proper biopic until Sylvie Verheyde’s Madame Claude landed on Netflix last year.
Unlike Jaeckin’s film, which never looks like it’s taking place in a time other than the mid-’70s, Verheyde’s Madame Claude pays more attention to period detail. Still, there are anachronisms, primarily with the character Sidonie (Garrance Marillier), who is sort of this movie’s Elizabeth, if Elizabeth was a wealthy girl with daddy issues. Sidonie is always smoking 120s, even in the scenes set in the late 1960s, when that length of cigarette wasn’t introduced until the early ’70s. Worse, Sidonie’s look never, ever changes. Whether it’s the 1960s or 1990s, Sidonie always looks like a 20-something woman with the exact same hairstyle. This oversight is pretty fucking glaring considering that the movie takes great pains to make sure 1990s-era Mme. Claude looks like she’s in her 70s. The movie also can’t escape its cheapness, with much of it being shot on cramped sets, giving it an overall claustrophobic feel. Madame Claude 2021 may be leagues above Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss, but it’s still a made-for-TV movie.
For all its flaws, I think Verheyde’s movie is the better biopic, which is why I’m giving it a half-star more. However, I think Jaeckin’s brand of highbrow Eurotrash is the more interesting watch.
Monday, January 31, 2022
Let's Leave the Lifetime Movies to Lifetime, Shall We Netflix?
Netflix’s Brazen attempt to rip-off Lifetime schlock. |
Besides, subscribing to whole other streaming service might not be necessary. In its desperate bid to become our everything, Netflix has been offering its own versions of Lifetime movies, because it knows that the one thing viewers crave when subscribing to a streaming service is basic cable content. Last month I watched Netflix’s stab at Hallmark/Lifetime’s stab at schmaltzy holiday inclusivity, the sugar-coated gay romcom Single All the Way. This month, I decided to check out the streaming service’s new Lifetimey thriller, BRAZEN, starring Alyssa Milano, a weirdly controversial casting choice.
Milano plays Grace Miller, an author of mystery novels and thrillers that are so popular that her bookstore appearances are standing room only.
Her books may also be the only ones stocked in this mall atrium. |
Grace’s latest novel is Brazen Virtue, the same title as the Nora Roberts’ novel on which Brazen is based. How meta! The passage Grace reads from it, describing an “unremarkable” murder victim and wondering if she had a secret life, might have counted as foreshadowing if Brazen had the patience to let us discover those secrets in due time, instead of revealing them in the movie’s prologue. Grace’s readers are enthralled and applaud as if they just heard Beyoncé perform her latest. “That was the best turn-out we’ve had all year,” gushes the bookstore’s manager. “Keep writing, Grace Miller. You’re the best.” Interestingly, her fans keep their distance, which is telling because wait until you get to know Grace!
You see, Grace is supposed to be a strong, confident woman. Unfortunately, to convey her strength screenwriters Edithe Swensen and Donald Martin have made her into a self-satisfied asshole, someone who is superior in all things, be it investigating crimes or uncorking wine bottles. Of course, her greatness comes at a cost: all other characters must be slightly (or a lot) dumber. Near the movie’s climax, she actually tells a police captain to make sure the evidence they have on a suspect is solid to ensure the arrest sticks. That the captain doesn’t respond with a well-deserved “No shit, Sherlock” should tell you how far up Grace’s ass this movie is.Despite Grace’s grating personality, she is the first person her sister Kathleen (Emily Ullerup) calls when she needs help. Grace immediately ditches her book tour to fly to D.C. so she can criticize her sister’s taste in wine, as well as pointedly bring up Kathleen’s past mistakes: a disastrous marriage, a drug addiction (just pills; she wasn’t a filthy heroin addict or scabby faced tweaker), leaving her son behind when she left her husband.
Kathleen assures Grace that she’s gotten her shit together. She’s kicked “the meds” and is now teaching English at an exclusive private school. She’s also decided to fight to regain custody of her son. Because this is an expensive undertaking, she needs money, which is why she called Grace—not for a loan, but for Grace to consent to a second mortgage on the house they inherited from their parents and that Kathleen now lives in. Grace, likely thinking, I cut my book tour short for this?, is dubious the loan will provide enough money to finance the impending legal battle, but Kathleen assures her she’s working on “other things” to raise the money.
But enough about Kathleen and her problems. The next morning, while Kathleen’s at her day job of teaching rich kids about Shakespeare, Grace tries to work on a new book but can’t concentrate because her sister’s neighbor keeps firing up a buzzsaw every few seconds. Grace, incensed that someone would have the audacity to work on a construction project at 10 a.m. on a weekday, complains because of course she does. But then, upon seeing that the neighbor is played by Sam Page, decides to make peace and bring him an empty mug that she says contains coffee. The neighbor, Ed, doesn’t do caffeine, but Grace forgives him because it turns out that Ed is a huge fan of her work. Making the previous sentence a bit more implausible is that Ed is also a detective on the D.C. police force. A cop who doesn’t consume caffeine? I’m not buying it, just as you won’t buy that he’s immediately attracted to Grace, but who knows. Maybe her books are just that good.Sam Page (left) is ready to be your new Greg Evigan. |
Beats the hell out of being an Uber driver. |
But I digress. The prime suspect is Kathleen’s ex, Jonathan (David Lewis). David is a smug prick, but he’s got an air-tight alibi and he’s too obvious besides. He also provides Brazen with its best scene.
Grace, perfect at everything else, also throws a mean left hook.Finding Kathleen’s killer is further complicated when other online dominatrixes are murdered. Now there’s the possibility that the cops are dealing with a serial killer, one who is targeting PG-rated doms. Seriously, movie, no one is paying $40 a month to watch moms do steampunk cosplay.
Especially when they wear their Maidenform One Fab Fit® underneath their leather corsets. |
Though Ed was given a week off for solving a big case (or maybe he’d already put in for the time, which is more believable), he forfeits his PTO in favor of investigating the murder of his love interest’s sister. No good deed goes unpunished, of course. Grace doesn’t just do the typical mystery/thriller thing of trying to solve her sister’s murder on her own, or even unofficially assisting Ed on the downlow. No, she wants to be an active member of the investigating team—and Ed’s captain (Alison Araya) allows it.
With Grace now appointed as a consultant, Ed and his partner Ben (Malachi Weir) are now having to suffer her company as she accompanies them to interview suspects. Ben is strangely accepting of this arrangement, but then, Ben’s a pretty chill guy. Yet even Ben gives their “consultant” an eat shit look when she barges into a meeting between the detectives and the captain to share evidence she’s turned up from her solo sleuthing.When their two most likely suspects/obvious red herrings are cleared, there’s only one thing left to do, and that one thing telegraphed by a lingering shot of one of Kathleen’s leather costumes laid out on display on the bed of her “dungeon.”
The star of Poison Ivy II shows us she’s still got it! |
Safe to Assume the Book is Better
Phone sex was Kathleen’s porny source of extra cash in the book as it was originally published in 1988. |
It’s not that Brazen is a complete piece of shit. Monika Mitchell’s directing is competent if uninspired and, apart from some flat performances by actors in minor roles, the acting is decent enough, though no one should hold their breath for an Emmy nomination. It’s just that the movie is so goddamned soulless. It’s a thriller without suspense; a romance without heat. As irritating as I found the character of Grace (just the character; Milano’s performance is fine), hating her was what kept me invested in the movie. That, and hoping Sam Page would strip down to boxer briefs at some point (spoiler: he doesn’t). You’d do better to just watch an episode of Law & Order: SVU.
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