Category Archives: Movies with Nudity

Perfect (1985)

Posted on January 6, 2025 | Leave a comment

perfect3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Reporter investigates aerobics craze.

Adam (John Travolta) is a reporter working for Rolling Stone magazine who gets sent on assignment to Los Angeles. While there he becomes intrigued with the health fitness craze and believes the workout clubs are becoming like the singles bars of the 80’s. He asks his editor Mark (Jann Wenner) permission to write a secondary story focusing on this new phenomenon and he agrees. Once he begins attending the club he becomes infatuated with Jessie (Jamie Lee Curtis), one of the instructors. He asks her for an interview, but she refuses based on a past experience she had with another journalist, but Adam continues to pressure her. Eventually the two begin dating only for Jessie’s initial fears to ultimately get exposed when she reads the story he’s written about the club, before it gets sent to the press, and realizes it’s a negative take on the people in it, many of whom are her friends, which leads to a serious strain on their relationship. 

The film is loosely based on the real-life experiences of Aaron Latham who worked as a reporter for Rolling Stone during the late 70’s. He had already written the screenplay for Urban Cowboy, which also starred Travolta and was also directed by James Bridges, so this reteaming was expected to be a huge hit, but instead it lost over $8 million at the box office despite initially doing well on its opening weekend. A lot of the problem is that journalists aren’t considered likable people and most of the American public by and large despise them. The fact that this one behaves exactly the way you’d expect, being more than willing to exploit their subject, particularly with the way he treats the Marilu Henner and Laraine Newman characters, in order to get a juicy spin on a story, just makes him all the more despicable. 

His character is quite blah as well. We never learn why he wanted to get into journalism and if some backstory had been given, and not just starting out with him working in the obituary section and trying to move his way up, then he might’ve had more depth. It’s confusing too why such a good-looking, jet-setting guy, wouldn’t have a girlfriend. Maybe if he’d been through a rough break-up and thus wanted to avoid it that might’ve been understandable but should’ve been explained. Even just having some casual dates would’ve made sense but having him just all alone with no reason only adds to make the character even more transparent. 

Curtis as an actress is excellent and the movie is worth sitting through solely because of her and she’s looking really hot here too. However, her character’s responses to things seemed a bit off. She makes it quite clear upfront that she’s not interested in an interview, but Adam doesn’t take no for answer and proceeds to continue to hound her, which should make her hate him even more, but for some reason it doesn’t. Yes, he does help get her car started when her battery dies, so as a thank you she might’ve been willing to do a simple interview, but instead her repayment is to go to bed with him while still refusing to do any interview, even though I felt realistically it should’ve worked the other way. 

The concept itself isn’t intriguing. I lived through the 80’s and really didn’t care why people got into the aerobics thing. Revealing that some of those that did was because they were lonely and looking to meet someone to hook-up, isn’t exactly groundbreaking. The entire supporting cast is incredibly dull including Jann Wenner, the original co-found of Rolling Stone magazine, who essentially plays himself as Adam’s boss, but his performance is lackluster, and a professional actor should’ve been given the role. 

Spoiler Alert!

My biggest gripe came at the end where Curtis keeps going back to Travolta even as he does all the things that irritates her about reporters like secretly recording their conversations while in a car. That alone should’ve gotten her to dump him, which she does for a while, but then she returns. One forgiveness is okay, everybody deserves a second chance, but then he does it again with the negative story. Granted having the article revealing that she had an affair with her coach years ago wasn’t his fault as his editors put that into the story later on, but she had no way of knowing that. From her perspective he betrayed her trust and therefore the relationship should’ve been permanently over. She didn’t care for reporters right from the beginning and all he did was affirm her confirmation bias. It would’ve been more believable had she instead liked journalists and maybe wanted to be one herself and therefore kept given him the benefit of the doubt, but the way it gets done her makes little sense. 

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: June 7, 1985

Runtime: 2 Hours

Rated R

Director: James Bridges

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Movies Based on Short Stories, Movies with Nudity, Romance

Tagged , , , , , ,

Barfly (1987)

Posted on December 30, 2024 | Leave a comment

barfly

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Drunks at a bar.

Henry Chinaski (Mickey Rourke) is a bum who has very little money, lives in a small rundown apartment that’s more like a sleeping room, and spends most of his time getting drunk at a bar across the street called The Golden Horn. It’s here where he gets into arguments with Eddie (Frank Stallone) the bartender. During one of their confrontations the two go out back and have a fistfight behind the building, which Henry unceremoniously loses. Feeling embarrassed and dejected he goes on a crusade to ‘win his title’ back by finding food in order to regain his energy, but when he rips a sandwich out of another customer’s hand, since he doesn’t have money he must steal from others, he gets thrown out of the bar by Jim (J.C. Quinn) the bar owner. He then stumbles his way to another waterhole named Kenmore where he meets Wanda (Faye Dunaway) a fellow alcoholic. The two create a makeshift bond and end-up going back to her place, an apartment paid for by a married man who covers for her life necessities, as a kept woman, as long as she’s willing to put-out when he wants it. Just when Henry thinks he might be falling in-love she betrays him by have a tryst with Eddie. Feeling dejected Henry turns back to the bottle only to have Tully (Alice Krige) show-up at the doorstep. She’s a publisher offering him a check of $500 in compensation for some of the poems and short stories that he had submitted, which she found to be both gifted and profound. Henry though isn’t sure he can accept the money as he’s more comfortable being poor and not used to being liked, or a part of the upper class, which for decades he had found snotty. Then Wanda comes back into his life and when she finds out about Tully she makes a personal vendetta to ‘put her out’ as she feels rightly or wrongly that Henry is ‘hers’ and no other woman can have him.

The film is based loosely on the life of Charles Bukowski, who used the character of Henry Chinaski in five of his novels and was considered his alter-ego. It was produced by the notorious Cannon Group a production company that had a portfolio of a hodge-podge of movies some of them of a decent quality and others that were anything but. Although they had made a commitment to finance this one it almost didn’t get made as the studio was going through a period of financial distress and felt this one required too much money to fund, so they threatened to pull-out until director Barbet Shcroeder appeared at their office with a Black and Decker power saw warning that he would cut-off one his fingers to show the world that ‘Cannon was cutting-off a piece of him by pulling out of the project’, which was enough to get the execs to change their mind.

As a film it works mainly because it used authentic Los Angeles locations, many of which Bukowski frequented in real-life, as the setting. The dismal interiors really help create a vivid look making the viewer feel they’re as trapped in the skid row surroundings as the protagonist and with no discernable way to get out. The apartment sequences are especially engaging not only for the scene, that comes near the end, where Henry finally busts in on his noisy neighbors where he has a memorable confrontation, but also at the beginning when he accidentally goes into an apartment that isn’t his, but since it looks just as bleak as his sans for some decorative window curtains, he at first doesn’t even know it.

As a character study it’s revealing though it does hinge on how much tolerance the viewer will have towards someone whose decidedly self-destructive at every turn. Rourke plays the part in an over-the-top way particularly the weird style he walks almost like he’s trying to put a touch of camp to it and I don’t blame Bukowski, who stated in a later interview that Rourke was ‘too exaggerated and a bit of a show-off’ in the part, which Bukowski ultimately felt that he ‘didn’t get right’ though he later warmed-up to it and possibly other viewers may as well.

Dunaway seemed more problematic playing a woman on the skids was definitely not a part of her repertoire and she seems miscast. She almost makes-up for it by appearing topless during the bathroom scene and then getting into a climactic catfight with Krige at the end, but I didn’t understand why the woman would be wearing what appeared to me as female business attire as that was something her character was not and therefore she should’ve had something more ragged to wear even if it was just a simple jeans and T-shirt.

Spoiler Alert!

The film has many quirky moments including the two paramedics that come to visit Henry on a couple of occasions, which almost steals the movie and make this seems more like a surreal, dark comedy than a drama. The leisurely pace I liked and seems more suited for a European audience that isn’t so plot driven, but I would’ve liked seeing Henry working more at his craft. He’s only shown writing a couple of times, which is so brief that I really didn’t think he was that committed to it and almost like a novice writing words on notebook paper making it a complete surprise when a publisher eventually does show-up. You’d think if he hadn’t even bothered to type out what he had written most publishers would’ve thrown it away making the moments with the agent seem almost dream-like and more a fantasy than the intended reality.

I was a bit turned-off by the ending. I remember reading an article back in the 80’s that this movie was an example of a ‘downbeat ending’ that Hollywood studios were shying away from. During the 70’s sad endings had become the standard, but by the 80’s they tended to not register as well with the public and thus making upbeat conclusions became the norm. However, the article had specifically pointed out this movie as having an ending, which ‘wasn’t a happy one’, but I didn’t get that impression. I thought maybe it would have Henry getting knocked out by Eddie during their fight ‘rematch’, but the camera tracks out of the bar, so we never see the results of the confrontation and it’s all left open, so it’s neither sad nor happy. My only conclusion is that the article’s author felt this was a ‘sad’ ending because Henry went back to his old ways of drinking versus becoming a successful writer, but for some people success is a scary thing and falling into their familiar habits, as bleak and destructive as they may seem to others, offers a weird form of security, so I felt it ended on a high note because Henry was doing what was right for him and with the type of people he felt comfortable with. Being rich and famous would never have worked with his personality and therefore he was better off without it.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: October 16, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 37 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Barbet Schroeder

Studio: The Cannon Group

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Movies with Nudity

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Johnny Got His Gun (1971)

Posted on December 28, 2024 | Leave a comment

johnny1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Left with no face.

Joe (Timothy Bottoms) finds himself stuck on a hospital bed, covered with a white sheet and unable to communicate with any of the doctors or nurses. As a soldier fighting in WWI, the last thing he remembers is being hit with an artillery shell and he presumes he’s injured and the medical staff is just trying to make him well again, but ultimately, he comes to the conclusion that he’s lost all of his limbs and even his face. The only thing left is his brain, which allows him to relive the memories of the past, but with no ability to express himself, or see or hear anything, like a prisoner in his own body. Locked away in a utility room, so his disturbing condition won’t be seen by others, he tries to suffocate himself but finds even that to be impossible. Eventually he’s able to use morse code by banging his head against his pillow to alert the staff that he’s still conscious and not a vegetable, but his demands to be toured around in a glass coffin in order to show the public the horrors of war go unheeded.

The film is based on the 1939 novel of the same name by Dalton Trumbo, which was inspired by the real-life case of Curly Christian, a Canadian WWI soldier who lost all four of his limbs during battle. The book was met with many accolades from the critics and was even considered for a movie as early as the 1940’s when it was to star a young William Holden, but funding for the project fell through. By the 1960’s when anti-war sentiment grew during the Vietnam years renewed interest in bringing the novel to the big screen mounted and plans were put in place to have Luis Bunuel direct, but yet again funding became an issue and the pre-production was paused for several years until Trumbo himself decided to take it on by working with private investors to get the required capital. The modestly budgeted film was then given a limited release in the summer of ’71 but was never a hit and largely forgotten until revived in 1989 when the heavy metal group Mettalica used footage from the film in their music video ‘One’.

The film has some interesting aspects including having the present-day scenes shot in black-and-white while Joe’s memories and dreams are done in color. Timothy Bottoms, in his film debut, is excellent. For most of the movie we only hear his voice-over of his thoughts, but within that limitation he plays it well and uses his tone eloquently to convey his emotions and inner angst. The supporting cast such as Jason Robards as Joe’s caustic father help give the movie a bit of an edge and Diane Varsi as the sympathetic nurse who shows compassion with Joe’s dismal predicament and quarrels internally about what to do including considering shirking her professional responsibility in order to put him out of his misery, is quite good too.

The structure though doesn’t fully work. The memories of past events, including his home life and upbringing, are too general, stuff that could’ve happened to anybody and thus nothing stands-out. The dream sequences don’t have enough visual flair and are much too talky. Trumbo may be the master of the written word, but his cinematic sense is lacking, and the film drones along putting the viewer to sleep instead of reeling them in emotionally. The anti-war message may have been ground-breaking for the ’30’s, but by the time of the movie’s release there were too many other art mediums saying the same thing, so what gets said here is nothing new and comes-off as redundant and even preachy.

My biggest complaint though is that we never see Joe’s actual physical state. During the whole movie he remains conspicuously covered by a white sheet, which I found to be a cop-out. I wasn’t opposed to keeping what he looked like a mystery for most of the way as revealing it right away would’ve taken away the shock effect, but at some point, it needed to be exposed to the viewers horrified eyes. Just constantly describing something doesn’t work in movies, maybe in books, but in film one should always go for the visual. Not sure why it wasn’t done here. Maybe they thought it would be too costly to create the special effects, or the gruesomeness would sicken the audience, but wasn’t that supposed to be the whole point? By keeping it at a ‘tasteful’ level it misses-the-mark and one of the main reasons why the movie doesn’t have as strong of an impact as it could’ve.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: August 4, 1971

Runtime: 1 Hour 52 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Dalton Trumbo

Studio: Cinemation Industries

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a Hospital setting, Movies with Nudity, War Movies

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Posted on December 26, 2024 | Leave a comment

silent

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: A killer Santa Claus.

When he’s only 5-years-old Billy Chapman (Jonathan Best) has a very traumatic experience. It starts when he and his family are visiting their grandfather (Will Hare) inside a senior living facility. While his parents and younger brother are temporarily out of the room his grandfather, who usually never says a word, suddenly speaks by warning him about Santa Claus and how he punishes those who’ve been naughty. On the car ride home, his family is attacked by a gunmen dressed as Santa (Charles Dierkop) who has just robbed a liquor store. Both his parents are killed by the man, but Billy manages to escape by running out of the vehicle and hiding behind some bushes. Things now flash forward to the year 1984 where Billy (now played by Robert Brian Wilson) is 18 and still suffering from the dark memories of the event as well as the abusive upbringing inside the orphanage he was sent to that was ruled by a tyrannical Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin). Working as a stock boy at a nearby toy store, he gets asked to fill-in as Santa when the man who usually plays him calls-in sick. Playing the part though brings back up all the repressed emotions of what happened years earlier causing him to have a mental breakdown and turning him into a killer. 

This film ended up becoming quite controversial and it all started when producer Scott J. Schiend accepted story submissions from the public to help him decide what movie project he’d like to finance next. One of those submissions was short story written by a recent college grad named Paul Caimi entitled ‘He Sees You When You’re Sleeping’, which involved a killer Santa. Schnied became intrigued by the concept and hired Michael Hickey to write a full-length screenplay around the premise. Once completed the script was shopped around until Tri-Star Pictures decided to pick-it-up and finance it as well as act as its distributor. 

Since there were already two other films that had been released that dealt with a killer Claus including the 1972 horror anthology Tales from the Crypt, and the 1980 slasher You Better Watch Out! no one behind-the-scenes was expecting this one to create much controversy since neither of those had. However, mainly because of an aggressive marketing campaign, it soon caused the ire of many parents who felt based off of the TV-ads that this film would tarnish the image of Santa Claus and make children fear him and thus a movement to have the movie removed from theaters was created. Even Siskel and Ebert got in on it by focusing an entire episode of their show to it and reading out the names of the cast and crew in order to ‘shame’ them for having worked on the production. The movie was soon pulled after having been in theaters for only a week, but the controversy ended up having a Streisand effect as it garnered it more attention than it would’ve otherwise, and it made a hefty profit at the box office and ultimately became a cult hit that spawned 4 sequels as well as a reboot.  

It seems to me that most people that protested the movie didn’t actually watch it because if they had they’d realize that it’s made very clear that the guy doing the killings isn’t really Santa nor does he even look much like him. The kid who plays him doesn’t even bother putting the beard on and his own face is constantly exposed while he does the butchering, so at no point does the viewer ever see him as being anyone other than a troubled teen with severe mental issues. I actually wished the part had been played by Dierkop who portrays the initial Santa during the hold-up and puts far better energy into the role and genuinely looks more like the classic Claus both in his age and physical build. 

The movie puts a lot of effort into showing how Billy became the way he does, but for me that was a problem as it gets too plodding and seems to take forever for the carnage to get going, which for a slasher fan is what you really want to see. Would’ve been better had it started out right away with this guy Santa killing people, maybe even one of the kids who sits on his lap at the store, and with no reason why he was doing it, and then through intermittent flashbacks allow his back story to be revealed versus having the background painfully elaborated from the start, which takes away any mystery, or surprise. There’s also the issue of young Billy having prominent brown eyes, but when he reaches adolescence his eye color suddenly turns to blue. 

Spoiler Alert!

My biggest complaint though is with the Mother Superior. Chauvin plays the part quite well making the nun scarier than the killer and somebody you really love to hate, but she’s never killed off, which is a huge disappointment. Many people who grew up going to a strict Catholic School might’ve enjoyed seeing a disciplinarian nun get hacked and it might’ve been cathartic and thus having it not occur doesn’t give the film a sufficient payoff. 

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: November 9, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Charles E. Sellier Jr.

Studio: Tri-Star Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Christmas Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Cult, Horror, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , , , ,

Goldengirl (1979)

Posted on December 15, 2024 | Leave a comment

goldengirl

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Runner injected with hormones.

Goldine (Susan Anton) is a tall, 6-foot-2, athlete, who’s also quite beautiful, who shows a lot of talent as a runner and ends-up qualifying for the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. However, behind-the-scenes there’s a sinister plot. Her father Serafin (Curt Jurgens) is a neo-Nazi who has injected her with hormonal drugs and vitamins from an early age in order to get her to be taller and stronger than the other athletes. This regimen has had a adverse effect on her system causing her to get diabetes of which she’s required to take two pills before every race in order to prevent her from going into shock. Dryden (James Coburn), who’s been hired by her father to help market her and make money off of her name and potential celebrity, recognizes these problems and tries to get her to drop-out, but the lust for fame and recognition are too much and Goldine decides to stay-in even as the warning signs mount.

Based on the 1977 novel of the same name by Peter Lovesey and originally intended for a miniseries on NBC-TV, who initially funded the production, but then scraped the telecast when the US pulled out of the Olympics due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The film was then re-edited from its initial 4-hour cut and paired down to less than 2-hours before being released to theaters where it managed to recoup only $3million from its $7million budget. Alot of the problem is that not enough happens to make sitting through it seem worth it. The sinister neo-Nazi story angle doesn’t get played-up to make it suspenseful, or even mildly diverting. In many ways this could’ve been just an average film about athletes training for the Olympics because for the most part that’s pretty much what it focuses on and even then, the interest level is only marginal.

Coburn is a great actor, but I didn’t know what he was doing in this type of movie as he seemed too old for the part. While he was only 50 when it was shot, he looks much more like 60, or even 70. Having him ultimately get into a sexual relationship with Goldine seemed absurd. I got nothing against May-December romances, but it just didn’t make sense why this beautiful, young woman would have to settle for some old guy, or would even want to, to satisfy her sexual needs. A woman looking like she did should’ve been able to attract a man her age, let alone many, possibly even a fellow runner and the story would’ve been stronger had she been in a relationship with someone else her age who was at odds with the father and fought for her right from the start versus some old guy waltzing-in who only takes a casual concern to her problems and could easily bow-out at any moment, which is what he ultimately kind of does.

The biggest detriment is with Anton. As an actress I thought she did quite well. She was known at the time for being crowned Miss California in 1969, but her work here did lead to a Golden Globe nomination and her own TV-series and given the fact that she didn’t go through the conventional acting training I felt she earned it and was effective. Her character though is bland, and she should’ve been the one uncovering her father’s dastardly plan instead of Coburn. She spends a lot of time reacting to things versus driving the action like a protagonist should. Her personality traits aren’t clear and seem almost robotic most of the way and it prevents the viewer from having any emotional connection to her, or her quandary. Having her start to ‘flip-out’ near the end, supposedly because of her ‘condition’, makes her even more of an enigma and might’ve had a more profound effect had she been better defined and three-dimensional from the beginning.

Spoiler Alert!

Curt Jurgens meltdown while being interviewed live on-the-air by reporter Robert Culp, and then his subsequent running-out onto the racetrack, while in full view of millions of spectators, in an effort to win his daughter’s affections back, is the best moment in the movie. It’s a bit campy and over-the-top for sure, but when a film is as boring as this one even a silly moment can help it and quite frankly there should’ve been more of them.

The warp-up though is terrible. Having her decide at the last second not to take her diabetic pills as directed and then proceed to go into the race anyways is the movie’s one and only suspenseful minute, but then director Joseph Sargent botches it by fading out and not showing her collapsing on the track. We’re told about it later, but it would’ve been more dramatic for the audience to have witnessed it first-hand. To then have her fully recover and not learn from the event and go on afterwards like it was ‘no big deal’ defeats the purpose of the movie. What’s the point of sitting through an almost 2-hour flick where the character doesn’t change, or grow in any way and the events that happen throughout it don’t really lead to anything?

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: June 15, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 45 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Joseph Sargent

Studio: AVCO Embassy Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Sports Movies

Tagged , , , , , ,

Night Shift (1982)

Posted on December 12, 2024 | Leave a comment

nightshift1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Hookers in a morgue.

Chuck (Henry Winkler) has dropped-out of his former job as a stockbroker due to the stress and decided to work in a more tranquil setting as the night shift manager of a New York City morgue. He’s unhappy though to have to share duties with Bill (Michael Keaton) who’s talkative and partying ways are a complete contrast to Chuck’s introverted manner. Chuck’s home-life isn’t much better as he’s engaged to be married to Charlotte (Gina Hecht) though her habits and constant complaining are at odds with Chuck’s. His only solace is Belinda (Shelly Long) a prostitute whom he sometimes bumps into as she’s servicing his next-door neighbor Luke (Tim Rossovich). When Chuck finds her beaten-up inside an elevator he decides she needs to find a work environment that will afford her more protection, which gives Bill the idea to open-up a prostitution ring inside the morgue, which goes-off surprisingly well for  awhile before rival pimps become aware of it and threaten Bill and Chuck with their lives unless they agree to let them in on the payout.

This marked the second feature length film directed by Ron Howard and was inspired by a New York Times article about a real-life morgue that became a prostitution hang-out during its night hours. He decided to offer the leading role to Winkler, who had the choice of either playing Bill or Chuck but went with Chuck as he felt it would be fun playing against type, or in his words a ‘chance to play Richie Cunningham’. Winkler was still acting in ‘Happy Days’ TV-show at the time, so he’d shoot this on Mondays and Tuesdays in New York and then fly back to Hollywood to play Fonzie on Thursdays and Fridays.

While the change of pace may have shown what a good actor Winkler was it really didn’t help his image as the protagonist here is too wimpy. A somewhat passive guy is okay, but this guy lets people push him around too much making him look pathetic and his buttoned-down personality doesn’t show much energy making most of his moments in front of the camera too subtle to be either funny or engaging.

Keaton on the other-hand is too flamboyant, and his talkative ways become obnoxious instead of endearing and I personally didn’t blame Winkler for telling the guy to shut-up and leave him alone as I would’ve felt the same way. The story could’ve worked just as well if not better had Keaton not been in it at all and let Winkler carry-it alone, which would’ve allowed for a more interesting character arch at seeing this nebbish guy run a prostitution ring and thus learn to open-up more because of it.

Winkler’s relationship with Charlotte made little sense as the two had nothing in common and all she did was nag and complain. Why would anyone want to date someone like that let alone get engaged with them? I realize this was supposed to be part of the ‘comedy’ but for it to be funny there actually has to be some truth in it and these two shared no chemistry and at least one of them would’ve in reality come to their senses and broke it off and logically it’s surprising that it didn’t happen. The Charlotte character wasn’t even needed because the focus is on Winkler’s budding romance with Long, so why not just have him be a single guy who’s lonely and can’t make it with women and thus becomes entranced with Long despite her being a hooker simply because she showed him some attention.

While she gives a really good performance that’s light years removed from her Diane Chambers role from ‘Cheers’ that she’s best known for, and she sure looks great in the scene where she wears skimpy panties, her character here is problematic. She’s too wide-eyed and innocent for a woman whose been working as a call girl on the big city streets and even been badly beaten-up a few times by her pimp and johns. Seems like she should’ve formed a very hardened, crusty exterior for her own basic mental defense and the fact that she doesn’t show any of this and instead is so openly sweet seemed not remotely believable.

The premise has great potential, but it doesn’t do enough with it. For most of the way the pace is leisurely and the comedy subtle. I was expecting dead bodies coming-in amidst the sex and lots of mix-ups and confusion, but that stuff barely even gets touched upon. The prostitutes are portrayed as an extreme caricature with no distinct personalities, which reveals how shallow the whole thing is. Back-in-the-day, and I know because I was around, movies dealing with the subject of prostitution was considered ‘edgy’, but now stuff like this is looks trite and barely even touching the surface in regard to realism.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: July 30, 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 46 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ron Howard

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Plex, Roku, Tubi, Amazon Video, YouTube

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Buddy Movies, Comedy, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity

Tagged , , , , , ,

The Devils (1971)

Posted on December 8, 2024 | 1 comment

devils1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 9 out of 10

4-Word Review: Burned at the stake.

In the year 1634 the governor of Loudon, a small fortified city, dies, making Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed), a priest with a secretly decadent lifestyle, the one in control. He’s idolized by the townspeople and the head nun at the local convent, Sister Jeanne des Anges (Vanessa Redgrave), secretly has sexual fantasies about him though because she suffers from having a hunch on her back is rarely ever seen outside and Urbain himself doesn’t know she exists. When Urbain secretly marries Madeleine (Gemma Jones) Jeanne becomes jealous causing her to confide to Father Mignon (Murray Melvin) that she’s been possessed by Urbain as well as accusing him of dabbling in witchcraft. This then leads to an inquisition headed by Father Pierre Barre (Michael Gothard) and a public exorcism, which has the nuns in the church strip and perform perverse acts before Urbain and his new wife are arrested and put on trial.

The story is based on the actual event, which was written about in the book ‘The Devils of Loudun’ by Aldous Huxley that was later turned into a stageplay. After the play’s success United Artists became interested in turning it into a movie and signed-on Ken Russell to direct due to his recent success in helming Woman in Love. Russell read the source material and became in his words ‘knocked-out by it’ and ‘wanted others to be knocked-out by it too’. This then compelled him to write an extraordinarily over-the-top script full of sex, violence, and graphic torture that so shocked the studio execs when they read it that they immediately withdrew their initial investment and refused to fund the picture threatening the project from being made even though many of the sets, constructed by set designer Derek Jarman, has already been painstakingly completed, but fortunately for them Warner Brothers swooped-in at the eleventh hour, which allowed the production to proceed.

The film’s release was met with major controversy with many critics of the day, including Roger Ebert who gave the film a very rare 0 star rating, condemning it. Numerous cuts were done in order to edit it down to a version that would allow it to get shown with the original British print running 111 minutes while the American one ran 108. Both were issued with an ‘X’ rating though even these cut out the most controversial scene, known as ‘The Rape of Christ’ segment, in which a group of naked nuns tears down and then performs perverse acts on a giant-sized statue of Jesus. This footage was deemed lost for many years before it was finally restored in a director’s cut version, that runs 117 minutes, that was shown in London in 2002. Yet even today this full version is hard-to-find with Warner Brothers refusing to release it on either DVD, or Blu-ray. They’ve even turned down offers from The Criterion Collection who wanted to buy it. While there was a print Warner released onto VHS back in the 80’s, this same version, got broadcast on Pay-TV, it’s edited in a way that makes the story incomprehensible, and only the director’s cut is fluid enough for the storyline to fully work.

It’s hard to know what genre to put this one into as this isn’t your typical movie and watching it is more like a one-of-a-kind experience that very much lives up to its legend and just as shocking today as it was back then. Yet, outside of all of its outrageousness it is quite effective. Each and every shot is marvelously provocative and the garishly colorful set pieces have a mesmerizing quality. The chief color scheme of white that lines the walls of the inside of the convent seemed to interpret to me the interior of a mental hospital, which helps accentuate the insanity of the frenzied climate. While things are quite over-the-top its ability to capture the mood of the times, the cruel way people treated each other and how they’re all steeped in superstition as well as the dead bodies from the plague that get stacked about, are all on-target and amazingly vivid.

The acting is surreal with both Reed and Redgrave stating in later interviews that they consider their performances here to be the best of their careers. Reed’s work comes-off as especially exhausting as he gets his head shaved and then is ridiculed in a large room full of hundreds of people before burned to death with make-up effects that are so realistic it’s scary. Redgrave, who walks around with her head twisted at a creepy angle, is quite memorable during the scene where she physically punches herself for having sexual fantasies, even puts a crucifix in her mouth at one point and masturbates with a human bone. Dudley Sutton and Murray Melvin with their very unique facial features and Michael Gothard, who initially comes-off with his long wavy hair as an anachronistic hippie flower child, but who becomes aggressively evil as the makeshift exorcism proceeds, all help round-out a most incredible supporting cast.

While the cult following for this remains strong and getting stronger and demand for a proper, director’s cut studio released DVD/Blu-ray is high Warner continues to rebuff the requests. There are though ways to find versions through Bing searches. Streaming services Shudder and Criterion Channel have shown the most complete prints to date, running roughly 111 minutes with most of the controversial scenes, including the Rape of Christ moments though these scenes are of a poorer, grainy and faded color quality since they never went through a professional digital transfer, but overall it’s still one of those movies you should seek-out because not only is it fascinatingly brilliant, but it’s something that could never be  made today and a true testament to the wild, unfiltered cinema of the 70’s that will forever make it the groundbreaking, unforgettable decade that it was.

My Rating: 9 out of 10

Released: July 16, 1971

Runtime: 1 Hour 57 Minutes (Director’s Cut)

Rated R (Originally X)

Director: Ken Russell

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD-R

1 Comment

Posted in 70's Movies, British Movies, Foreign Films, Moody/Stylish, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Novels, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

Tagged , , , , ,

Outland (1981)

Posted on November 28, 2024 | 1 comment

outland

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Deaths at mining outpost.

William (Sean Connery) is a federal marshal assigned to an isolated mining outpost on one of Jupiter’s moons. The outpost, known as Con-Am 27, is supervised by Mark Sheppard (Peter Boyle), who boasts a high productivity from his miners, but this comes at a cost as they seem to be steadily dying-off after suffering from bizarre psychotic episodes. William brings a blood sample of one of the latest victims to Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen), a nurse stationed at the outpost, who runs it through some tests and learns that he had been taking a powerful drug that can allow the men to work long hours at a high rate, but they will eventually burn-out and be driven crazy after about 10-months of use. William learns that Sheppard is fully aware of the drug use and allows it since it helps his workers achieve high results while also paying-off the police authorities to keep quiet. William refuses to go along with this and openly challenges the status quo of the space station causing Sheppard to call-in two assassins who’ll arrive on the latest shuttle and dispose of William unless he’s able to kill them first.

The film was inspired by writer/director Peter Hyams’ desire to make a western, but was advised by studio execs that westerns were no longer profitable, but sci-fi movies dealing with outer space were, so he decided to switch the setting of High Noon, a famous western starring Gary Cooper, to that of a space station, but otherwise kept many of the story elements from that one intact. The response by critics at the time was mixed with some labeling the effort as ‘trite’ while others, like critic Desmond Ryan of the Philadelphia Inquirer calling it ‘scarier than Alien, which I found funny since that one has gone on to be a timeless classic while this is largely forgotten.

The film does score when it approaches the human factor like greed and the way management can and will exploit the workforce if it’s able and the resentment and apathy workers can have towards their jobs, which even if it’s in some distant future could still most likely be reoccurring elements that will go on no matter what the time period. The look of the space station, particularly from the outside, is cool and I enjoyed the way the film replicates the ominous silence of space especially at the beginning.

Some other futuristic effects don’t work as well like the way the computers feel the need to make little beepy noises every time it prints out a word, or message, which may have seemed high tech at the time, but is now antiquated. The television screens display the old tube models while today we have the flat HD variety making this ‘future’ seen here seem more like the past. There’s also plentiful shots of people openly smoking in meeting rooms, but since second-hand smoke was proven to cause lung cancer and outlawed now, more people vape anyways, then why would it have been brought back in the future?

Connery shouldn’t have to explain why he’s going up against this evil conglomerate when no one else will help him, as the viewer should be able to surmise this on their own, which shows how poorly fleshed-out his character is. Having him rebuff his son’s and wife’s request to come back to earth with them because he has something to ‘prove’ unintentionally works against his likability as it makes him seem selfish versus noble. Would’ve been better had his wife left him on bad terms, maybe because for example he was an alcoholic, or too focused on his job, and thus with nothing else to lose he decides to prove to himself he can do at least something right by taking down the bad guys since he’s essentially failed at everything else. The audience would’ve been more emotionally invested in his quandary if he had nowhere else to turn, instead of here where he technically does have an option.

Sternhagen is an interesting choice for the female lead in that she’s not the proverbial young and attractive heroine like viewers have come to expect in Hollywood action flicks. Had she been more romantically enticing that might’ve made the viewer dislike William, particularly if he acted upon his emotions, since he was already married, so to avoid any possible conflict they made the lady character older and sarcastic and thus not somebody to typically fall in love with. While I appreciated the concept of having two people work together without it leading into a sexual escapade, which becomes a cliche in itself, I still felt it was hard to fathom that she’d be the only one at this outpost that would offer him assistance. The work crew wasn’t real happy with management especially finding out that they were fed a drug meant to ultimately kill them, so I’d think there would be some of them who would want to help William take down their oppressive employer, which would’ve also helped it add a wrinkle to the High Noon formula, which it otherwise follows too closely to the point that it becomes predictable and redundant.

While I did like the shoot-out that happens in the giant greenhouse, which visually is impressive due to its vast largeness, I did feel overall the assassins weren’t interesting. We barely see their faces and they come-off as being no different than the other workers already at the station and this lack of distinction makes them forgettable. Initially I thought William wouldn’t be able to know which ones coming off the shuttle, as there are quite a few people who disembark it, were the killers, so there would be added suspense of him being unclear of who exactly was after him, but this quickly gets answered when William can see via circuit cameras the two men taking out their weapons, which ruins what could’ve been an added mystery. Ultimately, I felt the assassins shouldn’t have been human, but instead an indestructible killer robot, which would’ve kept it more in the space age realm and given it added excitement and special effects.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: May 22, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 49 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Peter Hyams

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

1 Comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Movies with Nudity, Police Drama, Sci-Fi

Tagged , , , , , ,

Steel (1979)

Posted on November 25, 2024 | Leave a comment

steel

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: They build a skyscraper.

Big Lew (George Kennedy) runs a construction company that builds skyscrapers and is under pressure to get his most recent project, which will be one of the tallest he’s ever been put in charge of making, completed under budget. While climbing onto a metal high beam, one of the other workers with him freezes and refuses to come down. Lew attempts to relax him, but in the process, he loses his balance and falls to his death. Cass (Jennifer O’Neill) is put in temporary charge, but she’s overwhelmed with the demands and thus goes to Mike (Lee Majors) to help take over the project and make sure it gets done in time. Mike used to be a part of the hard-hat team, but an accident caused him to become afraid of heights and forced him to take a job as a truck driver, but when the daughter of an old friend comes calling, he can’t refuse. He assembles a motley crew of misfits who all have eccentric personalities but also know how to build tall buildings and do it right even when put under grueling circumstances. Not all of them know about Mike’s fear and he tries to hide it from them due his concern that they might not respect him anymore if they found it, but while he struggles to keep everyone working at a near impossible pace he must also fight-off the likes of Eddie (Harris Yulin) who’s been tapped by a criminal conglomerate to do whatever he can to hijack the efforts of Mike’s crew and make sure the building is never finished.

The film is for the most part just a TV-movie if not for one brief moment when a prostitute gets into the truck that Lee Majors is driving and takes-off her shirt. It would’ve been best had it been made for that medium because as a theatrical release it didn’t do well and has been largely forgotten without any DVD, Blu-ray, or even a steaming venue to its name. Infact the only thing that stands it out is what occurred behind-the-scenes as stuntman A.J. Bakunas died when attempting the world record by diving off a construction site at 315 feet from the 22nd story where he reached speeds of 115 mph. The jumped looked perfect, but upon landing the air bag split and he died from the injuries the next day.

While his death was certainly regrettable, his father was a part of the 1.000 onlookers who witnessed it, it was not shot in a way that makes it work in the film. While the footage was kept and edited into the movie you only end up seeing a few seconds of it making it seem like it wasn’t even worth attempting if that’s all that was going to be seen. It was also used to kill-off George Kennedy, it was his character’s fall that the jump was created for, but Kennedy’s hard-ass persona is the one thing that gives the story any color and it’s a shame that he hadn’t stayed in all the way through.

The supporting cast if full of familiar B-movie faces and some of them are quite good, but they’re not in it enough. The movie might’ve been more entertaining had the workers themselves carried it, but instead we get introduced to their quirky temperaments, while Majors busily makes the rounds to beg them to come aboard as his crew, but then after that they’re largely forgotten and instead the focus gets put on Majors who is by far the dullest of the bunch and it would’ve worked better had he not been in it at all. O’Neil had great potential, seeing a woman trying her best to head an all-male crew, most of whom weren’t exactly gentile, could’ve made for some high drama and been considered even groundbreaking and the film clearly misses-the-mark by not having taken that avenue.

The building that was used for the film was the Kinkaid Towers in Lexington, Kentucky, which when compared to major skyscrapers in large cities is quite puny and unimpressive. The opening shot capturing it from the ground-up as its half-built doesn’t help to dispel this feeling and if anything seems rather laughable especially when there’s no other tall building around it, so there’s no cosmopolitan vibe at all to it.  However, the shots showing the men walking on the high beams several stories up with seemingly nothing holding them down is nerve-wracking to watch especially for those who fear heights, so in that vein it succeeds, but with everything else it’s rather flat.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: July 25, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 42 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Steve Carver

Studio: Fawcett-Majors Productions

Available: DVD-R

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Drama, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

Tagged , , , , , , ,

One From the Heart (1982)

Posted on November 17, 2024 | Leave a comment

oneheart

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Break-up/make-up

Hank (Frederic Forrest) and Frannie (Teri Garr) have been together for 5-years but while celebrating their anniversary at home the cracks in their relationship begin to show. Frannie is upset that they can never go out and wants more adventure. Hank doesn’t see this as a problem, so the two break up. Frannie meets Ray (Raul Julia) a waiter who has ambitions to become a singer. Hank gets together with Leila (Nastassja Kinski) who is much younger than him and lives the fast lifestyle. Each spends a night with their new partner, but end-up longing for their former mates when it’s over. Ray offers to take Frannie to Bora Bora, but will she really board the plane, or will Hank catch-up with her in time and convince her to move back with him?

The movie has a weird look about it and this is mainly because director Francis Ford Coppola decided he wanted to film the entire thing on the soundstage of his Zoetrope studios. This in retrospect seemed absurd as the setting was Las Vegas with one of the most flamboyant downtowns of any city, so if the real thing is already visually arresting why trump it with a fake one that isn’t half as exciting? The artificial presence kills the movie from the very start and what’s worse is that it was so painstakingly expensive to create the set design, which is massive, that it sent Coppola and his studio into bankruptcy of which it took many years to recover and all of it wouldn’t have been necessary if they had just shot it on-location, which would’ve been a thousand times better.

The lighting is one of the more annoying aspects particularly the red light that shines through the couple’s home window making it look like they live in the red-light district of Denmark, or near a police station. The outdoor scenes look as phony as you’d expect including having the night sky shown to have a ‘ceiling’ and the distant mountain vistas appearing as nothing more than a cheap matted on paintings. Everything comes-off as loopy like a great director whose ego got the best of him, and he made a massive artistic overreach for no other purpose then just to see if he could. The music interludes by Crystal Gayle and Tom Waits don’t work either. If a movie is intended to be a musical, as this one kind of is, then each song needs to sound distinct and at least moderately peppy, but here it comes-off like the same droning song that just never ends and adds little to the already goofy set-up.

The characters are poorly fleshed-out and, with the modest exception of Harry Dean Stanton and Elia Kazan, wholly uninteresting. The break-up is the biggest problem as the ‘squabble’ appears to be over nothing more than the fact that Hank didn’t take Frannie out on their anniversary, but to move-out because of something like that seems awfully trite. Normally for relationships/marriages to go really bad there needs to be a lot of anger simmering underneath the surface and this thing at best is just a tiff especially when at the beginning they seemed content with other. To make it realistic there should’ve been clear underlining animosity right away and not go from ‘happy couple’ to break-up with a snap-of-the-finger.

Not sure either if it’s exactly possible to get back together after the other partner has slept with someone else. Granted there could be some exceptions, but most people would consider it an extreme betrayal and unforgivable and certainly not something that they could just conveniently forget about and return back to the ‘happy couple’ that they were. Yes, in this instance they both cheated, but that makes things even worse. Who’s to say you can ever trust the other again? If one tiny disagreement can get each one to suddenly jump in the arms of a perfect stranger what’s to say that won’t get repeated in the future?

Garr, who appears topless in several scenes and even fully naked from the back in one moment, is okay. The supporting cast is also good especially Allen Garfield as Julia’s perturbed boss. I even found Kinski a bit mesmerizing with her singing and the way she was able to balance herself on a big orange ball that used to be the sign for the Spirit of 76 gas stations, but overall the thing is so thinly plotted, with too much emphasis being put on the garish set design, that it can all be summed up as a hopeless experiment gone wrong. Even Coppola has admitted in subsequent interviews that it’s a ‘total mess’, so if the director is warning you that his own movie doesn’t have much going for it, you’d better listen.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: February 11, 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 39 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Movies with Nudity, Romance

Tagged , , , , , ,