A Wasted Life: June 2020

Saturday, June 27, 2020

Eli (USA, 2019)

While director Ciarán Foy didn't exactly make waves with Sinister II (2015), his sophomore feature film, that somewhat listless and predictable movie did reveal a possible talent for achieving an enduring and appropriate dank atmosphere as well as the effective direction of child actors. But if both were merely inferred in Sinister II, they are proven hands down in Eli, Foy's latest feature film horror, a movie that is far better made and far more effective than Paramount's ignoble relegation of distribution rights to Netfux, where it premiered and is now found, would indicate. That the dinosaur of a movie production studio chose not to try to give the movie a real cinematic release reveals a substantial lack of foresight on their part, if not mental ossification, for if flawed-but-effective films like The Conjuring (2013 / trailer) and it's tangential sequel Annabelle (2014 / trailer) could become both hits and successful, semi-separate franchises, a movie like Eli surely could have, too, had it been handled properly. Rich in atmosphere, well-acted (particularly by the kids), and often quite scary, Eli is an efficient horror movie steeped in ever-increasing dread that has more real scares than jump scares and also packs one of the hardest and most unexpected twist endings seen in a long time.

Trailer to

Eli:

Eli opens on a note that is both sunny and summery, but it is quickly revealed to be a lie: a wishful dream that segues into a nightmare before returning to the real life of Eli Miller (Charlie Shotwell), a young boy apparently deathly allergic to everything. He and his obviously financially-strapped parents, Rose (Kelly Reilly of Eden Lake [2008 / trailer]) and Paul Miller (Max Martini of Sabotage [2014 / trailer]), are on the way to their last hope for a cure, a sanatorium deep in backwaters of Louisiana run by Dr. Isabella Horn (Lili Taylor of Leatherface [2017 / trailer], The Notorious Bettie Page [2005 / trailer], John Waters' Pecker [1998 / trailer] and more), who claims to have previously cured three other children suffering the same affliction. But the safe haven proves quickly to be anything but safe, though whether the danger lies in the ghosts that truly come to haunt Eli in the house or the treatment itself is very much open to question.

The basic atmosphere of dreary loss and hopelessness fully infuses the film from the initial dream sequence onwards: the world is a constant and deadly threat to the young boy, as is already very apparent in the run-in he and his parents have with the some of America's typical citizens when checking out of the last cheap & sleazy motel on their journey to the "safe house". But if the physically real can be left behind by driving away, Eli is unable to flee the "safe" walls of the sanatorium once the ghosts there go beyond making themselves known and actually begin to get hands-on with him — unluckily, as the ghosts only give him their attention, and not his parents, his panic is easily and quickly dismissed as due to the delicate nature he has acquired owing to his sickness.

Eli uses a unhurried pace interspaced with moments of terror, beginning first with beer-swilling rednecks and then with words writing themselves of fogged-up windows and escalating to unexpected ghostly appearances, but hardly crescendoing with physical attacks of the spectral or the apparent betrayal of those one trusts the most. For most of the movie, the viewer is as lost as Eli, unsure of what one should — or even could — do in a situation as hopeless as the potentially deathly ill as Eli finds himself. And if the kid initially seems wimpy and almost unlikable, little by little he become a figure of identification, someone the viewer begins to root for, if only because the viewer can recognize the spark of a strong will for survival that awakens in Eli. An extremely futile desire for survival, however, for it would seem doomed to lead Eli to his own demise no matter where he turns or what he does — re-entry into the world outside, after all, would death for him.

By the time Eli pulls its sucker punch — a sucker punch that easily equals the best ever pulled by [yawn] M. Night Shyamalan, the one pulled in the final scenes of The Sixth Sense (1999 / trailer) — the viewer has come to truly worry for Eli, to identify with him, and to hope that he somehow manages to find a solution for what appears, by all accounts, to be a hopeless situation. Kudos to director Ciarán Foy and his cast for taking the audience on such a decent ride, and for building and sustained such a pervading sense of horrific no-way-out — a sense of horror that is hardly dispersed by the movie's extremely left-field ending, an ending the infers consequences that will far transcend anything that occurred in the sanatorium.

We here at a wasted life tend to be indifferent to against remakes, as few are ever even half as successful as that (2004 / trailer) of the original Dawn of the Dead (1978 / trailer), but after watching both Sinister II and Eli, we cannot help but think that should anyone ever come up with the idea to redo some flawed non-classic or semi-classic, forgotten kiddie-terror movies of the past — say, The Child (1977) or The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971 / trailer) or Bloody Birthday (1981 / trailer) or The Children (1980 / trailer) or Devil Times Five (1974 / trailer) — Ciarán Foy could well be the perfect person for the project. He's got a talent with directing kids, one equaled only by his ability to create atmosphere. He's a director to watch, to say the least…

Saturday, June 20, 2020

Death at a Funeral (Great Britain, 2007)

This British flick directed by the American director Frank Oz got a lot of positive press in its day, and was enough of a success outside the US that it got remade in Bollywood (as Daddy Cool [2009 / trailer]) and in the USA by Neil LaBute (as Death at a Funeral [2010 / trailer]), the latter version of which even kept talented star-name short guy Peter Dinklage in the same part he played in the original. And while we do wonder how a farcical comedy about an uptight British family with familial differences dealing with a funeral gone wrong works when the setting is changed to an uptight Afro-American family, this version here had hardly enough true laughs to instigate the desire to see the newer American version, despite the last's intriguing cast.

Not to say that Oz's movie was absolutely terrible, but it is pretty much a waste of time. Neither all that funny nor all that shocking, Death at a Funeral makes the mistake of basing most (though admittedly not all) of its laughs on two stale concepts: accidentally ingested drugs and the sudden appearance of the gay lover of the "straight" male patriarch — oh, and because it's funnier, the lover is a dwarf.

Trailer to

Death at a Funeral:

Personally, it would seem to us that such a difference in height does have its advantages: at least one of such a couple would seldom chafe their knees. Indeed, the gay dwarf lover bit does have its humorous aspects, though it is somewhat distressing that the filmmakers reduced his need for recognition or possible closure to mere greed (them shifty gay folks are just bad people, and worse when they be short). But then, had Peter Dinklage's character, Peter, been presented as a truly sympathetic person, most of the related "dark humor" would have left a bad taste in one's mouth and the Brits in the flick would have seemed much more like the uptight jerks they truly are than they do when they're merely losing grip on an inane and unexpected situation caused by a blackmailer.

As for all the drug-related stuff, well, the concept of accidental ingestion of hallucinogens is generally funnier to people who have never taken them, and the scriptwriters don't seem to display any founded knowledge in how hallucinogens work. (Which, perhaps, is why we found it all so unfunny.) If the drugs were really as strong as they are said to be at one point, Little Peter would have a permanent brain of mush, a fact that makes it hard to laugh at anything that happens to him. Ditto with wimpy nice guy Simon, played by Allan Tudyk, a man who is truly very funny in Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010) but not very here: his dosage may only have been enough for a strong but simple trip, but even a simple trip can turn damagingly bad in the wrong environment, and the funeral environment at the House of British Twits as shown in the movie is not a good environment. (Indeed, a funeral anywhere is probably not a good environment to drop hallucinogens — Timothy Leary's excepting.) That his girlfriend (Daisy Donovan) nevertheless did not blow off the funeral for his own safety once she discovers she's accidentally dosed him (with mislabeled drugs) is simply irresponsible on her part, regardless of how relationship-reaffirming their narrative ends.

In any event, if unrealistic drug ingestion and dwarf lovers and watching farcical disaster after farcical disaster, small and large, pile up one after the other and on top of one another is fun or might be funny for you, then this day in the life at a funeral held at the home of an uptight family of upper middle class twit Brits might be your tepid cup of tea. Others will probably come away feeling like they have wasted their time…

But then again, for the benefit of doubt: if Death at a Funeral is watched with a larger group of people (say, in a cinema), where the laughter of other, easier-to-please viewers can help carry along those who find the darkly "humorous" events of the narrative a bit too predictable and too easy, it is possible that the movie might come across as far funnier than when viewed in just a small group or alone.

Death at a Funeral is, in any event, well cast and well acted and well shot — it's everything else about the movie that just isn't right.

Saturday, June 13, 2020

Babes of Yesteryear – Uschi Digard, Part XI: 1978 to Addendum

Babes of Yesteryear: a wasted life's irregular and PI feature that takes a look at the filmographies of the underappreciated actresses cum sex bombs of low-culture cinema of the past. Some may still be alive, others not. Our choice of whom we look at is idiosyncratic and entirely our own — but the actors are/were babes, one and all.

As the photo (possibly) and blog-entry title above reveal, we're currently looking at the films of one of the ultimate cult babes ever, a woman who needs no introduction to any and all red-blooded American cis gender, tendentially hetero male whose hormonal memory goes further back than the start of the 80s: the great Uschi Digard.*

As The Oak Drive-In puts it: "With her long hair, Amazonian build & beautiful natural looks (usually devoid of make-up), nobody seems to personify that 60's & early 70's sex appeal 'look' better than [Uschi Digard]. She had a presence that truly was bigger than life — a mind-bending combination of hippie Earth Mother looks and a sexual wildcat. […] She always seemed to have a smile on her face and almost seemed to be winking at the camera and saying 'Hey, it's all in fun.' Although she skirted around the edges at times, she never preformed hardcore…"*

* Actually, if you search long and hard and go to the type of websites that install all sorts of nasty bugs onto your computer, there is a grainy, B&W single shot loop-like film around that looks very much like a private home movie that somehow escaped the home closet. Hard, it is; hot, it is not. We found it once, but didn't save it — much like we did with Neola Graef's current whereabouts.

Today, Uschi Digard is still alive, happily married (for over 50 years), and splitting her time Palm Springs and Los Angeles, CA. To learn everything you ever wanted to know about her, we would suggest listening to the great interview she gave The Rialto Report in 2013. You can find Uschi on that evil thing known as facebook.

Please note: we make no guarantee for the validity of the release dates given… or of the info supplied, for that matter.

Herewith we give a nudity warning: naked babes and beefcake are highly likely to be found in our Babes of Yesteryear entries. If such sights offend thee, well, either go to another blog or pluck thy eyes from thee...

Go here for Babe of Yesteryear

Uschi Digard, Part I: 1968-69

Uschi Digard, Part II: 1970, Part I

Uschi Digard, Part III: 1970, Part II

Uschi Digard, Part IV: 1971, Part I

Uschi Digard, Part V: 1971, Part II

Uschi Digard, Part VI: 1972

Uschi Digard, Part VII: 1973-74

Uschi Digard, Part VIII: 1975

Uschi Digard, Part IX: 1976

Uschi Digard, Part X: 1977

The Only Way to Spy

(1978, writ. & dir. Michael Ullman)

"Any resemblance to characters living or dead is strictly intentional."

Uschi Digard supposedly appears, uncredited, somewhere in the background of this super-obscure, R-rated spy comedy that seems once upon a time to have received video release in many a country but is otherwise completely forgotten.

The "plot", as found on the back of the video box above, which makes The Only Way to Spy look like a serious spy film, and as given at Pre-Cert, whence the image below comes: "When the nose cone from a deadly missile disappears, a group of secret agents are called to locate its whereabouts and who is behind it all. Deadly ... Dangerous ... Zany Excitement that explodes across the screen!"

The only two people we could locate who have watched and written the movie both think that it sucks. They wrote their reviews at the imdb, where one, Gridoon, goes into greater detail as to why it's so crappy: "The Only Way to Spy is not a movie. It is a random collection of images shown out of order. To say that it doesn't make sense would be an understatement; any given scene has no connection to the previous or to the next one. There isn't a shred of talent or professionalism to be found in any frame of this picture. [...] It's supposed to be a soft-core action spy comedy: there is no spying, no comedy, very little — and badly filmed — action, and, infrequently, some naked breasts. The busty actress who plays 'OO6' is game enough, and with a different cast and crew around her, she could have been the lead in a genuinely sexy spy spoof."

The man behind the movie, Michael Ullman, did not have much of a movie-making career: he was never heard of again before or after this movie, at least not under that name.

Of the participating actors, some actually had careers. Pamela Palma (above), for example, was a former burlesque dancer from Italy who had also danced in an occasional film, this being the last before she hung up her feather fans and veils. Andrea Adler is now a novelist into the I Ching. Patrick Wright (28 Nov 1939 – 9 Dec 2004), born Michael E. Wright, husband of the spunky exploitation actress Tallie Cochrane (7 Oct 1944 – 21 May 2011),* was a regularly employed character actor (usually as a "heavy") found somewhere in many a fun film, including the rare and contentious Night of the Strangler (1972 / movie), the cult faves Maniac Cop (1988 / trailer), Graduation Day (1981 / trailer), Caged Heat (1981 / trailer), Russ Meyer's Good Morning & Goodbye (1967 / opening credits below) and The Candy Tangerine Man (1975 / which we look at in our upcoming Babes of Yesteryear series on Marilyn Joi); he also directed the "shockingly inept" sexploiter Hollywood High (1976 / movie) and produced Frightmare (1983 / trailer), both classics of bad cinema.

* Go here to Chateau Vulgaria for an interview of Tallie, put online in 2012, where she mentions, in regard to the great Uschi, "I knew her very well, she was a sweetheart. She was very quiet. I had dinner with her a few times. She was very busy back then. I hooked her up with a few jobs. I have no idea what happened to her. She was an L.A. girl."

Opening credits sequence to

Good Morning & Goodbye:

Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens

(1979, writ. & dir. Russ Meyer)

Russ "King Leer" Meyer's last feature-film release, co-written by Roger Ebert (as "R. Hyde") is, in an oblique manner, a spoof of Our Town (1940 / fan trailer). Uschi has a cameo as SuperSoul, but she was primarily active behind the scenes. Still, her short appearance in Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens might well be her last "real" appearance in a movie: as far as we can tell, all subsequent appearances are either merely soft-core and/or lesbian shorts, scenes from older films edited into new (mostly porn) flicks, or tiny non-sex cameos in real sex films.

We saw Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens somewhere, decades ago, and didn't like it — but maybe we might give it a second go, one day. Maybe... in all truth, we were never truly enamored by either Kitten Natividad or Ann Marie, and this movie is truly theirs.

Ann Marie dancing,

but not in a Russ Meyer movie:

Nowadays, Kitten appears in an occasional (intentionally bad) movie, while rumor has it that Ann Marie (born Kathy Ayers), whose boobs (according to Boobpedia) were — like Kitten's — not 100% natural, now lives in Norway.

Let's go to good ol' All Movie for Robert Firsching's plot synopsis: "Like most of cult director Russ Meyer's later films, his final ode to the superhuman bosom largely dispenses with plot in favor of episodic sexual sight-gags. The ostensible storyline, narrated by Stuart Lancaster (30 Nov 1920 – 22 Dec 2000) in hilarious deadpan style, deals with the bedroom hijinx of small-town America — in this case the fictitious community of Rio Dio, Texas. Junkyard worker Lamar Shedd (Ken Kerr) is in trouble with his sexually ravenous wife Lavonia (Natividad) because he can only achieve satisfaction through unconventional openings. While Lavonia proceeds to bed down the local garbageman (Pat Wright [28 Nov 1939 – 9 Dec 2004]) and others with more standard tastes, Lamar is put through a series of increasingly silly 'cures,' including a visit to a chainsaw-wielding gay dentist (Robert Pearson [31 Jan 1921 – 4 July 2009]). Eventually, a radio faith-healer with enormous breasts (Anne [sic] Marie) gets him back on the right track. The amazing June Mack (26 Jan 1955 – 3 May 1984 [murdered]), who looks like she stepped straight out of a Robert Crumb cartoon, is the film's highlight as Kerr's insatiable black employer, Junk Yard Sal. The usual comic fight scenes are augmented here with different colors of blood for each character, but the high-voltage action of many earlier Meyer films is absent, as he was obviously trying to keep up with the booming porn market by including as many naughty close-ups as possible."

Who killed June Mack?

As common for a Meyer's film, Henry Rowland, born Wolfram von Bock (28 Dec 1913 – 26 April 1984), shows up to play Martin Bormann: he gets bonked in a coffin by Ann Marie's faith healer. The actor playing "14-year-old" Rhett, Steve Tracy (born Steve Crumrine on 3 Oct 1952), was 27 when he made the movie; gay, he died of complications arising due to AIDS on 27 Nov 1987.

"It's as lewd as it is crude, as dirty as it is flirty, as right as it is wrong, as deep as it is long. The plot is little more than a ruse as it prefers we peruse and the one thing it won't do is allow for the blues," says Rivers of Grue. They also point out that "only the word Brobdingnagian comes close to defining their DD cup majesty" of Meyer's females, and that "while his many detractors accused him of portraying the fairer sex purely as objects, more often than not, these Amazonians were stronger than their alpha counterparts which I guess made him an accidental feminist. Funny that."

The Spinning Image comes the closest to explaining our own problems with Meyer's last feature film, saying: "Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens holds a special place in film history as the last ever, proper film directed by cult auteur Russ Meyer. It was scripted by critic Roger Ebert [...], but if you're expecting the over-the-top laughs of Ebert's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970 / trailer, with Charles Napier) then you may well find this film curiously laugh-free. It takes Meyer's particular style about as far as it would go, and although promising a sequel at the close ('The Jaws of Vixen'), it was the end of the line for its creator, unless you count the video documentary on Pandora Peaks he made about twenty years later [...], and the virtually plotless ramble includes an abundance of sex scenes bringing the usually teasing Meyer about as close to hardcore as he ever got. [...] And so Ultravixens drags on, being one of Meyer's longest films and feeling it. The cast are cartoonishly energetic, and appropriate for the stag film humour, with Natividad displaying uncommon enthusiasm in her performance but there's only so many times you can see her bouncing up and down before it begins to get tiresomely repetitive. [...] It seemed the times were catching up with Meyer, and here he showed himself to have run out of ideas."

Trailer to

Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens:

El Gore, on the other hand, sees the movie, at least on a cinematic level, as "one of Meyer's more experimental films, containing a lot of gamy, curious but also remarkable and innovative camera angles and perspectives," and says: "Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens focuses on women's struggle for sexual satisfaction and men's inability to fulfill the distorted male sexual role which is imposed by society. In a more simplified or superficial version this means that it is all about big-breasted, hairy nymphomaniacs and a man who only gets sexual satisfaction by anally raping women.

Fantasy

(1979, writ. & dir. Gerard Damiano)

A.k.a. That Prickly Feeling. Oddly enough, although this San Francisco-shot movie is not listed on any of her filmographies, and although she does not even appear in it, Uschi has autographed copies of the poster (see above: that's her John Hancock). It could be that she simply confused the movie with some other project, like Fantasm (1976, see Part IX), or maybe she did some background work that no one has noticed yet, but let's take a look at it anyway.

End credits to

Fantasy:

Gerard Damiano (4 Aug 1928 – 25 Oct 2008) is most famous for his classic porn films Deep Throat (1972, see Harry Reems Part II) and Devil in Miss Jones (1973, see Harry Reems, Part III). The basic concept of one of Damiano's less well-known films, Let My Puppets Come (1976 / first 22 minutes), recently got a Hollywood spin as The Happytime Murders (2018 / trailer). For a truly excellent spin on the transgressive concept of Let My Puppets Come, however, one should check out the early Peter Jackson classic, Meet the Feebles (1989).

Trailer to

Meet the Feebles:

Fantasy is a porn version of the then-popular television show Fantasy Island (1977–84)*, but without short people. As the backside of the DVD explains: "Set in an elegant cafe at an island resort, Director Gerard Damiano takes us inside the minds of the characters to examine their fantasies about each other. Each vignette is increasingly erotic, with heat generated by the thoughtful examination of interpersonal relationships. This is one of the few films that draws applause at its conclusion. A masterpiece."

* Which got a bizarre reenvisionment this year as a horror movie (trailer), perhaps the most oddly thought-out revamp of a "vintage" TV show since, dunno, last year's even more bizarre R-rated horror version of Hanna-Barbera's cult kiddie TV show, The Banana Splits (1968)

Trailer to

The Banana Splits Movie (2019):

At the imdb, bruimaud says "[...] Come and see how Gordon (Jon Martin, born Gerald Michael Heath), the barman of Fantasy, is one of the most sad and lonely characters created by Gerard Damiano, a sort of 'alter ego' who tries to understand the whole mystery of world, dreams and creation. This introspective movie is Damiano's 8 ½ (1963 / trailer), a very unknown one but a masterpiece."

About the only other person we could find who felt the need to write about the movie was Robert Firsching at All Movie, who mentions that the characters of the "hardcore spoof" include "a not-so-blushing bride wondering if her husband would be shocked by her unusual desires and a bored married couple who are only aroused when partaking in group sex activities" and that "the plot is fairly unimportant, as the framework is basically an excuse for endless graphic sexual activity." Sounds like a porn film.

The Best of Sex and Violence

(1982, dir. Ken Dixon)

As mentioned further above, although Uschi was still found here and there in photo shoots, by 1982 the Great Digard's film appearances were pretty much reduced to lesbian trysts with the now-departed Candy Samples* (12 April 1928 – 23 Sept 2019), a rare non-sex role in shorts or porn movies, and recycled clips cut (usually) into porn video releases, some with and some without "plots". In other words: nothing really worth taking look at.

* "Whatever Happened to Candy Samples?" — a podcast from The Rialto Report.

If you get down to it, most Ken Dixon documentaries also pretty much a recycling of clips, but this project, produced by Charles Band and Michel Catalano and Frank Ray Perilli, is less a documentary than a collection of 28 trailers. As such, it is a lot more fun than the average hairy-palm movie with a fake plotline, which is why we thought we'd take a look at it — that, and because it was "written" by the recently departed Frank Ray Perilli (30 Aug 1925 – 8 Mar 2018), the former stand-up comic who also did occasional character roles in diverse movies (for example, New Orleans Uncensored [1955 / movie], Invasion of the Star Creatures [1962 / trailer below], Michael Pataki's Cinderella [1977 / trailer, which he also wrote] and Adult Fairy Tales [1978, / trailer, which he also co-wrote] and more), and wrote or co-wrote some fun trash (Alligator [1980], Dracula's Dog [1977 / trailer], Mansion of the Doomed [1976, which we'll take a look at in our upcoming Babes of Yesteryear feature on Marilyn Joi] and more).

Trailer to

Invasion of the Star Creatures (1962):

At All Movie, Brian Gusse has the basic facts: "This compilation of previews from low-budget action films & softcore sex films is hosted by veteran horror actor John Carradine (5 Feb 1906 – 27 Nov 1988) […]."

The fabulous blogspot Temple of Schlock, whence the advert shown further above is taken, mentions that "The Charles Band-produced trailer compilation The Best of Sex and Violence played midnight shows in 14 Chicago area theaters on February 5-6, 1982 as a presentation of The Alternative Film Society, a New Jersey-based organization that 'four-walled' theaters for midnight movie screenings and dusk-to-dawn shows in the early 1980s. […] None of the movies pictured in the ad (The Dirt Gang [1972, see Uschi Part XI], Werewolves on Wheels [1971/ trailer], two different Ginger flicks) have anything to do with The Best of Sex and Violence."

At Unrated Film James Klein slaughters the English language as he says, "This video […] was the first video to ever be released of just movie trailers […]. Full Moon has released this gem of trailers ranging from Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde [(1976 / trailer], Zombie (1979) […] and The Doberman Gang ([1972 / trailer] one of my own personal favorite trailers). What I loved about these trailers from the 70s was that they showed everything: faces being blown apart, breasts bouncing everywhere (back when women had some damn meat on their bones) and profanity that could make a truck driver blush. Sometimes these trailers were even better than the films themselves. The Best of Sex and Violence mixes all sorts of genres so that you may see a few horror trailers and then it will jump into a trailer for Dolemite (1975 / trailer). […] But be warned, this is not the best quality. Maybe my favorite part of The Best of Sex and Violence may be David [8 Dec 1936 – 3 June 2009] and Keith Carradine's cameo appearance alongside their dad and their awkward interaction between the three. Oh wait, the opening has a woman (Laura Jane Leary) being chased topless down a street as an unseen killer chases after her. Yeah, boobs always trump Carradine's."

Trailer to

Best of Sex and Violence:

Uschi is underrepresented to say the least, considering her career, but she is there because one of the trailers is to Truck Stop Women (1974, see Part XII). In general, the quality of the images sucks: everything seems to be taken from VHS versions of the movies.

Famous T & A

(1982, dir. Ken Dixon)

Remember the day when (discreet) T&A was the staple of the prime-time programming of the traditional big three? When, unlike on pay TV, the hard nipples were always kept under a T-shirt…?

Saturday Night Live:

The immediate follow-up to Charles Band & Michel Catalano & Ken Dixon's The Best of Sex and Violence, this time without host John Carradine or "scritptwriter" Frank Ray Perilli.

More so than the previous "film" we looked at, The Best of Sex and Violence, which is a collection of trailers, Famous T&A is closer to the typical Ken Dixon documentaries in that it is pretty much also just a recycling of clips (to be exact, "archive footage", movie outtakes and trailers). Here, he actually cannibalizes his own previous project and reuses a lot of stuff already seen in The Best of Sex and Violence. Still, since we find movies like this a lot more fun than the average hairy-palm movie with a fake plotline, let's take a look at it.

At the imdb, frankfob2@yahoo.com hits the nail on its head with his one-sentence film description: "A collection of nude and/or topless scenes from various films featuring actresses who were either famous at the time or who became famous later on." Cult babe Sybil Danning, at the time but 30 years of age and herself in possession of some fine T&A, hosts the filmic journey.

Over Unrated Magazine, James "Who needs an editor?" Klein was not impressed: "Just one year later after The Best of Sex & Violence was released, director Ken Dixon came up with another idea in which to make a quick buck on the video market: naked celebrities. […] Basically this is just the same recycled boobs that we saw in the last trailer compilation. […] Famous T&A shows clips from mostly films that Charles Band produced or distributed, so there isn't a lot to choose from. It is nice to see Ursula Andress get a naked rub down from Mountain of the Cannibal God (1978) or Laura Gemser have a naked make out session with another woman in Emmanuelle Around the World (1977 / SFW trailer) but I personally would rather see these films than watch quick (or in some cases overlong) clips that are just randomly thrown together. I did enjoy […] watching a bottomless biker chick drive down the highway provided me with some laughs but it just wasn't enough to hold my interest. […] I will say that if you are an Elvira fan and always wanted to see what those huge jugs of hers look like, you get a clip from The Working Girls (1974 / trailer) in which she shows off those milkers. Maybe for some of you, this DVD is worth purchasing just for that."
Video Vacuum liked the video/DVD a little bit more than James, saying, "Sybil Danning hosts this shot-on-video compilation of nude scenes of famous (and not-so famous) women. […] Sybil appears (dressed as a gladiator no less) and introduces a bunch of clips for 75 minutes. Some of the highlights include Phyllis Davis appearing in outtakes from Terminal Island ([1973 / trailer below] including some full frontal nudity that doesn't appear in the film), a pre-Flash Gordon (1980 / trailer) Ornella Muti, […] Bridget Bardot, Claudia Jennings (in scenes from Truck Stop Women [1974, see Part XII]), Elvira (her striptease from Working Girls), Jacqueline Bisset, Laura Gemser, Vanity, and Russ Meyer stars Edy Williams and Uschi Digard. […] The trailers are an especially nice touch. They break up some of the monotony of the unedited clips, some of which play out too long. […] At 75 minutes, Famous T & A is just long enough not to wear out its welcome. However, if the filmmakers cut out all the filler of non-famous T & A […] and kept the running time to about an hour, it might've been classic."

Trailer to

Terminal Island:

Ha ha, it's Burl was in turn less impressed than James, saying that Famous T & A "seems to have been organized much in the manner that Jackson Pollock organized his paint droplets! […] All in all, it's kind of a boring cruickshank of a motion picture! The video box implies that we'll see all sorts of now-famous people in various states of undress, and sure, we do see naked ladies, but they somehow manage to drain that experience of any prurient interest whatever! Ha ha, quite a feat! […] And worst of all perhaps is the stuff they make Sybil Danning say! My gosh, it makes the end credits of Howling II (1985 / trailer) seem like an exercise in dignified solemnity by comparison! The poor woman — I hope she was at least well paid!"

In general, the quality of the images sucks: everything seems to be taken from VHS versions of the movies.

Played somewhere during the film —

For Your Love by The Yardbirds:

Gunblast

(1986, writ. & dir. Nick Millard)

"Hey man, you fucked my woman last night. I'm going to kill you."

Yet another 66-minute direct-to-video release from the no-budget auteur that virtually no one has seen. Aka Mac 10 and Shotgun, like so many of Millard's movies this one has met little resonance — and most of that which it has gotten is universally negative. Uschi Digard, who worked with Millard over 1.5 decades previously on softcore sex films like Roxanna (1970, see Part III) and The Pimp Primer (1970, see Part II), is seen onscreen in some sex cinema in some Tex-Mex border town in a softcore porn film (Millard's Fancy Lady [1971, see Part IV]) licking her boobs.

Unrelated to this movie, but related to Uschi, in an interview at [Re]Search My Trash, Millard says, "I can tell you that Uschi was always very professional to work with ... and I can tell you about the first time I ever saw her, because I will never forget it: It was in March of 1970, at the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City, California (very close to Beverly Hills). One word can describe Uschi, magnificent — I had never seen anything like her breasts in my life (and I was raised around a burlesque theater, the Moulin Rouge theatre in Oakland, California). She also had a very pretty face and a nice derriere. […] About twelve years ago, her agent, Hal Guthu (1923 – 27 Feb 2000), told me she was living in Palm Springs, California."

The plot? "Grant Marland Proctor (19 Sept 1939 – 8 Oct 1988) is an ex-convict just released from an eight-year stretch in San Quentin. He gets involved in the twilight world of an international narcotics syndicate importing heroin into the United States. The stakes are high and the risks are great in this hard-hitting powerhouse action thriller."

At Letterboxd, they add some details: "A femme fatale non-extraordinaire (Christina Cardan of Chained Heat [1983 / trailer]) lures an aging ex-con to Mexico to intercept a mega-volume heroin delivery. Sparks fly between the two, and romance ensues. Also featured are some bloodless gun violence and a hitman with a Mac-10." Indeed, at Letterboxd, some guy named Tyler Baptist bitches that "this 65-minute-long snooze inducer features no plot, bloodless and bullet-less violence, a hella-boring striptease, and weird random early 80s porn scenes that have nothing to do with the movie." And somewhere along the way Roy Grant (Proctor) reads the December 1985 issue of Playboy as he eats canned Beans and Wieners in a motel room.

Bleeding Skull tells it like it is: "At this point, Nick Millard has nothing to prove — to me, you, or anyone else in the world. Earnest in his intent and inspiring in his tenacity, Mr. Millard remains the most singular, inventive, and beautifully disconnected filmmaker that no one cares about. […] It's difficult to communicate how powerful Gunblast can be. Like most of Millard's films, it runs just over 60 minutes. And, like .357 Magnum (1977 / clip below) and The Terrorists (1988), this movie is filled with shockingly terrible compositions, uncomfortably misplaced music cues, and the same exact people playing the same exact roles with different character names. Elements are reused with such rapid proclivity (the car from Doctor Bloodbath [1987 / full movie], the house from pretty much every Millard film spanning 1976-1988), that the blurring of filmic perimeters becomes inevitable. This is a lovely netherworld. It never changes. It just spreads, organically, in 60-minute increments. But Gunblast, in contrast to .357 Magnum, requires no commitment to accept. There's no need. This film is instantaneous elation. It moves quickly and never stops to ponder anything less than complete hilarity, bafflement, and talk of the 'shooting off' of people's balls. As such, it's Nick Millard's most consistently fulfilling 'action' film."

Scene from

.357 Magnum (1977):

Trash Film Guru understands this, and long after saying "Please understand — if you actually like action, you might not enjoy Gunblast very much," continues with: "What's that, you say? The plot? You want to know about the fucking plot […]? What are you, a square? Things go south. Off the rails. Down the toilet. Up shit creek. Oh, and tits up. Of course. But you knew that already. The beauty of it is, though, that it absolutely, positively, unequivocally doesn't matter. You don't watch Nick Millard movies for the story. You don't watch them for the acting. You don't watch them for the characterization. You don't watch them for the action. And you don't even watch them for the boobs-to-face mash-ups. You watch them because nobody else ever made movies the way he did and no one else ever will because no one else would a)want to; or b)know how to. There's no mistaking Millard's work for that of anyone else just as there's no way Millard could possibly make a film the way anyone else makes them. He operates by his own set of quite-likely-not-of-this-dimension rules. Things like shot composition, logically sound dialogue, sensibly-placed musical cues, or coherent storylines are beneath his notice. His mind is just plain moving too fast to even consider such banalities. He's working at 1000 MPH to come up with films that — irony of all ironies — move at a truly glacial pace. He can barely fill up an hour's worth of tape — and has to recycle 25% or more of the material we see from his other movies to do it — but it feels like six. Or seven. Or more."

Whether Gunblast or Mac 10 or Shotgun: an auteur film by an auteur filmmaker.

Slaves of Sin, Part I

(1999, dir. Unknown)

We couldn't find out anything about this "documentary" that supposedly uses segments taken from Can I Do It 'Till I Need Glasses? (1977), featuring Uschi Digard and Robin Williams (21 July 1951 – 11 Aug 2014). The third credited person is Mary Yates (8 March 1929 – 1 Sept 2012), the former wife of Ted Yates and Mike Wallace.

Over in Germany, the website Moviepilot claims that Slaves of Sin is a "Dokumentarfilm über die Dienstleister im Rotlicht Bezirk" — that is, literally translated: "a documentary about service providers in the red light district." (Hookers, possibly, or maybe their cleaning ladies. Who knows.) Personally, we think they have this movie confused with some other film. It supposedly also uses outtakes from Bloodsucking Freaks (1976 / trailer below), as well outtakes from Dying: Last Seconds of Life, Part II (1988) — but the latter film also uses outtakes from Bloodsucking Freaks, so maybe the outtakes are actually only from one of the two movies.

The backside of the video box, in any event, makes the film sound like a documentary about the contemporary Republican Party: "Enter the realm of mystery where fantasy and obsession run wild and sin runs deep. You will wonder how certain things actually take place: ∙Rich crazies and their hobbies ∙Twisted Career 'Peeping Toms' ∙Sneaky Surveillance ∙Outrageous Outcasts ∙Satirical Stardom ∙Sick Psychos… and much, much more! Prepare yourself. You are about to experience bizarre people & bizarre situations. You will be forced to decide who are the naughty and who are the daring. Are they those on camera or those with the cameras…or both. AND WHO IS WORSE????"

NSFW Trailer to

Bloodsucking Freaks:

In any event, Uschi Digard didn't list Slaves of Sin, Part I on her filmography once found at her now-dead website. Video Detective, on the other hand, goes so far as to list her as the producer of this low-rent mondo documentary. And as far as we can tell, Part II was never made.

Pandora Peaks

(2001, writ & dir. Russ Meyer)

This direct-to-video "documentary" on Pandora Peaks (born Stephanie Schick in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1964) was the last film Russ Meyer (21 March 1922 – 18 Sept 2004) completed before sliding into total senility. Uschi Digard supplied some of the female narration. Pandora Peaks, since retired, is a former stripper known for her artificial triple-H breasts. Her mega-silicon mambos that can be seen in hundreds of photo layouts as well as in the movie mistake Striptease (1996 / trailer) and the Andy Sidaris' (20 Feb 1931 – 7 March 2007) disasterpiece Do or Die (1991 / trailer). Though ostensibly about Pandora, Meyer's straight-to-video project is arguably less a traditional documentary than a boob-fixated example of occupational therapy.

Opening credits plus…

"Who ever went to see a Russ Meyer movie, to actually see Russ Meyer?" asks Mikey Mo, before continuing to say: "Meyer has claimed on multiple times his least favorite movie was Mondo Topless (1966 / first 4 minutes). […] There was no plot, just these women dancing and sharing random tidbits about their everyday life. It was shot in 5 days and only produced to make a quick buck to cover for the losses on the previous movies. Because Meyer disliked Mondo Topless so much it's a mystery why he chose to use the same set-up for this movie. Pandora Peaks is nothing more than 70 minutes of Pandora dancing and stripping at several in- and out-door locations while she tells us her life story. Her segments are intercut with those of Tundi, which were obviously shot in the 80s, and narrated by Uschi Digard pretending to be her. […] There is also some sort of Russ Meyer travelogue going on as he himself brings up stories about the war, has made some new shots on location in Germany where he visits old war buddies and tells us all about the history of the city of Palm Desert."

Two other sets of bodacious bazookas, those of Candy Samples and Leasha, are also worked into the film towards the end of the movie, but all the disparate parts don't really come together to create an interesting film, unless looking at big beamers is enough to make you happy.

Steve the Movieman, for example, liked this exercise in editing featuring "reused footage, large breasts, rapid-fire editing, and crystal-clear photography used over and over and over again for seventy-one minutes": "The film largely spends its time follows Peaks around as she dresses and undresses, usually in public, and wears outrageously tight outfits that only go on to emphasize her voluptuous figure. During Peaks' scenes, she narrates and discusses her early years, largely spent hiding her unusually large figure thanks to her Christian-Conservative parents before embracing her body and her form later in her years as a stripper and a porn actress. Peaks is a pretty attractive force, thanks to her beautiful blonde hair, dashing figure, confidence in appearance and position, sensual voice, and, of course, her assets. We get a lifetime's worth of scenes of her having fun with her assets and dressing and undressing for our pleasure. […] Peaks' story — which commands a good 60% of the film — is an intriguing one and one of sustainable interest. We get the impression that she is undercutting Meyer's lax approach to this particular project by using this potential-vehicle as an opportunity to allow her personal story to be heard and sincerity on her behalf to prevail. Through her efforts to do this, Peaks becomes likable and more than a big-breasted enigma. Few would be able to erect a personality while the camera's fixation seems to constantly be on your oversized assets."

Ban the Sadist Videos! Part 2

(2006, writ. & dir. David Gregory)

David Gregory is an extremely productive maker of documentaries, most of which appear as extras on diverse DVDs; in between, he does an occasional feature-film doc like this one. We were not exceptionally impressed by his last feature narrative film, Plague Town (2008), though it did have some good aspects. ("Plague Town is a bit like an excellently made carrot cake dressed to look like a Black Forest Cake: in the end, no matter how good the carrot cake is, you're sort of disappointed it isn't Black Forest Cake — even as you take a second slice.")

Gregory also made Ban the Sadist Videos! Part 1 (2005), about which KQEK says, "Named after a salacious Daily Mail headline and written & directed by veteran documentarian / film historian David Gregory […], Ban the Sadist Videos! Was original released in two parts as bonus material in Anchor Bay UK's Box of the Banned series — a pair of sets featuring films formerly banned/cut by the BBFC censors in Britain. Known as 'Video Nasties', the list of films branded as taboo original totaled 72 but was significantly whittled down in later years."

In regard to Part II, Video Vacuum says, "The British government used 'Video Nasties' (mostly thanks to the country's sensationalized tabloids) as the public scapegoat for violent real-life incidents. The infamous Bulger case, where two boys killed a toddler, is blamed on Child's Play 3 (1991 / trailer), even though the kids never even saw the movie! […] There are a couple of interesting side notes here, like the rise of the black market for movies without certificates. I also enjoyed seeing the logistics of putting censorship into action (the board has to go back and watch thousands of videos that have already been released, leading to a huge backlog). Gregory also does a side-by-side comparison of Evilspeak (1981 / trailer) and its eventual censored version. I wish there were more of these comparisons, because seeing the actual cut footage gives you a good idea of what the censors found objectionable."

In any event, Uschi supposedly pops up somewhere in some "archive footage" — i.e., outtake from some past movie — but isn't a talking head. (Odd, actually, considering the wealth of her past, that Digard hasn't reemerged yet as a talking head in contemporary projects or started making appearances at pop culture festivals and conventions.)

Bad Biology

(2008, writ. & dir. Frank Henenlotter)

Another fabulously strange movie by the great cult filmmaker Frank Henenlotter (Brain Damage [1988 / trailer], Basket Case [1982], Frankenhooker [1990 / trailer] and more), who returned to the directorial chair to deliver his first feature fictional film after a 16-year absence. But then, as The Pink Smoke points out, "Henenlotter is a rarity among filmmakers: he does what he wants to do, and if he can't then he's not interested. He makes his 'weird little movies' on his own terms... Unfortunately nobody would meet those terms sufficiently enough to suit him, hence the long cold winter of no new output. Until now. [… ] His latest, Bad Biology (A God Awful Love Story), is pure and uncompromised Henenlotter."

Perhaps the most laughably restrained plot description of the movie is found at TCM, which simply says that the movie "Centers on a woman with a unique physical condition and her discovery of a man seemingly made just for her."

Trailer to

Bad Biology:

At All Movie, on the other hand, Jason Buchanan goes into a bit more detail: "[…] A warped love story about a fashion photographer with an mutated sex organ who meets a man with a truly magnificent tool. Jennifer (Charlee Danielson) is a shutterbug who specializes in edgy imagery. Her sex drive is always in the red, and she likes to ride bareback. She's also prone to killing her lovers during intense bouts in the bedroom. When Jennifer gets pregnant — which happens quite frequently — her rapid metabolism causes her to birth malformed infants in a matter of minutes. Sexually frustrated by the fact that she can't find a man who can truly please her, Jennifer is elated when she happens across Batz (Anthony Sneed), a man who keeps his monstrous organ under control by injecting it with lethal amounts of animal tranquilizers. Bats, too, has been having a rather difficult time finding a compatible mate, but when these two get together it's a match made in mutant heaven."

Dr. Gore gives the movie, which "feels like it was directed by a guy who spent a lot of time hanging out in Times Square in the 70s and 80s", "3 out of 4 mutant orgasms", saying: "Bad Biology attempts to answer the age-old question that keeps me up at night. How can mutated freaks of nature find love? As for seven-clit Jennifer, she stalks the bars and clubs hoping someone can feed her vagina the loving it needs. […] As for 24-inch Batz, he is trying desperately to control his third leg before it winds up hurting someone. His python of love gives women unending orgasms. Jennifer needs orgasms to live. These two were made for each other. […]"

"The epitome of unsavoury and vile, Bad Biology is a film that will cause you to look at your genitals with an air of distrust by the time it's over. The long-awaited return of writer-director Frank Henenlotter, this sebaceous cyst masquerading as cinema repeatedly tests one's tolerance for things that secrete an unconventional brand of ooze," says House of Self-Indulgence, and continues: "Teaming up with rapper turned writer-producer R.A. Thorburn (a.k.a. The Rugged Man), the wily filmmaker has dragged his wonderfully disgusting outlook kicking and screaming into the 21st century. It's true, the campy effects, unprofessional acting and gritty locations of his past movies are well represented in this outing, but they don't quite feel at home in this starkly modern universe. (Hip Hop and Henenlotter is a dicey combination.) While not as aesthetically pleasing as his previous films, the outrageous premise and twisted humour more than make up for its lack of flair. Outrageous premise? Really? I mean, Mr. Henenlotter's previous films involve a murderous mound of flesh who gets around via a wicker basket, a parasitic worm who shoots hallucinogenic blue liquid through a straw located in its mouth, and an amateur mad scientist who reanimates his dead girlfriend with spare hooker parts, so how outrageous can it be?"

So where is Uschi Digard in all this? She's the babe in a porn loop Batz watches.

Henenlotter followed this movie up with a documentary, That's Sexploitation (2013). It would have been the perfect place for Digard to perhaps start a new career as a talking head, but she isn't even in any of the outtakes shown.

Trailer to

That's Sexploitation:

Addendum — the One that Got Away:

The Last Days of Pompeii

(date & director unknown)

No, Uschi did not appear in the movie advertised in the poster above. That movie is, obviously enough, a John Holmes's penis (8 Aug 1944 – 13 Mar 1988) vehicle; less obvious, perhaps, is that it is a Hawaii-set porn version of James M. Cain's novel Double Indemnity, which had already gotten the non-porn Hollywood treatment in 1944 (trailer).

The synopsis to director Sam Norvell's (a.k.a. Stanley Kurlan) Eruption (1977), as found at One-Sheet Index: "[Leslie] Bovee, a devious partner in crime, shows that she too can handle her part as easily as she handles Holmes. Married to wealthy but no longer (to her) desirable executive (Gene Clayton), she hatches a scheme to have Holmes insure [her husband's] privates for $1,000,000 and then, of course, do him in — and that's one-half mil each for our two main characters. However, Bovee's stepdaughter Angie (Susan Hart) soon steps in and exposes (1) a few facts about her mother's background to Holmes and (2) her own lovely teenage body, every orifice of which Holmes promptly fills with his legendary part. The denouement takes enough twists to bedazzle a Hitchcock fan, but it is sex that people come to see in Eruption, and it is sex that they get."
The full NSFW film can be found at Tube Porn, which says "In the long list of unforgettable John Holmes classics, Eruption may be his finest work. Notorious for his gigantic member, people often overlook his sincere and talented acting ability. Hired by a devious sexpot played by Leslie Bovee, Holmes destroys her husband for the life insurance money that will make them both rich. The crime goes off withput a hitch, but when a persistent investigator causes trouble, the Hawaiian Islands grow increasingly treacherous."

SFW and just for fun —

the first film version ever made of

The Last Days of Pompeii

(dir. Mario Caserini, Italy, 1913):

In any event, we only use the Eruption poster above only because it fits so well to "the one that got away": the movie that may or may not exist, and for which we could not find any image. Namely, The Last Days of Pompeii (1975), supposedly featuring the volcanic talents of both Uschi and her regular partner in lesbian trysts, Candy Samples (12 Apr 1928 – 23 Sept 2019). Way back in 2005, Time magazine even made reference to the movie (but not Uschi), writing "The last days of Pompeii has been the title of, among other things, a historical romance by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, a mini-series featuring Lesley-Anne Down and a porn flick starring one Candy Samples." The problem is, there seems to be literally no real documentation of the film anywhere else online, and almost everywhere that mentions it simply reiterates the little info supplied at the notoriously unreliable imdb — all of which was taken from a since-deleted page at the website Imagine Casting. (And yes, we saw that page once — as little as four months ago, it was still up.) Not reliable stuff, in other words.

But then, there is an odd reference in another often equally unreliable source that makes us sort of wonder: Wikipedia's page on the Adam Film Awards. If we are to believe that entry, in 1976 the Adam Film World's annual X-Caliber Awards for "Largest Breasts on the Sex Screen" went to "Uschi Digart in The Last Days of Pompeii". (The cover above, by the way, is from the January 1972 issue, long before the supposed release of Pompeii, and shows Uschi in the movie Below the Belt [see Uschi, Part IV].)

Could The Last Days of Pompeii truly have existed, once upon a time…? After all, every other movie referred to in that Adam Film Awards entry does exist.

Will we ever know for sure? Doubtful. Until then, The Last Days of Pompeii remains the Uschi maybe-movie that got away, the unknown HIM (1974) of big-breast fans.

As a side note: the original artwork for the Hawaii poster, artist unknown, was also used, complete with title, in Germany at some point as the poster for a release of the Russ Meyer classic Supervixens (1975, see Uschi, Part XIII). Which usage came first, we dunno.

May she live forever — The Great Uschi!

Coming soon:
Babes of Yesteryear looks @ Marilyn Joi