All posts by Louis Fowler

Hollywood Babylon (1972)

Why isn’t more softcore porn as educational (or gossipy) as this? Hollywood Babylon, pseudo-based on the best-selling Tinseltown scorcher by psychedelic Church of Satan co-founder Kenneth Anger, is the ultimate precursor to The E! True Hollywood Story, with a much-needed emphasis on the nastier side of fame. Granted, we’re never really told who most of the stars (repeatedly referred to as “the golden people”) are, but it doesn’t matter — you came for some ‘70s bush-filled debauchery, and that’s exactly what you get.

Here are a few highlights among its star-studded and stud-starred recreations:
• Corpulent comedian Fatty Arbuckle bangs a girl to death with a champagne bottle after saying things like, “Later, Toots, I’m in a lovin’ mood.” The narrator laments, “If only his fans could see their jolly, fat star now!”
• One nameless star falls in love with a 7-year-old girl, gets her pregnant at 15 and marries her in a Mexican village that “smells of human urine and donkey dung.” Now mortally afraid of normal penis-to-vagina sex, he vows never to have to do it that way again. So what does he do? He obsessively forces her to go down on him all the time, even bringing in other girls to teach her how to do it properly (i.e. no teeth — you fellas know what I mean).
• Hilariously German director Erich von Stroheim, when not filming orgies, masturbates and cackles maniacally (monocle and all) as he watches a “professional sadist” whip the shit out of a chained naked girl. Is it just me, or did Stroheim look like Dr. Hugo Strange?
• Notorious lover Rudolf Valentino liked highly masculine, domineering women, was married to two “renowned dykes,” was worshipped by “swishing sissies” and his final words were, “Now, do they still think me a pink powder puff?”
• Swedish sexpot Uschi Digard — the hottest, most buxom star of ‘70s adult cinema — gets into a face-slapping catfight that leads to one of the most erection-inducing sex scenes you’ll ever see. She then models lingerie for her director.
• Lastly, America’s first sweetheart Clara Bow invites the whole football team into her boudoir, with sexy results. In the best end credits sequence since Don’t Go in the Basement, they run over the final scene of the exhausted football team, exposed wangs and all, sprawled out in Bow’s room. —Louis Fowler

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The Peek Snatchers (1965)

Remember the good ol’ days of burlesque shows? Me neither, but from the looks of The Peek Snatchers, they really weren’t all that. As a matter of fact, they were nothing more than sub-Stooges sight gags, lame plots, lamer accents and a string of voluptuous ladies — sexy guts and all — dancing around to seedy nightclub jazz. In other words: Why wasn’t there a sequel?

After a newspaper headline (presumably from The Plot Exposition That Won’t Be Used Later Times) reads “Tel-Star Orbits the World, Claim Many Things Uncovered” and “Big Jewel Robbery — Two Scientists Missing,” we meet two goofballs who may be the scientists. They bumble and stumble around, say stupid one-liners and stare into a white piece of paper masquerading as a super-computer that can see anything in the world.

With all that power, do they fall into international intrigue or get involved in some sort of espionage? Nope. Instead, they stare at 1960s tits and ass. So in between gay cowboy jokes and Japanese Beatle gags, we see a chunky stripping Latina, a chunky stripping blonde, a chunky folk-singing stripping Asian and a chunky belly-dancing Arab — sexy ladies one and all.

So fellas, wait for the wife to go to work, drop the kids off at school and get ready to masturbate, old-school! —Louis Fowler

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The Curious Dr. Humpp (1967)

Somewhere in Argentina, a doctor — a curious doctor, if you will — is up to no good. At night, he sends out his pasty-faced, failed-conceptual-art experiments to round up various lovers in different states of doing it. From a teen couple and busty ’60s lesbians to a drunken nympho and couple at a weed orgy, these monsters are the very definition of coitus interupptus, always attacking before the sex gets hot and heavy — damn you, Dr. Humpp! (In between all this, a monster walks into a bar, orders a drink and watches a burlesque show … and no one bats an eye.)

Meanwhile, the police are baffled.

We finally meet The Curious Dr. Humpp (Aldo Barbero, The Naked Beast). While I didn’t find him so much curious as I did lecherous, it seems that the reason he sends out the monsters to collect the fornicating couples is to collect the “blood forces of sex.” Why would one need these sexy forces? Why, to keep eternally young, of course. These experiments consist of forcing couples to get it on and watch them. And watch them. And watch them. And watch them. His jealous, buxom-blonde assistant (Gloria Prat, Feast of Flesh) begs Dr. Humpp to “use my body to keep you alive.” Where can I find that kind of help?

Meanwhile, the police are baffled.

While I’m sure The Curious Dr. Humpp (aka La Venganza del Sexo) was a raincoat potboiler back in its day, the Spanish work is actually pretty tame by today’s standards. Yet it still works as a testament to outré ’60s bizarro cinema. This is the kind of movie that could have only been made back then, with half-baked sci-fi, no-baked monsters and fully baked bosoms. In other words, it has everything.

Meanwhile, the police are baffled.

One question: Is Humpp his real name? Just like if a kid’s name is Gannett McCaster, he’ll be a cop; Jet Rockway, an ace pilot: If your last name is Humpp, it’s a guaranteed life in the sex trade, science or not. What medical school did he go to? How did that graduation ceremony go? Were his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Humpp, in attendance? Were they proud? Are they proud now? What was his thesis? If only the WB could commission a pilot for Humpp: The Early Years.

Meanwhile, the police are baffled. —Louis Fowler

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Butterfly (1982)

It’s hard to believe there was a time when the name Pia Zadora was on everyone’s quivering lips. For one moment in history, she was lauded as our nation’s highest female ideal, a growth-stunted pixie with a mischievous, Lolita-esque twinkle in her eye. She was the Megan Fox of her time — a time when our country was less judgmental about its objects of sexual fantasies. Today, she’s nothing more than another cultural oddity, a punch-line name best left for Trivial Pursuit questions and cameos in John Waters flicks, but she got her masterpiece in the Depression-era, depression-inducing melodrama Butterfly.

Zadora is the bee-stung-lipped Kady, a seductively wanton tween who surprises her estranged pop, Jess (Stacy Keach), one afternoon and proceeds to turn his life upside down as she offers him her own downside up. Yes, she teaches this gruff loner to love again — not in the life-affirming, “I want to be a better father!” kind of way, but more in the “I want to massage my daughter’s nubile breasts while I bathe her!” kind of way. To Kady and Jess, incest is the best way to pass time as they mine for ill-gotten silver. I personally would’ve just stuck to singing old slave spirituals, but then again, Zadora isn’t my nympho daughter.

Orson Welles shows up as a drunken judge and bloats all over the screen, delivering a wonderfully unintelligible performance that is so bitter and careless and drunk on Paul Masson, I doubt he knew the cameras were rolling. But maybe that’s just Matt Cimber’s charmingly free-flowing directorial style which, coincidentally, made him the Razzies’ pick for worst director that year. (That’s okay, Matt, the Razzies have been the stupidest award show since … well, ever. Consider the source.)

Watching Butterfly, you’re filled with wistful visions of Zadora’s unrealized promise. I say it’s about time for this little spitfire’s comeback, if only for a feature-length realization of her post-apocalyptic video for “When the Rain Begins to Fall.” I’m sure Jermaine Jackson would be down for it. And probably Cimber, too. —Louis Fowler

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Soul Plane (2004)

So I just saw Soul Plane, aka Let’s See How Far We Can Set the Civil Rights Movement Back and Throw Tom Arnold in There as Well: Da Movie!

In a premise that makes the Wayans brothers’ White Chicks look like Roots, a lovable loser (Kevin Hart) whose dog is sucked in to the propeller while he gets diarrhea on an airplane, sues and is awarded $500 kajillion. Therefore, along with his cousin, Method Man, he opens the first black-themed airline.

It kind of sounds like Airplane!, and I feel like it earnestly tries to be, but it’s so bogged down in its own ineptitude that it just becomes an exercise in pure tedium. Not even John Witherspoon (the dad from Friday) could get a laugh out of me. The jokes are all pretty much unfunny shit-and-ass gags and the aforementioned Arnold is a guy named Mr. Hunkee (pronounced “honky”). That’s about as clever as it gets, folks.

Snoop Dogg takes over the Peter Graves role, but we get no classic lines like “Do you like movies about gladiators, Billy?” Instead, Snoop smokes some weed. Surprise! There was some actual potential in this idea, but as my date said, it seemed more like a “made-for-UPN movie.” And I’m surprised it weren’t. —Louis Fowler

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