For nearly an hour of its hour, The Beautiful, the Bloody, and the Bare consists of a naked woman being drawn or photographed for artistic purposes. How does the narrator make that interesting? Beats me, because he doesn’t. Director and writer Sande N. Johnsen (Teenage Gang Debs) doesn’t seem to know, either, although he tries by inserting props like guitars, beach balls, African ritual masks — you know, the usual. At least the constant jazz music’s hep!

The narrator of this New Yawk story, Leo (Tom Signorelli of Michael Mann’s Thief), is an artist who convinces his buddy Pete (Jack Lowe, Johnsen’s The Twisted Sex) to put his heavy-haired arms to good use as a nudie shutterbug. Although visually the type of guy who says, “Now look here, lady” three times a day with incontestable derision, Pete agrees.

All goes fine for a while — a long, long while to the viewer — as Pete takes pictures of so many undressed dames with such varied shapes and slopes of breasts, you could CLEP out of freshmen geometry. Then Pete’s aversion to the color red rears its fangs. From a model’s fiery hair to another’s freshly coated fingernails, each appearance of the crimson makes him go wonky, resulting in one of cinema’s greatest worst reaction shots as Pete’s struck speechless for a full 10 seconds! By the time yet another model cuts her finger, Pete acts like he’s just been told he has a dead mother, tummy cancer and a disappearing penis.

So Johnsen can justify the Bloody portion of the title, Pete starts murdering the gals. It’s similar to Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Color Me Blood Red, but a year earlier and really, really boring. Exception: the end’s rooftop chase and Pete’s final freakout, in which he slathers himself up like the Peanut Butter Baby. The production is so cheap, city streets and walls play home to painted and markered credits, far outlasting this nudie cutie’s run. —Rod Lott

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Come spy with me, beckon Marsha Jordan and Ann Perry to curious viewers of The Golden Box, a secret-agent sexploitation caper from Her Odd Tastes director Don Davis. As a fan of Jordan, the Jayne Mansfield of ’60s softcore cinema, I was double-O ready for it.

In L.A., shortly after getting serviced while sitting on an all-gold toilet, the sideburnt musician Kirby (Forman Shane, College Girls Confidential) is shot dead by a mob enforcer. The murderer absconds with Kirby’s sheet music — actually an encoded record of the organization’s illegal wire transactions. In paragraphs of exposition he stays alive just long enough to blurt to the ladies before gurgling some ketchup, Kirby admits to skimming off the top of mob money.

With that, Diane and Donna (Jordan and Perry, respectively) embark on a mission to find Kirby’s killer, the silk-kerchiefed Slade (Jim Gentry, Hollywood Babylon). This endeavor takes them from Washington, D.C., to, um, Grand Rapids, Michigan, testing mattress-spring durability along the way. Scenes shot in the latter constitute Box’s most entertaining stretch (not involving the law of gravity), as our plump-chested pair tails Slade. At one point, to avoid being made, they duck into “one of those sexy adult movie theaters” showing none other than Jordan and Davis’ other 1970 collab, Marsha the Erotic Housewife! Amusingly taking the in-joke further, the box office gets a refund request.

Although its occasional change out of bedrooms and into the streets makes The Golden Box novel, it still isn’t remotely as fun as it sounds, not even with spinning interstitials à la TV’s Batman and the liberal spritz of a literal seltzer water bottle. Alas, this film marked Jordan and Davis’ fifth and final T&A team-up. Perhaps Jordan didn’t like sharing the spotlight with Perry (The Bellboy and the Playgirls)? Everything about Jordan is big — her hairdo, her personality, her line readings, her … well — so it’s not like she leaves much room onscreen for anyone or anything else. Her visual appeal aside, Box’s greatest asset is the score from Davis’ regular composers, Chet and Jim Moore; it’s as bouncy as its stars. —Rod Lott

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Heard the buzz? It’s just Marsha Jordan’s vibrator. At the movie’s start, she rubs the battery-burnin’ device all over her face and head, which is not how it’s supposed to work. Not for nothing is this titled Her Odd Tastes!

Credited (and misspelled?) as “Marsh Jordon,” Ms. Jordan positively #girlbosses her way through as dildo saleswoman Christine. After she and her sister (Capri, College Girls Confidential) examine one another for precancerous lumps, Christine is nearly raped by a knife-wielding medical researcher studying pleasure. She’s saved by a book publisher who proposes she continue testing her attacker’s theory by retracing his thrusts steps collecting, um, data worldwide.

Christine does, starting in Hong Kong, where a prostitute injects her with opium. In South Africa, she attends a party where everyone wears masks, à la Eyes Wide Shut, not realizing the shindig is actually a satanic orgy — replete with a mascot goat’s head!

Dazed, Christine stumbles around (stock footage of) safari animals before she’s found by a game hunter and his wispy-mustached son, Mark. Because Mark’s girlfriend turned out to be a boyfriend, the anguished young man nurses a broken heart, until Christine lets him nurse her sizable bosom, among other activities. When the father tries to muscle in for sloppy seconds, Mark shoots so Dad can’t score.

Finally, in Nairobi, she oils up with a greasy sheik and his belly dancer for a threesome. Admits Christine, “My life is just one sexual merry-go-round.”

And how. Like the wrestling sequences in Santo movies, the sex scenes go on far too long. That said, Jordan is nearly as screen-scorching here as in The Divorcee and Marsha the Erotic Housewife, the latter of which shares writer/director Don Davis with this globetrotting romp-de-bomp. Therefore, I will be visiting the set for impromptu auditions once I finish building my time machine.

And speaking of bizarro contraptions, the film ends with the publisher mounting Christine atop a horizontal-enough La-Z-Boy recliner. Lightning strikes; the chair explodes; they die; the end! As these things go, Her Odd Tastes is a scream. But shhhhh, lest you wish to wake the wife and kids. —Rod Lott

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Andy Samberg, Will Forte, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller: just a few of Extreme Movie’s credited writers whose bona fides weren’t as bona fide when this comedy was made. By the time it was released, they likely wished they’d used pseudonyms.

Against better judgment, I laughed several times while watching it. I certainly didn’t expect to. After all, the movie:
• sat on Dimension Films’ shelves for, like, ever
• went straight to DVD
• lists 10 screenwriters
• boasts the word “movie” in the title — rarely a good sign

Oh, it’s no gem, but for something with so many strikes against it going in, Extreme Movie ain’t that bad. It’s a sketch film in the same throbbing vein as Kentucky Fried Movie or Amazon Women on the Moon, but with all the bits centered on teen sex to cash in on that American Pie fever. Several characters recur in parts scattered throughout, but there’s no pesky plot to follow.

If there’s a main character, it’s Ryan Pinkston (Soul Plane) as a scrawny high school virgin perpetually embarrassed by the sex-ed lectures of his teacher (a scene-stealing John Farley, brother of Chris). In other sequences, Screamer Matthew Lillard dishes out sex advice as himself; MTV manchild Andy Milonakis dates a sex toy (not a doll, a toy); and Frankie Muniz (Stay Alive) learns how wild his girlfriend really is. Seeing Michael Cera (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) asked by a online hookup to show up at her door posing as a rapist — but accidentally going to the wrong apartment — is funny (and only because Cera is Cera), but seeing Jamie Kennedy do his thing is not.

Spotty is an apt descriptor for the film; even with missed targets, the brief running time won’t leave you feeling too cheated. Cameos from a gay Abe Lincoln and a horny puppet might help compensate for a surprising lack of nudity for such below-the-belt material. —Rod Lott

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Between Pamela Anderson’s Barb Wire, Joan Severance’s Black Scorpion and Nicole Eggert’s The Demolitionist, 1995-6 proved to be a banner year for B movies starring surgically enhanced TV vets befit in tight black leather costumes. Also in this club of sexed-up superheroines within that calendar range? Electra! As in Shannon Tweed’s with-a-C, not Jennifer Garner’s with-a-K Elektra.

Tweed (Hot Dog … the Movie) is Lorna, a quiet woman who favors farm life and floral prints. She’s stepmom to Billy (Joe Tabb, 2002’s Feedback), a muscular, blank-faced, long-haired, Jersey-accented, bare-chested bo-hunk whom she lusts after. And what soccer mom wouldn’t? The boy’s got freakin’ super powers! In addition to allowing him to jump real far, run real fast and flip real vans, Billy’s powers are youth- and health-restorative.

Naturally, that appeals to the evil Dr. Roach (Sten Eirik, Darkman II: The Return of Durant). Being confined to a wheelchair outfitted with two expandable TV antennas, he longs for the young man’s goods. Trouble is — and here comes the genius part of the Damian Lee/Lou Aguilar screenplay — they can be transmitted only through Billy’s semen and, well, Roach doesn’t play for that team.

So when the leatherbound wiles of a pair of backflippin’ bitches fail to extract the mighty virgin’s super juice, Roach kidnaps Lorna, teases her with a vibrator and makes her up to be some ultra-hot harpie who can bare vampiric fangs, levitate during catfights and shoot bolts of electricity from her palms. Needless to say, she’s up ’n’ grindin’ on her jeans-model stepson in no time, tricking him into making a small deposit.

Speaking of unloading, director Julian Grant (The Cropsey Incident) does that with a slew of bloopers during the sequel-threatening end credits. Most of the foul-ups, bleeps and blunders entail one cast member or one another saying “fuck” or variations thereof. In addition, Tweed claims she’s about to barf, and I can’t say I blame her. —Rod Lott

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