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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When I hit puberty, the only advice I remember my father giving me was, “Treat a whore like a princess, and a princess like a whore.” Not understanding it, I ignored it.

In the UK, however: When the exasperated, knickers-obsessed Jamie McGregor (Barry Evans, Die Screaming Marianne) is told the same in so many words, the 18-year-old grocery delivery boy puts his all behind it, in hopes of losing his virginity. From “grotty birds” to wealthy women, every attempt at a stolen kiss, popped button or unzipped zipper is comically foiled.

Given the sheer amount of ladies’ names bunched on one slide in the opening sequence, one correctly assumes Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush to come by its nursery rhyme-derived title easily: Jamie tries to score; Jamie fails; Jamie tries again. And that’s exactly what director Clive Donner (What’s New Pussycat) delivers.

If not for the mod scenery, Swinging London vibe and preponderance of Steve Winwood on the soundtrack, the hormonally fueled farce would fit in as readymade for the ’80s teen-movie scene. And not unlike the eventual (but sex-free) Ferris Bueller, Jamie lets no thought go unexpressed to viewers.

With Evans striking the right balance between likability and believability, Mulberry Bush has a fun-loving innocence about it that doesn’t seem icky. (We’ll leave that to the McGregor bathroom cabinet’s tin of “medicinal charcoal biscuits,” whatever those are.) That said, like the real-life chase between — ahem — monkey and weasel, it eventually grows tiresome. —Rod Lott

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Movie star Lisa Brandon has everything a modern woman could want: a growing reputation as a prima donna, a perfect doctor boyfriend she shuns, a father who only wanted a son, a daughter she gets to see one whole day a week and a burgeoning side hustle as a prostitute. (That’s everything, right?)

To borrow the infamous tagline of 1983’s Angel, she’s a Hollywood actress by day, Hollywood hooker by night. Through a series of unconvincing wigs, including the Tina Turner, Lisa (Rebecca Holden, The Sisterhood) prowls the L.A. streets for johns with fist-crumpled cash. One such negotiation goes like this:

Potential Client: “I use [this truck] when I wanna pick up a cheap whore.”
Lisa: “You found her, mister. Now how ya fixed for dollar bills?”

Lisa’s efforts at keeping her #girlboss gig a secret are threatened with implosion when the slobbish manager (Eddie Barth, 1979’s The Amityville Horror) of her preferred roach motel for trick-turning discovers her true identity. He blackmails her for a condo and a job — and not the blow kind.

Unbeknownst to her, the redheaded bombshell Holden earned herself a lifelong crush with 11-year-old me when she slinkily sauntered into an episode of Police Squad! (and seemingly every other network show at the time) with sexiness and confidence. Turns out, neither are reason enough to search for Paul Leder’s relentlessly downbeat Twenty Dollar Star, not easily located.

One can see Holden’s motivations for working with the A*P*E writer and director:
1. It’s the lead role.
1a. In a feature, even!
2. Despite the subject matter, he allowed her to stay clothed.
3. He let her sing a couple of songs. (It’s not unlike her fellow ginger Cynthia Brimhall in the Andy Sidaris pics. Someone dropped the ball by not pairing these two in a pilot about crime-solving singer sisters.)

Other than showcasing her voice, the melodramatic film does her no favors. Leder choreographs exchanges of dialogue with unnaturally lengthy pauses in between characters and sentences. Said dialogue is involuntarily campy, from Lisa dissing a journalist as “that overdressed barracuda” to telling her director he “made my nose look like Godzilla!” Under a more skilled director, Holden could pour her all into each scene without coming off as histrionic and shrill.

Speaking of, Twenty Dollar Star boasts a two-bit score in which the supposedly sexy saxophone nears the vibrating tones of a kazoo. —Rod Lott

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Attention, salesmen the world over: One particular bank in Scotland has an incentive program that bests any “president’s club” event. In exchange for your hard work, it buses you to a weeklong retreat at Mega Boob Manor — so named because it’s staffed by women with royally large chests.

The butter-faced ladies pamper and pleasure the guys. They play squash and they squash. They ride exercise bikes and they ride. They soak in Jacuzzis and they soak. They squirt water guns and they squirt. You get the picture. Because individual literal fantasies are catered to, we witness a burglary during a shower, a licking of “fruit and cream from the body of Sally” and an old man’s face getting bitch-slapped by 10 heavy bags of hanging flesh.

Meanwhile, the men’s suspicious wives rightly assume the worst and take revenge by bedding their husbands’ boss. He mercifully puts this wicked monstrosity of mammaries to bed by breaking the fourth wall: “Oh, no, that’s the end.”

All of the above occurs as hamster-wheel instrumentals by The Pync Brothers (whoever they are) blare; just imagine if The Art of Noise were commissioned to score a children’s educational video on farm animals.

Also known by the titillating title of Miss-Adventures at Mega Boob Manor, Mega Manor is the movie equivalent of second base. Despite being directed by UK hardcore pornographer Peter Kay (Carrie Potter and the Philosopher’s Bone), sex is absent from this slab of erotic comedy. There’s so much breast-squeezing, the guys likely got carpal tunnel syndrome. Only three actors — Pat Wynn, Lynda White and Janie Hamilton — allowed their names in the credits. I can’t imagine why. —Ed Donovan

When I met Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, it was in the mature section of the video store. Surrounded by beaded curtains, the titillation of promised soft porn — “cable version,” the box exclaimed — just around the fuzzy corner to syrupy heaven and carnal self-pleasure.

Instead, it was a Brazilian art film about the dual nature a woman goes though channeling love and lust. I was thoroughly pissed. But now, some 25 years after I first saw it, I have viewed Dona Flor with new eyes.

After a night of hard partying, Vadinho (José Wilker) dies. His widow, the titular Flor (Sônia Braga), brings new meaning to long-suffering; during their marriage, he went from cockfighting and gambling to countless affairs and wife-beating, as one does.

Flor goes on with her life. She meets and marries Teodoro (Mauro Mendonça), a pharmacist she believes is a good man, but also a boring one. It’s okay, though; Vadinho’s ghostly visage is fine with performing all his late-husbandly duties — all sexual, of course. I guess Teodoro does, too.

While I originally thought this was tale about a new wife and the trials and titrations about marriage, it’s actually a sexy wish-fulfillment fantasy, with Braga’s Flor being the sultry object of South American desire. It’s concerning that she puts up with Vadinho’s abuse, but I guess she makes peace with it, because Flor gives both men a kiss goodnight, even if one’s a ghost.

Dona Flor was first remade in 1983 as Kiss Me Goodbye with Sally Field, James Caan and Jeff Bridges. The original’s sex appeal was monstrously gone, replaced with a brown swatch of neutered khaki fabric. —Louis Fowler

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