“Won’t you believe in me? If you do, there will always be mermaids.” So beckons a sexy, near-breathless female voice at the beginning of The Mermaids of Tiburon. Before you answer, let me tell you the fish-femmes in this strange breed of nature film (the exploratory-earth kind) and nature film (the nudie-cutie kind) are far more well-endowed than that cartoon one on the tuna label.

As the title has it, the film takes place on Tiburon, a Mexican island in the Gulf of California, where marine biologist Dr. Samuel Jamison (George Rowe) embarks on a “most extraordinary adventure.” Calm down, however, because it has to do with finding riches of pearls. Old man Steinhauer (John Mylong, Robot Monster‘s professor) proposes a partnership: “You can be astounded at what you find down there.”

At no point, however, does he say, “And by that I mean, mermaids with tits as big as my head.” Because that’s what the island’s “100 miles of dry sand and granite” gets you: topless, top-heavy mermaids — some with fins, some without, who needs continuity with cans like that? — who swim about and have no problem showing their, um, gills. It’s so innocent by today’s standards that it’s as harmless as a National Geographic special.

Whoever thought pulchritude could be so … well, deathly boring? The women playing the mermaids are lovely, especially Playboy Playmate Diane Webber, but beauty only gets you so far (and that includes the terrific underwater photography). The basically plotless flick spends so much time on scenery that the barking of sea lions counts as action, so when the man-eating shark shows up, you’re praying for blood. According to Tiburon, “Time has no meaning to these creatures,” and we experience that. Painfully. —Rod Lott

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The Toy Box is an utterly bizarre mix of sex and horror, and I fully admit to watching it only because Uschi Digard is in it, as I’ll see anything to which she and her charms lent time. Uschi isn’t the star, but she does have the film’s most memorable scene. (Seriously, have you seen her? How could she not?)

The story is about an old scraggly guy who looks not unlike Burl Ives. He has no eyes, sits in a dark room and telepathically has various young people carry out his most twisted sexual fantasies. Said fantasies include having a woman pleasure herself with a new dildo (“It turns on easy,” she says. “Hopefully it will do the same for me.”); having a fat guy butcher and copulate with dead women; and having a bunch of partygoers have an all-out orgy, despite the severed heads that pop up from nowhere and bodies that fall dead without explanation.

In Uschi’s aforementioned scene, she goes to bed, only to have the bed come alive to feel her up and before you know it, she’s screwing the sheets.

Reportedly, The Toy Box boasts a must-be-seen-to-be-believed twist ending, but unfortunately, the copy I was watching pixelated and froze before I could reach it. If what I did see was any indication, I’m sure it’s wild. But if you’ve seen the ending and can fill me in, please do. In the meantime, I’m on to more Uschi … —Rod Lott

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In the first of a five-film franchise known as the Olga series, White Slaves of Chinatown follows the adventures, so to speak, of the lovely slave trader Olga (pronounced “Allga,” per narrator Joel Holt). Being “an animal without conscience,” Olga (Audrey Campbell) spends 70 sin-soaked minutes recruiting and then punishing curvy Caucasian women for “the syndicate,” an organization that specializes in heroin, we’re told. In fact, we’re told everything, as the movie’s dialogue is entirely voice-over, and more often than not, writer/director Joseph P. Mawra simply lets Holt (star of Karate, the Hand of Death) do the talking.

Olga keeps her prey locked up with no food, water or clothes, but she’s not totally heartless, checking up on their welfare once a week, whether they need it or not. It’s all part of her plan to brainwash them into prostitution, naturally, and if any of the girls gives her trouble, Olga takes it out on her via physical pain. One young woman may be hanged upside down on a crucifix for days at a time; another, strapped to a table for whippings and the ol’ Chinese water torture.

Despite all this so-called roughie’s sex and nudity, Republicans may cheer for White Slaves for its anti-abortion message. One hooker terminates her pregnancy via a back-alley doctor, and not only does she kill that baby, but she dies on the table, too. Quips Holt, “Chalk up another one to this filthy old butcher!”

Set in Chinatown where the streets are heavy with “sinister fumes of their opium pipes,” the B&W T&A affair delights in watching the lustful ladies get high and writhe around topless or in their pointy Maidenform bras. During such displays, classical music plays so any masturbators watching can feel uptown and elite while yanking it. The symphonies sure beat the incessant Chinese music that permeates the early half. White Slaves would like to have it both ways: to titillate and infuriate, but let’s not kid ourselves: This is vintage exploitation, through and through.

So enjoy! Your grandmother might even be in it. If so, kudos! She was hot. —Rod Lott

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While being date-raped, heretofore virgin Helen (Fiona Horsey) notices suddenly that the pain has suddenly stopped. That’s because her date has been eaten in full by her very hungry genitalia. Such is Angst.

“He vanished, into thin air,” a baffled Helen relates to her doctor, who answers, “Inside your vagina?” Then he, too, tries to molest her, and is, er, snatched up as well. Same goes for her stepfather when he tries to put the moves on her. Once Helen’s private parts start talking to her (“Feed me!”), she tries to silence it by spraying bleach all up in there.

And when that doesn’t work, she simply gives in and becomes a ho-bag to keep her vagina satisfied. About the most graphic it gets is when a john can’t get his now-ridiculously elongated tongue loose from that which exists between her legs. The image is like something out of a Tex Avery cartoon … well, if not for the vagina dentata plot, the rampant nudity, the exploitation of women, the rough language, and all that other stuff.

Originally titled Penetration Angst, this shit- shot-on-video snorer is hardly the first talking-vag flick (Chatterbox, anyone?), but it’s definitely the worst. “What a fucking mess!” screams one woman with about eight agonizing minutes left to go. My sentiments exactly. —Rod Lott

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Call this softcore entry Star Whores or Fuck Rogers. Described by its very own producer, David F. Friedman, as “the worst science-fiction movie ever made,” Space Thing is so no-budget, its opening credits are painted on naked breasts (including the ever-dubious “written by Cosmo Politan”). Not that you’ll be complaining.

Our hairy-backed hero, James, is an avid sci-fi reader, much to the dismay of his horny wife. After she convinces him to make love, he drifts off to sleep and dreams he’s an alien, disguised as a human, in the year 2069 (natch) aboard a spaceship filled with intergalactic honeys and ruled by the lesbian Capt. Mother, who looks an awful lot like Rose McGowan.

The plot — James wants to stop them from reaching a California desert, oops, I mean far-off planet — is simply an excuse to allow the various and numerous sexual couplings. Strangely, the women (one of whom is named Portia — a Shakespearean reference, perhaps? Nah!) are allowed to fully disrobe, but the guys keep their pants on and simply do a lot of rolling around. Capt. Mother even gets her groove on with another girl and wields a stinging whip to another.

Something Weird Video’s special edition includes the original trailer — which tastefully references one sequence as “planet of the rapes” — as well as a gallery of Friedman advertising art and two future-themed short subjects, one involving a giant robot butler. —Rod Lott

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