Category Archives: Sex

Famous T and A 2 (2022)

No doubt Famous T and A proved an enormous VHS hit for Charles Band back in 1982. Hell, it probably paid for an L.A. divorce or a Romanian castle. Now, a full four decades later, the exploitation film legend finally gives it something his 2006 movie Evil Bong already has seven of: a sequel.

What in the holy name of Craig Hosoda took you so long, Chuck?

Whereas sex bomb Sybil Danning hosted the original, Famous T and A 2 comes fronted by a sex doll in human form, Diana Prince. A former (?) porn star, she’s best known as the sidekick to drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs on his current Shudder series, a gig that doesn’t ask for much. This compilation flick calls for even less: Sit still, face the camera, read innuendo-leaning lines off cue cards, raise an eyebrow now and again. (The latter accounts for more movement than Band’s camera.)

After a quickie quick run-through of early skin-on-the-screen history — or herstory, really — Prince officially kicks off Band’s “tit-illating trip” with a tribute to Russ Meyer. Strangely, it’s done so with clips from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, one of the few Meyer mamm-sterpieces with no nudity. That oddity immediately rectifies itself with segments honoring Jess Franco, Andy Sidaris, Linnea Quigley and the like. As one could guess, the bulk of T&A 2 pulls from Band’s Full Moon-owned archives, from the respectable (Tourist Trap, also skin-free) to the reprehensible (Unlucky Charms) to the Skinemax staples.

In these cases and most others, the clips aren’t clipped enough. For example, as a one-time 13-year-old, I’m pretty sure viewers want to see Sherilyn Fenn making the two-backed beast with an actual beast in Meridian, not several minutes of talk leading up to it. The erotica from Band’s Surrender Cinema titles wear out their welcome sooner, in particular the tentacles-a-poppin’ Femalien: Cosmic Crush.

Among the other Surrender snippets are Veronica 2030 and Bad Girls at Play, both notable per Prince for their featured porn personalities. The former puts Julia Ann in some kind of gold tinfoil (but not for long) as some kind of sex robot; the latter finds Trump belt notch Stormy Daniels unleashing breasts with angles so boxy, they don’t appear to be finished.

Something about it all seems … off. Perhaps it’s a lack of energy; perhaps it’s my age; or perhaps the concept’s irrelevance in an everything-on-demand world. Or perhaps it’s all these things, and Famous T and A 2 is really as boring as it struck me. Co-directed and written by Full Moon regular Brooks Davis (The Gingerweed Man), it stretches the definition of “famous” as far as Band does with dollars. —Rod Lott

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Busted (1997)

Words you never wanted to see grouped in such an order, “directed by Corey Feldman,” adorn Busted, the thankfully lone such endeavor from the former Goonie. It aims — repeat: aims — to be a Naked Gun-style parody of cop movies, but comes off as being made by people who have never seen a comedy and know the genre only through eavesdropping. Perhaps Feldman himself sensed this, which explains Busted‘s double-barreled categorization as a spoof and a Skinemax entry. Jokes and boobs: Only one requires skill — well, post-scalpel.

Police Academy: Mission to Moscow, I hereby rescind every negative word I’ve sent your way.

Not content with calling the shots, Feldman also stars as a zany cop in a precinct of nothing but. Even zanier, to bring crime off the streets, his crew brings it into the station; pantyhose-faced purse snatchers roam the halls freely, while one jail cell is transformed into a bordello. The strategy is not unlike the “Hamsterdam” season of TV’s brilliant The Wire, and let that be the only time the two shall be tied. (Let this serve as my proactive public apology to David Simon.)

Story stops at setup: With a Peeping Tom on the loose — not to mention bank robbers and a bikini-clad woman crossing streets while holding a giant letter “J” (ugh) — the mayor (Rance Howard, Ticks) assigns a stern lady captain (Mariana Morgan, Exit to Eden) to keep the cops under control or else. Her hair bun is wound so tightly, you just know it’s going to be unfurled toward the end, revealing her as Total Hottie. (However, Feldman does not telegraph he then will violently remove all fabric in order to expose her breasts.)

With a reason to exist out of the way, it’s one unfunny joke after another, each increasing in flatness. They’re so poorly written, you can predict the punchline immediately upon hearing idioms like “show her the ropes” and “by the book.” To be fair, such gags come straight from the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker style, but it really is all in the delivery. For example, a police sketch of a stick figure can be funny under the proper circumstances, like as a quick cutaway; you don’t pass it around to every other character in a crowded shot to individually display and comment upon further. Your movie may be dirt-stupid, but viewers are not. (Okay, most viewers.)

In an extended boxing match, Feldman referees; for some reason, that requires him to pop one eye, turn his mouth diagonal and talk out one side of it, in an accent approximating … I dunno, Burgess Meredith? He does this not just for a line, which might be acceptable, but the entire scene. It’s painful viewing — more painful than a looped, slow-motion clip of Gage getting an up-close look at a semi in 1989’s Pet Sematary.

Another set piece finds Feldman wrestling a live gun from porn star Ron Jeremy. Who knows, that could be based on something the two did at a party in the Valley, and Feldman thought it’d be a hoot to throw in. If so, that’s more effort than he expended on masking the rag covering his genitals in a shower threesome (none) or where the top of the precinct’s set ends (also none).

Among other cameos, Julie Strain is on hand long enough to drop her towel; Todd Bridges, to remind you he’s still alive; and Elliott Gould, to embarrass his family and threaten his legacy. Corey Haim is also present, but only for a few random scenes. That’s because he reportedly walked upon learning his “friend” Feldman also had hired Haim’s alleged molester, Dominick Brascia (Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning).

Inadvertent or not, the one thing Busted does right is giving 1990s T&A royalty Monique Parent, Ava Fabian and Griffin Drew the rare opportunity to flex muscles beyond just the ones required to unhook their bras. They get to flex comedic muscles, too, even if that means fellating butter-rubbed corn on the cob. —Rod Lott

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The Divorcee (1969)

Not for nothing does the tagline to this Stephen C. Apostolof sexploitation film shout, “SEXUALLY HANDICAPPED BY ORDER OF THE COURT.” His favorite sexploitation starlet, the magnificent Marsha Jordan, stars as the (ahem) titular The Divorcee. Yes, that’s Divorcee with double Es, appropriately.

Jordan’s Betty Brent has a problem with alcohol: One drink and she’s ready for a roll in the hay. (Wait, this is a thing?) It’s the only way her husband, Hank, can defrost her for some sheet-heatin’, and one reason he’s happy to be discovered with his hand in another woman’s cookie jar. Although mortified at his infidelity, Betty doesn’t want a divorce; even after he hangs up on her, she rubs the telephone all over her all-natural body, making me reconsider the value of a landline.

But as title has it, a decree of dissolution must occur. One bang of the gavel later, Betty’s on to banging every gavel passing her way, provided there’s a cocktail attached. Betty beds her lawyer, an insurance salesman new to her apartment building, a dentist in a sauna, his friend in the sauna and a door-to-door vitamin salesman. Heck, after a bartender — dressed like his shift at Shakey’s Pizza just ended — gives her three free zombies to down, each the size of a fishbowl, she’s down for a threesome.

And so she goes — and goes! — until hitting rock-bottom at a sex party: She wakes the next morning to find her latest notch MIA, except for a lipstick-scrawled “THANKS” (with sarcastic quotation marks, no less!) and $11 cash. Ashamed, Betty looks at herself and screams, “Whore! Whore!” Then she goes home, clutches her beloved creepy doll and screams “Whore! Whore!” more. Inching toward a mental breakdown, she calls to win back her ex-husband … and he hangs up on her. Oh, well! The end.

Per the formula established by Apostolof (College Girls Confidential), Jordan might spend more screen time undressed. Whether vertical or horizontal, his two-pointed star is clearly all-natural, yet never full-frontal. There’s certainly no actual hanky panky on parade, so Apostolof (under his A.C. Stephen nom de plume) relies on close-ups of hands gripping bedspreads in ecstasy and closer-ups with the jiggle of a fresh Jell-O mold. When things get really hot ’n’ heavy, he reveals a fondness for the go-go camera zoom.

The pendulous and wig-piled Jordan does her best throughout The Divorcee, which is simply to burn a scrumpdillyicious intensity. That she does near-flawlessly. I learned at her best, she resembles Barbara Eden. In interest of fairness, when she also scrunches her face to feign tears, at her worst she’s resembles Marjorie Taylor Greene.

The one thing I learned is my post-divorce life was nothing like this. I was robbed! —Rod Lott

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School for Sex (1969)

Giles Wingate is in a pinch. Relieved of his sizable inheritance through a revolving door of gold-digging wives — including his former maid, who cunningly moves from housework to ho’work — he strikes upon a jolly good idea to replenish the coffers: opening a School for Sex.

Written, produced and erected — er, directed — by Pete Walker (For Men Only), this British bird-watcher takes place at the estate of Giles (Walker regular Derek Aylward), where he teaches young women how to use their built-in wiles to win, win and win, hearts be damned. Each libidinous learner among his initial class of four appears to be as horny as Times Square at rush hour.

Classes cover everything from bikini calisthenics to spotting the millionaire. Regardless of the syllabus, a peering, leering cop (Bob Andrews, The Soldier) practically on loan from Keystone is ever so eager to observe, what with being married to a woman whose shape isn’t curves, but an isosceles trapezoid. While clothing for the nubile pupils is often optional — and taken — School for Sex is rather chaste, being all about the look, not the act.

Nudity aside, Walker’s script sways more toward actual female empowerment (no, really!) and away from sleaze. This is crucial, because if Aylward and/or Giles weren’t likable, School for Sex wouldn’t be approachable, and Walker all but acknowledges this with his light touch. Both its sexiest woman and most valuable player is Thunderballer Rose Alba as the middle-aged countess-cum-headmistress. (Speaking of 007, the women’s costumes are credited to “Pussy Galore.”) Always clothed, yet never a wrist’s length further from a cocktail, Alba gives a strong comedic performance in a movie that doesn’t even ask her to. —Rod Lott

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Fritz the Cat (1972)

Fritz the Cat, a countercultural icon based on the work of Robert Crumb, kind of proves that the counterculture really didn’t have that extremely large of a foot to keep on truckin’ through the ’70s. Ostensibly about a liberally fraudulent cat who loves to have as much unsolicited intercourse as possible, this animated film made — I’m willing to bet — far more Republicans than Nixon ever could.

In the typical fashion of director Ralph Bakshi, an extremely hit-or-miss filmmaker, we find Fritz hanging out in an anthropomorphized variation of New York City, getting high, having group sex and, I think, dropping out of school.

After a series of New York-based adventures, we follow him and a female dog (a bitch, get it?) to the deserts of California where, after a Nazi rabbit brutally beats a horse prostitute, Fritz hooks up with a terrorist organization to blow up a power plant, blowing himself up, with unsettling sexual results.

More a collection of art pieces than an actual linear story, Fritz the Cat seems to be made up of barely connected vignettes, done in the artistic stylings of early ’70s greeting cards. In between all of the horribly unsexual sex, the use of constant racial figures is most troublesome — for example, Black people are jive-talking crows — taking the film into Song of the South territory.

But that was the ’70s in America, I guess.

The first cartoon to be rated X, Fritz the Cat shouldn’t be banned, but it’s probably right where it deserves to be: a misfire and multicolor oddity that, honestly, could be mostly ignored and, thankfully, is. —Louis Fowler

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