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

Get it at Amazon.

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

Get it at Amazon.

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

Get it at Amazon.

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

Get it at Amazon.

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

Get it at Amazon.