Sex

Titanic 2000 (1999)

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titanic2000Take the best fart jokes Troma has to offer, the erotic sensibilities of any Surrender Cinema release and the CGI knowledge of a fifth-grader in Mrs. Delvecki’s keyboarding class and you have Titanic 2000, with emphasis on the first three letters.

The Titanic has been rebuilt and is about to set off for its second maiden voyage — only this time it’s called the “TIT-anic,” I guess because lots of breasts — or “tits,” as they are sometimes called — are seen a few times. On board are the typical gay stereotypes; the fat woman who eats a lot; the guys who farts a lot; a rock singer with a bad, overdone British accent; and a bunch of sluts who disrobe many, many times. The comparisons to James Cameron’s Oscar-winning Titanic end there, though, because also included is a vampire lesbian who needs to find a new bride. The new bride in question is the very hot Tina Krause, 100 times more attractive and a little more slutty than Kate Winslet.

titanic20001The characters run around a lot, fart, show their breasts, do pratfalls, eat and fart.

The TIT-anic sinks in the end, not due to an iceberg, but because the hull was made of tinfoil. Tina and the vampire swim through many badly done blue screens and escape. In the water, their breasts float. They then go to Long Island (?) and have more lesbian sex. —Louis Fowler

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Horror

Frogs (1972)

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frogsYou can’t really blame Frogs’ producers for their blatant deception. I mean, there are frogs in Frogs, but they alone aren’t the only animals who turn against the various unlikable characters who inhabit the story. In reality, the film more accurately should have been called Traditionally Harmless Animals Which Suddenly Decide to Attack People Because of Pollution, which I will concede would have been a lot harder to market.

The people in question are a bunch of rich assholes who live under the thumb of patriarch Jason Crockett (Ray Milland, X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes) and who have gathered together on his private island to celebrate his latest birthday. You know Crockett is a bad guy because:
a) he’s rich, and
b) is in a wheelchair, so it’s only natural that he has no problem keeping the bugs away from his estate with a very eco-unfriendly pesticide.

frogs1It’s only a matter of time before the local animal population (which admittedly includes a lot of frogs) calls “Bullshit!” on this and starts attacking everyone, including the studly, tree-hugging photographer played by Sam Elliott (Tombstone), whose lack of a mustache is eerily discomfiting.

Frogs manages to avoid being as ridiculous as that same year’s Night of the Lepus, but that’s not a good thing. While watching giant bunny rabbits stalking Janet Leigh is just stupid enough to hold your attention, the same can’t be said for people being hunted by normal-sized fauna. Despite the goofy promise inherent in its concept and infamous poster, Frogs is just plain dull. —Allan Mott

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Mystery

Mundo Depravados (1967)

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mundoOn the night of a full moon, poor Arlene is murdered. One of her socks is missing from the scene, proving we live in such a Mundo Depravados — that is, depraved world. Need further proof? Before the crime photographer snaps his pic, Arlene’s dress is lowered to bare a nipple. Say “cheese,” ya hot corpse!

Then our nonsensical, Naked City-wannabe narration kicks in: “Yes, this is your city. It has more than a million eyes. … But tonight, all these eyes are blind. They listen, but they do not hear. They touch, but they do not feel.” Whatever. All viewers need to know is that a killer of lovely ladies is on the loose; all of his victims belong to the Temple of Beauty Health Club; and everyone refers to him as “the sex monster.”

mundo1The good news is that two police detectives (“comedy cops” Johnnie Decker and Larry Reed, reunited from Al Adamson’s Psycho a Go-Go) are on the case. The bad news is that the two police detectives exhibit as much horndoggedness as the film’s multiple Peeping Toms, so of course they’re eager to partner with Tango, a stripper pal of Arlene played by real-life stripper Tempest Storm, whose pendulous breasts keep Mundo Depravados from being completely inert. They cannot distract, however, from her emotionless line readings.

Who would give her such a plum role? Singing cowboy Herb Jeffries, in his one and only attempt at writing and directing. He was married to Storm at the time — but just barely, as their union dissolved the year of Mundo Depravados’ release. Semi-sleazy for its time, the movie plays rather static today, peekaboo nudity and all. —Rod Lott

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Horror

Sorority House Massacre II (1990)

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SHMIIWhereas 1986’s Sorority House Massacre was serious, Sorority House Massacre II takes the self-aware, scream-queen route. That’s bound to happen when you put Jim Wynorski (1988’s Not of This Earth) at the helm.

So will abnormally large breasts, which makes him the perfect director for such an imperfect project. Who else would have the foresight to place all the cops’ expository dialogue in a strip club?

Five sorority girls buy a new-to-them house for their chapter. They’re able to afford it because the abode has been on the market for five years, what with being the site of multiple murders and all. When they’re informed by the creepy neighbor what went on there, Wynorski cedes screen time to clips from a previous movie … but not the previous movie. Instead of footage from the film to which SMHII is ostensibly a sequel, we see a condensed version of 1982’s The Slumber Party Massacre. Slumber, sorority — slutty all the same, right?

SHMII1After the girls take showers (Stacia Zhivago, who kind of looks like Laura Dern with double Ds, soaps herself up to squeak-toy noises on the soundtrack), they don lingerie to play with a Ouija board, which reawakens the evil of the home; ergo, the “massacre” portion of the title can come into play.

None of the actresses can act; they’re here to scream and let the camera leer over their bodies. For example, for a simple shot of three of them ascending a staircase, Wynorski chose a lower-than-low angle for maximum ass-cheek exposure. More than the blood that squirts like a ketchup dispenser being squeezed too hard too fast, skin is the most special effect of all in SHMII, from Melissa Moore (Repossessed) to former porn star Gail Harris. Wynorski didn’t need much more that that, except the same ol’ crashed-lightning stock footage producer Roger Corman has used since his Edgar Allan Poe pictures. —Rod Lott

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Reading Material

Chain Saw Confidential: How We Made the World’s Most Notorious Horror Movie

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chainsawconfidentialNearly 20 years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Gunnar Hansen, who forever will be known as Leatherface in the 1974 horror classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. While his iconic character is terrifying and evil, Hansen himself is not. He’s a teddy bear, nice and gracious as can be.

Therefore, it’s not a surprise to me that his book on the making on that movie, Chain Saw Confidential, is like its author: well-spoken and informative, yet also politely quiet and respectfully subdued. Those hoping for a Fangoria-style exercise in gore will be disappointed.

I didn’t, so I wasn’t. After all, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre isn’t nearly as violent as its title or reputation suggests. It’s an intense film, no doubt, but so much of its brutality isn’t onscreen — it’s filled in by viewers’ minds. The movie is also not a cult film, because, as the book reminds us, it simply was far too successful to qualify.

Success was hardly on the minds of any of the cast members, all unknowns just happy to be making a Real Movie, even if they didn’t think anything would become of it. Financed in part by drug money, Tobe Hooper’s Massacre proved tougher to make than it is to watch, thanks to the unbearable summer heat of the Lone Star State and, during the now-famous dinner scene that took 26 hours to shoot, the smell of dead dogs and headcheese.

With remarkable clarity and detail for something that took place four decades ago, Hansen recounts the treacherous, unpredictable shoot, plus the squabbles over profits the creatives never saw when the film hit big. Given the flick’s monster grosses, they thought they would be rich; “Instead,” Hansen writes, “things just got weird.”

The book retreads a lot of the info from documentaries on the various DVD editions over the years, but gives readers much, much more. (Example: learning that Hooper and company wanted and thought they were going to get a PG rating.) Hansen leans on co-stars for quotes and recollections (but not, tellingly, Hooper), yet the story is told from his frontline perspective. It’s a tale uniquely his own. —Rod Lott

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