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InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Bikini Pirates (Review)

May 11, 2012By

Bikini Pirates

aka Harlots of the Caribbean

2006
Written by Fred Olen Ray
Directed by Fred Olen Ray (as Nicholas Medina)

You would think that one day we’ll get to the end of the Retromedia Bikini films, but you are wrong. They are being made faster than I’ve been getting copies of the films, so they’ll continue to appear on TarsTarkas.NET forever! Luckily, they are pretty entertaining, hence why they continue to appear and I haven’t given up and started reviewing The Dead End Kids films. (Okay, the Dead End Kids films are pretty good, too… Some of them.)

Bikini Pirates features a small cast, and thanks to moving the action to the remote woods, the small cast feels natural and not like they’re avoiding plot points on purpose to hide from hiring a bunch of extras. So a good call there, though it does keep people like Ted Newsom from popping up, which is sad. The opening credits play over stock footage of diving scenes set to a Pirates of the Caribbean-ish theme song. As most of these Retromedia Bikini tales open with credits over cgi effects or stills that have been run through Photoshop filters, this is a colorful and interesting diversion.

To keep from listing the prior Bikini films over and over again in the roll call below, we’ve switched to linking to the actor’s tag so you can just click that and see everything they’ve been in that we’ve covered so far:

Dustin (Voodoo as Alexandre Boisvert) – A wreck diver who tracks down sunken galleons in search of treasure. He finds more than he bargained for when he discovers the diary of Morganna the Pirate Queen in the ruins of his latest salvage.
Jill (Nicole Sheridan) – Dustin’s girlfriend, who becomes possessed with the ghost of Morganna the Pirate Queen thanks to a magical necklace. She’s the center that the quest for the buried treasure revolves around.
Joe (Randy Spears) – Dustin’s friend and partner in the wreck diving business, who enjoys diving wrecks almost as much as vacations in the woods and having threeways with his friend’s girlfriend.
Susan (Beverly Lynne) – Joe’s girlfriend who is along for the treasure hunting ride. A bigger believer in seances than Joe or Dustin.
Morganna the Pirate Queen (Rebecca Love) – The terror of the seven seas and the lover of the seven seas, Morganna the Pirate Queen ruled the waves and made waves in the bedroom. And now she’s back in ghost form!
Captain Tygus (Evan Stone) – Morganna’s loyal captain who has returned with her to help find the missing treasure and help their souls rest once and for all. So they’ll be free to get it on in the afterlife!

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Dark Shadows

May 9, 2012By

Dark Shadows


2012
Written by John Augus and Seth Grahame-Smith
Based on characters created by Dan Curtis
Directed by Tim Burton

Needs more spires…

The thing about Dark Shadows is it is the type of film that Tim Burton directing and Johnny Depp starring should make it a natural hit and an amazing cinematic experience. But instead things just don’t turn our right, in fact, they go pretty wrong pretty quickly. The dark and dreary atmosphere is unfortunately too familiar with Burton’s other works, even though it should stand out here. The plot is the weakest part, the whole jilted ex-lover out for revenge trope we’ve seen time and time again. Sure, it’s dandied up with all the spooky trappings, ghosts and vampires and witchcraft, but it’s nothing new. Unfortunately, that’s a big problem. Just reading through the plots for the series, there was a lot of things going on, most of which is ignored and discarded, though there are a few references. But what we end up with is bland.

The Transylvanian version of The Help didn’t do as well

Though the period setting of 1971 is largely used on a few jokes that fall flat and hippie murder (killing hippies is soooo Kent State…) it does help in giving some characters a distinct look as they’re dressed in period clothing as opposed to modern fashion (and it helps that retro looks are in and what old is new!) Beyond that, you’ll not even notice that it is set in the past and not modern day, the few times older technology is used, it’s not intrusive and it keeps things from getting diluted with cell phone videos of vampire action being uploaded to YouTube.

The film is not all bad, there are bright spots. The strongest aspects of Dark Shadows are the actors. Everyone is bringing their A games. But they got little to work with, and the film can’t be carried by performances alone. And remember that it’s Collins, not Cullen. Let’s not say things we can’t take back and have sparkle vampires starting to wander around…

Three Stooges witchcraft

Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) – A 17th-century man cursed to become a vampire by a scorned lover. He’s imprisoned in the ground for 200 years and is freed in 1971, where he sets out to try to bring his family back to prominence. There is no actor I could have conceived of playing this part except Johnny Depp, and no one else could have done it justice. But Depp seems to be acting a constant stream of Jack Sparrow variations, eventually it’s going to get tiresome. Eventually means real soon.
Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green) – A former servant of the Collins family 200 years prior and a witch, who has been enacting revenge against the family ever since Barnabas spurned her. Eva Green is spectacular and looks spectacular.
Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) – The matriarch of the Collins family, and the only thing holding it together until Barnabas arrives with help and secret treasure. Michelle Pfeiffer is frakking awesome. It is great to see a strong role for an older woman in a Hollywood film.
Carolyn Stoddard (Chloë Moretz) – Elizabeth’s teenage daughter, who seems to think she’s some sort of rocker chick and is permanently scowling.
Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcote) – Hired to be the governess of David Collins. Victoria is a name she made up on the train ride over. She bears a striking resemblance to Barnbas’s true love, Josette du Pres, and quickly catches his eye.
Actual photo of the original test audience five minutes after the film ended…
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Corporate Fantasy (Review)

May 5, 2012By

Corporate Fantasy


1999
Directed by Charles Randazzo
Written by Catalina Larranaga and Garrett Clancy

Mystique films brings us some office-based romance with Corporate Fantasy. You know a softcore is more high class because pseudo-popish songs playing during the action scenes as opposed to light jazz. The film should be sexy, but parts of it are dry and parts crammed in. Catalina Larranaga wrote the film with Garrett Clancy, I get the feeling she wrote the main story and he “punched it up” with the models and other additional sex scenes. Which is fine, you gotta sell the film somehow, and the story is still intact.

The styles of the film date it as a 1990s film, even if it comes at the tail end of the 1990s. Office attire for women is so period specific that you can’t get around it. Thus, right now the film looks older than it is because of the fashion, but in 10 years the film will look less old because some of those fashions/hair styles will be back in style. And kids who weren’t just hitting the offices in the late 90’s won’t even be familiar enough with the fashions to recognize it as dated, so it will blow right past them. Those of use who grew up in the era and witnessed models wearing the same clothes with the same hairstyles don’t see the fashion as a big deal at all, and the glamorous fashion helps Corporate Fantasy look like a much more expensive film than it probably is.

Daisy Dawson (Tracy Ryan as Tracy Smith) – Daisy is the young new attractive employee at the advertising agency that becomes the target of everyone with a Y chromosome. Daisy is shocked, shocked that this could happen, especially after the disaster that was her last relationship. Can things come up roses for Daisy? Or come up daisies? But not pushing up daisies, because that means people die. This is Corporate Fantasy, not Corporate Massacre! Tracy Ryan was active in both soft and hardcore films (her hardcore aliases include Avalon) and had a whole pack of names she went by.
Gloria (Catalina Martone as Catalina Larranaga) – Gloria is the older, more experience, more bad of the three girls, but not so bad she’s evil, she just has sex with married dudes while at the office. But she’s a hard worker and cares about her friends. Catalina Martone is familiar to anyone who saw her dozens of softcore films from the 90s and 00s. And she helped write this one.
Tammy (Susan Featherly) – She’s southern. Did you know she’s from the south? Because her southern accent just shelled Ft. Sumter. Susan Featherly was a softcore actress active in the late 90s-early 00s, appearing in films such as Andromina: The Pleasure Planet, The Awakening of Gabriella, and Virtual Girl 2: Virtual Vegas.
Orlando (Jarod Carey) – The sort of nice guy at the office who occasionally gets caught up in the filthy shenanigans of his fellow male coworkers.
Blake Tyler (John Gallucci) – The sleazy manager of the agency and chief promoter of the sleazy guy behavior and office theft. John Gallucci is a pretty good actor, I’m surprised he’s hardly in anything.
Kevin (Karl Preston) – Kevin is the blond guy who is married, but that doesn’t stop him from doing Gloria. He also rips off his workplace and commits sexual harassment.
David (Brian Nowak) – Loyal mailclerk and secret CEO. Shhhh! Don’t tell anyone he’s really the CEO. Even though it’s a bit obvious…

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

A Little Bit of Heaven

May 4, 2012By

A Little Bit of Heaven


2011
Directed by Nicole Kassell

There have been a few tries to put cancer in comedies in the past couple of years, most of which have had mixed-to-bad results, because cancer isn’t really that funny. So of course the next step is a weepy romantic comedy about dealing with cancer and finding love! Even weirder, it’s pretty much marketed as a romantic comedy even though is blurs more over into the drama category. But, despite the fact it’s getting awful awful reviews, A Little Bit of Heaven isn’t awful (or even awful awful), it’s far more complicated than that…

Marley Corbett is a carefree woman who seems like she has it all going on. She’s a young hip girl in the city, just scoring a big promotion and living life and partying. Working hard and playing hard. All that cliched jazz. Her biggest worry and biggest love is her pet bulldog, while men are nothing but a list of bootycalls. She has a whole cadre of friends who join her on her adventures.

But things aren’t going all that great in Marley’s life, unexplained loss of weight, bloody stools…something bad is on the horizon. After a visit to the very handsome Dr. Julian Goldstein, she’s diagnosed with advanced colon cancer. Of course, Marley is too busy having fun to take any of this seriously. She shocks her friends with her announcement done in a flippant way, unaware or uncaring about the shock she put them through. Her attitude begins to have some cracks after a colonoscopy shows things are worse than they thought and the only hope in an experimental procedure that might work or might not. It’s also during this colonoscopy that she has her first vision of the afterlife…

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Sweet Prudence & the Erotic Adventure of Bigfoot (Review)

April 28, 2012By

Sweet Prudence & the Erotic Adventure of Bigfoot


2011
Written and directed by William Burke

I must go, but you can always catch my lone movie role in Robot Monster!

Sweet Prudence & the Erotic Adventure of Bigfoot gives us what we want – Bigfoot running around a nudist camp! Also we got UFOs, crazy dudes, the Loch Ness Monster, and goofy fun. It all rolls up into a Sasquatchtacular adventure and some fun late night viewing.

The overall plot is fun and quick paced, there never seems to be a point where things drag out, which can be a problem with some of the softcore films. The actors are all energetic, and most put on a naturalistic approach to acting, feeling like real friends that you are hanging out with rather than characters. Albina Nahar is the standout actress who almost steals the show, she’s having a lot of fun. But everyone does their jobs very well, the chemistry is great, even the chemistry of everyone hating Dirk! The Sasquatch costume is well built, though it looks a tad familiar. There are a few technical problems, some of the outdoor scenes are a bit overexposed. There is also an editing problem, where there are a few shots that seem to be focusing on an item (for either a joke or an emotional punch) but we either don’t get a clear view of the item or a shot of it wasn’t edited in in post. A notable examples is the floating tarot card of The Lovers at the end of Veruca and Flower’s sex scene, the card is not seen clearly and I only recognize it because I’ve seen a copy of the tarot deck they are using. This actually made me sad, because that stuff made the scenes more creative. William Burke obviously had fun setting up the many many many many weird positions for some of the sex scenes, and several other examples of having fun with sex scenes (i.e. the speed up sequence that explains why Mike is tired) show care was taken in every part of the film.

Prudence and Veruca watch the funniest episode of 2 Broke Girls ever!

Let’s talk about Bigfoot! Longtime readers will probably not be surprised to know this is not the first film I’ve seen with Bigfoot sexing up a girl and with Bigfoot raping a dude. I’ve even seen Ape Canyon in a theater with the director there! There is a whole subgenre of films with Bigfoot sexing up women or raping them, and let’s not even get into the books/fan fiction. Just look up Sasquatchploitation for more info than you ever want to know. Another common Bigfoot trope is UFOs, both in films and in real life Bigfoot sightings. It’s just cooler to say you saw Bigfoot and UFOs instead of just one.

Where did you find a waiter in the middle of the swamp??

The Sasquatch in Sweet Prudence & the Erotic Adventure of Bigfoot is not mean spirited or Bigfoot being overly perverted, he just seems to get aroused when the women are already running around naked for various reasons, though he’s perfectly willing to do the deed when offered (or not offered!) The opening credits take form of comic book cover and panels by Aaron Lane and help give us the feel that the whole thing is too pulpy to take serious. And will we see a whole series of Sweet Prudence dealing with erotic paranormal encounters? Maybe we will, if you buy enough DVDs/watch it on Cinemax/Maxgo!

Hey, that UFO has a “Mystery Spot” bumper sticker!

Prudence (Angie Bates) – Former cryptozoology major looking to regain her reputation and degree by capturing photos of Bigfoot. Innocent and sweet, incapable of lying, and incapable of lying in wait without pleasuring herself. Best friends with her roommate Veruca.
Veruca (Albina Hussain as Albina Nahar) – An erotic blogwriter under the pen name Salimae, Veruca is more interesting in looking for thrills instead of looking for Bigfoot. But she supports her friend Prudence and dreams of lumberjacks to help spice up her writing. Instead, she finds commune girls, but that’s just as good or even better…
Flower (Heather O’Donnell) – A hippie tarot zen master guru in charge of the local naturalist retreat where Bigfoot has been spotted recently. A big believer in visualizing good thoughts and manifesting them into reality.
Mike (Michael Slade) – Prudence’s friend and schoolmate who was unjustly dragged into the loss of his degree due to her shenanigans. Helps her track down Bigfoot thanks to some convincing, and finds love while doing so.
Ginger (Lynzey Patterson) – Freespirit worker at the naturist retreat who is the first to spot Bigfoot. Is practically insatiable.
Dr. Dirk (Luke Gallo) – A Bigfoot hunter who also came to the resort in secret. Is abrasive, loud, obnoxious, foulmouthed, and seems totally out of place from the rest of the cast and their granola free love attitudes.
The Creature (Daniel Moshe Johnson) – He’s Big! He’s got a foot! Okay, he’s got TWO feet! It’s Bigfoot, and he’s trapped on Earth and naked women are everywhere! What’s an ape to do?
Nothing can go wrong with this plan!
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Bikini Jones and the Temple of Eros (Review)

April 26, 2012By

Bikini Jones and the Temple of Eros


2010
Written and Directed by Fred Olen Ray (as Nicholas Medina)

Hey! Zip it while I’m translating ancient ruins, buddy!

We’re back in black and back in bikinis for yet another entry in the ever-growing Fred Olen Ray Bikini Movie Madness! This time, the world of Indiana Jones gets bikinied a Bikini Jones! Join that ever-sexy science field of archeology as Bikini Jones seduces her hands onto the Idol so she can unlock its secrets before the never-do-wells get their mitts on it and on Bikini Jones’s own golden idol. Bikini Jones features many of the regular cast members circa 2010, most of which have appeared in enough films it’s simpler just to link to their tags than to list all the films over and over again for each actor. Fred Olen Ray reuses the talent because they can get the job done, and done right, and done quickly. But mostly done right.

The later seasons of The Dog Whisperer started to throw in gimmicks for ratings…

Bikini Jones is fun, has fun things going on, and is worth your time. But don’t take my word for it, read the review and then take my word for it! Wait a minute…

Olsen Twin Cop! She’s a cop, and an Olsen Twin.

Dr. Bikini Jones (Christine Nguyen) – A famous archeologist and expert in translating ancient languages. And at having lots of sex. What do you expect when you name your daughter Bikini? The Jones family should be banned from handing out names…
Evilla Cruella (Heather Vandeven) – Again with the names that force their owners into a life out of their control. Evilla Cruella was doomed from the start. She’s from Hobokin, but comes from a long line of Morons. Wants to be ruler of Moronica.
Carol Summers (Rebecca Love) – An excellent cypher from the Department of National Antiquities…or is she????
Drago (Frankie Cullen) – Frankie Cullen shows up playing what probably would have been the Evan Stone role, as Evilla’s main henchman. Does the dirty work and the dirty deeds.
Mr. Martin (Ted Newsom) – The CIA boss who hires Bikini Jones so they can stop Evilla from getting her hands on Moronica.
Mark X (Billy Chappell as Tony Marino) – Oh….THAT GUY.
Janette the Security guard (Brynn Tyler) – A security guard straight from that school from the Armed and Dangerous movie… Brynn Tyler is the only newcomer in this flick.
Sacred Idol of Eros (himself) – The most famous idol from Eros….ever!
The Guardian of Moronica (CGI) – Moronica is full of rocks, Morons, and this guy, who eats everyone. No wonder Moronica’s economy is in the toilet…
What do you call a tyrannosaurus that talks and talks and talks? A dinobore! I’ll be here all week, folks.
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