Luther Boots (Mike Hartsfield) goes to a yard sale, finds a backpack — that has killed a child with a stock video explosion and that means I had to send a message to Erica from Unsung Horrors and pass the curse of this on to her — and it starts to kill everyone that is close to him.
Every SRS-released Amityville movie has characters that just talk about everything. They narrate every moment of their lives. No one I have ever met talks like this, but yet this happens in all of their movies. I realize that we need to explain what is happening, but when the talking takes up most of the movie and people are given to saying things like, “Backpack, I think you’re going to help me a lot.” I lose my mind by the time a film like this one is over.
What didn’t help is that I usually watch Amityville movies all alone, but for some reason my wife came in and started watching this one and realized that she had made a mistake marrying me. She had so many questions about why I would spend so much time watching this and I was afraid to show her my Letterboxd list because I’m too old to start over again.
Anyways, what it does have going for it is shots inside the backpack, as well as the fact that the backpack looks just like the house on 112 Ocean Avenue. It also has the threat of a cat death — spoiler warning, it survives — and a lot of people killed by, yes, a backpack. Who knew that my old JanSport could have been so evil?
There were moments of this that were so uncolor balanced and the sun was bleeding into the image that I was shocked that it wasn’t filmed by someone who had never seen a camera or a movie before. Then there would be a great shot or a cool slow motion push in to someone. I wonder, can you tell when one of these movies is a parody any more?
Now, to the tune of Stroke 9’s “Little Black Backpack:”
June 16: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Bruceploitation! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
Originally a South Korean movie called Amelika bangmungaeg (also called Visitor of America), this was released in the U.S. by Aquarius Releasing with new dubbing, an incredibly insane poster of Bruce Lee emerging from a grave to defend a half nude woman and battle a flying bat baby as well as a new beginning filmed in the U.S. where lighting strikes the grave of Bruce Lee, who soon emerges, ready to fight. In an amazing display of absolute lunacy, that’s it. No more Bruce Lee.
No, instead, we follow Wong Han (Jun Chong, a judo master who used the name Bruce K. L. Lea; he’s the founder of the World United Martial Arts Organization (WUMAO); has trained Lorenzo Lamas, Sam J. Jones, Phillip and Simon Rhee, and Heather Graham; he also shows up in L.A. Street Fighters, Silent Assassins and Street Soldiers) as he makes his way to America to try and learn who killed his brother Han Ji-Hyeok.
Also: It appears that Wong’s brother died by jumping off his apartment building and is being incinerated in the furnace of the same building, which ends with Wong scooping up all the burned bones and placed them around his neck, along with a photo of the deceased and wandering the streets looking for answers. He’s then attacked by a man in black, who he defeats and kills, which leads to his arrest.
Wong is bailed out by a rich man named Scott Lee and asked to find a woman named Susan (Deborah Dutch, Deep Jaws, 976-EVIL II), who ends up being a waitress. Why Lee hired him is a mystery because he’s shown that he has no idea how to find the killers of his brother, so it’s not like they had a precedent for his detective skills. Anyways, he decides to help Susan and teaches her martial arts so quickly that she can fight nearly as well as him in mere days. She soon informs our hero that she learned from her job in Lee’s Turkish bathhouse that five men were involved in the death of his brother: the black man Wong has already battled, as well as a white man, a Japanese fighter, a Mexican and a cowboy. Seeing as how there are about 4 million people in Los Angeles, this won’t be easy to find them. Then again, he didn’t find the killers yet and did find Susan, so he’s batting .500 which would get you in the hall of fame.
Then, our hero goes to a Christmas parade. Why? So the people there can look directly at the camera and the filmmakers could shoot this without permits. Our hero is a strange guy, one who won’t sleep in Susan’s house for moral reasons, so she buys him an RV to sleep in outside her house.
Anyways, the cowboy is the last alive, killing the other killers before Wong and that means that our hero and he will have to battle one on one. He fights like a pro wrestler, which I can appreciate, and then we learn that maybe Wong’s brother is still alive as nearly everyone else dies. Yes, our hero can’t even protect the woman who helps him, choosing to do a fancy flying kick instead of just disarming the bad guy.
Directed by Lee Doo-yong and written by Hong Ji-Un, this movie is really something else. It’s not good and yet I loved every moment. I kept thinking about the trailer and the poster and how they had to have led people to say, “Bruce Lee versus the black angel of death? How can I not watch this?”
My wife asking me during this movie, “Did cowboys really swear so much?” I figured this movie was just following the lead of Deadwood, but I decided to do some research. According to Notes from the Frontier, they both did and didn’t. Jesse Sheidlower, the American editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and the book The F-Word says, “There were cursing contests when cowboys would get together and insult each other. Evidence that we have is that they were using more religious blasphemy than the sexual insults which are popular today.” That’s because using the f-word didn’t come into use in the U.S. until after World War I. That said, the same article says that Stagecoach Mary, Belle Starr — and this film’s star! — Calamity Jane all were historically known to use tons of profanity.
Directed by Terry Miles (Even Lambs Have Teeth) and written by Leon Langford and Collin Watts, this is the story of — you guessed it from the title — Calamity Jane (Emily Bett Rickards, Felicity from Arrow) getting revenge on the man who killed her soon-to-be husband, Wild Bill (Stephen Amell, who was Green Arrow on Arrow and the lead in Heels).
Most of what we know about Calamity Jane — born Martha Jane Canary — comes from an autobiographical pamphlet that she dictated and sold as part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. As you can imagine, a lot of the story in that pamphlet is exaggerated. She claims that her name came from a battle with Native Americans: “When fired upon, Capt. Egan was shot. I was riding in advance and on hearing the firing turned in my saddle and saw the Captain reeling in his saddle as though about to fall. I turned my horse and galloped back with all haste to his side and got there in time to catch him as he was falling. I lifted him onto my horse in front of me and succeeded in getting him safely to the Fort. Capt. Egan, on recovering, laughingly said: “I name you Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains.” I have borne that name up to the present time.”
Then again, another story of her life — not written by her — said, “She never saw a lynching and never was in an Indian fight. She was simply a notorious character, dissolute and devilish, but possessed a generous streak which made her popular.”
How realistic is this film’s claim that Wild Bill was married to her?
On September 6, 1941, the U.S. Department of Public Welfare granted old age assistance to a Jean Hickok Burkhardt McCormick. Jean claimed to be the daughter of Martha Jane Canary and James Butler Hickok and had evidence that they were married at Benson’s Landing, Montana on September 25, 1873. She also had a letter from Jane that said that she had been married to Hickok and that he was het birth father. She was then placed for adoption with a Captain Jim O’Neil and his wife.
When she died — of alcoholism — according to Michael Griske’s The Diaries of John Hunton: Made to Last, Written to Last: Sagas of the Western Frontier, “Four of the men who planned her funeral later stated that Hickok had “absolutely no use” for Jane while he was alive, so they decided to play a posthumous joke on him by burying her by his side.”
The truth is always difficult to divine.
Let’s talk about the movie.
When Jane and Bill make it to Deadwood, they finally decide to walk the aisle. Except that he can’t leave behind the chance to play cards and that ends with Jack McCall (Primo Allon) killing him. As you can imagine, McCall gets out of town before Jane can catch him after she easily escapes from the jail of Sheriff Mason (Tim Rozen).
Mason starts a posse to hunt down both Jane and McCall, as well as a criminal that Jane was in jail with — and who started the riot that got her out — by the name of Abigail (Priscilla Faia) starts to stalk her.
If you’re an Arrow fan, this mini-reunion doesn’t last long. So you may be let down. This also feels like way more talking than action, but the fight between Jane and Abigail is pretty great. I also liked the undertaker character who gets Jane through the Badlands, even if he’s barely in this. But hey — I’m all for new Westerns getting made.
I have to tell you, I drove my wife nuts by saying the name of this movie over and over again.
This starts with Monica (J. Roppolo Jacobs) trying to call her daughter Verity (Evelyn Giovine) — or V as everyone seems to call her — from a pay phone after she causes an incident at a mega church by calling Pastor Dean Humphries (Damon Dayoub) a “hypocritical bastard.” She barely gets a message sent before she’s cut off, just as her daughter is in the midst of shaking down someone along with her boyfriend Sam (Greg Finley). As the man runs, Sam takes a shot at him and steals a car while a convenience store owner gets a clear view of both of their faces. V breaks up with him, something that seems to be a long time coming, and heads to The Devil’s Dive, a bar where her foster sister Ruby (Raquel Davies) works.
After doing some research into where her mother was — yes, there are still payphones, as her sister reminds her — she is contacted by Detective Peter Frederick (Daniel Link). They’ve found her mother’s body and she has to identify her. We soon discover that Peter might be V’s father and he definitely wants to discuss her relationship with Sam, the money they owe to drug dealer Ricky and the beating of the man the other night. She runs and decides that there’s no way the police can handle this investigation, so she has to infiltrate the church where her mother died.
To do that, she has to become The Sintern.
After meeting the Pastor and his wife Heidi (Stefanie Estes), V renames herself Chastity and becomes part of the marketing team for the church. Despite being on the bad side of longtime parishioner Louann (Judy Kain), she wins over everyone, including the social media officer Kayle (Phuong Kubacki) — the brownies help — and singer Gage (Samuel Larsen), who leads the church’s choir in worship. V — or Chastity, as she’s now called — now understands the sin of illicit thoughts every time she sees Gage make an altar call.
Of course Chastity is able to figure out exactly who killed her mother, get the boy to fall in love with her and get away from her criminally minded ex-boyfriend. She also gets to bond with her foster sister all over again, who conveniently is going to college for marketing. As I was watching this while doing my day job in advertising, I just kept yelling at the TV (when I wasn’t making up songs about The Sintern).
Directed by Julie Herlocker (who was a producer on Millennium and Grimm) and written by Jeff Dickamore and Aurora Florence, this presents a level-headed look at a church — despite the murder and sexual mania of its leaders, the followers are there for good reasons — and has a heroine who moves past her upbringing to become a capable heroine willing to do nearly anything to expose the truth. Also, as I love exploitation, bonus points for — spoiler warning — Pastor father nearly assaulting her, followed by her puking up her guts when she realized that any daddy issues that she had in the past are about to be multiplied beyond belief. Double word score — or whatever — for the fact that Pastor Peter doesn’t really know much of the Bible and seems to make things up, which others call out and which confuses our heroine, who doesn’t know much of the Psalms.
On a final note, I always get weirded out when religious people drop the name and location of their Bible quote. Like, you’d say, “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness.” And then follow it with Psalm 30:11. You don’t see me closing my movie quotes with where they appeared, like “You wanted to kill me! What are you gonna do now, huh? Now death is coming for you! You wanted to kill Helena Markos! Hell is behind that door! You’re going to meet death now… the LIVING DEAD!” Suspiria, an hour and five minutes in.
June 15: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Free Space! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
I approached this movie with a strange and melancholic blend of joy and sadness. Joy because it’s everything I love about movies: Italian maniacs let loose in Miami making a movie that at once combines Lethal Weapon, Ghost Dad and Tron while being shot on film in the very late for the Italian exploitation film industry year of 1997. Even better, it has the high concept of combining Terence Hill and “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler as buddy cops.
The cheerlessness comes from the fact that this is at the end. This is the last movie that Antonio Margheriti (Anthony M. Dawson in America) would direct, the last that Bruno Corbucci would write and really the event horizon of an era of films that I love with all my heart.
Yet in this bubble of time, you still get Margheriti combining actual car chases with the practical miniature effects that you hope for in his movies. The explosions are as big as they can be. And sure, maybe Terence Hill is thinking about better days alongside Bud Spencer. Perhaps Marvin Hagler is probably remembering when he fought world middleweight champ Alan Minter, who said, “No black man is going to take my title.” Then he hit him so many times so quickly that he opened four gigantic wounds on the champ’s face and Hagler won his first title as the fans in Wembley Arena launched beer bottles his way. How did he end up here in Miami trying to tell jokes and being in his fourth movie for these wacky Italians?* And was Margheriti dreaming of filming cobwebbed staircases being navigated by a candelabra-wielding Barbara Steele?
No matter. Here they are in Miami and a movie needs to be made.
Skims (Hill) is an ex-cop turned computer salesman who comes back to Miami to see his old cop friend Mike Davis (Hagler). But we know why he’s in town. He’s undercover, investigating a microchip stealing plot. He’s also excited to reconnect with former cop — and the widow of his partner — Chelo (Giselle Blondet) and bond with her tech-loving daughter Lily (Jennifer Martinez).
Our hero finally tracks down the villain behind all of the drama in this, a man named Abel Van Axel (Stephen Edward, who showed up in three episodes of Miami Vice), who goes by the even cooler — if unnecessary — name of Mr. X. What is he, the final boss of a Konami beat ’em up?
Despite being informed that Skims is the greatest cop of all time, he gets blown up real good and dies. We even see his funeral. I’m shocked they didn’t run the credits.
Except that Skims has somehow survived and shows up on Lily’s computer, looking like Trinity by way of Automan, fighting dinosaurs and transforming like he’s fueled by Energon. His power set is beyond crazy here, even moreso than the goofball abilities Hill had in my beloved Super Fuzz. He can be invisible unless someone tells him they love him, he can travel through telephone lines and is now a hologram, which is explained as “the result of modern technology and Biblical faith.”
Of course the bad guys pay and Skims carries around the bad guy’s gun, turning it on him, and everyone is all smiles by the end. Even me, as I watch the credits and try not to think that it’s over, it’s over, all the rainbows in the sky start to weep, then say goodbye. Apologies to Roy Orbison, obviously.
The best thing in this whole movie is that Skims forgets that he’s just been killed by techno gangsters and real estate lords and decides to screw around with his fellow cops while they’re lifting weights, playing ghost reindeer games with them like he’s Super Fuzz — “He’s a super snooper. Really super trooper. A wonder cop a one like you never saw.” — and I could watch a 90-minute movie of these antics.
You may ask, who else is in the cast? Well, who isn’t? This is the last movie of Richard Liberty, who unites the decades of Romero films by playing Artie in The Crazies and Dr. Matt “Frankenstein” Logan in Day of the Dead. He plays Captain Holmes. The old lady who pulls out a gigantic handgun and fires it at criminals is Florance McGee, who was also a senior citizen in Super Fuzz and was Phoebe Russell in Empire of the Ants. Tommy Lane was a stuntman who was in Shaft and Ganja and Hess along with playing the trumpet and flugelhorn. Wikipedia thinks that he’s the same Tommy Lane who was in the Rock ‘n’ Roll RPMs with Mike Davis. He wasn’t.
There’s also Roger Callard (Conan the Librarian from UHF), Edoardo Margheriti (who would go from doing effects on Yor Hunter from the Future to being a second unit director for Hudson Hawk) and a lot of folks who were in Florida-based productions such as Wild Things and B.L. Stryker.
Beyond Corbucci, this was written by Terence’s son Jess and executive producer Ferdie Pacheco. It was the only movie that Ferdie ever wrote or produced. He was better known as the personal physician and cornerman for Muhammad Ali. He left Ali’s team in 1977 when after Ali won against Earnie Shavers, he felt that the post-fight physical showed that the boxer was falling to pieces. In the book Muhammed Ali: His Life and Times, Pacheco said, “The New York State Athletic Commission gave me a report that showed Ali’s kidneys were falling apart. I wrote to Angelo Dundee, Ali’s trainer, his wife and Ali himself. I got nothing back in response. That’s when I decided enough is enough.” When they reunited in 2002 and Ali was suffering from Parkinson’s, The Greatest told The Fight Doctor “You was right.”
This also has one of my favorite things about Italian movies going for it: absolutely strange alternate titles. I get Virtual Weapon as it tells you that this is a Mel and Danny ripoff with a tech twist and the French title Cyberflic means Cybercop. But then the Japanese title is Point of Dead, which is a great title that says nothing. Germany got Zwei Fäuste für Miami (Two Fists for Miami), Hungary the very metal Én vagyok a fegyver (I Am the Gun) which spoils the ending of the movie and Italy had Potenza virtuale (Virtual Power).
I always worry that I am going to run out of Italian movies to obsess over but so far, I keep finding new things to write over a thousand words about.
*In case you wondered, Indio and Indio 2 for Margheriti, as well as Across Red Nights for Maurizio Bonuglia.
When The Strangers came out in 2008, it had mixed reviews, which didn’t matter. It became a cult film. It has characters that have such a good look to them and the end of the film, where Dollface explains it all by telling the couple that they were attacked “Because you were home,” which was enough in the quality starved mid 2000s. The sequel, The Strangers: Prey at Night, changes influences from the 1970s to the 1980s. While it also has its audience, it’s really twenty good minutes looking for a movie to be part of.
Imagine how surprised I was when Lionsgate announced that director Renny Harlin and writers Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland would be making three new films in this series, all in a row, all shot in Slovakia. Is this the 2000s all over again?
Intellectual property is insidious. Sure, we love seeing sequels of the films that we love. But when an IP is a success, we can be sure that we’ll see numerous remakes and reimaginings of every horror property there is — except for Friday the 13th, right? — again and again.
Where this movie changes the game — slightly, ever so slightly — is by having its leads Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and Ryan (Froy Gutierrez) traveling across the country and being forced to stay overnight in Venus, Oregon, as opposed to visiting their summer home in the midst of a relationship crisis.
Harlin has stated that this trilogy was intended to be neither a remake nor reboot. He was also aiming to get the tone close to the first movie, despite plans to explore who the killers are and where they come from. This suggests to me that what made the original so great — there’s no motivation for the killers other than they need something to do — is similar to why Halloween remains the best film in that series. It’s all about keeping things simple as well as scary.
Producer Mark Canton also says that these three movies are all about introuducing audiences to the world of The Strangers and that they want to expand that world Also, these movies take place in the same universe as the original two films. Harlin also told ComicBook.com, “We, of course, shot them on top of each other and mixed up, like movies are always made. But we had to keep in mind that this is one story arc. It is one 4.5 hour movie, and the first movie is a first act. It sets up the characters and the terror and the Killers and our main character, who will survive the first movie, but then go on a journey for the next two.” The thought is that these movies will show four days in the life of Maya.
The problem with shooting three movies at the same time is that the first movie better knock you out. And this, well…remember when Gus Van Zant remade Psycho and people wondered why it was shot for shot? At least that was a classic film that had several decades in between. This just feels like watching a fan film of the original. Sure, it looks great, but it’s missing the menace that the first take had, the moments of looking out into nothingness, wondering what is out there waiting. That’s one of the most terrifying things in real life and The Strangers captured it flawlessly.
None of the masked characters are actors from the other films. The Man In the Mask is now called Scarecrow and he’s played by Matúš Lajčák while Dollface is Olivia Kreutzova and Pin-Up Girl is Letizia Fabbri.
It took Michael Myers six movies to find the Thorn Cult and Jason ten movies to go to space. Who knows where these films are going to go? Will we see other people make their own karaoke versions of mid-level slashers? Will I be enraged when Zack Snyder remakes The Prowler and Michael Bay shows us his vision of The Being? But we all lived through the Platinum Dunes era, when the films we once loved were strip mined and made into barely recognizable films with pretty kids getting killed by CGI versions of the murderers we once cheered for.
I am reminded that Harlin also made A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Exorcist: The Beginning. Then again, he did make Deep Blue Sea, the movie that taught me that LL Cool J’s head is like a shark fin. Maybe I should be patient and see where he goes with this. But man, how many chances has this guy got? For every The Long Kiss Goodnight there’s Cutthroat Island, but then again, he also made Prison, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane and Die Hard 2. I feel too old and too limited in the time that I watch movies — yes, I know, I watch like four a day — to sit through three of these movies only to say, “Eh.” Maybe I want too much, you know?
At least the Spirit Store will have official masks for all the Hot Topic kids to wear this Halloween.
Eh, that feels like I’m being a gatekeeper. Perhaps this will lead people to discovering better movies.
In the world of E.C. Comics, there is no shortage of cheating spouses or the price they pay for giving into sin.
“Hello, golfing fiends, and welcome to the Crypt. Oh, don’t mind him. That’s just my caddie, Juan. He got me teed off while I was playing a round…so I shot a hole in Juan! Which brings to mind the young woman in tonight’s tale. She’s also playing around, except that her game isn’t golf. It’s love. I call this disgusting drama “Spoiled.””
This episode is so meta that there’s an argument for buying cable in it. “The picture is so much better. Plus, you get HBO and everything. It would really improve the quality of your life,” says Louise (Annabelle Gurwitch) to her put-upon friend, soap opera obsessive Janet (Faye Grant). And once our heroine actually does get the cable, her husband Leon (Alan Rachins) demands that she turn off the Crypt Keeper!
Janet loves Fuchsia (Anita Morris), the star of her favorite daytime show There’s Always Tomorrow. When Fuschia’s husband ignores her, she gets the passion she needs from younger and way more desirable men. So you can understand when cable guy Abel (Anthony LaPaglia) comes into her home that she wants nothing more to pound his brains out while all her mad scientist hubby cares about is taking brains and moving them from body to body.
Well, not exactly. He actually switches the heads on the bodies and by the end of this story, he’s done that to Janet and Abel with some of the worst effects that 1991 can deliver.
Directed by Andy Wolk, who has mostly been in episodic television, and written by Connie Johnson (who assisted producers on this show for 17 episodes) and Doug Ronning (who also wrote another episode, “The Secret”), this is what happens when this show tries to be too cute. Sure, humor is part of E.C. but it’s not all of it. It’s why I prefer the Amicus version to so many of the HBO episodes.
Grant and Rachins would play another married couple — and the parents to Brian Austin Green — in the TV movie Unwed Father.
This is based on “Spoiled” from The Haunt of Fear #26. It was written by Otto Binder (who wrote more than half of the Captain Marvel family stories and created Supergirl) and drawn by Jack Kamen.
June 14: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Beach! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
John D. MacDonald had several of his books turned into movies. The Executioners was filmed twice as Cape Fear, Soft Touch inspired Man-Trap, plus the novels Darker Than Amber, The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything, Condominium and A Flash of Green were all made into movies. Even this story was turned into two TV movies with the second starring Virginia Madsen as Linda.
Linda Reston (Stella Stevens) has a bad marriage with Paul (Ed Nelson, The Devil’s Partner), who is daydreaming of leaving her when she suddenly shoots their friend Anne Braden (Mary-Robin Redd) and turns the gun on Anne’s husband Jeff (John Saxon!) while at the beach. Paul calls the cops and when they arrive, Jeff is alive and the twosome accuses Paul of killing Anne.
As you can tell right away, Linda and Jeff are working together to get rid of their spouses and make a new life for themselves. Luckily, Marshall Journeyman (John McIntire, who replaced both Ward Bond on Wagon Train and Charles Bickford on The Virginian when both of those actors died), an elder lawyer, takes on his case and starts to investigate Linda and Jeff.
Paul sneaks out of his cell and soon learns that his wife has been conspiring with Jeff, which leads Journeyman to get the cops in on a scam to call her and try and get a confession. She’s too tough but man, Jeff folds right away. She tells him he’s spineless and also informs her now ex-husband that she won’t be in jail long.
Stella Stevens is quite wonderful in this. She’s so cold and has everything figured out but yet as she laments, she’s never been able to find a man who isn’t spineless. Her husband can’t even bury a dead animal without having a nervous breakdown and her lover gets her arrested for murder. I’d love a sequel where we learn how she takes over prison.
June 13: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Ozploitation We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
John D. Lamond worked in promotion before directing his first two movies, Australia After Dark and The ABC of Love and Sex. These mondo films were both successes which led to him making his first narrative film, which is Felicity. He also wrote Sky Pirates and directed the slasher Nightmares.
For this one, he was inspired by Just Jaeckin’s Emmanuelle to the point that the book gets references multiple times and there’s even a similar wicker chair. He said, “The French have always been able to make their films NOT be pornographic, they’d be erotic. They were classy – the most they could ever say was softcore. And the way they did it, they made pretty images that looked like a Singapore Airlines TV commercial, they had nice fashion, good photography and nice music. And that way it dresses it up and makes it all chocolate boxy… I thought okay, the way to do that on a film budget is to go somewhere exotic. Make sure the people are pretty and they don’t have pimples. Don’t be sordid in any way, have pretty music and exotic locations, nice lighting and nice fashion. So even though it was a tiny film, we came up to Hong Kong and we got all the clothes tailor made for them, so that they fitted properly.”
Felicity Robinson (Glory Annen, Prey, The Lonely Lady) has spent most of her life in boarding school, forever dreaming of the kind of true love — and plenty of lust — she has read about. Well, she mostly reads Emmanuelle and The Story of O (you can even see Udo Keir and Corinne Clery on the cover). She also occasionally has sapphic interludes with her Willows End Ladies College classmate Jenny (Jody Hanson) that mean more to Jenny than Felicity.
Then, her father arranges a trip to Hong Kong to visit his friends Christine (Marilyn Rodgers, Patrick) and Stephen (Gordon Charles). As soon as she gets there, Felicity spies on the two as they make love. Christine realizes this and decides to introduce Felicity to the ways of love, first having her be deflowered by the much older Andrew (David Bradshaw) and then the exotic Me Ling (Joni Flynn, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Octopussy), who takes her on a journey through the erotic world of the East. But ah, Felicity remains traditional and eventually falls in love with a nice young boy named Miles (Chris Milne, Thirst).
There’s even a scene where the characters go to see The ABC of Love and Sex, which Lamond said was a “total Roger Corman.” He also intended to make a sequel, Felicity in the Garden of Pleasures, that the government organization known as the South Australian Film Corporation would invest in. Controversy resulted and the movie was never made.
Felicity’s voice — and the reason this might feel so charming instead of lecherous — belong to Diane Lamond, the director’s wife. They pull another Emmanuelle move by claiming that the story was written by Felicity Robinson.
Sadly, Glory Annen’s went through some dark times in her life. She was the partner of racehorse owner Ivan Allan for more than a decade and when the relationship ended, both she and her mother were evicted from their home. This led to a major British court case which “established that parties to ancillary relief court proceedings may generally expect the information they have provided about their finances to remain confidential and protected from publication.”
After Annen died in 2017, several documents she wrote regarding her relationship have been released and are currently being used to create an expose of Allan, the British legal system and the criminal elements in the world of horse racing. Her last role was in Lamond’s True Flies.
I had so much fun watching this movie. I’m certain I watched it furtively on Cinemax After Dark along with stand outs such as Eleven Days, Eleven Nights; Emanuelle in Bangkok; Gwendoline; The Secrets of Love: Three Rakish Tales and Young Lady Chatterley II. These movies seemed so naughty then — well, Joe D’Amato’s work still is sleazetastic — and watching this today, I felt the same way that people that once got arrested for watching nudie cuties must have felt as hardcore started playing legally.
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