EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by AC Nicholas, who has graciously become a Big B&S’er, a monthly supporter of the site and got to pick an entire week of movies. Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!

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When this movie was first released, at the dawn of what would be porn chic, Andy Warhol and Vincent Canby both spoke highly of it. Today, it wouldn’t seem so incendiary. In 1970, it was mind blowing.

An adult movie is watched by a wealthy couple played by Frank Wolff (The Great Silence) and Erika Remberg (Cave of the Living Dead) and their son (Paolo Turco, What Have They Done With Your Daughters?). That night, at a carnival, they meet a woman who they think is the actress — it’s actually Annie Carol Edel (Crazy Desires of a Murderer) — they’ve just watched. She’s played by Silvana Venturelli and she soon seduces the entire family, forcing them to admit their desires and secrets.

Shot Italian style — a plan to use live sound didn’t work out — and with a score by Stelvio Cipriani, this all becomes an exercise in style, like the scene in a library where words are zoomed into and books are thrown. I also am amazed that the girl who may or may not be the actress is willing to spend any time with the son, who seems devoted to magic tricks and telling people his strange myth-based dreams, much less making love to him in a field outside the castle he lives in.

Director Radley Metzger, who wrote the script with Michael DeForrest, this movie just hints at how far things would be taken in the future. As it is, in Pittsburgh, it played at The Guild, a theater in Squirrel Hill that became Gullifty’s, another place that is gone.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by AC Nicholas, who has graciously become a Big B&S’er, a monthly supporter of the site and got to pick an entire week of movies. Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!

1. Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
2. Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
3. As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
4. For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?

Maraschino Cherry (Gloria Leonard), the owner of a high-class escort service in New York City, spends this movie teaching her younger sister Penny Cherry (Jenny Baxter) what it takes to succeed in the business.

Leonard had a pretty interesting life. She grew up in the Mosholu Parkway neighborhood in the Bronx along with Robert Klein, Penny and Gary Marshall, and Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. Before her adult career, she was a bond trader and a PR person for Elektra Records. When she got her first work, her agent didn’t tell her it was for hardcore.

She was later the publisher of High Society, a job that she took seriously, according to adult historian Ashley West: “Gloria really would visit wholesalers herself, had relationships with all the distributors, would hire and fire staff, would supervise layouts, would recommend and decide upon the content, so really became a hands-on editor, at least in the first five or six years of her stint at High Society.” She also invented two things that became huge profit makers: publishing celebrity nudes, which led to the magazine Celebrity Skin, and using 976 numbers for phone sex.

Leonard was a board member of the Adult Video Association and its successor the Free Speech Coalition, and an outspoken advocate for the adult film industry and free speech rights. She also started Club 90, the first support group for women in adult. Sadly, she died from a stroke in her Hawaii home in 2014.

Directed by Radley Metzger under his Henry Paris name, this movie somehow looks classier than most mainstream movies made today. This has a cast filled with golden age stars like Lesllie Bovee, Constance Money, C.J. Laing, Anette Haven, Wade Nichols, Eric Edwards and Michael Gaunt as a man who can only perform while on the porcelain throne. Before he was well-known, Spalding Gray did adult and yes, he’s in this.

So much of this seems to be re-edited from The Opening of Misty Beethoven — Constance Money sued and won for her scenes being reused — but the quality is there. I mean, today most filth is shot on digital cameras. This is an actual movie with an actual plot shot on film. It may seem alien today but it once happened all the time.

It’s amazing to think that just ten years before, Metzger’s films like Camille 2000 were shocking.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by AC Nicholas, who has graciously become a Big B&S’er, a monthly supporter of the site and got to pick an entire week of movies. Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!

1. Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
2. Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
3. As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
4. For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?

The Image AKA The Punishment of Anne was based on L’Image, a high class dirty book if there ever was one. According to the Rialto Report, it was written by “Jean de Berg, later to be revealed as the pseudonym of Catherine Robbe-Grillet, a mysterious French writer, photographer, and actress of Armenian descent, who was also married to the French writer and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet.”

Broken up into ten chapters, this is the story of Jean (Carl Parker), an older writer who has come to Paris and who soon meets an old friend by the name of Claire (Marilyn Roberts). He’s soon part of her world of BDSM along with her younger partner Anne (Mary Mendum, Metzger’s girlfriend at the time, she would also appear in several Joe Sarno movies).

What’s really interesting in the above-mentioned Rialto Report article is that beyond the interiors being shot in a property owned by Roy Cohn was that none of the leads believe they performed any of the sex in director Radley Metzer’s first hardcore film.

This was way rougher than many were ready for, even in the Golden Age, but it retains its classy feel despite of that. Just like The Score, Metzger shows a side of the bedroom that many even today don’t want to see or even discuss.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by Jenn Upton, who has graciously made a donation and picked this movie. Would you like to have me write about the movie of your choice? It’s simple!

1. Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
2. Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
3. As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
4. For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?

Sam Raimi was, at one time, mostly known for horror. Of the novels of Scott B. Smith you would think he’d make a movie of, maybe The Ruins would make more sense. That said, A Simple Plan reminds you that he once lived in the same house as the Coen Brothers when all were new to Hollywood. That said, he makes this movie all his own.

Wright County, Minnesota mostly has a feed mill and lots of snow. Hank Mitchell (Bill Paxton) and his wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda) are two of the few college-educated people there. Hank’s brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and his friend Lou Chambers (Brent Briscoe) are closer than the two actual brothers are. This is tested when the men find a crashed plane and $4.4 million dollars. Hank wants to turn it in. Jacob and Lou change his mind, saying he should keep it until the snow melts and if no one brings up the money when the plane is found, they can keep it.

They all agree to not discuss the money with anyone except that Hank tells Sarah. She thinks they should take some money back to the plane. On the way, Hank and Jacob are surprised by a farmer on a snow vehicle. In the heat of the moment, they kill him and send his body and vehicle into the icy river.

Sarah believes that the money was a ransom for a kidnapped heiress from Michigan, who was abducted by two brothers by the names of Stephen and Vernon Bokovsky. She tells him that there’s no victim in the crime now, as one of the brothers had to be the dead body in the plane. The plan falls to pieces though when Lou demands his money. He’s been spending too much and might lose his truck. He threatens to go to the cops. Sarah says that they should kill him, a shocking moment as she’s just given birth to their first child.

Sarah says that they should frame Lou for the farmer’s murder by getting him drunk, making him confess and recording it. Jacob is upset that he has to betray his friend and it almost all goes wrong when Lou pulls his gun. It ends up with Lou and his wife Nancy dead and Hank having to spin the story to the police of what exactly happened. The next problem is that Jacob mentioned the plane, so Sheriff Carl Jenkins (Chelcie Ross) makes Hank show him where it is, bringing along FBI agent Neil Baxter (Gary Cole).

This is probably where you should stop reading if you want to watch this movie.

Baxter is, of course, Vernon Bokovsky. Somehow, Hank is able to kill him but now Sheriff Jenkins is also killed. That means that another story has to be told. And that’s when Jacob tells him that he’s tired. He’s either going to kill himself or force his brother to kill him, creating an alibi so that Hank can live free. It turns out that when he tells the story to the real government agents, they tell him all of the money was marked. He burns it in his fireplace, realizing that he will always be haunted by what he has done.

Paxton and Thornton had been scheduled to be in this movie for years. John Boorman was the original director and the film got cancelled. Neither believed they would ever be in the film but luckily, it all came together. This was one of the first movies where Raimi worried more about the performances of his actors instead of the action of the shots.

I miss Bill Paxton. I realize I never knew him outside of the roles he played but I feel like some part of me — I know it’s strange — knew he was a good man. In this, Hank is an ordinary person who somehow becomes a level of evil that he had no idea that he was capable of. Thornton also plays a role that any other actor would treat as a message part. His diminished intelligence is just who he is; he has other smarts that somehow make up for his lack of intelligence.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by Jenn Upton, who has graciously made a donation and picked this movie. Would you like to have me write about the movie of your choice? It’s simple!

1. Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
2. Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
3. As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
4. For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?

Hubert Selby Jr. had always intended to adapt his novel into a film, as he had written a script years before meeting director Darren Aronofsky, who said, “Anyone that reads Selby’s work can see how intense his world is. He writes the most discordant, angry words that tickle the air with some sweet music around it. It’s an unbelievable experience to read his books. I knew that once I made a larger film it would be very difficult to do a project like this. I live my life not wanting to have any regrets, and I knew that Selby was cool, that he’s a badass.”

Before the movie was made, Jared Leto spent time on the streets and starved himself. The director also asked him and Marlon Wayans to stop having sex and eating sugar so their cravings felt honest. Jennifer Connelley and Ellen Burstyn lived in similar situations to their characters and tried to understand the lives they led.

Burstyn is Sara Goldfarb, a widow who lives with her television, watching it nonstop. Leto is her son Harry, a heroin addict along with Connelley as Marion and Wayans as Tyrone. They sell heroin not just for their own addictions but for the dreams they have, whether that’s to open a fashion store or to escape the ghetto. Sara just wants to be on the TV show she’s obsessed with and begins to diet so she looks good for it. Her friend Rae (Marcia Jean Kurtz) suggests she try diet pills; she’s soon crushing amphetamines to the point that even her junkie son is worried. But all she wants to do is get on that show and impress her friends Rae and Ada (Louise Lasser, the former Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman who once had issues of her own). As the time of the show gets closer, she descends into madness. She imagines her refrigerator is attacking her and a trip to the office of the game show ends with her hospitalized and given electroshock therapy.

Meanwhile, a gang war puts Tyrone in prison and with drugs so much more expensive, Harry tells Marion that she should start doing sex work, even sleeping with her therapist (Sean Gullette). By the time it’s all over, she has a pimp (Keith David), he’s lost his arm from using so much heroin and he and Tyrone are trapped in jail. By the end, everyone is lost, trapped in a fetal position, their only dreams ones that will never come true.

Most movies have 700 cuts for ninety minutes. This has over 2,000 as the quick cutting madness and always in-your-face camera shots are disorienting. Released with no rating, this movie in no way allows its actors to have the old Hollywood addiction cliches. Drugs have never felt this horrible. There’s no fun in any of these highs.

There are some really interesting moments in this. Beyond the influence of Perfect Blue for one of the bathtub scenes, when Sara talks about being old, there’s a second when the camera literally slips away from her. That’s because cinematographer Matthew Libatique had started to cry and fogged up the camera and made that mistake. Despite Aronofsky being upset at the time of shooting, that’s the take in the movie. Also, all of Tappy Tibbons’ dialogue was actor Christopher McDonald improvising.

Aronofsky didn’t want to change the book, as he loved the author’s work. He wasn’t sure if Harry lived or died and had asked Selby about the character’s outcome. The author answered, “Of course, he lives.” When Aronofsky asked why he said that, Selby responded that the character had to suffer more. That may be why the director believes that Tyrone is the only person capable of reclaiming his life. That’s why in the final scene, only he has an actual good thought of someone other than himself. He remembers his mother.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by Chris Salazr, who made a $5 donation and got to pick the movie of his choice. 

Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!

1. Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
2. Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
3. As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
4. For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?

As they await repairs, Val Com 17485 (Andy Kaufman), a robot valet with a specialty in lumber commodities, falls in love with Aqua Com 89045 (Bernadette Peters), a hostess companion robot who is made for poolside parties. They assemble a robot named Phil (Jerry Garcia) who they treat as their child and take with them a comedian robot, Catskil-55602 (Jack Carter).

They are pursued by Crimebuster (Ron Gans), a broken police drone that wants to bring them into to be erased. They are and yet they keep reverting back to their new programing as the love between them has become too strong.

The story sounds good but the actual movie, well…

In his book Andy Kaufman: Revealed, Bob Zmuda wrote that Kaufman and Zmuda had “pitched” the The Tony Clifton Story to Universal Studios. They were concerned that Kaufman had not acted in films except for a small role in God Told Me To, so they arranged for him to star in this movie as a test. It was a disaster and Kaufman even apologized on Late Night With David Letterman for making it.

When I spoke with director Alan Arkush about this movie, he was very honest about it.

B&S: Can you tell me about Heartbeeps?

ALLAN: I got offered this big studio movie. And I really have to say that I totally misread the situation. I didn’t really understand the script or maybe it didn’t indicate that it could be a wacky comedy. I seized on the idea that it could be this big story about robots falling in love and making it a Frank Borzage movie (a bizarre idea and nothing like what the studio wanted). He was big on love conquers death, love is a spiritual thing and I thought that’s what the situation was with these robots. Maybe that’s an intellectually good solution but it’s not the movie they wanted.

I made so many bad choices like a pace that was WAY too slow for comedy. I should have just turned Andy Kaufman loose, used many many more special effects and taken more advantage of the genius of my FX team Stan Winston and Albert Whitlock. We recently did a commentary for the Kino Lorber rerelease and that was both eye opening and painful, but useful to me as an artist, not unlike when I critique a film at the AFI.

B&S: But you had a great cast! I mean, Jerry Garcia is in it.

ALLAN: Yes, Jerry was someone I knew really well. And I asked him to do one of the robot voices on the guitar. I was trying to borrow stuff from other parts of my life to shoehorn in. The studio cut ALL of Jerry’s work out.

At least Arkush was able to get Paul Bartel, Mary Woronov and Dick Miller in the movie, as well as Kenneth McMillan and Randy Quaid as repairmen. But otherwise, this movie seems like it’s going somewhere at first and then just sits there forever, despite being only around 75 minutes. I’ve put off watching it for years because I’ve heard just how bad it is and I’d hoped that it would surprise me.

It was written by John Hill, who also wrote Quigley Down Under, Little Nikita and episodes of Quantum Leap and L.A. Law. He also scripted Steel Justice, a TV movie in which monster truck robot Robosaurus teams with a police officer. Do you think he told people, “I did Heartbeeps so I am a natural to write this movie about a child who brings back his dead cop dad as a fire-breathing transforming dinosaur?”

What is great is the makeup by Stan Winston.

The artist had been sought after he created the makeup for the Tin Man in The Wiz. Winston said, “I hadn’t been all that happy with the final results of the Tin Man makeup, which was made up of foam rubber appliances, painted to look like metal. I wanted to see if I could come up with something better for Heartbeeps, appliances that would have an intrinsic metallic quality, rather than one that was just painted on.”

He used gelatin appliances that were painted with metallic colors. However, the heat of shooting meant that the makeup needed near-constant touch-ups. This almost ruined Winston’s sanity.

“I had created the look I wanted and I had done something that no one had ever seen before. The downside was that, on a daily basis, I didn’t know whether or not we were going to get through the shoot! These were very difficult makeups to maintain, very labor-intensive. Every day at lunch we had to replace the lip appliances, for example, because they were starting to melt on us. Vince Prentice and Zoltan Elek, the makeup artists who actually applied the prosthetics, constantly had to stay on top of the problems with the gelatin. I was a wreck through the entire shoot.”

It did teach him an essential lesson.

“I was in a stressed-out state, which was fairly typical of me at that time, and Bernadette Peters said to me, “Relax, Stan. It’s just a movie.” Here she was, going through this grueling process of having these prosthetics applied to her, and she had to calm me down. It should have been just the opposite. To this day, I thank Bernadette Peters for putting my attitude in perspective. In this work, there are always going to be very real responsibilities and pressures — but it’s just a movie, and there’s nothing to be gained by being a walking stress factory. Ever since that time, I’ve tried to bring positive energy and lightheartedness to the set.”

Resources

Stan Winston School. Heartbeeps: Behind the Scenes at Stan Winston Studio.

This movie by Felipe M. Guerra has bad audio, is kind of dark and feels thrown together. And you know, that’s kind of perfect for Luigi Cozzi, who has made some of my favorite movies on the same budget that most movies spend on paper towels.

Cozzi started as a fan, writing to authors and becoming the Italian correspondent for Famous Monsters of Filmland. After becoming friends with Dario Argento — he’s still the man who runs the director’s Profundo Rosso store — he went on to help write Four Flies on Grey Velvet and The Five Days and direct The Killer Must Kill Again, Starcrash, Contamination, Cannon movies Hercules, Adventures of Hercules and Sinbad of the Seven Seas, Paganini Horror, The Black Cat and Blood on Méliès’ Moon.

I’m a huge fan of Cozzi. He seems like someone who genuinely loves chatting about his movies and what it was like to make them. Starcrash was one of the first Italian movies that I ever saw. My very young eyes saw it and was amazed and forever since, Italian exploitation has just spoken to me on a higher level. It’s so amazing to hear how these films were created by the source. If you love movies, despite the flaws of the production, you’ll love this.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Immoral Minority Picture Show was made in 1983 and went unreleased until 2009. It’s very much a Kentucky Fried Movie but probably closer to Movie 43.

Director and writer Scott Mansfield — yes, the same director as Deadly Games — put together this sketch-filled movie and sure, most of them aren’t funny, but there’s a great slasher sequel parody called Don’t Scream On My Face that has a great part for Linda Blair. There’s also a Lite Blood ad with Count Dracula (James Sikking) talking about how he needs to cut the fat. And John Carradine introduces great moments in Polish history, which means he sits in silence. How about a slasher called The Hanukah Horror?

None of these jokes are funny but I can’t hate a movie that includes such a cast. I mean, David L. Lander and Michael McKean as Third Reich soldiers? Marilyn Chambers as Marilyn Chambers? Colleen Camp is in this! Barbara Bosson (did she and Sikking ever talk about this on Hill Street Blues?)? Georg Stanford Brown from Roots and the former husband of Tyne Daly? Sybil Danning? Juila Duffy? Meadowlark Lemon and Jimmie Walker as the first black men on the moon? Deborahg Harmon? Sunny Johnson (Flashdance)? Audrey Landers from Dallas? Kim Lankford from Knots Landing? Squire Fridell (Ronald McDonald in Mac and Me)? P.J. Soles!?! Wendi Jo Sperber!?! Jennifer Tilly? James MacKrell (Lew Landers in Gremlins and The Howling)? Ed Marinaro (did he also discuss this movie on the set of Hill Street Blues?)? Diana Muldaur? Newhart‘s William Sanderson and Peter Scolari? Bruce Weitz (can I make that Hill Street Blues joke again? I can.)? Fred Willard? Keenan Wynn?!? Jere Rae Mansfield, who called herself “the blonde that died on every Aaron Spelling show?” Marie-Alise Recasner (Island of Blood)? Miguel A. Núñez Jr. (Spider from Return of the Living Dead)? Erika Eleniak? Adult director Paul Thomas? Karen Lorre? Sniglets Rich Hall?

Yes, it’s not good, but I loved it.

You can watch this on Tubi.