With scenes from Party Girl, Baby Face, I’m No Angel, The Dentist, Polly Tix In Washington, Love Life of a Gorlla, King Kong, Sex Madness, The Outlaw, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Bus Stop, High School Confidential!, The Girl Can’t Help It, Promises…..Promises!, Baby Doll, Blood Feast, Peeping Tom, Easy Rider, Carnal Knowledge, Silent Night Deadly Night and more, this James Forsher-directed film starts with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and then brings in Peter Fonda to discuss the history of censorship in Hollywood.
I was most excited to see Eli Wallach and Carroll Baker appear to discuss Baby Doll, but there are also appearances by Sheree North, Mamie Van Doren, Hal Roach and Jane Russell. There’s also an awesome segment where Martin Scorsese talks about how Peeping Tom played art theaters and late night horror at the same time.
Sure, it’s dated and the movies may not be as shocking any more, but if you’re a film fan like me, this is essential. Before the internet, tracking down Hayes Code-era films — even clips, really — was impossible, so this viewing brought multiple smiles to my face. Who doesn’t love to see The Dentist and realize how upset people were made by it?
Here’s another Mill Creeker that Sam, the boss at B&S, and myself never heard of and would have passed on — if not for it being on a Mill Creek box set. And you probably never heard of it either, as it is a British TV movie, part of the 165-episode run of BBC-TV’s 1985 – 2002 series Screen Two. According to the digital content managers at the IMDb, the Screen Two project was the brainchild of producer Kenith Trodd, who headed a team to create a programming block for the BBC to compete with Channel Four’s efforts in making movies for television and theatrical release. The series plan was to break the BBC away from their studio-made stage play format (know your old PBS-TV rebroadcasts of Doctor Who) to create “live,” non-stage programming. Known as The Fourth Man during its TV run, it carried the title of Blunt for its VHS and overseas theatrical releases.
Of course, it helps that we have Sir Anthony Hopkins heading the cast to inspire us to sit down and review the title for our Mill Creek blowout of their 50-film Excellent Eighties box set.
So, what’s it all about?
VHS image courtesy of ijcm3/eBay.
The story concerns Blunt, Anthony Blunt (a bad Bond joke on my part), a British art historian and professor who became the infamous “fourth man” in the Cambridge Five, a notorious group of spies comprised of rogue MI5 agents (Britain’s CIA equivalent) working for the Soviet Union from the 1930s up through the early 1950s. Once a Sir of the Royal Victorian Knighthood, Blunt was stripped of the honor in 1979 when his activities came to public light.
While the production values exceed the TV stage play-style they were attempting to update, this is — even with Hopkins to hold our interest — still pretty dry and pretty boring and the production values really haven’t improved much: this isn’t an action drama, but (still) a stagey, psychological drama that attempts to get inside the heads of the men and asks “why” Blunt did it. While Blunt and the Cambridge Five’s exploits are certainly intriguing and appealing to spy aficionados, the way this story is told, it just isn’t as engaging as the exploits of Ashaf Marwan, an Egyptian billionaire who worked for Mossad, the State of Israel’s intelligence agency to became the world’s first true “super spy” during the 1973 Yom Kippur War/Arab-Israeli War. His exploits are chronicled in the much better spy film The Angel (2018) and its accompanying documentary, The Spy Who Fell to Earth (2018).
You can watch Blunt: The Fourth Man on Tubi as a free-with-ads stream.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Yes, along with The Lady and the Highwayman, this Mill Creek has not one but two John Hough made for TV movies. Hough is an interesting director who made perhaps my favorite late model Hammer movie (Twins of Evil), one of the best car movies of all time (Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry), several fun Disney movies (the Witch Mountain films, The Watcher In the Woods), some out there slashers (American Gothic and Incubus), a few sequels (The Triumphs of a Man Called Horse and Howling IV: The Original Nightmare) and even executive produced a really insightful wrestling documentary (TheBackyard).
This bodice ripper, based on the book by Barbara Cartland, starts with Sir Giles Staverley (Christopher Plummer) being tricked into gambling away not only his home but his daughter to Lord Harry Wrotham (Edward Fox, M in Never Say Never Again). He becomes so distraught over what he has done to his daughter Serena (Helena Bonham Carter in one of her first big movies) he kills himself.
However, Lord Justin Vulcan (Marcus Gilbery, who is also in Hough’s Biggles) wins everything from Wrotham yet has no idea what to do with the house and the girl. His mother, Lady Harriet Vulcan (Diana Rigg!) wants her far away from her son and their ancestral home of Mandrake, so all manner of upper crust intrigue follows.
Originally airing on December 27, 1987 on CBS, there are also roles here for Stewart Granger (The Wild Geese), Fiona Fullerton (A View to a Kill), Neil Dickson (who was also in Biggles, an HBO afternoon movie that I really need to get to), Anna Massey (Peeping Tom), Eileen Atkins (Sister Albana fromI Don’t Want to Be Born), Gareth Hunt (who is in Hough’s Lady and the Highwayman) and Robert Addie (Mordred in Excalibur).
Eurospy fans will be pleased that two Bond girls (Fullerton and Rigg) show up here, while noting that both Rigg and Hunt played roles on The Avengers (she was, of course, Emma Peel while he played Mike Gambit on The New Avengers).
Leave it to Mill Creek — with their B-Movie Blast set — to carry the entire, two-film career of director Lawrence Bassoff on one disc. And Hunk also reappears on their Excellent Eighties set, which we’re also unpacking this month . . . but not with Weekend Pass, again? Is not Weekend Pass, also from the ’80s, “excellent” as well? What gives, Mill Creek? As you can see, we took it upon ourselves to review Hunk, not only once, but twice, with two different takes, as we love this movie. Now, that’s not to say that Hunk — as well as Weekend Pass — isn’t a bitch to sit through, because they will make you want to Red Ryder your eyes out.
We also made an effort to find the WORST artwork used for the film. It’s pure 10th grade art class. Again, get the BB gun: for it’s a celluloid Christmas. Oh, guess who got his start as a background extra in this: Brad Pitt. True story.
Rondo does it again with the art fail that is Top Cop. Oh, and Vipco did worse with Beyond Evil.
Did you see Bedazzled (1967) with Peter Cooke as the devil and Dudley Moore as the dope who accepts the ‘Bubs seven wishes for his soul? More likely: Did you see the Elizabeth Hurley and Brendan Fraser’s 2000 remake? Well, it is that same old Faustian tale, only with comedian-actor James Coco in the Cooke role. And only the budget is so low, the production could only afford one wish. And that “wish,” if the poster didn’t give it away, is to be a “hunk.”
Not only is this review a round-up of Lawrence Bassoff’s career, but actor Steve Levitt’s as well, as we also reviewed his work role in Last Resort. Sure, Levitt did other things, more than two things — mostly TV series, which we don’t review — but unless Mill Creek boxes those “other things” up, we probably won’t review those films. Hey, the dude is serviceable and was Tiger Blood tryin’, but after 10 years in the biz, he just wasn’t winning. He bailed on the biz after his first starring role-TV series The Boys (1988) failed, and the TV movie Danger Team (1991), which was series pilot, didn’t go to series. Again, Mill Creek, hook us up with Danger Team to give us a Steve Levitt trifecta for the site.
So . . . Levitt is Bradley Brinkman, a computer programming geek whose fiancee ditched him for her aerobics instructor — and I feel for Bradley: My “dumping” experience was by a woman who pursued me . . . then traded up . . . when our mutual friend hit the family inheritance jackpot. Why be with an up-and-coming radio jock who used to draw floor plans for a living when you can live in a two-story mansion on the Palm Beach-skirting Intercoastal? They’re divorced thes days, but she cleaned up (which was her scam, I believe) and financed her to-Los Angeles relocation. She was ga-ga for Hollywood, even when we dated.
But I digress, again.
So Bradley is losing his mind over finishing a computer program, so he drops the ol’ “I’d sell my soul to finish this” trope. He comes to move next door to Chachka (Cynthia Szigeti, a member of the influential The Grounding comedy troupe). At least she’s sweet on him, but the rest of the upscale greedy professional types hate him because Cha is sweet on him. But there’s another “hottie” on the way.
Coco’s devil dispatches O’Rourke (Deborah Shelton, a Miss USA 1970 and runner-up to Miss Universe that year; she was on Dallas and in Bloodtide, as well as DePalma’s Body Double) to finish the computer program for Bradley — and gives him a new, hunky body for the some. So, actually, he gets “two” wishes. Ugh, don’t over think the plot.
And, with that . . . that’s a wrap on Steve Levitt. Call John Allen Nelson (the Deathstalker from Deathstalker and the Warriors from Helland Dave in Killer Klowns from Outer Space), as Hunk Golden: the ultimate martial arts he-man that can bed any woman he wants. Remember Den, the John Candy-voiced geek in Heavy Metal that the Loc-Nar geek-to-hunked? It’s like that. Only Den, like Hunk Golden, won’t end up in hell.
PLOT TWIST!
Does anyone remember Rebecca Bush, who played Florence Henderson in Growing Up Brady? Well, she’s really actress Deborah Shelton, aka O’Reilly, aka Dr. Sunny Graves, the head shrink that Brad’s been seeing. Huh, people “become” other “people” in this movie. Was all of this identity-switching in the original script or did actors quit and creative scripting filled out the story? Who knows. (What a f’ing mess this is, but we will plow forward.)
PLOT TWIST!
Now, we are time traveling, as Bradley-Hunk meets Ivan the Terrible, Jack the Ripper and Benito Mussolini, as his job is to recruit “demons” for hell, which are in short supply. And something about Coco-Devil wanting to start WW III. (What a f’ing mess this is, but we will plow onward.)
PLOT TWIST!
Bradley-Hunk becomes a nation celebrity when he saves Garrison Gaylord, a national, but drunken, television host (Robert Morse, who you know as Bertram Cooper on Mad Men) from being hit by a car — with his brute strength. Like the Hulk. Only he’s not green and he’s Hunk. And O’Brien who is Dr. Graves, who is the devil’s agent, is really a 10th Century princess who sold her sold to avoid an arranged marriage. (What a f’ing mess this is, but we will plow forward.)
Does the presence of Avery Schreiber, aka Dr. Cornelius Butt from Galaxina (also on the B-Movie Blast set), as well as Airport ’79 and Silent Scream, help? Does the presence of Hilary Shepherd, who was in the band American Girls and appeared in Weekend Pass, Scanner Cop, Radioactive Dreams and Theodore Rex, help?
Nope.
If you’re a B&S About Movies geeker of the obscure actor variety, you’ll see Melanie Vincz (The Lost Empire), Page Mosely (Edge of the Axe), John Barrett (Gymkata and Steel Dawn) and Andrea Patrick, who plays a mermaid here; she was a beauty queen that was married to Fabian Forte — and you know we show the Fabian film love ’round ‘ere.
If only Fabian starred in this as the Devil. No, we’d never wish that devilish punishment on Fabian. Don’t believe us? Punish yourself on You Tube — Brad is called out at the 17:25 mark in the upload. So there’s that click bait incentive.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
We’ve been jammin’ on this movie at B&S About Movies for quite some time, as we included it on August 19, 2019, as part of our “Deadly Game Shows Week” of film reviews. Leave it to the fine film folks at Mill Creek to finally give it a slot on a Mill Creek box set. And it’s a part of their B-Movie Blast 50-film box set. And guess what? As is par for the Mill Creek course, it’s coming at us again on Mill Creek’s Excellent Eighties 50-film set — which guest writer Sean Mittus covered for us (on February 28, 2021).
Yes. The poster is better than the movie.
Well, Sam, even though he knows I hate Troma movies more so than him, he asked me to give this another take, so as to keep the site fresh and repeat free. Whatever, boss.
Lord help me. I guess I’ll be sharing some of Sam pissy hate-mails love for not liking Troma movies. But I pride myself on my “delusional hipster” and “edgy commentary” skill sets. Look, I just don’t like movies that are bad on purpose. Well, scratch that. Writer and director Eric Eichelberger, of the comedic horror Ghoul Scout Zombie Massacre, purposely made his movie “bad.” But it’s not bad from incompetence or campy due to lack of skill (as is the case, here), for it is a well-produced and shot film and acted film (by skilled actors that understand their material) that is in homage to the ’80s SOV films before it.
That same can’t be said for this . . . celluloid thing. It’s exists. That’s the nicest thing I can say. It’s not a real movie, like Ghoul Scout Zombie Massacre. I know, I know. It’s “over my head” and this . . . thing . . . and Redneck Zombies has fans. I am not one of them. Maybe The Toxic Adventure and Surf Nazis Must Die — and that’s only because of the nostalgic USA Network Friday-Saturday weekend connection. Yeah, yeah. I know this isn’t a Troma movie. But it dumps #2s — among other things — like one.
There, now that’s two rips on Troma. Deal with it, dear reader-cum-troll.
Yeah, this movie is more “deadly” that you realize. Where’s Ralphie’s Red Rider?
So, in an f’d up Los Angeles communications outlet of the KLST variety of the Zoo Radio variety (only that’s radio; this is TV) and just down the dial from “Weird Al” Yankovic’s Channel 62 in UHF, is the bottom-of-the-barrel KSIK — with the top-rated show hosted by John McCafferty: Live or Die. And McCafferty (played by Chuck Toedan) ain’t no Damon Killan. Now, do you remember when Chuck Barris went meta with The Gong Show Movie? That’s how you do a game show parody: Deathrow Gameshow is a “how to” on how not do to them.
Now, before you start with the “hypocrite” love: Yes, I liked Mark Pirro’s My Mom’s a Werewolf. But he only wrote that and didn’t direct it: the great Michael Fischa, did. And Fischa had John Saxon and Susan Blakely to carry the film. And McCafferty and his co-star, Robin Blythe ain’t no Saxon or Blakely.
So, if you haven’t figured it out: Condemned death row prisoners are given one last chance to entertain the masses before they get executed, as well as the chance to win prizes for their families. What you don’t know, in the “plot” of it all: It all goes off the rails when the Spumoni family’s boss is executed playing the game — by electro-shocked wires on his penis as a stripper dances before him. Comedy. You gotta love it.
Now the family send Luigi Pappalardo to kill the host. And this is where I am allowed by B&S About Movies’ hipster and edgy editorial policy to use the word “ensues” because to say more is a lesson in QWERTY futility. Okay, I’ll say this:
This is a film that thinks naming the love interest damsel-in-distress Gloria Sternvirgin, a member of Woman Against Anything Men Are For organization, is funny. It’s not. This is a film that can’t pull of its too-ambitious over talent and budget mock-parody TV commercials and promos for other shows at the station. Again, “Weird Al” does it so much better in UHF. This is a cheap, talentless crap bag that’s an insult to crap bags the world over that also served as a waste of my hand muscles. Do not do this to me again, Sam, or I’ll scrape up my couch coins and Auntie and Gram’s X-Mas and Birthday money and send a hitman to kill you — which is greater than the budget wasted on this “existing” crap bag that stinks to Troma high heaven.
I can’t recommend this. You’ll have to find your own freebie streams and online shopping links for DVDs.
R.D out. See you in the comments box.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
In the Mill Creek B-Movie Blast box set, you will encounter the only two movies that writer director Lawrence Bassoff made, Weekend Passand this film. It’s not often that you can say that you’ve seen every movie a director has made, so this is a real opportunity. Or perhaps I tell myself that to get through these films.
Where Bedazzled had the devil as Peter Cooke ready to give Dudley Moore seven wishes for his soul — or Elizabeth Hurley and Brendan Fraser in the 2000 remake — in Hunk we have James Coco — he died days before this was released — as Dr. D, the man who tempts this film’s hero with just one wish.
That wish? Well, to be a hunk. What else did you expect?
Bradley Brinkman (Steve Levitt, Last Resort) is a computer programmer who doesn’t yet know that all of the geeks will get rich and he’ll never have to worry about his fiancee who ran off with an aerobics instructor. But hey, it’s 1987 and those years are far away.
Bradley says something about selling his soul to finish a computer program, which means that his next creation, The Yuppie Program, is a huge success. He moves in next door to Chachka (Cynthia Szigeti, who may have appeared in a few films but is best known for her work running The Groundlings and starting the ACME Comedy Theater; she taught plenty of folks, with a short list being Will Forte, Joel McHale, Conan O’Brien, Cheri Oteri, Julia Sweeney and Lisa Kudrow) and immediately all of the yuppies hate him because he doesn’t fit in.
By the way, if you’re reading this and wondering what a yuppie is in the year of 2021, it stood for young urban professional. It went from a demographic term to a pejorative pretty quickly, to the point that my father-in-law uses the term interchangably with socialists and liberals, which isn’t what yuppie means, but I’d need an entire second website to discuss some of these conversations.
The truth is that the program that made Bradley rich was really made by the devil’s agent O’Rourke (Deborah Shelton, who was Miss USA 1970 and runner-up to Miss Universe that year; she was on Dallas and in Bloodtide, as well as DePalma’s Body Double, where he disliked her voice enough to have her redubbed; her second husband was Shuki Levy who wrote the theme songs for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the Mister T cartoon, M.A.S.K. and many, many others, in addition to directing several episodes of the series he helped produce with Saban Entertainment). She makes him a deal that if he wants a new body, he can have it for the summer and he agrees (or else this movie would end about seven minutes or so in to its running time).
He becomes Hunk Golden (John Allen Nelson, Deathstalker from Deathstalker and the Warriors from Helland Dave from Killer Klowns from Outer Space), the ultimate man, a person whose teeth never break, who can eat all the junk food he wants and who is also a martial arts master. I mean, sure, he’s going to burn for all eternity, but the next few years will look pretty great what with all the women he’s sleeping with and fashion trends he’s setting.
The whole reason for this demonic soul bargain is that there’s a shortage of demons, so Dr. D plans on Hunk and O’Brien going through time along with Ivan the Terrible, Jack the Ripper and Benito Mussolini. That’s pretty imaginative, as is the idea that the therapist who has been working with Hunk — Dr. Sunny Graves (Rebecca Bush, who played Florence Henderson in Growing Up Brady) — is really O’Reilly too.
Somewhere in the midst of all of this, a drunk television host named Garrison Gaylord (Robert Morse, who was in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying as well as playing Bertram Cooper on Mad Men; here he is in an 80’s sex comedy which seems like a step down but work is work) nearluy hits them on the beach and Hunk stops the car with just his strenngth. He becomes an instant celebrity while Dr. D worries that Sunny/O’Brien has fallen in love with another client. If she fails again, he promises to return her to her original form.
Instead of helping Dr. D start World War III, Bradley and O’Brien end up cancelling their contracts, with her going back to being a 10th Century princess who sold her soul to avoid an arranged marriage. I mean, now she has centuries of experience and is a great programmer, so I think she’ll be fine.
You’ll also see some familiar faces here. And by familiar faces, I mean the kind of people that maniacs like me shout out loud when they see them, like Avery Schreiber, who was in the Doritos commercials when I was a kid and shows up in Airport ’79 and Silent Scream. He also taught the master improvisation classes at Chicago’s Second City, so the fact that both he and Szigeti are in this is kind of a big deal for comedy nerds. If only Del Close had been in town that day!
Hilary Shepherd, who was in the band American Girls and played Divatox in Power Rangers: Turbo — maybe she met the Saban guys through Shelton? — is in this too. She’s also in Weekend Pass, Scanner Cop, Radioactive Dreams and Theodore Rex, all movies again that none out of a hundred people have seen, but all ones that get obsessed over here.
You’ll also find Melanie Vincz (The Lost Empire), Page Mosely (Edge of the Axe), John Barrett (who did the stunts for Gymkata and Steel Dawn) and Andrea Patrick, who plays a mermaid and was a beauty queen from the town of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, just a half an hour from my home. Her name may not mean much to you, but she’s married to Fabian Forte and we all know just how much Fabian and his films get coverage here.
Yet perhaps the biggest name in this movie barely is in it. Brad Pitt was an extra in this film, making it his very first screen appearance.
Can you write over a thousand words on a forgotten 1980’s sex comedy? Yes. You sure can.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We’ve already posted two articles about this beloved film on February 23, 2019 and November 3, 2020, but what kind of female society week would we have if this one didn’t make the cut?
To be perfectly honest, I could watch this movie every single day. Directed by five different people — Joe Dante, Carl Gottlieb, Peter Horton, John Landis and Robert K. Weiss — and starring tons of folks that I love, it’s the most perfect of all cinematic junk food.
Rather than give you a breakdown of everything that airs on WIDB-TV (channel 8) during its broadcasting day, I’ll just touch on the fact that this movie unites so many of my favorite people in one place.
There’s Russ Meyer as, well, Russ Meyer the video store owner, because what other place would have giant movie posters all over it for Supervixens? An assortment of comedians enacting a roast in the place of a funeral, with Charlie Callas, Rip Tayor, Jackie Vernon, Slappy White, Henny Youngman and Steve Allen being upstaged by Joe Dante favorite Belinda Balaski, who goes from sadness to anger to comedic force in one incredible performance. Ed Begley, Jr. as the Invisible Man. William “Blackula” Marshall as the leader of the Video Pirates. Henry Silva appearing in Unsolved Mysteries years before that show was a thing (it debuted in 1987, most of this film was shot in 1985). David Alan Grier as Don “No Soul” Simmons, something that never fails to make me smile. Andrew “Dice” Clay before anyone knew who he was, shooting Ken Wahl’s wife and getting Jimmy Olsen in trouble. And oh yeah — the main segment has Steve Forrest (the star of S.W.A.T. and Mommie Dearest‘s Greg Savitt), John Travolta’s older brother Joey, Lana Clarkson (Barbarian Queen and, sadly, a future Phil Spector victim), Sybil Danning and Forrest J. Ackerman as the President of the United States in a movie that should star Zsa Zsa Gabor. Stick around after the credits or you’ll miss a picture-perfect Kroger Babb riff starring Carrie Fisher and one of my favorite movie people to ever exist, Paul Bartel. Oh! I almost forgot Monique Gabrielle as Taryn Steele!
I have no idea who this movie was for other than for me. It’s a movie that speaks the language of the movie geek long before the internet existed and was doomed to bomb (or play HBO forever and find worshippers).
I’m so happy to have the new Kino Lorber blu ray of this. Beyond featuring a documentary with interviews with nearly everyone involved, it also has the deleted segments Peter Pan Theater, The Unknown Soldier and The French Ventriloquist’s Dummy. Plus, there are outtakes of every single routine from the roast of Harvey Pitnik and audio commentary from Kat Ellinger and Mike McPadden.
You can get the new blu ray from Kino Lorber, who were nice enough to send us a copy. This is one of those movies that I feel that everyone should have in their collection. There is no way that I can be unbiased on this one.
Man, I don’t know if this is strictly a giallo or just plain sleaze. But hey, I watched it, you’re going to read it and then we’ll all go about our way. Seriously, I always thought The Devil’s Honey had the most ridiculous sex scenes in a quasi-giallo and here we are with Profumo, which has nothing to do with the British sex and politics scandal, and was also known as Bizarre.
Florence Guérin (Top Model, Faceless, Too Beautiful to Die, The Black Cat) plays Laurie, a woman who is pretty much haunted by a violent lover named Corbi. No matter how far away from him she gets, he always pulls her back in.
Yet now she’s found a new lover named Edward (Robert Egon, the only actor I can think of who is in a Marvel movie*, My Own Private Idaho and two Fulci films**, Massacro and Sodoma’s Ghost), who she feminizes and sodomizes when she isn’t pouring Coca-Cola all over his pubes and licking it off. Yes, this is that kind of movie.
Corbi is never far behind, sending men to attack Laurie and Edward before she decides to take matters into her own hands. But is she strong enough to leave him? Even sixteen years after The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, giallo heroines are still having trouble dumping the abusive men who give them the kink they need. Oh Laurie. Your vice is a locked door.
Frankly, I’m shocked Severin has put this out yet, but this may be because not that many people know about it. Maybe we can do something about that. I’ve honestly never seen Russian roulette used as foreplay before, so I guess that late model giallo has wonderful things to teach us all.
*To be fair, it’s just the 21st Centurt post-Cannon Captain America.
**You could say three, as he also shows up in the mashup of these movies, Cat in the Brain.
Iheiji Muraoka (Ken Ogata) had plans to be a shopkeeper. However, as he begins to learn that the Japanese armed forces will soon advance across Asia, he instead goes into business as a brothel owner. After all, an army moves on its stomach, but it often stays ready to fight based on its desire.
This is one of Shôhei Imamura’s later movies, but still rich with the black humor and desire to explore the hidden castes and stories of Japan.
Muraoka became Zegen, quite literally the most powerful seller of women in modern Japanese history, known as “The Boss of the South Seas.” Yet beyond the monetary and carnal rewards of this vice, he saw the business of turning out women as an almost patriotic duty.
At the close of this film, as the Japanese forces return to Malaysia, Muraoka rushes to greet them, seeing them as the children of the men that he had worked with to keep Japan strong. He is shoved down by a commanding officer who does not even recognize the old man’s attempts at speaking Japanese. In the end, despite his fanatic devotion and the ruin of so many lives, he himself has been rendered meaningless.
Zegen is one of the three films on Arrow Films’ new Survivor Ballads: Three Films By Shohei Imamura set. I’ve learned something new from each of these movies as we covered them this week and this set has my complete seal of approval. You can get yours from MVD.
Okay, so we’re cheating with this review. It doesn’t star John Doe, the subject of our week-long film tribute.
This parody on organized religion and the mass communication medium of television directed by New York No Wave artist Beth B stars Doe’s ex-wife Exene Cervenka, who meet her second husband Viggo Mortensen on the set of this, her only acting role. Beth B made her feature film debut with the 16-mm black & white film Vortex (1981) starring Lydia Lunch (Blank Generation, Mondo New York) and a young James Russo (later a go-to heavy in films such as Beverly Hills Cop and Donnie Brasco).
Stepthen McHattie (Theodore Rex) stars in this black comedic statement on the televangelist craze of the ’80s (think Jim and Tammy Bakker) as Reverend Randall, a flock-bilking preacher who likes to compose and rehearse his sermons while watching pornography. His religious empire begins to crumble when the unemployed Jerome Stample (Viggo Mortensen), who grows tired his wife Rhonda (Cervenka) donating to Randall’s church, devises a blackmail plot with his sister-in-law (the singular Dominique) to ensnare the reverend in a sex scandal.
Surprisingly, the film’s soundtrack doesn’t feature the music of Cervenka or director Beth B’s frequent collaborator Lydia Lunch; it instead spins the popular college radio and new wave club hits “Sputnik,” “Touched by the Hand of God,” and “Skullcrusher” by New Order, and “Jesus Saves” and “Twanky Party” by Cabaret Voltaire — along with a few tunes by co-star Dominique (Davalos), who would form the Delphines with former Go-Go Kathy Valentine in the late ’90s.
While it was released on VHS and appeared on HBO, Salvation! has never been released on DVD; however, we’ve learned the vinyl soundtrack was, in fact, released on CD in 1988 (thanks, Fabio, for pointing that out!). The film was previously offered as a VOD stream on Amazon Prime, but has since been pulled from release. You can, however, watch the film through a series of clips uploaded to a playlist by a You Tuber known as “McHattie Fan.”
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Moviesand publishes on Medium.
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