Playmaker, also known as Death Date and Private Teacher, was recommended to me by Brad Sykes, who knows a thing or two about erotic thrillers, as he directed two movies in the last days of the genre, Demon’s Kiss and Loving Angelique. Producer Peter Samuelson saw two people standing on a Hollywood street corner holding a sign “looking for money for a movie.” After several rewrites, their story became this movie, which was filmed at The Eagle’s Nest in Chatsworth, CA. It was the former home of The Captain and Tenille.

Jamie Harris (Jennifer Rubin, Taryn from A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and the star of a movie that maybe only I love Bad Dreams) is a waitress/actress who wants to land a role in the film Playmaker. Her friend Eddie (John Getz) offers to set her up with the mysterious Ross Talbert (Colin Firth; more on a star of that caliber being in an erotic thriller in a moment), an acting teacher who can “bring the real you out.” His teaching is more psychologically abusive than the Meisner Technique or Lee Strasberg’s Method; several of his past students have been murdered. One night — after they’ve had shower sex, this is an erotic thriller, right? — She makes her way into the room that she demands never to be opened. It’s filled with stalker photos of her, blown up to a considerable size, and a book that gives her a grade of F for her acting. He comes in with a knife; she shoots him in self-defense.

Yet when the police come, it’s not Talbert’s body. It’s another man, Michael Condren. So, who did she kill? And has she learned how to be a great actress because of all of this? She does get the lead in Playmaker.

The Schlock Pit has covered this—I feel like every time I look up a VHS-era film, they are there, and this warms my insides—and they report that it was written by Michael Schroeder (Out of the Dark) and rewritten yet again by its director, Yuri Zeltser, who wrote Bad Dreams.

So wait — how did Colin Firth, the Best Actor Academy Award-winning actor for The King’s Speech — end up in a movie that had a “must be 18 to rent” handwritten sticker on it? Firth has repeatedly spoken of his hate for this movie, telling The Sun, “My son happened to be in Los Angeles at the time. It was a three-week job, and it paid extremely well. It’s a rather silly story about an acting coach who trains an actress by psychologically torturing her. I knew it would be complete rubbish,h and I sincerely hope no one ever sees it.”

He also told The Weekly News, “…it was a terrible film. I hope it sinks without a trace.”

He explained to The Radio Times four years after making it, “If I want to buy a house or am about to go bankrupt, and someone comes along with a hefty pay cheque for a ridiculous job, I’d do it. I’ve made a couple of pieces of crap, although when one is working, one takes it seriously. It’s embarrassing appearing in rubbish, so you con yourself it’s worthwhile even though the third eye knows full well it isn’t. But I do have a child to support.”

I think the man doth protest too much.

What are the lessons that cost $5,000 from this teacher? Ego killing. You must destroy your sense of self, give up control of your mind and body, and use the worst moments in your life to fuel your craft, even if you never enjoy it. Passion doesn’t last; being able to draw on the torture of human existence? That’s what makes an actor.

However, the bad guy dies halfway through this, and our heroine is as confused as the audience. It only gets stranger from there. Also, Jennifer Rubin dresses super boxy and looks like a 1990s Louise Brooks, aggressively chewing ice while she gets day drunk in a bar and bemoans her actress life. Yeah, I kind of fell in love with her character right there.

Playmaker is better than it has any right to be. It’s my favorite type of adult thriller, one that gets the memo about being sexy and then decides that once it tickles you, it can also get weird. Downright weird. Colin Firth somehow made several Bridget Jones movies and wasn’t embarrassed by those, yet disliked this. Go figure. Maybe I just like trash.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Andrew Stevens seemingly took on the male lead in almost every erotic thriller of the 1990s. Reuniting with his Night Eyes 2 and 3 co-star Shannon Tweed, he plays Nick Richardson, the mystery man who exists only in the dreams of his character, Moira Davis. She’s been abused by her husband, Dr. Daniel Davis (Joe Cortese), for so long that she’s gone into this fantasy world, dreaming of Nick and the gorgeous house that he’s built.

What happens when she finds that house? Well, she does. Nick lives there. So what is fantasy, and what is real?

Directed by Stevens from a script by Karen Kelly (formerly one of the Hardbodies; she also wrote Body Chemistry 4: Full Exposure, Dead of Night, Poison Ivy: The New Seduction and another Stevens and Tweed movie, Scorned), this film gets called out in We Kill for Love because of how it takes the erotic thriller script, eschews much of the noir and becomes almost a fantasy film yes, I know, beyond the sex fantasy.

SubTorretto on Letterboxd had a line about this that I love: “Shannon Tweed has gorgeously lit sex dreams that devolve into her running down a passage of flowing curtains, a mix of horror, mystery and stunning beauty; it’s like she’s in an 80s Italian slasher.” Maybe that’s why I loved this so much, as it has the rich blackness of VHS-era Italian movies that I go crazy for. This event has the candelabras of the Italian gothic! Those dream sequences have the kind of fog that Fulci loved, minus the eye violence he adored so much more.

Other than the Gregory Dark films, this film stands at the pinnacle of the erotic thriller genre. It may not adhere to the genre’s rules, but its unique take and bold deviations make it significant.

Imagine if Roger Corman produced a Giallo. Well, didn’t he do this a whole bunch of times with all of those erotic thrillers? An in-name-only sequel directed by Catherine Cyran (writer of Slumber Party Massacre III), this has Phillip (Barry Bostwick) marrying a series of age-appropriate women like Jean (Lesley-Anne Down) and bringing his young daughter Casey (Teresa Hill) to live with them. But like a plot out of a Caroll Baker/Umberto Lenzi movie, Phillip and Casey are truly lovers and kill off the wheelchair-bound rich woman before they have to deal with her lawyer, Howard (Michael Gross). But then it turns out that Jean may not be as dead as she seems.

This movie almost doesn’t want the erotic part of its genre. At one point, after getting high at a goth club, Casey brings home another club girl named Lisa (Betsy Lynn George) for a three-way with her much older lover. Instead of showing that, it’s all in dialogue, and we cut to the following day. As a result, this feels more like a TV movie than an actual erotic film. That said, Teresa Hill is gorgeous, but I’m also someone who grew up in the pre-Suicide Girls days of nascent goth girls who had no set way of wearing their makeup and couldn’t easily find Manic Panic and Urban Decay at Target.

The story is better than the first, however. I’m always a fan of criminals falling for someone who is even more dangerous than them, and this gets that right, with supernatural ghostlighting (I’m copyrighting that phrase) and Alex Keaton’s dad playing lover against lover.

Also known as Behind Closed Doors, this was made in the same house as Carnosaur 2. As always, I have to thank The Schlock Pit for that knowledge.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Jackson Barr is back to write the third in the Body Chemistry series, along with director Jim Wynorski, who seems perfect to make this movie. There’s also a new actress playing sexpert Dr. Claire Archer, as Shari Shattuck (star of two Cannon films, The Naked Cage and Number One With a Bullet, as well as video store classics like Arena, Uninvited and Death Spa) takes the reins — literally — from Lisa Pescia.

The not-so-good doctor has come back to Los Angeles, where Freddie Summers (Chick Vennera) is trying to make the movie of her life, along with studio boss Bob Sibley (Robert Forster) and producer Alan Clay (Andrew Stevens). Clay wanted his wife, Beth (Morgan Fairchild), to play the role of Claire, but there’s a problem. The sexologist knows Summers from her past — he was a character in the first movie — and only agrees to make the film if Clay has an affair with her.

It’s nice that Andrew got his mother Stella a part, even if this is softcore pornography. She doesn’t get nude, but Delia Sheppard and Becky LeBeau sure do. And hey, this starts with Robert Forester physically attacking two nude sex workers in a frenzy, a fact that is forgotten after it happens, kind of like the real Hollywood.

All Alan wanted to do was make nature films. Now he’s making exploitation movies and stuck between two gorgeous blondes. That doesn’t sound like the worst life. Despite having a successful online show — in 1994! — and being a best-selling writer, Dr. Claire Archer still needs to wrap men around her wizard’s sleeve and use people because she’s evil. Yes, a woman in charge of her sexuality, who knows how to use it to get ahead and has become popular because of it, has to be a harridan.

I prefer Pescia in the role, but this has enough for me to enjoy, including the filmmakers grabbing a crew member to play Morton Downer Jr. in a flashback.

You can watch this on Tubi.

September Drive-In Super Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre in Vandergrift, PA on September 27 and 28, 2024. Admission is still only $15 per person each night (children 12 and under free with adult) and overnight camping is available (breakfast included) for an additional $15 per person. You can buy tickets at the show but get there early and learn more here.

The features for Friday, September 27 are The Raven, The Terror, The Little Shop of Horrors and Attack of the Crab Monsters. Saturday, September 28 has The Beyond, Opera, Cemetery Man and A Blade In the Dark.

Throughout the 1990’s, Michele Soavi kept the traditions of Italian horror alive. Starting as an actor in films like Aliens 2: On Earth, City of the Living Dead, Demons and The New York Ripper, Soavi would also become an assistant director to greats such as Dario Argento (Tenebre, Phenomena), Lamberto Bava (Blastfighter and the previously mentioned Demons) and Terry Gilliam (The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Brothers Grimm). Finally, he’d graduate to creating his own films, including Stagefright, The Sect and The Church.

Cemetary Man is based on Tiziano Sclavi’s novel Dellamorte Dellamore (the best translation is “About Death, About Love”). Sclavi also created the comic book Dylan Dog, whose protagonist looks exactly like this film’s star Rupert Everett (and which was also made into a 2011 film).

Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett, My Best Friend’s Wedding) takes care of the Buffalora cemetery. He lives in a shack, with death and his mentally challenged assistant Gnaghi his only friends. Quite frankly, his life sucks. Young punks in town tell everyone he’s impotent. And his only hobbies are putting together a skull-shaped puzzle and crossing out dead people’s names in the telephone book.

That said, he has a hell of a job to do. The gates of the cemetery read “For those who will rise again,” and after a week, the dead rises from their graves, ready to kill the living. Francesco must kill them when they rise, even if no one wants to hear what a problem he’s facing. Again, the townspeople think he’s a moron, the mayor doesn’t care and, according to Franco, the town’s bookkeeper, he’d have to do a ton of paperwork if he really wanted the help.

While watching a funeral, Dellamorte falls in love with a widow. He waits for her to visit the graveside of her dead husband, then takes her on a tour of the grounds. As they have sex on the graves, her dead spouse rises and fatally bites her. Or maybe it’s a heart attack. Or maybe she isn’t even dead.  That said, seven days later, she also rises from the dead and Dellamorte must put her down as well.

Meanwhile, Gnaghi falls in love with the mayor’s daughter, Valentina. Even when she’s decapitated, he won’t fall out of love, instead digging up her head and starting up a romance. And the widow rises again, leading Dellamorte to believe that he was the one who killed her, not her husband. This causes him to either go insane or to begin seeing the truth, as the Angel of Death appears to him, begging him to stop killing the dead and only kill the living.

The widow has become the unattainable object of Dellamorte’s desire. He even tries to talk a doctor into removing his penis so that one aspect of her, the assistant to the new mayor (oh yeah, Valentina killed her dad when he shunned her new relationship) who is afraid of penetration, will fall in love with him. That relationship ends when she is raped, loses her phobia and marries her attacker.

Dellamorte then goes into town and kills anyone who said he was impotent. Meeting a prostitute in a bar, he realizes that she is also his unattainable love. He kills her and everyone in her apartment by setting it on fire.

Remember that bookkeeper, Franco? Well, he’s killed his whole family and the other murders that Dellamorte has done are all pinned on him. He drinks iodine to kill himself, but before he dies, Dellamorte visits. While visiting, he kills a nun, a nurse and a doctor, finally trying to confess to everything but no one will believe him.

Death reveals himself again and laughs that Dellamorte has not figured out what the difference between life and death is. So our hero packs up the car, grabs Gnaghi and tries to escape the town. As they race out of a tunnel, their car wrecks and Gnaghi is critically injured.

Dellamorte fears that the rest of the world has ceased to exist. He decides to kill himself and Gnaghi before his assistant is miraculously healed. He throws Dellamorte’s gun off a cliff and the two men decide to go back home.

If you’re looking for a narrative film that makes sense, this is not the movie. If you’re seeking a dream meditation of life, love and loss, then fire up your DVD player. Or streaming device, it is 2017 after all. Shot in a real abandoned cemetery, there are moments of poetic beauty and grace, like when the floating fool’s fire lights dance around the graves as Dellamorte and She make love. And there are also moments of abject horror and dread, as the film has an incredibly memorable personification of death.

Soavi would drop out of filmmaking to take care of his sick son in the late 1990’s, returning to work in television in the early 2000’s. Here’s hoping that he gets another chance to return to features, as Cemetery Man is everything I love about film — strangeness that is not easily accessible or categorized.