50 ft. Woman's Rival Found Mummied

Yyvette Vickers found dead. Daily Mail tarts it up pretty good for us, so go there. Ya just KNEW she'd come to no good after 52 years of being a hot starlet (well maybe not so hot in the end....)
Who's up for some bare 1959 heinie?

Smoke Crazy

I am moving back to my hometown after being away for many years. In the process of packing I've come across many photos, articles and mementoes that has gotten me feeling a little nostalgic. That's why I'm blowing the dust off the first feature length movie I made, SMOKE CRAZY. This movie was shot back in 1990 and the re-edited into a short in 2005. I present the short to you all today, so pull up a comfy chair, butter some popcorn, and please enjoy our feature presentation. If you have trouble viewing the movie here you can link to it by clicking on the title.

Cher-lesque - the Queen Bee Buzzes Again

I saw the film on my birthday with a dozen 40-something gay pals and we all said the same thing afterwards: it was fun. At times, I must admit, I was thinking "okay I know where this is going...so can we please move on to the next song or Cher scene?"

The critics and fellow bloggers are all trying to top each other with clever summaries: "How do you get to Burlesque? Via Chicago past Xanadu on the way to Cabaret."

Cher is back, bitches. She reportedly even hired her own editors to make sure she looked swell after several years away from the big screen. When I read that tidbit I thought: wow, such a Babs Streisand move. It isn't hard to believe though- the 2 divas are contemporaries and Babs' hubby James Brolin (Cher's Malibu neighbors) even appears in the film's 11th hour.

All the roles are well cast- even the non speaking ones.

Cher summed up the film herself on her Twitter: "It's not Shakespeare! It's predictable but it's beautiful and FUN!"

True dat, Cher.

Cher will be soon hosting TCM ala Alec Baldwin/Robert Osbourne in a series of special events. She loves TCM and appreciates those well-worn functional B-film plots (like the one in Burlesque) that would have starred Alice Faye or Betty Grable back in Hollywood's golden age.

During the film, I was thinking to myself that the teens and 20-somethings who haven't seen anything on TCM or poked their heads beyond the last decade's horror film remakes & reality shows will find Burlesque to be a rare entertainment. THE BEST MOVIE EVER...they'll post on facebook. Bless their lil' hearts.

The real gritty drama of this film was behind the scenes when Screen Gems head Clint Culpepper greenlit his lover Steve Antin's screenplay and gave him the director role. That is how these things work, folks. Look how many times Sony has sucked Nora Ephron's balls in the last decade due to her alliances with studio Vice Presidents.

Anyway, Culpepper micromanaged as much as he could on his lover's film - which led to borderline fisticuffs on the set, we hear. No worries if they may be now broken up, Steve Antin is a survivor...and has kicked around Hollywood as an actor (The Last American Virgin; The Goonies; The Accused) and writer (Chasing Papi) for decades. He is well connected- his other ex-lover David Geffen helped convince Cher to take the role in Burlesque. Geffen dated Cher too.

Did I mention that insufferable Culpepper of Screen Gems also control freaked all over Cher's Graumann's Chinese Theatre cement ceremony? (I was there!) He was a first-rate boorish exec trying to boss Cher around at first - but she held her ground and her spotlight. I'm sure Cher understands that her legend is cemented and studio heads are quickly deposed and forgotten.

Cher was very cool - and gave fans more than an obligatory wave. She actually walked over and down the line of fans who showed up for her - thanking and posing her way deeper into our hearts.



The film Burlesque could make a great drinking game...

Take a shot everytime Cher licks her puffy upper lip.

Take a shot everytime a character talks about what THEY want ( I , I, me, me). That's very LA.

In her film debut, X-Tina is a likable ingénue with great lungs and no backstory, and her on-screen love interest (Cam Gigandet) is perfect for the role of a Hollywood metrosexual hottie who has to fuck a girl to prove he's straight. Did I mention he is a bartender/song writer? Yup, dude has his dreams too. How very LA-- and director Antin gets that. In this town, everybody has hidden talents or thinks they do.

Burlesque also delivers Stanley Tucci in his 2nd "gay Eve Arden" role. He is good and brings some heart and laughs to the film.

It ain't SHOWGIRLS camp - it takes heterosexual men to deliver those unintentional cult comedies (see also: Valley of the Dolls).

Burlesque just wants to entertain for 100 minutes, feature divas singing, flaunt pretty boy ass - and thankfully has no message to deliver other than stay true to your dreams and keep your friends & enemies close and your plastic surgeon closer.

Abandoned!

Twenty years ago this weekend I met Donna Lethal. She came to visit her friend Mavis Martini, one of the first people I met when I moved to Wilmington, NC. Back then Donna was a blonde and went by the name of Jayne International and I was a young filmmaker who loved B Movies and beer. With our combined love of trashy cinema (John Waters, David Lynch, Ed Wood, Doris Wishman etc...) I decided to make a movie with Mavis, Jayne and other assorted oddballs we knew. That movie was ABANDONED! and now twenty years later I've decided to recut and update it. Donna and Mavis are too much of a class act to post it here, but I'm not. So, grab a comfy chair and some snacks and enjoy the Director's Cut of ABANDONED!.

Blood Freak (1972)

This movie defies decription so I'm not even going to try. My favorite part is at the end when the narrator chokes on his cigarette while preaching about the evil of drugs.

David Lynch Friday

Hey all you Slammerers (Slammerites?), if you every wondered what DIRTY DANCING would look like had David Lynch directed it, I've got your answer right here.



And on the flip side of that coin:

What if BLUE VELVET was a romantic comedy?

Take Your Vitamin B-Movie Monster

One of the best monster beach musicals ever ! Do the Zombie Stomp... Sing the melodic song "Elaine" and dance the "Wiggle Wobble"...or vacuum your carpet to a music box tune...but beware of zombies, voodoo, and blood thirsty Connecticut sea monsters.

In Dreams

I'm feeling suave today.

Ma Na Me Na

When I was a little kid my favorite show was Sesame Street and my favorite bit was the Ma Na Me Na song. I would go around the house singing that song repeatedly, which probably led to my Mother's nervous condition. I loved the Ma Na Me Na song, so you can imagine my surprise when I found out that it was based on a song from a Swedish softcore porn movie called Inferno E Paradiso (Heaven and Hell). My childhood memories are based on porn! This explains so much about me.

Here is the Sesame Street version.


Here is the Ma Na Me Na scene from Inferno E Paradiso.


Here is the American trailer for Heaven and Hell. I really like the "prudish American" hard sell of this one.


And, lastly, here is Dio performing Heaven And Hell, because it rocks hard.

Teenage mother means nine months of trouble!

There's nothing I can add to this. It's perfect.

Put the glasses on!

In my opinion, one of the best fight scenes in cinema is from John Carpenter's THEY LIVE. It's not the flashiest, best choreographed fight ever filmed. It's just a good, solid five minutes of two guys beating the crap out of each other because one guy wants the other guy to put on a pair of sunglasses.

Trailer Park

It is rare that I get excited about a movie based on the trailer, but I can't wait for ZOMBIE STRIPPERS to be released. From the trailer, I can gather that it has two plot devices that I really enjoy in cinema:

1) Zombies

2) Strippers

I know that this movie will probably suck, but what a concept! You just know Ed Wood is smiling down from Heaven.

Damn you all to HELL!

Charlton Heston had to go kick it, which means that "Attack of the Crab Monsters" got kicked off TCM's schedule tomorrow night.

More Slammies

The Hardest Working Actor Award goes to Jack Cassidy for appearing in four(!) projects after his death in 1976. Here's a clip of Jack on the Dinah Shore show displaying his two great talents, singing and being a jackass.


The Hardest Working Actor Award, First Runner-Up goes to Bela Lugosi, who only appeared in most of one movie after his death, but what a movie!

R.I.P., Ben Chapman

... better known as one of my very favorites - The Creature From the Black Lagoon!


... which, believe it or not, is not only the same fishin' hole at the beginning of the Andy Griffith Show, but only a few miles from my house, and a favorite hiking spot of mine.

The poster is better than the movie.

Well, except for the part where Jack Nicholson mutters, "We put garlic on the bullets." I think that's his only line.

Somewhere Over The Rainbeaux

I watch a lot of bad movies. If it has a low budget and an exploitable premise I'll watch it. More often than not, I'm disappointed by the movies I see, but I keep watching them because I am looking for diamonds among these lumps of coal. One of these diamonds is Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith.

Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith's biggest role was Lavelle in CAGED HEAT (1974), but she is probably best known for her work in the Cheerleader movies of the mid seventies. She appeared in THE SWINGING CHEERLEADERS (1974), THE POM POM GIRLS (1976), and REVENGE OF THE CHEERLEADERS (1976). Rainbeaux isn't the lead in any of these movies, she doesn't have the most lines, or get the most screen time, but she has a presence that makes you want to watch her whenever she is on screen and that is a quality that is rare in any actress.

In this scene from REVENGE OF THE CHEERLEADERS (1976) Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith is the pregnant girl in the bathroom holding the lizard.