Beau-Pere (1981, Fr.)

Director Bertrand Blier's affecting, well-acted (believable) controversial film, due to its intimations of pedophilia, was initially denied theatrical release by US distributors, and was given only a limited showing a year later.

To sensationalize the film, one of its French posters (see right) displayed a long-shot image of an entirely topless Marion, although the exact shot was not in the actual film.

It told about the love between:

• Marion (Ariel Besse in her debut film and in her most prominent French-speaking performance, filmed at the age of 15), a 14 year-old girl
• Remy (Patrick Dewaere, an actor who committed suicide in 1982), Marion's step-father, a nearly 30 year-old morose lounge-restaurant piano player and psychologically-wounded and unstable man, still recovering after the death of his wife Martine (Nicole Garcia) in a car crash

The compelling film, without moralizing, portrayed the overmature girl's sexual affection and confession of romantic feelings and love for her conscience-torn stepfather when she came to live with him instead of her biological father, alcoholic Charly (Maurice Ronet). She hesitantly admitted as she hugged him one evening before bed that she was physically smitten with him: "I wonder if I'm not a bit attracted to you...physically...I don't know, I have desires, strange feelings and I think about you all the time." She also asked: "Aren't you physically attracted to me?" When he denied having physical feelings for her, he added: "I'm not quite old enough to go for little girls." She asserted: "I'm not a little girl anymore...I'm a woman! It's fairly recent, but I am one now!" and stomped out of the room.

The next morning, she resumed the discussion about her physical infatuation with him: "There's absolutely no doubt. It is a physical attraction. There are signs which don't lie...Well, when I'm next to you like last night, really close, my heartbeat speeds up. My breathing-rate is faster. My throat gets dry. There's like a heat wave inside me. I feel all weak...It's a killer." She replied: "So what?" when he mentioned their 16 year age difference.

When he found her seductively naked in his bed and demanding to be there, she asked: "What exactly am I lacking that would make me a woman?" He responded: "You don't really think you and I are going to make love?" She replied: "Not necessarily." He asked: "So what do you want?" Dejected, she told him: "I don't know."

Reversing himself, he told her that she was a woman, but he had no intention of making love to her ("Anyway, not now"), when she retorted: "Then, when?" He answered: "Never...Probably never. Just because all at once, you're a woman, it doesn't mean I have to make love to you. There are lots of women I've never made love to." She assured him: "I'm in no hurry. We have plenty of time." She said she was naked in his bed because she wanted to sleep next to him ("feel your body against me, snuggle up to you - it's all I think about"). She invited: "Are you coming?" He worried: "What if I lose control?" She replied: "Do I get to you?...Can't you sleep with a little girl in your arms?" She confessed: "If you did feel the way I do, it'd be cruel not to tell me." He assured her: "Even if I wanted you, which I don't, I could never touch you. You're too young, too vulnerable."

The next night, she again boldly joined him in bed, saying she was 'available' if he wanted her: "The classic woman-as-object." He resisted her affections, even though she declared that she was a 14 year old woman - "in perfect working order, all systems go. If you had any curiosity at all, you'd notice I have breasts which despite their small size, react when touched. You'd also notice other things which might interest you." Because she had confided her love in him, she urged him to take her virginity: "I want to be broken in by someone who knows the score." She desired: "Kiss me, Remy. A real kiss. Why not?" But he rejected her and refused to succumb, until she left for a ski resort on a train, when he gave her a passionate goodbye kiss.

Missing each other terribly during the holidays, he hurriedly drove to rendez-vous with Marion in her chalet room - and boldly asked her to make love to him on Christmas. She left for a short while and later when she returned, she found him sleeping. The nubile Marion undressed and climbed into his bed barechested as he surrendered to her 'Lolita-like' seduction and struggled with his mixed emotions while making love to her.

Later he thought about how she was "so happy" and that he was "very gentle" with her, but felt that they should cover up their wrongful indiscretion - he called it a "caress that got out of hand a bit." She wanted to make love again, but he declined: "I've pulled enough boners in my life." He felt responsible for her and wanted her to live a normal life, with friends and dates her own age. She quipped, revealing her own distaste for peers: "Boys my own age will want to make out." He was a bit surprised and dismayed when she took him literally and searched for a male "substitute" - and made out ("groping and pawing") with other boys, although claimed she wouldn't go all the way: "Everything below that belt is private territory. The exclusive owner of that territory is you."

When she disobediently returned from a birthday party the following morning, staying out past her curfew, he again succumbed to her charms. As she sat on his lap, he untied her purple party dress and stripped it off - admitting that he was again surrendering to her ("I'm tired of being a hero. He lightly touched her left breast as she asked: "Love me?" She willingly accepted his proposal to make love to her again (Marion: "Make love to me?...For a long time?...Often?...I'll make love to you, too") (their second love-making scene), before kissing him. She promised: "I'll make you forget the blues, all your troubles."

Afterwards, a surprise visit from her real father caused suspicion that Remy was sleeping with his step-daughter, when he caught them in an obvious lie, and saw them engaged in a steamy embrace and kiss while he was leaving. He turned and expressed his 'weird thought': "You wouldn't be sleeping together?" Remy feigned outrage and denied the accusation. Soon after, Remy struck up an acquaintance with divorced single-mother and accomplished solo pianist Charlotte (Nathalie Baye) and felt himself pulling away from young Marion. He worried about his departure as they laid naked in bed for the last time: "Hold me back, don't let me leave... I'll be so unhappy after I've lost you." Soon, she regretfully felt that she would become an "acceptable young lady" as she grew older and would no longer be "ashamed" to be accompanied by him. She even thought of having a baby with him, and tearfully told him how much she had learned from him.

During a final goodbye scene, Marion already knew he would be moving on and starting "a new life" with Charlotte, and only asked that he come to her when she requested it at any time in the future. She was the one to decide to pack her suitcases and leave Remy (and return to her real father), to his utter shock when it actually happened. He found comfort in the arms of Charlotte, who assured him: "I'll cure you" - and they made love (off-screen), watched from the doorway by Charlotte's 5-year old blonde daughter Nathalie - his potentially-new stepdaughter - would history repeat itself?

Blow Out (1981)

In this dark and twisty Brian De Palma (writer and director) political thriller - the Reagan-esque era, Hitchcockian-type film that paid homage to both Blow-Up (1966) and Coppola's The Conversation (1974). Its riveting themes were audio voyeurism, political dirty tricks, and corruption (with illusions to Watergate, the JFK Zapruder film, and the Chappaquiddick scandal):

• it opened with a 'film within a film' - the shooting of Co-ed Frenzy - a cheap, low-budget exploitation film (set in a sorority house filled with scantily-clad females) where a killer (from his POV as in Halloween (1978)) stalked and slashed a nude female (Missy Cleveland, April 1979 Playboy Playmate) in a shower. [Note: It was a scene reminiscent of the early 1980s film Friday the 13th (1980) when other imitation slasher films were being spawned.]
• Jack Terri (John Travolta), a sound F/X recorder-technician working on the low-budget exploitation film in the "Personal Effects" department, laughed and rated the undubbed death scream: "That scream is terrible." His director-producer Sam (Peter Boyden) asked: "What cat did you strangle to get that??" Jack replied: "That's her voice"; Jack was informed: "Look Jack, I didn't hire that girl for her scream. I hired that girl for her tits"; Jack considered the picture their "finest film" together, but was asked to replace the weak cry from the naked coed's lips, and also to find new wind sound effects
• In fact, Jack took his sound-effects job seriously at Independence Pictures Inc. in Philadelphia where he had worked for two years - and was interested in capturing truth and reality in his recordings (weather effects, footsteps, heartbeats, clocks, glass breaks, gunshots, a body fall, etc.)
• while Jack was recording outdoor sound-effects later that night with a directional baton-like microphone (and a portable reel-to-reel device), he witnessed a fatal car crash when a car's tire popped and screeched, and the vehicle plunged off a deserted Philadelphia road into a river; Jack dived in, swam down and rescued the driver's companion, later identified as a ditzy yet good-hearted blonde named Sally Bedina (Nancy Allen, director DePalma's real-life wife), but it was fatal for the driver who had drowned
• at the hospital, Jack reported to disbelieving Detective Mackey (John Aquino) that he had first heard a "bang" before the tire blow out ("the bang was before the blow out"). Then, he learned that the deceased was notable Governor George McRyan (John Hoffmeister), a hopeful presidential candidate who, the evening of his death, had announced his entrance into the primary election; officials wanted to entirely hush the embarrassing fact that the Governor was with a female "playmate" companion, although Jack stressed that what he saw was "the truth" and he didn't want to lie about it
• Jack went along with the deception and cover-up proposed by the governor's assistant Lawrence Henry (John McMartin) -- until he had second thoughts after listening to his recorded sounds tape he had made, in a participatory scene; the tape confirmed that the car's tire popped and screeched before it plunged off a deserted Philadelphia road in the fatal accidental crash
• he realized that he had inadvertently recorded evidence of an assassination ("I think your tire was shot out"). Jack believed that the governor's left car tire was shot before the tire blew, causing the accident (he hypothesized there was a gunman in the bushes who had shot the left front tire to cause the crash, where a puff of smoke was seen - it was evidence of a conspiracy and cover-up
• he became more suspicious when a photographer named Manny Karp (Dennis Franz) sold his "exclusive" series of still pictures (taken from his motion picture camera film) of the McRyan's accident to the press - appearing in a News Today article entitled "McRyan's Tragic Blow Out."
• his faith in the authenticity of his film craft was reawakened. In his past (seen through flashback), the principled Jack had helped crack down on police corruption until one of his concealed wires short-circuited and caused undercover cop/detective Freddie Corso (Luddy Tramontana) to be found out and murdered during a botched sting. The tools of his F/X trade had failed him, leading to his choice to avoid the truth and make cheap exploitation films with phony sound effects. But now that he found himself caught up in some kind of political corruption, he convinced the rescued blonde Sally to join him to investigate the suspicious incident
• Jack synchronized Karp's series of photographs with his own audio tape to create a film of the incident. He decisively pinpointed the moment of the gunshot - seen as a flash in the bushes. He hid the incriminating film in a ceiling panel in his office, believing it was evidence of a major political conspiracy. He then reported his findings to Detective Mackey, who was mostly uninterested, reflecting the times' political apathy: "Nobody wants to know. Nobody cares."
• meanwhile, a serial killer-stalker named Burke (John Lithgow) was terrorizing the city, dubbed "The Liberty Bell Strangler"; Burke's first unfortunate sex-crime victim at an excavation site was a 22 year old receptionist (a Sally look-alike), strangled and then stabbed (and mutilated) with an ice-pick in the pattern of a Liberty Bell; a second victim was a prostitute strangled in a women's room at the train station
• Burke had been hired as part of a political conspiracy to effectively eliminate Governor McRyan from the upcoming election; he had changed the tire on the vehicle, to make it look like a blow out; he also infiltrated sound guy Jack's office and erased the tapes to make Jack look like a "crackpot"; he then explained to his political operative that Sally's killing would eliminate loose ends when her death was attributed to the "Strangler": "I've decided to terminate her (Sally) and make it look like one of a series of sex killings in the area. This would completely secure our operation"
• photographer Karp was Sally's pimp who had set her up to be with Governor McRyan the night of the 'accident' - he was paid $6,000 by one of McRyan's unidentified opponents (the original plan was to scandalize the governor by exposing him with a floozy - "he wasn't supposed to die")
• Karp was doing "divorce work on the side," using prostitute Sally to set up and incriminate cheating husbands so they could be bribed for hush money (one of Karp's b/w photos showed an unsuspecting client caught in bed with Sally); Sally knocked Karp unconscious and stole Karp's original film reel of the car accident, to give to a TV investigative reporter named Frank Donahue (Curt May)
• serial-killer Burke was a Bell Telephone repairman, who had wire-tapped Jack's phone and was able to circumvent all of Jack's efforts to present the truth and expose the conspiracy
• the film's climactic, violent pursuit scene occurred during a surreal Liberty Day Jubilee 1981 centennial celebration in Philadelphia with red-white-blue-fireworks and a parade down Market Street; to cover all the bases, Jack had 'wired' Sally and vowed to her: "Nobody's gonna f--k me this time." She would be recorded as she met with Donahue to give him the tape and film
• however, as Jack listened, he realized that Sally was speaking to Burke, who had intercepted her and was impersonating Donahue. After a car pursuit and frantic chase after Burke, across Philadelphia in his Jeep during the crowded festivities, Jack crashed and was injured. He didn't reach Sally in time before she was killed by strangulation, on the top of the Port of History building. Jack killed Burke by stabbing him with his ice-pick weapon, and was stunned to realize that Sally's lifeless body meant that she was truly dead

Sally's Death Scream Used on Re-edited Soundtrack of Slasher Film

Drowning Out Sound of Authentic Scream

• ironically, Sally's recorded scream - haunting and sad - and intensely realistic, was used for an actress' "terrible" and perfect scream for the soundtrack of a shower scene in the cheap, exploitational slasher film seen in the film's opening (Producer Sam: "Now that's a scream!"). Jack muttered to himself: "It's a good scream," but he held his ears to drown out the sound

Body Heat (1981)

Lawrence Kasdan's crime drama Body Heat (1981), (a post-noir remake of the classic Double Indemnity (1944)) was one of the first of its kind - a neo-noir or erotic thriller. It had a twisting plot of murderous lust and 1980s eroticism.

It opened with the aftermath of a love scene in a humid southern city, in which a naked female partner named Angela (Lynn Hallowell) dressed as she told her distracted partner - horny Florida attorney Ned Racine (William Hurt):

"My God, it's hot. I stepped out of the shower and started sweating again."

The naive lawyer was soon ensnared by another sultry, alluring, cheating, husky-voiced femme fatale Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner) upon their first meeting at an outdoor beachside concert. After she told him that she was married, he persisted - and she complimented him:

Matty: "You're not too smart, are you? I like that in a man."
Ned: "What else do you like? Lazy, ugly, horny, I've got 'em all."

Later when they met at the only bar in the small town of Pinehaven, she told him: "Some men, once they get a whiff of it, they trail you like a hound." He claimed: "I'm not that eager." When she said her temperature was normally high, he quipped: "Maybe you need a tune-up," to which she answered: "Don't tell me. You have just the right tool." She warned him: "You're going to be disappointed," but he didn't take the hint. He was enthralled by her mode of dress (a braless, open blouse and bright red skirt) but told her:

"Maybe you shouldn't dress like that...Then you shouldn't wear that body."

The film had numerous highly-charged, sweaty sex scenes, beginning when he followed her home to see (or listen) to her porch's wind chimes -- but then asked him to leave almost immediately: "I shouldn't have let you come." Although he began to leave, he returned and broke into her locked house through the windowed side porch door with a garden chair (to the sound of the wind chimes) to the awaiting, horny and receptive Matty. After feeling her breasts and crotch through her clothing, she laid back on the floor. He removed her panties to make love to her, exclaiming: "It's so right!" She begged:

"Please, Ned. Do it!"

They became obsessed with each other and made sweaty love in her bed, in the boathouse, in a large bathtub, etc, without pausing in-between, and he complained as she touched his limp penis: "Gimme a break here. It takes a little while." She joked: "It's your own fault. I never wanted it like this before. It throws everything else out of whack" - he told her it would take 30 seconds for him to recover.

In a shared bath of ice cubes after more insatiable intercourse (she pleaded: "Don't stop!"), as he again observed, both physically and metaphorically:

"You are killing me. I'm red, I'm sore...Look at it. It's about to fall off."

Also included in the film was the scene of Ned's mistaken delivery of a very forward proposition to Matty's visiting high school girlfriend Mary Ann Simpson (Kim Zimmer): "Hey lady, do you wanna f--k?" and the controversial scene in which Matty's young niece Heather (Carola McGuinness) caught the two in an oral sex act but couldn't identify the man with the erection.

Ultimately, Matty's amorous ploy was successful in convincing her duped lover Ned to kill her rich husband (Richard Crenna) - Ned was in fact charged with the murder and imprisoned in a Florida state penitentiary, while "Matty" escaped "to be rich and live in an exotic land."

Cannibal Ferox (1981, It.) (aka Make Them Die Slowly)

Umberto Lenzi's Italian torture-porn exploitation film with unbelievable scenes of graphic violence in the Amazon followed closely on the heels of Cannibal Holocaust (1980, It.), and was often accused of being a rip-off. It was also banned from viewing in dozens of countries, and controversial for its extreme violence.

It exhibited gruesome death scenes and tremendous shock value for its explicit gore and gratuitous violence. Its opening included a warning statement about its barbarity:

The following feature is one of the most violent films ever made. There are at least two dozen scenes of barbaric torture and sadistic cruelty graphically shown. If the presentation of disgusting and repulsive subject matter upsets you, please do not view this film.

The controversial film began with the murder (by mobsters) of an unnamed drug user in the NYC apartment of a despicable and exploitative drug-dealer:

• Mike Logan (Giovanni Lombardo Radice, aka John Morghen), a cocaine-addicted, NYC drug dealer who was selling heroin; the mobsters were seeking to locate Mike for over a month (for an unpaid debt of $100,000)

Meanwhile, in an Amazonian jungle setting, three explorers set out to study the phenomenon of cannibalism:

• Gloria Davis (Lorraine De Selle), a NYU Ph.D. graduate student and aspiring anthropologist-researcher
• Rudy (Danilo Mattei, aka Bryan Redford), Gloria's brother
• Pat (Zora Kerova), her blonde friend

Gloria

Rudy

Pat

Gloria's theoretical objective was to prove that cannibalism was a myth (an "invention of colonialism") - although she soon found out otherwise.

Coke-snorting Mike had fled to South America (Colombia) along with his drug-dealing partner:

• Joe Costolani (Walter Lucchini, aka Walter Lloyd), a fellow adventurer

Told in flashback, both Joe and Mike began exploiting, torturing and abusing the natives to acquire their precious gems and drugs (cocaine), during a search for a cache of stolen emeralds. Mike treated the locals with sadistic disrespect and then blamed hostilities on the natives. They claimed that their alleged Portuguese guide was brutally tortured (with eye-gouging), tied to a large wooden pole, castrated, and brutally killed by the cannibals, although Mike had committed the murder. To get out of the jungle alive with Joe, Mike kidnapped a young native girl (the native chief's daughter), although the two were pursued and attacked. Joe was badly-injured in the right shoulder and right leg.

The two groups met up, and soon slutty Pat was sexually seduced by Mike, helped with a dose of cocaine.

During a cocaine-fueled rage, Mike encouraged Pat to slowly kill the captive native girl with a knife, but went ahead and killed her himself with a gunshot when Pat resisted and the girl tried to flee.

The scenes in question were many. There were various animal cruelties - a live parrot's head was ripped off and its innards were eaten, a tortoise had its body parts amputated before its belly was torn open, a furry creature tied to a post was eaten by a anaconda, a small crocodile was sliced open, and a piglet's belly was slowly cut open.

Within a short period of time, the mistreated natives became aggressive, sought revenge and captured the entire group. After Joe succumbed to his lethal wounds, the angry natives discovered his body, dragged his corpse out of a hut, disemboweled him, pulled out his intestines, and ate them - as Gloria and Rudy watched from afar.

Joe's Disembowelment

Mike was also caged, but fled into the jungle, although he was recaptured and treated harshly like the villager-guide he had previously tortured. He was castrated with a machete (his prized excised penis was eaten raw by the native chief and the painful wound was cauterized to prevent him from bleeding to death) while he was strung up on a large wooden pole. Then he was imprisoned underground.

During an escape attempt while being transported to another village, Rudy's leg was bloodied in a jungle booby trap and he was attacked by fiercesome, blood-seeking piranhas when he hid in a pool of jungle water. Forced out of the water, a native shot him in the chest with a lethal poison blow-dart.

Mike actually escaped again - and upon recapture, his right hand was amputated (chopped off at the wrist) with a machete.

A torturous 'meat-hook' death was inflicted upon feisty female victim Pat, as she was being watched by a group of female villagers. She was stripped of her shirt, poked in both breasts by a spear, and then iron hooks were pierced through both of her breasts - blood sprayed out as she screamed in intense pain. She was impaled by both breasts and suspended by ropes attached to the iron hooks to bleed to death in the Amazon jungle sun, as Gloria watched her die.

Breast Hook-Impalement Death

Another horrific and repulsive partial decapitation death method was the one in which coke-addicted psychopath Mike Logan deservedly suffered and died. (He had already been castrated and his right hand had been amputated in revenge by the natives). Mike was further restrained in a crude apparatus - positioned under a wooden table with a hole in it, through which the top of his head appeared. From there, natives chopped off the top of his skullcap with a machete to eat his reddish, gelatinous brains.

By film's end, Gloria was freed by a sympathetic male native, and was able to reach safety and civilization when discovered by monkey traders, near death. Similar to the natives' version of events, Gloria confirmed that the others were in a canoe that capsized and they were consumed by crocodiles.

A few months later back in NYC, she published her dissertation thesis titled Cannibalism: End of a Myth and received her doctorate degree in sciences and anthropology. Her writing was all a cover-up and a lie - and a distortion of her harrowing jungle experience. She was praised for her debunking of the idea or cruel myth - "the notion that man eats man" - and demonstrated that anthropophagy did not exist. Her reasoning was that the violence she had experienced was first inflicted upon the natives by her "civilized" and "superior" white society - and those acts of violence bred more violence.

Cannibal Holocaust (1980, It.)

This extremely graphic, hotly-debated cult classic Italian film from director Ruggero Deodato - was the uncredited inspirational precursor of the faux-documentary "found-footage" smash hit The Blair Witch Project (1999) - it was filled with violent, grisly, and disturbing images.

[Note: Another Italian exploitation film Cannibal Ferox (1981, It.) (aka Make Them Die Slowly) with unbelievable scenes of graphic violence (including castration and breast impalement) in the Amazon followed closely on the heels of Cannibal Holocaust (1980). It was also banned and controversial for its extreme violence. See separate entry below.]

For his work on the film, the director was arrested by Italian authorities on suspicion of murder charges and faced life in prison, following its 1980 Milan premiere. He endured a trial when Italian authorities were unconvinced that the footage was indeed staged. Deodato lost the original trial, and all prints were to be destroyed, but he managed to have the ruling overturned in the early '80s when the actors finally appeared on TV to prove otherwise. Some five years passed before the film saw release in Deodato's home country. This movie was banned for twenty years in certain countries, including the UK.

It opened with a reverse disclaimer:

For the sake of authenticity, some sequences have been retained in their entirety.

The cannibal-exploitation film was purportedly the story of a four-person American film crew that disappeared while making a documentary (a feature entitled "The Green Inferno" - referring to the jungle itself) about the last surviving indigenous tribes that still practiced cannibalism in the wilds of South America's Amazon jungle area. The tribes in the area included the Yacumo, the cannibalistic Yamamomo (or Tree People), and their warrior-rivals the Shamatari (or Swamp People).

The film began with a NYC reporter recounting the story of the group that entered the jungle on the border between Brazil and Peru. The entire film crew consisted of:

• Alan Yates (Gabriel Yorke), the young director - a famous documentarian
• Faye Daniels (Francesca Ciardi), Alan's girlfriend and script-girl
• Jack Anders (Perry Pirkanen), a blonde cameraman
• Mark Tomaso (Luca Giorgio Barbareschi), a cameraman
• Felipe (Guillermo), a guide

After their disappearance, the reporter told about a search and rescue mission that was undertaken, led by New York University anthropologist Harold Monroe (with two guides: experienced, bearded Venezuelan Chaco (Ricardo Fuentes) and his younger assistant Miguel). Along the way, they experienced a number of ghastly sights, including a skeleton of a corpse, and a brutal ritualistic "punishment for adultery" torture. It was performed by a native Yacumo husband against his young wife (Lucia Costantini) on a muddy lakeside. He violated her with a large wooden dildo and spiked ball of mud, followed by beating her to death. They also watched as rival tribes attacked each other, raped a young woman, and carved open another female. They realized that the filmmakers had caused unrest and great hostility among the villagers.

Later after finding the more primitive Yamamomo tribe (and Prof. Monroe's naked swim with natives), they were led to a totemic shrine (with the skulls of the four crew members and pieces of photographic equipment) - evidence that the crew had been murdered. They participated in a grisly, ritualistic, cannibalistic feast (eating parts of the dead body of a Yamamomo criminal recently executed), before being allowed to take back the crews' film reels - footage of their journey into the primitive culture - in exchange for Monroe's tape-recorder.

The reels were taken back to NYC for viewing. Masterful cinematic tricks and special effects created an unnerving view of the fate of the team - found in the undeveloped film cans of raw, unedited footage. Grisly, realistic-looking scenes (either realistic or staged) included:

• numerous animal slaughterings (including a horrible turtle murder-beheading, causing Faye to throw up, and a beheading of a squirrel monkey)
• Felipe's leg amputation with a machete (to prevent venomous snake-bite poisoning) and cauterization, although he soon died and was left behind
• a staged massacre of the Yacomo tribe, including hut burning where women and children had been herded, and some natives were burned
• insensitive to the native culture, Yates and Faye had vigorous sex in full view of the natives
• a ritualistic forced abortion and the clubbing death of the mother-to-be (including the burial of the undeveloped fetus in mud)
• the crew's gang-rape of a young Yamamomo girl (ignoring the objections of Faye)

Turtle Murder	Felipe's Leg Amputation with a Machete
Alan Yates and Faye - Sex in Full View of Natives

The film's most notorious scene was next -- the discovery of the impalement of the young gang-raped female on a pole, with a pole inserted from her mouth to her genitals. (Was she punished by the natives, or was this a set-up by the film crew to obtain sensational footage?)

Retaliation by the Natives Against the Gang-Raped Girl: Pole Impalement

The Yamamomo tribe attacked the film crew, seeking revenge. Anders was hit by a spear, and then suffered male genital dismemberment followed by body mutilation, disembowelment, the display of guts, and cannibalism (the same fate befell Mark). Faye was stripped, raped, beaten by the women, and beheaded (her decapitated head was paraded around). Yates' death was filmed by his own dropped camera.

Anders' Genital Dismemberment and Mutilation	Faye's Rape and Beheading Murder
Deaths of Film Crew Members

After viewing the horrific final reel of the unedited film of the sadistic, unethical, exploitative, offensive, culturally-insensitive film crew getting what they deserved, Monroe staggered out into the NY city street, lit his pipe, and in voice-over asked himself: "I wonder who the real cannibals are."

Circle of Two (1981, Can.) (aka Obsession)

Hollywood blacklist survivor-director Jules Dassin (with his last film) helmed this Canadian romantic drama. It was a familiar tale of an older artist becoming inspired by a younger female or muse, as in:

• Age of Consent (1969, UK, Australia)
• Camille Claudel (1988, Fr.)
• La Belle Noiseuse (1991, Fr.) (aka The Beautiful Troublemaker)
• Surviving Picasso (1996)
• Girl With A Pearl Earring (2003, UK, Lux., Fr./Belg, US)
• Factory Girl (2006)

There were a few taglines about the obsessive love affair:

• "Theirs was a love against all odds"
• "Their lives would always be entwined"
• "Years were the only thing that stood between them"

It told of an unlikely obsessive romance (a "Circle of Two") between two mis-matched individuals (with a 44 year old age gap) who first met when they literally bumped into each other at a soft-core film showing, and he questioned her under-aged attendance: ("Hey, how did you get in here?"):

• Sarah Norton (17 year-old Tatum O'Neal), an inspirational, adventurous 15-16 year-old teenaged schoolgirl, an aspiring writer of poems from an overprotective family
• Ashley St. Clair (Richard Burton, in his mid-50s), an elderly, 60 year-old painter living in Toronto

[Note: Tatum O'Neal was fresh off her victory as Best Supporting Actress for Paper Moon (1973), and had appeared in other family-oriented films since, such as The Bad News Bears (1976), Nickelodeon (1976), and International Velvet (1978). As she was making an attempt at more adult films, she had also starred the year before opposite Kristy McNichol in the R-rated Little Darlings (1980), a semi-sensitive teen comedy about a competition to lose one's virginity at a summer camp.]

In the film's most talked-about scene, she stood naked in his studio in the woods behind a well-placed chair in order to seduce and encourage him to return to his life's work. He had lost his artistic muse 10 years earlier. She even defiantly smoked one of his cigars, announcing herself as a smoking muse: "Nude with cigar." He reacted with quiet anger and ordered her to clothe herself ("Get dressed!"). She objected, reminding him that he had painted Claudia Aldrich (Nuala Fitzgerald) in the nude: "You painted Claudia in the nude." He repeated himself, but she again argued: "My body's as good as Claudia's any day." He then vehemently shouted at her: "Get dressed!" She crossed her hands in front of her breasts. Unfortunately, her stalker ex-boyfriend Paul (Michael Wincott), who was spying from a hidden distance, misunderstood the scene.

As she rode her bike away, the jealous and spiteful Paul attacked her in a cornfield with an attempted rape ("You take your clothes off for everybody, but me"), but she fought back and struck him on the head with a rock. He suffered a fractured skull from the incident.

By the film's ending, after problems had arisen and the relationship began to crumble between Sarah and the older Ashley, she criticized him for leading her on:

"Please tell me, sir, was it honorable to make me fall in love with you? You knew what was happening. Why didn't you stop it? You and your charm, your brandenburg and your goddamn rabbits. Is that what you do - going around charming little kids? Making little kids fall in love with you and then disappear?...Don't tell me how old you are. I know it and I don't care. I know the numbers, all of them. When I'll be 60, you'll be 104. We'd make a great couple. Boy, do you owe me an explanation."

In an attempt at an explanation ("Yes, I could have stopped it, but I didn't"), he recalled how he had always laughed in the young girl's presence, and admitted that he was "amazed" and "flattered" that she found him attractive and wanted to go to bed with him. He also explained how she had become his muse: "And she awoke something in me that made me want to go to work again. Then I watched myself fall in love with her." He claimed he couldn't help himself from loving her, although he was 60 and she was only 16: "I don't think there was a minute with you, Sarah, happy as it was, and I was happy - I don't think there was a minute when I could free myself from watching myself. And I kept saying, 'What the hell are you doing?' I saw this old idiot making a fool of himself over a young girl."

He referenced the time she had asked to be painted nude - without asking for sexual relations:

And yet every time you came on that silly little bike, my heart would lift again. When you stood there to be painted, when you offered yourself, I'd say, 'She's young. She's lovely. Take the gift and time's running out. Take it.' You know what I think it was, Sarah? If I didn't make love to you, it wasn't because of honor or morality or any of that. I was afraid of what would happen to me. I was thinking of myself. I couldn't face not holding onto you. I couldn't face the ridicule. I couldn't face Claudia's ridicule. I didn't have the strength to face your eventual, inevitable regrets. And yet - I let myself say it - it resolves and resumes all this. I love you. Sarah, I love you.

She asked pointedly: "What do you want from me, Ashley?" He responded: "I want you to go on loving me as I go on loving you." He wanted her to always think of their short affair as "worthwhile." He urged her to proceed on with her life: "You're going to be a beautiful, talented woman. And me? Whatever new life you make, whatever's left of mine, I want us to go on loving each other." She also confessed her steadfast love for him forever: ("When I'm married and have 18 kids, I'll go on loving you. I will go on."

Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story (1981) (TV)

Director Gabrielle Beaumont's bio-drama told the tragic story of Playboy's August 1979 centerfold model/actress Dorothy Stratten, portrayed by Jamie Lee Curtis in an early role, just one year after the real-life Stratten (actually Dorothy Hoogstraten) was brutally murdered by her sleazy con-man estranged husband Paul Snider (Bruce Weitz), who then committed suicide. The titillating film was rushed into production soon after her 1980 murder to exploit its story.

The opening scene (under the title credits) was a Playboy photo-shoot in which the nude Stratten tossed her hair back repeatedly. Curtis was obviously topless in this and some other scenes, and often scantily-clad, but NBC-TV viewing prohibited her from revealing herself fully.

At the Playboy Mansion

It would be Bob Fosse's Star 80 (1983) that would do complete justice to the tragic story of the ill-fated starlet.

The Evil Dead (1981)

Writer/director Sam Raimi's first film in the Evil Dead trilogy was a low-budget, non-humorous B-grade horror film. This was the ultimate "cabin in the woods" movie. Malevolent and demonic evil spirits were unleashed upon five Michigan State University students in a remote Michigan (some say Tennessee) mountain cabin (during a weekend retreat) after the reading of a forbidden book (the "Naturan Demanto" or the Necronomicon) found in the cellar.

It featured a Stephen King quoted tagline:

"The ultimate experience in grueling terror."

Due to the film's graphic violence, it was banned in several European countries. On-screen blood and gore would have given the film an NC-17 rating if Raimi had presented the film to the ratings board when it was first released. In the UK, the film was subject to obscenity trials and various censorship cuts - particularly regarding the tree-rape scene.

The infamous and controversial predatory (and gratuitous) 'tree rape' scene was accused of being misogynistic, and brutal, and even director Sam Raimi years later agreed that he had gone too far.

University student Cheryl Williams (Ellen Sandweiss), main character Ash Williams' (Bruce Campbell) younger sister, was the first to be possessed. When she was walking in the woods outside the log cabin, she was attacked by tree branches and vines that wrapped around her neck and limbs ("It was the woods themselves, they're alive"). They stripped her of her clothes, caressed her and then spread her legs. One tree branch suddenly impaled her in her crotch. Soon after she was chased back to the house (with quick POV tracking shots), she was transformed into a demon zombie with a greyish white face and superhuman strength (known as a Deadite or Shemp).

Evilspeak (1981)

Director Eric Weston's grindhouse horror film's title referred to a computerized Black Mass ritual that unleashed terror upon a group of tormentors. The gorefest was released in both R-rated and uncut versions, for its extreme violence and nudity. It was notorious for being labeled a "video nasty" by the UK in the 1980s - and therefore faced censorship, was prosecuted, and refused certification and release. Eventually, it was released with 3 minutes and 34 seconds cut in 1987, and in a fully uncut version in 2004. Its tagline was:

EVILSPEAK...A Computer Programmed For Unspeakable Terror.

The basic plot was encapsulated in another tagline: "Data incomplete... Human blood required. Thus spake the computer." The film opened with a title card prologue:

And Satan said to the Man of God..
"What would you do tomorrow if you allowed me to die today?
What vocation would you pursue if my name disappeared?"
Kahlil Gibran

Under the opening credits at an unidentified Spanish shoreline, evil and Satanic black-hooded priest Father Lorenzo Esteban (Richard Moll) was excommunicated and banished (along with his followers) from Spain by priests in the Holy Roman Church during the Inquisition in the 16th Century, for practicing Satanism and blasphemy. He was told: "Nothing can protect you from the wrath of God or the Avenging Angel."

After being sent away, the contemptuous Father spit in the priest's face before walking down to the beach to a group of his own devil worshippers for a ritualistic sacrificial ceremony at a funeral pyre. He drew a 5-pointed pentagram symbol with his sword in the sand. Then he stripped the top from a brown-haired, peasant-girl (Nadine Reimers), raised his sword, and with one swing, decapitated her.

Peasant-Girl (Nadine Reimers) Decapitated by Esteban's Sword

The film - with the arcing swing, transitioned to the present day of the early 1980s, and the kicking of a soccer ball on a field in California. After the game in the locker room, one of the West Andover Military Academy cadet players - chubby and orphaned Stanley Coopersmith (Clint Howard, brother of director/actor Ron Howard), was bullied and tormented by teammates for his poor playing, causing the game's loss. Furthermore, he was outcast and treated badly by teachers and staff, the Coach, the Colonel and even the local Reverend.

Stanley found an ancient Latin tome (Esteban's diary or magic book?) in a secret walled-off chamber of the academy's chapel basement when he was ordered to clean it as punishment. Through a brick wall and in a dark room, he found the book of Black Mass rituals marked with a jewel-encrusted pentagram emblem on the cover. He also noticed a fetus in a jar that was moving. As he was being grabbed in the neck by an arm bursting through the wall and confronted by Esteban himself, Stanley suddenly awoke from a frightening nightmare.

Stanley was able to decipher (through his computer's translation program) what Esteban had written in three different diary entries in the 16th century, and translate the entries into English. The three entries described Esteban's plan of seeking revenge.

January 13, 1520
"I, Esteban, Have Come to Know That the Entire World Is a Domain of Evil. Ruled Over By an Evil Spirit. And Since the Power that Dominates the World is Evil, Then it Follows that Satan Must be God."
February 20, 1535
"I, Esteban, Have Signed the Book of Death and Touched the Hand of My Master Satan, Through the Rite of the Black Mass."
May 11, 1541
"They Think to Kill Me. But Satan is My Salvation. His Magic is Mine Forever. I Will Return. No Matter What They Do, I Will Return."

Stanley also used his computer to research the occult, in order to find out how to seek his own vengeance against bullies and other school officials. He typed in his prayer: "Satan, hear my plea and through the rite of the Black Mass help me stand erect before my enemy and defy his curse." Conveyed through his computer, Stanley learned that the invocation and items required to lead a Black Mass occult celebration and conjure up Satan included: mandrake root, juice of aconite, poplar leaves, arsenic, sulphur, black candles, unholy water, and human blood from a consecrated host. Stanley's first attempt to seek revenge by performing the Black Mass failed, because he hadn't acquired blood.

In one of the film's earliest death scenes after successfully performing the ritual - causing the computer screen to flash a pentagram, an unseen demonic power twisted the head of the drunken school custodian/caretaker Sarge (R.G. Armstrong) 180 degrees. After the murder, Stanley hid Sarge's body in catacombs, where other skeletal remains (decapitated) and Esteban's crypt were located.

School Secretary Miss Friedemeyer (Lynn Hancock) Attacked and Mauled by Wild Pigs in Her Bathtub After Taking a Shower

In a scary scene, the school's secretary Miss Friedemeyer (Lynn Hancock) was the next victim to be punished for stealing Esteban's diary after Stanley accidentally left it on her desk. When she finished taking a shower in a very gratuitous scene - she opened her bathroom door and a herd of evil, vicious, demon-spawned carnivorous black pigs attacked, mauled and devoured her (and pulled off bits of her entrails and flesh) after she fell backwards into her bathtub. The stolen Esteban diary slowly vanished from her desk.

Stanley became distraught when he discovered that the persistent bullies on his soccer team, led by Douglas "Bubba" Caldwell (Don Stark), had killed his puppy dog Fred. With superhuman strength, Stanley hurled teacher Hauptman (Hamilton Camp) into an overhead, hanging wooden, circular-shaped chandelier, where his head was impaled on one of its spikes - the blood conveniently drained into a goblet below, and now enabled Stanley to conduct his Black Mass ritual, to exact his own revenge on his tormenters. He drank the blood from the goblet and was empowered.

In the final 20-minute slaughter sequence (censored and edited in some versions) in the basement and barricaded chapel that trapped the students inside, there were numerous deaths when Stanley devoted himself to Satan and his body was possessed by the vengeful Esteban. [Note: The scene was reminiscent of revenge by the bullied protagonist of Carrie (1976)].

• a nail from a large crucifix statue (in Jesus' right hand) was pried out by an invisible force, leaving a blood trail; it sailed through the air into the forehead of Reverend Jameson (Joseph Cortese) as he delivered a sermon to the soccer team in the chapel above
• Stanley had morphed into Esteban and became possessed by him - he was soon transformed into a demonic figure - a beast with a pig snout, tusks, and ear-horns; he rose up from the fiery floor below into the chapel, wielding Esteban's sword as he flew through the air and decapitated many of his soccer team players who had teased him
• the head of the school headmaster Colonel Kincaid (Charles Tyner) was split down the middle by Stanley's sword
• there were more body-chompings by a horde of ravenous pigs that finished off the remaining students, and decapitations by Stanley with the sword, including the head of his soccer Coach (Claude Earl Jones)
• in the chapel cellar, the lead bully "Bubba" was grabbed by the throat by the 'reanimated' corpse of Sarge, and his still-beating heart was ripped out

The film ended with an epilogue:

"Suffering from shock and catatonic withdrawal, attributed to his having witnessed the fiery death of his dear friends and teachers, Stanley Coopersmith, sole survivor of the tragic accident at West Andover Academy Chapel, was admitted to Sunnydale Asylum. He remains there still."

On a demonic computer screen, a spinning pentagram was replaced by red text - and Esteban's name was replaced with Stanley's:

"By the four beasts before the throne, By the fire which is about the throne,
By the host holy and glorious name, Satan. I Stanley Coopersmith, will return.
I WILL RETURN."

Then, Stanley's face filled the screen before the closing credits.

Friday the 13th, Part 2 (1981)

The first franchise sequel, Friday the 13th, Part 2 (1981), was competing with the Halloween (1978) franchise for a substantial nudity quotient - and for displaying the nubile bodies of young adults who would end up as dead slasher victims, often after a display of nudity or sex.

One of the counselor trainees, Terry (Kirsten Baker) was first introduced with a close-up of her rear, walking in sexy tight short-shorts. Later, she took an evening stroll to the notorious Crystal Lake for a skinny-dip, after tantalizing one of the other handsome male counselor trainees Scott (Russell Todd) at dinner with her short, skin-tight, bra-less pink half-shirt top. When she entered the lake, Scott stole her clothes left on the shoreline -- but soon after, both ended up gruesomely murdered by the mysterious killer.

In a scene shortly later, Jeff (Bill Randolph) and busty girlfriend Sandra (Marta Kober) were doubly-impaled after copulating together, originally an X-rated scene that was edited for an R-rating. The nude lovers lying on each other were speared like a shish-kabob - the bloody spear-head struck the wood floor beneath their bed's mattress.

Friday the 13th, Part 2: Spearing Two Lovers - Originally X-Rated
Jeff (Bill Randolph) and Sandra (Marta Kober)

Another couple, sexually-assertive Vickie (Lauren-Marie Taylor) and wheelchair-bound Mark (Tom McBride), were also preparing for a night of sex, but neither one of them survived long enough.

The Funhouse (1981)

Director Tobe Hooper's sleazy, low-budget slasher-horror film came after his earlier works The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) (that was much more effective and scarier), and Salem's Lot (1979). After this film, Hooper went on to direct Poltergeist (1982), produced by Steven Spielberg. This film was described with a humorous tagline:

"Pay to Get In, Pray to Get Out."

It warned in a trailer description about the titular funhouse:

"Something is alive in the funhouse. Something not alive like its father, something better dead. Something that has the form of a human, but not the face. Something that feeds off the flesh and blood of young innocents. Something that tonight will turn the funhouse into a carnival of terror."

The opening tongue-in-cheek sequence was an homage to both Psycho (1960) and Halloween (1978) (filmed from the point of view of a heavy-breathing, masked intruder). In the bathroom scene, a killer approached a nude, teenaged showering female - the main virginal heroine Amy Harper (Elizabeth Berridge) - to stab her to death. As it turned out, the slasher was Amy's bratty younger brother Joey (Shawn Carson), a horror film aficionado, who was playing a prank on her with a long plastic retractable knife.

Amy Harper (Elizabeth Berridge): Psycho-like Opening Shower Sequence

The basic slasher-horror film then introduced two young double-dating couples who were planning to attend the town's fair ground's arnival - Amy had not received the approval of her parents (Jack McDermott and Jeanne Austin) who warned her about dating blue collar workers ("a guy who works in a filling station"), or attending a carnival with previous troubles:

• Amy Harper (Elizabeth Berridge), virginal
• Buzz Dawson (Cooper Huckabee), Amy's new boyfriend for a 'first date', a hunky gas station attendant
  
  
• Liz Duncan (Largo Woodruff), Amy's best friend
• Richie Atterbury (Miles Chapin), Liz's geeky boyfriend

The two couples attended the fair, where they tried out carny games of skill and chance ("Hit-the-Bell"), viewed an animals' 'freaks-of-nature' side show (with a two-headed cow), attended a magic show (with Marko the Magnificent (William Finley)) with an under-appreciative audience, smoked marijuana, went on rides (such as the spinning Cobra), and visited fortune teller Madame Zena (Sylvia Miles) for Amy's palm reading. After heckling her by guffaws at her prophetic pronouncements, they were thrown out by the enraged Madame, speaking with a phony Rumanian accent:

"Do not mock the stars, my friend...Out, out of here, you bad brats. I have performed in front of crowned heads of Europe. Don't come back, or I'll break every bone in your f--kin' bodies. Beat it!"

They were also enticed by the Strip Show Barker (Kevin Conway) to attend an adults-only strip-show: "They wiggle and they dance; Six beautiful girls." Instead of paying, they snuck around the back where Buzz sliced a hole in the tent canvas to peep on the strippers.

Another barker Conrad Straker (the third barker role for Kevin Conway), had earlier advertised the traveling Fairfield County carnival/fair's main attraction - the Funhouse - actually a fun-ride. The ride was decorated with a cackling fat lady, a pirate, a Chinese dragon, skeletons, bats and spiders:

Who will dare to face the challenge of the Funhouse? Who is brave? How about you, sir? Who is mad enough to enter that world of darkness? Terrified, terrified. You will scream with terror. You will beg for release, but there will be no escape. For there is no release from the Funhouse.

The foursome decided to spend the night inside the carnival grounds after taking a ride. They watched from the ceiling above as the 'Frankenstein Monster' - the Funhouse ride's assistant, approached prostitute Madame Zena for sex and then prematurely ejaculated. She assured him: "Nothing to be ashamed of," but refused to refund back his $100 cash: ("A bargain is a bargain....It's not my fault that you can't control yourself"). The 'Monster' violently strangled and killed Madame Zena in a rage. And then the four teens found themselves locked inside the Funhouse.

When the Funhouse barker Conrad found Madame Zena's corpse, he realized that the "Frankenstein Monster" (who called him 'Father') had committed the crime. He decided to cover up the murder to protect him:

Wait a minute, I got it...We'll blame it on the locals. That's what we're gonna do. We'll just go and we'll dump her some place. Then we'll blame it on the goddamn locals.

But then Conrad became enraged when he saw his empty cash box where the $100 had been stolen. He attacked the 'Monster' and ripped off his mask, revealing the hideous face of his own deformed, mutant and deviant son Gunther Twibunt (Wayne Doba). When unmasked by his father, Gunther's hideous face revealed that he was an albino with a cleft forehead, long sharp teeth, white, scraggly hair and bright-red eyes. [Note: It was mentioned that Conrad had protected Gunther in the past in both Dallas and Memphis, where he had murdered two Girl Scouts.]

At the same time, he realized everything had been witnessed by someone above them - Richie's lighter dropped from his pocket through the ceiling opening, revealing the teens' whereabouts. Conrad and Gunther went on a rampage to find them, and Gunther was worked into a murderous frenzy (in exchange for a fishing trip or anything else he wanted).

Murders of the teens followed in rapid succession:

• Conrad killed Liz's boyfriend Richie (who had stolen money from Conrad's strongbox) with a noose - via strangulation; he was also axed in the head
• Liz was dropped through a trap-door in the fun-house, then threatened to be raped by Gunther in an air ventilation shaft (with a rotating fan); she attempted to entice him with an offer of sex ("I know you like girls, I could be nice to you. You wouldn't have to pay me anything. I could make you feel good"), and then when he embraced her, she tried to stab him in the back; he turned on her and stabbed her to death and pushed her face into the exhaust fan

Both Amy and Buzz were confronted by Conrad holding a gun. When Amy asked why he was protecting his inhuman son, he replied:

I'm just protectin' my family...Oh hell, he ain't such a bad fella. He does get himself in all sorts of trouble, though, don't he? Anyway, blood is thicker than water. And I'm sure he's gonna be a real comfort to me in my old age.

• As Buzz and Conrad fought and struggled for control of the gun, Conrad was backed up into a prop sword and impaled; Buzz also shot Conrad four times
• Gunther dropped down from the ceiling, became incensed by the sight of the death of his father, grabbed Conrad's gun, and shot Buzz to death in the abdomen (off-screen)

"Final Girl" Amy fled and was left to battle the drooling Gunther in a climactic showdown. She ran into a room where she found the corpse of her ravaged friend Liz. The monstrous Gunther broke through the door, but after pursuing Amy, she defended herself by bludgeoning him with a crowbar. He became caught and hooked onto a track chain and was both electrocuted and crushed to death (and severed in two) between two giant machinery gears or cog-wheels that were rotating (part of the Funhouse ride mechanism).

"Final Girl" Amy's Horror: Gunther's Attack
In the Funhouse, The Death of Gunther by Electrocution and Bisection by the Funhouse's Mechanical Gears

As the film concluded at dawn with the carnival packing up to leave town, Amy emerged from the Funhouse ride as the animatronic fat lady perched at the entrance was laughing at her - referencing the phrase: "It ain't over till the fat lady sings."

Halloween II (1981)

The second film in the long-running series, Halloween II (1981), proclaimed "More of The Night HE came Home" - this time with slightly more nudity than the legendary first film, especially in its notorious hot tub scene.

In the Haddonfield (Illinois) Memorial Hospital late one night where recuperating Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) was hospitalized, buxom Nurse Karen Bailey (Pamela Susan Shoop) agreed to make out with horny ambulance driver/paramedic Budd (Leo Rossi) in the therapy room's hydrotherapy whirlpool tub ("It's hot in here") before the two met their predictable fate after sex.

He was strangled and killed by brutal killer Michael Myers (Dick Warlock) while checking the temperature controls outside the room (without her knowledge).

Moments later, she also succumbed by having her face scalded to death in the 130 degree water.

[Note: A continuity error in her slow drowning/scalding had her towel move from under her arms (covering her breasts) to her waist in her final moments to reveal her gratuitous topless nudity. In contrast, Budd's death was very brief and unprolonged.]

Heavy Metal (1981, US/Can.)

The fantasy graphics of the adult-oriented, late 70s comic book Heavy Metal inspired this animated, exploitative pop-cult film of six sci-fi/erotica, inter-related episodic segments (interwoven and framed by another story). The tales were accompanied by heavy metal hard rock. The animation was rated R for violence, sex, nudity (animated!), profanity and vulgarity.

[Note: See further information on its sequel almost 20 years later, titled Heavy Metal 2000 (2000) (aka Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.).]

This was an 'adult' underground cartoon that was more adolescent and juvenile than anything else, with graphic, teen-oriented depictions of drugs, taboo-breaking sex, disrobing nude women (with large breasts) viewed as sex-objects, sex-toy robots, fantasy sword-and-scorcery, and gory violence. The entire film told of an evil, glowing sentient green orb or meteorite, called the Loc-Nar, in inter-related vignettes.

In the 5th segment, "So Beautiful, So Dangerous," red-headed Pentagon secretary Gloria (voice of Alice Playten) had sex with robot (voice of John Candy) after being kidnapped onto an alien ship. Nude, she laid back next to the robot smoking a cigarette, when she exclaimed:

Gloria: "That was incredible! I've never felt anything like it."
Robot: "Oh great. I've been programmed to be fully proficient in sexual activities. Do you want to go steady?"
Gloria: "Gee, I don't know. I already have a boyfriend."
Robot: "What he does not know will not hurt him."
Gloria: "But I feel so guilty."
Robot: "Of course you would. Earth women who experience sexual ecstasy with mechanical assistance always tend to feel guilty."
Gloria: "Really?"

(later)

Robot: "But I don't understand. We laugh together, care for each other. We have highly proficient sex. Why can't we get married?"
Gloria: "Look, we're different, OK? Let's leave it at that."
Robot: "What do you mean, different?"
Gloria: "But mixed marriages just don't work. I'm afraid that I'll come home one day and find you screwing the toaster."
Robot: "You'll just have to trust me."
Gloria: "All right, all right, I'll marry you. But on one condition. I want a Jewish wedding."
Robot: "A Jewish wedding? Okay!"
Gloria: "Um, I forgot. Are you circumcised?"

The last episode was about a Defender named Taarna - a beautiful, sword-wielding, silver-haired Amazonian warrior maiden, the last of a warrior race called the Taarakians. She was costumed from complete nudity to a skimpy black outfit (and red shin-boots and gloves) with an electrified red sword, and riding on a giant yellow bird. She was summoned with a mission to defeat mutated barbarians on an alien planet (where the Loc-Nar had landed).

1st Segment - Harry Canyon Girl (voice of Susan Roman)	2nd Segment - Den Katherine Welles (voice of Jackie Burroughs)
5th Segment - So Beautiful, So Dangerous Gloria (voice of Alice Playten) After Having Sex with Robot (voice of John Candy)	6th Segment - Taarna Taarna, the Defender

Hospital Massacre (1981) (aka X-Ray)

See below X-Ray (1981).

The Howling (1981)

Werewolf films were the rage in the early 1980s, and popularized by director Joe Dante's horror film, The Howling (1981), with state-of-the-art special effects, inspiring the making of An American Werewolf in London (1981).

As additional homage to werewolf films of the past (there were seamlessly integrated clips from The Wolf Man (1941)), a number of the characters in the film were named after prominent horror film directors. Its tagline was:

"Imagine your worst fear a reality."

Early on, the film featured a startling scene in the Pussycat, an adult video store's dark and seedy porno viewing room, where LA TV news-woman Karen White (Dee Wallace-Stone) was part of a police trap to catch serial killer Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo). She was forced to watch a video of a young woman/hooker (Beverly Warren) in bondage being raped by Eddie - with lycanthropic overtones. When police arrived to save her from Eddie, the killer was shot and apparently dead.

Suffering from shock, nightmares, sexual dysfunction and partial amnesia, Karen was prescribed recovery time with her mustached husband Bill Neill (Christopher Stone) at a secluded Big Sur country "Colony" retreat locale up north, turning the film into a backwoods psychodrama.

(She was unaware that her prescribing New Age therapist/doctor at the time was Dr. George Waggner (Patrick Macnee), a werewolf himself)

Unbeknownst to them, ravenous, bizarre, sex-crazed werewolves were located there at the resort. One of the she-wolves was :

• Marsha Quist (Elisabeth Brooks) - a sex-starved, sultry, nymphomaniacal, raven-haired female - Eddie's sister who was acting like a "bitch in heat"

Karen's newly-bitten husband Bill was seduced by Marsha next to a campfire. As they made love, they both turned into howling werewolves through shapeshifting.

[Note: Unfortunately, budgetary constraints forced cuts in some special effects - the silhouette of Bill and Marsha having sex as werewolves was obviously cartoonish animation.]

Looker (1981)

Writer/director Michael Crichton's prescient, PG-rated high-tech science-fiction medical thriller was a mediocre film with very impressive visual effects. The way-ahead-of-its-time film was about plastic surgery, surgically-perfect models, and the replacement of models with CGI simulations.

It told about the murder of models, clients of Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Larry Roberts (Albert Finney), who were then replaced with virtual-reality imitations. It also included a political subplot regarding hypnotic suggestion to control TV viewers.

It opened with a strikingly-beautiful perfume commercial TV model named Lisa Convey (Terri Welles - Playboy Magazine's 1981 Playmate of the Year, in her feature film debut). She was complaining to Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Larry Roberts that she had physical defects and imperfections that needed plastic surgery in order to make her more beautiful and perfect.

"I have lots of defects to fix. I have a list right here. My nose is 0.2 millimeters too narrow. And my cheekbones are 0.4 millimeters too high. And my chin has a little 0.1 bump here. And my areolar distance is five millimeters. And I have a mole here on my ribs. So I need plastic surgery."

After photos and X-rays were taken of her, surgery was scheduled and performed, as the opening title credits played. Soon after, she ended up suicidally-dead under mysterious circumstances. [Note: There were also very minor roles for other Playboy Playmates (Jeana Tomasina, Pamela Jean Bryant, Ashley Cox, etc.) and even one for TV's Wheel of Fortune Vanna White.]

Looker Model Lisa Convey's (Terri Welles) Plastic Surgery

She became the latest of three similar models operated upon by Dr. Roberts that also died, including Susan Wilson (Jeana Tomasina Keough), and Tina Cassidy (Kathryn Witt). Both of the previous models were also linked to the advertising firm that produced Ravish perfume - Digital Matrix, Inc. (DMI), headed by Jennifer Long (Leigh Taylor-Young), and owned by John Reston (James Coburn). There were suspicious clues (a pen and small brown jacket button) that led Lieutenant Masters (Dorian Harewood) to speculate that Dr. Roberts was possibly involved in their deaths.

In the story, a fourth model named Cindy (Susan Dey of The Partridge Family fame), one of DMI's models, became frustrated by constant reshoots and complaints that her body didn't perform perfectly in motion, according to computer readouts: (Cindy: "I'm sick and tired of this computer. Why can't we just do the scene?...It didn't used to be like this - the computer telling us what to do").

DMI Commercial Model Cindy (Susan Dey) - The Use of Computer Mapping to Measure the 'Perfection' of Models During Action Shoots

According to Jennifer, the Digital Matrix Inc. research firm felt that its models (who had received surgery) were perfect in every way until they started to move during the commercial shoots, thus lowering their 'perfect body' scores. (Jennifer: "The girls couldn't maintain their scores. They looked perfect, but they weren't really perfect"). Therefore, the company decided it must digitally-scan the bodies of the models, to create a 3D computer-generated model of each one.

After being scanned, the female model wouldn't have to appear in person for commercial filming ("Once the model is made. The computer does everything") - the digital scan or model could be used instead. Each model was offered a contract (for $200,000) to have her body digitally-scanned to create a 3D computer generated model that could then be animated. Cindy allowed herself to be stripped naked in order to have her body and its measurements digitally scanned by the Digital Matrix research firm, to create a detailed 3D mapping or model of her entire figure. Her voice was also synthesized.

As Cindy disrobed and she stood naked, she mumbled to herself: "I hope you're satisfied, perverts!" She kneeled as the round platform on which she was standing sunk into the floor, then stood up and asked: "Now what?" She was slowly rotated as topographic scanners mapped out her body. She joked during the mapping: "I hope you're satisfied. Perverts....Help. Rape" - and the computer reprimanded her: "Please do not move your lower jaw...Failure to comply wastes valuable computer time."

The visual effects in the speculative film featured the first CGI human character, digitized and visualized by a computer-generated simulation of her body being topographically scanned - notably the first use of shaded 3D CGI in a feature film. Polygonal models obtained by digitizing a human body were used to render the effects.

There were various implications about the ways in which advertising companies were manipulating viewers: with unreal, computer-generated digital actors, a LOOKER electronic blue light gun to put victims into a hypnotic trance, and digital pupilary eye scans to maximize the impact of ads on viewers.

Ms. 45 (1981) (aka Angel of Vengeance)

One of director Abel Ferrara's earliest films (his second) was this low-budget exploitation, cult classic of female vengeance, rape-and-revenge. It was similar to other '70s films with the same theme of angry and violent feminist retaliation, including:

• The Last House on the Left (1972)
• Thriller - A Cruel Picture (1973, Swed.)
• Death Wish (1974)
• I Spit On Your Grave (1978)

The film's tagline was:

"It will never happen again!"

The urban thriller opened with an introduction to the often-victimized, oppressed, exploited main character in the early 1980s in the NYC fashion industry:

• Thana (17 year-old Zoe Lund (aka Zoe Tamerlis) in her film debut) - a waifish, shy and deaf-mute seamstress who worked in NYC's garment district; she lived by herself in a small low-rent apartment in Clinton Gardens
  [Note: Her name was an oblique reference to Thanatos, meaning 'goddess of death'.]

She was raped twice in the same evening, as she returned home from work:

• she was attacked by a plastic cellophane-masked assailant (director Ferrara) with a gun, dragged to an alley, and raped from behind while draped over some garbage cans, and her purse was also stolen
• after she returned home to her apartment, she was also raped there by a burglar (Peter Yellen) with a .45 revolver

She gained a thirst for vengeance after bludgeoning, knocking unconscious, and killing the second rapist with a blow to the head from her sewing iron - and she kept his discarded weapon - the .45 revolver. She dismembered his body in the bathtub, by sawing off limbs with a long knife, in a bloody and grisly scene. Each bloody body part was wrapped in newspaper and placed in black garbage bags that were then stuffed into her refrigerator and freezer.

At the same time, she was experiencing frightening hallucinatory visions and nightmares of being attacked - in one instance when she began undressing to take a shower, she saw her first rapist in her mirror-reflection.

Thana's Frightening and Hallucinatory Visions

Then over a long period of time, she methodically dumped and distributed the garbage bags throughout the city into trash containers. She also would deposit some of the bags with unsuspecting individuals. (Once she placed a bag in the trunk of a car licensed in Georgia by the driver (Eddie Eisele), and in the bottom of a bag lady's (Evelyn Smith) cart.) Suddenly frightened by a heckler (Vincent Gruppi) while disposing one of the bags when he thought she had left behind her bag, she impulsively shot the suspicious bystander dead with the .45 when he ran after her into a dead-end alleyway.

After returning home, she threw up in her bathroom, and her snoopy landlady Mrs. Nasone (Editta Sherman) (with her incessantly-barking and curious dog named Phil (Bogey)) insisted that Thana call a doctor. Meanwhile, Thana's work was judged as negligent and inadequate (and was not up to par according to her condescending, demeaning, creepy and patronizing boss Albert (Albert Sinkys)). He urged: "Be like the other girls," and claimed she wasn't concentrating or keeping up.

Thana was further disturbed when she saw a New York Post headline report about a mysterious .45 caliber murder the previous day ("NO CLUES IN BIZARRE .45 KILLING"). After lunch with her co-workers, Thana was left alone in the restaurant. As she left, she was followed and persistently approached on the street by a flirtatious, sleazy guy (who earlier was making out with his girlfriend in the restaurant). He claimed he was a famous fashion photographer named Rich Volk (Stephen Singer). He flattered her ("You are much too beautiful to be a model"), and invited her to share drugs and pose in his studio-loft that afternoon. She obliged and as she entered his cheap studio-apartment from the elevator, she pulled out her gun and impulsively shot him to death with multiple gunblasts, before the elevator door closed.

She was soon dressing provocatively, wearing dark blue apparel and appearing as a red-lipsticked hooker to seductively lure predatory males into being victims. She set herself up during nocturnal wanderings to frequently have the opportunity to calmly shoot and mercilessly murder potential assailants, so she would never be exploited again. As the empowered female became more mentally unstable and misanthropic, the lethal shootings piled up, including these particular situations:

• a black pimp (Stanley Timms) arguing with and beating up one of his black prostitutes (Faith Peters) while accusing her of cheating him of $50: ("Never f--k with my money")
• five male gang members in Central Park, who surrounded her and threatened: "We want everything you got, baby"
• an Arab sheik (Lawrence Zavaglia) (and his bodyguard/driver Hunter (Alex Jachno)) in a chauffeured limousine who offered her cash for her services ("Perhaps you'd like to come with me tonight"); she answered by murdering him and the driver - in tune to the rhythm of the windshield wipers; she shot the sheik in the groin and the driver in the head

Thana's Murder of Black Pimp Who Was Harrassing a Prostitute

Thana Surrounded and Threatened by Gang Members in Central Park

Thana With Arab Sheik in Back Seat of Limousine Before Murdering Him and the Driver

The next morning, she listened to a radio report that described the massacres: "Police are still mystified by two apparently unconnected multiple murders that took place in midtown Manhattan last night in the largest mass killing in New York City in eight years. In Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, all the victims had been shot by a .45 caliber pistol. Meanwhile, at 48th Street and Park Avenue, a wealthy Saudi Arabian businessman Sheikh Mohammed al Faisal was shot to death along with his chauffeur."

Another evening, Thana went on another excursion looking for potential male targets:

• in Chinatown, she was unable to carry through on the murder of a young Chinese man (Michael R. Chin) who had been making out with his girlfriend (Gerri Igarashi) before she entered a Baskin-Robbins for work - when he hurriedly walked back to his apartment and entered the locked front door, he unintentionally eluded Thana
• in a bar, Thana met a talkative shoe salesman (Jack Thibeau) who rambled on about his unhappy love life after being dumped by his cheating girlfriend (who turned out to be lesbian); later while seated on a park bench in view of the Queensboro Bridge across the East River with him, Thana attempted to shoot him in the head, but the gun misfired; he grabbed her weapon ("Is this some kind of a joke?") and shockingly and suicidally shot himself in the head

Her iconic costume by film's end, for her attendance at her company's Halloween costume party, consisted of a nun's outfit with suspenders, bright red lipstick, high-heeled boots, and a gun strapped to her thigh. In her bedroom in front of her mirror, the deranged Thana imagined shooting at invisible victims.

[Note: In director Abel Ferrera's Bad Lieutenant (1992), a nun had been raped by two guys, similar to what had happened to Thana.]

At the party, Thana was with her date-dance partner Albert (dressed as Dracula). Meanwhile, snoopy Mrs. Nasone - who was worried about her missing dog Phil (that Thana had spitefully tied up during a walk), searched through Thana's apartment and discovered a decapitated male head (of the rapist) in a black garbage bag. She reported her ghastly find to the police.

As Albert was attempting to kiss Thana all over her body in his upper private office ("Oh, baby, oh, sweetheart, the mound of Venus") at the top of a spiral staircase, he raised her black dress and noticed her .45 gun tucked into her garter. She removed the weapon from its 'holster' and murdered him (off-screen) with a massive gun-blast.

Thana's Close-Up Glance at Albert Before Shooting Him	Removal of the .45 From Thana's Garter Holster	The Beginning of the Massacre
Although Stabbed in the Back, Thana's Refusal to Shoot Laurie, Calling Her "Sister"

Indiscriminately from the top of the staircase and then on the floor of the party, she then went on a violent, crazed shooting spree (resembling Sam Peckinpah's slow-motion concluding bloodbath in The Wild Bunch (1969)) - targeting all of the males.

The film concluded with the end of Thana's deadly rampage at the party when her best friend Laurie (Darlene Stuto) fatally stabbed her in the back with a long cake knife. Before collapsing, Thana threatened but then hesitated to shoot Laurie, as she called her "Sister" before falling dead to the floor. It was the only word she had uttered in the entire film.

In her apartment, the mournful landlady Mrs. Nasone was surprised by the return of her dog Phil unharmed and scratching at her door.

Possession (1981, Fr./W. Ger.)

Polish director Andrzej Zulawski's experimental and avant-garde work was a very surrealistic and bizarre occult horror film, similar to elements of:

• Polanski's Repulsion (1965)
• Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958)
• David Cronenberg's The Brood (1979)
• James Polakof's Demon Rage (1982)
• Sidney J. Furie's The Entity (1982)
• Lars von Trier's Antichrist (2009)
• Amat Escalante's The Untamed (2016, Mex.) (aka La Región Salvaje)

It was released in a heavily-edited 81 minute American version that was derived from the original 127 minute long cut. The film's tagline asked:

Is it desire?
Or violation?
Devotion?
Or bondage?
Your hidden fears will be aroused.
POSSESSION
Inhuman ecstasy fulfilled.

The symbolically-told story, set in West Berlin, was about a couple that slowly descended into psychosis as they went through a self-destructive and disintegrating romance and marriage (on the brink of divorce). There were many grotesque, allegorical or metaphorical results that were produced. The main love triangle was between:

• Anna (Isabelle Adjani, French Cesar Award-winning actress), a tormented, erratic, sexually-psychotic young French femme, a ballet instructor
• Mark (Sam Neill), Anna's husband in a disintegrating marriage, involved in espionage as a Secret Service spy who returned after an absence to find his wife Anna admitting that she had been unfaithful
• Heinrich (Heinz Bennett), Anna's self-possessed lover, a self-help guru on the East side of the Berlin Wall

There was also a fourth character:

• Helen (Adjani also in a dual look-alike or doppelganger role) - an idealized Anna; a nurturing, innocent, kind, peaceful, green-eyed schoolteacher who tutored the couple's young son Bob, and with whom Mark started an affair as a replacement for his break-up with Anna

Anna and Mark lived in a brick apartment complex with windows that faced towards the Wall. The two were experiencing a very strained relationship especially after he discovered she was having an affair with Heinrich. Mark and Anna both had frequent arguments, shouting matches, and physical beatings of each other. In a scene of separation in a cafe, they were seated next to each other on different sides of a pillar covered by mirrors. She thought about their conflicts: "Maybe this is something all couples go through." During one struggle in their kitchen, she cut her neck with an electric knife, and Mark matched her by slicing into his forearm with the implement.

When a private Detective (Carl Duering) hired by Mark visited Anna's second sparse and run-down rented residence-apartment, and he caught a glimpse of a strange creature in her bedroom, he was lethally attacked in the neck with a broken bottle wielded by Anna. Later, when the detective's lover Zimmermann (Shaun Lawton) also visited the apartment, he discovered his partner's body, and a tentacled, undulating fleshy creature oozing on the bed, as Anna told him: "He's very tired. He made love to me all night." Zimmermann was also attacked and shot and killed with his own gun by a seemingly-possessed Anna.

From her tortured id, she had created an abominable, supernatural, wormy-tentacled, lizardy or octopus-shaped incubus creature (modeled by SFX master Carlo (E.T.) Rambaldi) and became possessed by it ("I can't exist by myself because I'm afraid of myself, because I'm the maker of my own evil"). The monstrous being (representing God, the Devil, or the Anti-Christ?) was kept, for purposes of sexual fulfillment and protective consumption - she also kept dismembered body parts in the refrigerator.

Various Views and Forms Taken by the Fantasized Creature

The notorious film included a five-minute hysterically-screaming miscarriage-birthing flashback sequence in a deserted, echoing subway tunnel in which she writhed, convulsed and tossed a netted bag of groceries against the wall, and let the consequences of her unhappy marriage overtake her. During the horrifyingly orgasmic sequence, Anna vomited and oozed blood and whitish milky fluids from all of her orifices, creating a puddle of liquids under her knees. Later, she described the experience: "What I miscarried there was sister Faith, and what was left is sister Chance. So I had to take care of my faith to protect it."

Anna's Birthing-Miscarriage in Subway Tunnel

In the film's most infamous scene, a naked Anna had sexual intercourse with her monstrous offspring in the missionary position. Mark arrived and was aghast at the sight of the abnormal coupling, as she glanced up at him and gasped, "Almost, almost."

Anna/Helen's (Isabelle Adjani) Monstrous and Possessed Sex

In the film's deadly conclusion, the creature had transformed completely into Mark's duplicate or doppelganger. Mark was shot and seriously wounded by police gunfire, and fled to Anna's apartment. At the top of the spiral staircase in the apartment building, he collapsed as both Anna and Mark's doppelganger arrived. She expectantly told him: "I wanted to show it to you. It is finished now." With blood streaming out of his mouth, Mark aimed his revolver at his duplicate and rejected this new version of himself. As he pulled the trigger, there was a volley of police gunfire from below. Anna was hit with multiple shots and collapsed onto Mark.

She struggled to pull herself closer to Mark for a final bloody kiss. Lying atop the wounded Mark, Anna shot herself in the back with his gun, and then collapsed dead into his arms. The doppelganger came over to Mark and told him: "So hard to live with it, hey brother?" Shortly later, Mark jumped through the stairwell to his death on the floor many stories below, and the doppelganger fled through the roof.

Mark Seriously Wounded at Top of Spiral Staircase	Anna Appeared with Mark's Doppelganger: "I wanted to show it to you"	Mark Aiming at His Own Doppelganger and Firing
Anna Collapsing onto Mark After Being Shot by Police	Final Kiss	Anna's Self-Inflicted Gunshot Death Atop Mark
Mark Listening to His Doppelganger	Mark and Anna Dying Together	Mark's Death From Fall

In the enigmatic, pre-apocalyptic ending, the silhouette of the creature (as Mark's doppelganger) appeared at the frosted door of the apartment where Helen was babysitting Bob - and threatened to enter. The young boy warned: "Don't open! Don't open! Don't open! Don't open! Please don't open!..." as the film concluded. As he kept crying the same words, Bob ran up the stairs to the bathtub to escape and submerge himself under the water with his clothes on. At the door, Helen was frightened by flashing lights and the sound of sirens.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981)

Director Bob Rafelson's film (from a script by David Mamet) was a more explicit R-rated version of the classic film noir, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), with Lana Turner and John Garfield, both of which were based upon James M. Cain's 1934 novel of the same name.

The weak remake featured the same torrid, adulterous love affair between:

• Frank Chambers (Jack Nicholson), a drifter
• Cora Smith/Papadakis (Jessica Lange), an unfulfilled, sexy wife of diner-cafe owner Nick Papadakis (John Colicos)

The romantic drama was most notorious for the intense, mostly-clothed, uninhibited sex scene performed in the cafe's kitchen. Its tagline was a play on a famous expression: "You Will Feel The Heat."

At first she vigorously resisted him inside the cafe, as they wrestled with each other and she succumbed to a forced kiss. Frank laid Cora onto a table, when she shouted, "Wait a minute, wait, get off" and then swiped away the cutlery and freshly baked loaves of bread to clear space for them. She encouraged him further, "Come on," and he continued to grope and fondle her between her legs and on her breasts, and to kiss her.

They began intercourse as she rolled around to be on top, after which the scene implied that she received oral sex.

Private Lessons (1981)

The first in a series of Private... films, by producer R. Ben Efraim, featured Emmanuelle's Sylvia Kristel as a 30-ish sexy tutor with the 'hots' for a teenaged boy. The morally-questionable, controversial and clumsily-made teen fantasy sex comedy with Sylvia Kristel (of Emmanuelle fame, although sometimes represented by body double Judy Helden) was not to be confused with the sordid Italian comedy The Private Lesson (1975) starring Carroll Baker. Even a remake or sequel followed, Private Lessons II (1993, Jp.).

The teen sex comedy The Big Bet (1985) also starred Sylvia Kristel as an older fashion designer who tutored a 17 year-old male in the art of love-making.

A surprising box-office hit (although popular mostly because of Kristel's reputation as Emmanuelle), it was advertised with the tagline:

"The bedroom is a fun classroom - EMMANUELLE's star is the teacher."

In this wish-fulfillment (actually child-molestation) film, there were a number of debauched and unnerving seduction scenes between:

• Phillip ("Philly") Fillmore (16 year-old Eric Brown), a wealthy under-aged 15 year-old teenager
• Nicole Mallow (Sylvia Kristel), Philly's lovely new alluring French housekeeper/maid

Private Lessons with Nicole (Sylvia Kristel): The Stripping Scene

In her bedroom, she invited him to watch her undress after she caught him peeping on her. She slowly and seductively gave him a private strip show, although halfway, she first asked the "growing" boy: "Do you still want me to continue?" and he enthusiastically consented. When she removed her bra, she asked: "What do you think of?...My breasts. How do you like them?" He could only respond: "Nice, very nice." She moved closer and asked: "Would you like to touch them?" with one of her nipples directly in front of his face. He declined and said: "Maybe later." She continued until she was fully nude. When she handed him her panties, he nervously left while telling her: "I really enjoyed it." She promised: "We should do this again sometime."

Private Lessons: The Bath Scene

In another similar scene, she invited him into his father's bathroom to watch her bathe in the tub. She enticed him again: "Would you like to wash my back?" She guided his hand onto her soapy breast, and then innocently coaxed: "Would you like to join me?...Take a bath with me...Why don't you try it? Maybe you like it....Come on, it will be an adventure." Embarrassed, he joined her but wore green bathing trunks. As she soaped him from behind and spooned with him, she also kissed him, and he turned and kissed her back. He agreed to remove his boxer shorts under the condition that the lights were turned off. He panicked when she touched his privates and quickly ran off - he accepted her apology, but to prove his forgiveness, she suggested that he sleep with her overnight. When he declined, she said: "Just to show that there's no hard feelings, would you kiss me goodnight?" She gave him a much more intimate kiss than the peck he offered, before he fled from her.

More kisses and affection followed as they started to fall in love and go on dates (and he even asked her to marry him) - their kissing was often witnessed by the chauffeur, Lester Lewis (Howard Hesseman). Philly's chubby friend Sherman (Patrick Piccininni) was suspicious about how easy the housekeeper was: "If she's that easy, she's probably a whore!" After a fancy restaurant dinner date, the two returned to her bedroom where they slowly undressed each other (to the tune of Air Supply's "Lost in Love") before having sex together.

And then the very contrived subplot became apparent when Miss Mallow died from a heart attack before actual intercourse. It was part of a contrived subplot blackmailing scheme of the chauffeur to have her seduce the young boy, make love and then fake her death (with blood dripping from her mouth). A ransom note would then demand $10,000 from Philly (his father's safe) to keep everything hushed. The chauffeur held two things over Nicole's head: the fact that she was an illegal alien, and a felon for criminally seducing a minor. The tables were turned on the scheming and treacherous chauffeur, however, whose plans were stopped when Nicole revealed her true love (or "crush") for Philly. Before she left permanently - knowing that they could never keep their affair a secret from Philly's returning father, the couple did consummate love-making (to the tune of Rod Stewart's "You're In My Heart") before the film concluded.

In the last scene at Frederick Douglass High School in the fall, Philly thanked pretty young teacher Miss Phipps (Meridith Baer) for advice given to him the previous June (in the beginning of the film): "Find girls whose age is more appropriate for me." And then he asked her out for a chauffeured dinner date to provide more details about his adventurous summer.

[See other entries: "Raunchy Teen-Sex Comedies of the 1980s"]

S.O.B. (1981)

Director Blake Edwards and his real-life wife Julie Andrews took it upon themselves to skewer Hollywood, and at the same time spoof Andrews' family-friendly image. It was a major about-face from Julie Andrews' wholesome, squeaky-clean public image in Mary Poppins (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965). The film tauted its director's bravado:

The man who painted the panther pink, and taught you how to count to '10' now gives you Hollywood bull... at its funniest and sexiest.

In the film, the initials in the title stood for:

" Standard Operational Bullshit."

There was a daring breast-baring, topless scene performed by Sally Miles (Julie Andrews), an Oscar-winning film star and the wife of suicidal film producer Felix Farmer (Richard Mulligan). In a film-within-a-film scene for the transformed, soft-core pornographic musical Night Wind, Sally had agreed to appear naked-chested - "show my boobies."

There was stunned silence from the onlookers, a pregnant pause, and then uproarious applause for her. She looked down at her bare breasts, smiled, and then discreetly covered up.

In the next year, Andrews portrayed a singing transvestite in Edwards' Victor/Victoria (1982).

Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981, It/Fr.) (aka Storie di Ordinaria Follia, or Conte De La Folie Ordinaire)

Italian director Marco Ferreri's erotic drama and compelling love story was adapted from German/American beat poet Charles Bukowski's 1972 fictional work Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness. The controversial author Bukowski had a cult following for his short stories, novels, essays, and poetry. Two other films with Bukowski-based characters included:

• Barfly (1987), with Mickey Rourke
• Factotum (2005), with Matt Damon

The semi-autobiographical film was basically a tale of the life of Bukowski (and his alter-ego Henry Chinaski) through another character:

• Charles Serking (Ben Gazzara), a self-destructive, womanizing, alcoholic writer/poet on LA's seedy skid row living in a flophouse, with a renegade spirit and on the verge of sexual depravity

The film opened with the inebriated Charles presenting a recital of his philosophical and poetic works to a small and rude, disrespectful audience, as he drank booze from a brown bag:

"Style is the answer to everything - a fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing. To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without style. To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art. Bullfighting can be an art. Boxing can be an art. Loving can be an art. Opening a can of sardines can be an art. Not many have style. Not many can keep style. I have seen dogs with more style than men - although not many dogs have style. Cats have it with abundance."

When he went backstage in the massive performance hall, he found a short, blonde 12 year-old Runaway female (Wendy Welles) who had set up for herself a makeshift bedroom with a clothesline. He asked: "Are you real?" After he told her he was returning to Los Angeles the next day, she enthusiastically kissed him and begged for him to take her to Hollywood. He felt both of her breasts with his two hands, and then took a peek. He quickly suspected she was older than 12: "Just what I thought - your tits are too big. They're at least eight years old apiece. That adds up to 16. You liar." She replied: "Sometimes I just say I'm 12. I can be anything I want. I'm almost 14 actually." She sat on his lap as he sang her a lullaby - 'Rock-a-Bye-Baby.'

When he later awoke, he discovered that she had run out on him after emptying his pockets and robbing him of his Greyhound bus ticket back to Los Angeles. She left him with one pair of her panties on the line that he stuffed into his pocket.

After returning to Los Angeles after a 1,600 mile bus trip home, he mused (in voice-over) about the 'City of Angels':

I had come to the conclusion that the touring poet act was a mistake, but then again, my life's been one big one, so I've been told. Luckily, I had a couple of fifties stashed and bought a bus ticket home. Forty-two hours and sixteen hundred miles of concrete later, I hit the streets of Los Angeles. Some call it 'Lost Angels.' Me. I was just another one of the lost back where I belonged. Back in L.A. I could have kissed the ground. I resisted the impulse. Besides, it was drink I craved, and I had to get back to my part of town - Hollywood. Everybody thinks it's the playground of the stars, but they pushed on years ago. Now it's my kind of place - dangerous - a hardcore turf of pimps, whores, no class rip-off artists, and other shattered types entertaining fantasies too desperate to mention, just naked reality twenty-four hours a day. I've always had a love affair with the streets.

Once he returned to his squalid one-room apartment (after an absence of six weeks), he engaged in an argument with his landlady and ex-wife Vicky (Tanya Lopert) who complained about his incessant alcoholism, and how she had covered for his 'bar tab' debts. At Venice Beach, CA, he happened to encounter a blonde to whom he was immediately and animalistically attracted - described in voice-over:

Waiting on the next tumble of the dice, I made Venice Beach with a six-pack and hit the jackpot when I spotted this blonde number. She was that rare kind who gives you an instant hard-on. All sexual sleaze with an ass like a wild animal. My kind of game. She was radiating heat, putting out signals and I was hooked. I followed her. What the hell else could I do? My blood was up.

He pursued the trashy Vera (Susan Tyrrell) (wearing a short black blouse and a torn leopard-print sarong-skirt and matching choker) to a bus stop and then trailed her back to her place. Once inside, he ripped open her blouse to reveal her sexy black bra. When she fell to the floor limp, he stripped open the rest of her clothing, revealing black garters and no panties. She suddenly recuperated and stood up, gorged herself with a large phallic bite from his peeled banana, and then aggressively kissed him before she wrapped her legs around him, and they engaged in sex on her bed.

Sex with Trashy Vera

Afterwards, when asked how she liked the sex, she replied: "I like being raped." He called her a cock-teaser - prompting her to request S&M as she smoked a cigarello: "I want you to be mean to me. Next time I want you to use your belt." She supplied him with a wide black belt and then ordered: "Come on, Tiger, whip me. I want you to beat me before you stick it in!" But then when he walked from behind the bar and showed that he was wearing speedo briefs illustrated with a gun and holster, she laughed at him: "Look at his little gun!"

Then, while he took a hot bath, she gave him a promised "big surprise." She reported him to the police that he had molested her ("He forced me to have oral sex with him"). They arrived and arrested him - he amused himself by calling it "carnal violence" - (voice-over) "She ate me up like an enchilada and spit me into a police car." The next day, she dismissed the charges.

Then, in a bar, Charles found another sexual connection with a second damaged female who was rated as "devastating":

• Cass (Ornella Muti), a glamorous barfly-prostitute with a cruel pimp (Patrick Hughes); she was sado-masochistic (with self-mutilating actions), with low self-esteem; she was melancholic and suicidal, and claimed she was an orphan who grew up in a convent

At the bar counter, she demonstrated her self-destructive urges by thrusting or impaling herself with a giant safety pin inserted through both facial cheeks. In his apartment, he recited for her what he had most recently typed on his typewriter: "'Love,' he said. 'Kiss me. Kiss my lips, kiss my hair, my fingers, my cock, my balls, my eyes, my brains. Make me forget.'" The next morning during a reddish dawn, the outcast and misfit Charles spoke the word "Love" when reaching orgasm with her for the first time while taking her from behind as she was bent over and bottomless at a window.

Later, she returned in an elegant black dress and demanded exclusive sex from him: "I want to be f--ked until I have nothing left for the others, nothing." He non-chalantly responded: "You want me to service you, huh?" When she attempted to pay him, he slapped her and grabbed her with a prophetic statement: "I'll kill you, do you understand?" She continued with lustful demands:

"I'm paying for this. Now lay down and take your pants off, slave! (He obliged her by lying on a mattress on the floor) Now, give it to me! Take my soul with your cock!"

In the next scene, Cass had been jailed for hustling and she called Charles to bail her out. After her release, he bluntly told her: "You can go f--k yourself." She left an ink thumb imprint on his forehead and declared: "Now you're my man - forever." He spoke in a voice-over about her dangerous allure:

:Cass had that special look that got to me. Like she'd been blown away by the winds of eternity and was swimming back against the current. There was something mysterious going on and I plunged right in. I was in over my head, my mind kept telling me. I had to come up for some air. But Cass was like fluid fire and her flesh had already sucked me in. I had to get away from her before I got burned. But that was like trying to climb out of a whirlpool."

He paid for the services of an obese Widow (Judith Drake) who lived in the same apartment complex as Vera. Afterwards in the living room, Charles told her about his hidden wish to return to the womb: "I had this friend once. He had this desire, this obsession to return to his mother's womb. And one day that obsession became a reality." She spread her legs on the floor and he dove in - to try and hide inside of her. She encouraged him: "It's OK, come to me, my baby." He then admitted as tears flowed from his eyes: "It wasn't true. I made it up." His voice-over described his own despairing life, as he escaped by visiting a homeless shelter to mingle with other drunks and "defeated" low-lifes:

(voice-over) "Ever heard the sound of one mouth screaming? I had for years - my own. I didn't want to go home. I didn't want to see anybody. I just needed to be invisible for a few days, to get down in the dirt, lose myself with all the others: the defeated, the demented and the damned. They are the real people of this world and I was proud to be in their company."

Meandering around, he commented on the madness and insanity of life and his own illusory and "meaningless" existence with no other alternative but to "laugh or cry." He found himself completely down-and-out, perpetually drunk, and sleeping in used cars in a sales-lot. He also spoke about God and death to two other drunks on Venice Beach:

"As long as you don't believe in God, ya got nothin' to sweat. You're just along for the ride. Death isn't good and death isn't bad. It's just the Joker in the deck. There's worse things, anyway, like living with someone you don't like, or working eight hours on a job you hate, that's definitely worse than death."

Later, he met up with Cass again in the bar, who said she had returned to hustling. In his apartment, he placed his head in her lap and again asked for her to kiss him: "Make me forget." The two spent a short idyllic time together in a beach guesthouse - a place where he used to write. He watched as she fed the seagulls at the beach - naked from the waist down. Charles professed his love for her, calling her "the most alive woman I've ever met." He asked, "Will you marry me?" but she only answered with a kiss. Then, she suddenly disappeared after they made love on the beach's sand bar. He described how he could feel that she had "a mortal wound in her soul."

He found her back in his apartment, where he had received a letter from a major publishing house in NYC, with a job offer that would take him away from her. He proposed to bring her to NY if things looked good ("Maybe your luck's turned around"). She cried, fearing to lose him. He discovered that her crotch area was bloody. Cass revealed that she had stitched her vagina shut with her large safety pin - she told him about her genital self-mutilation when she feared that she'd lose him.

"I've closed it. For you and for everybody. Forever."

He removed the large safety pin from her bloody groin area, and then nervously fled next-door to Vicky's emptied apartment.

After traveling to NY and being offered a job at Worldwind Publishing, Charles quickly became disillusioned with the uninspiring, sickly lime green-colored office cubicle he was assigned, and spent his time guzzling beer. He soon returned to Los Angeles ("I was back to square zero"), and returned to his favorite bar where the pimp had a new prostitute in tow. He learned that Cass had suicidally killed herself (by slashing her own throat) during his absence. He hugged her inside her open coffin in a Catholic mortuary, told her "You're too beautiful," and then spiraled downward into a drinking bout:

(voice-over) "When the bottom drops out, it's a terrifying ride. Throughout my life, I'd always challenged the death of the soul of everybody - the fools, the fiends, the friends, the fakers. My mouth has always been big, but I like to think my words are beautiful, but now there were no words, only emptiness, and I was blinded by the embers of memory and a million thoughts about the most beautiful girl in town. She was gone. Cass - that whore of an angel who flew too close to the ground and crashed."

In the film's conclusion, he attained some catharsis and peace when he returned to the beachhouse where he had experienced some idyllic moments with Cass. As he stumbled up to the beachhouse, he passed a young "Girl on the Beach" (Katya Berger) who was feeding the seagulls. He noticed that she was watching him from afar with some concern.

When she approached him in the beachhouse and asked: "Will you read me a poem?" and then on the beach asked: "Where does poetry come from?", he bargained: "You show me your titties and I'll compose a poem. Just for you." She ran to the water's edge and down the beach, where he followed. She shouted out to him: "Come to my island, come on, come. You might know all about poetry, but you don't know the road." He staggered after her, and then began to spout bits of original poetry to the admiring young female:

And the sun wields mercy. It's like a torch carried too high. And the jets whip across its sight and the rockets leap like toads. Peace is no longer, for some reason, precious. Madness drifts like lily pads on a pond, circling senselessly.

(The girl stripped off her blouse and skirt to reveal her nakedness from a short distance)

The painters paint, dipping their reds and greens and yellows. Poets rhyme their loneliness. Musicians starve as always. And novelists miss the mark. But not the pelican, the gull.

(He reached out to touch her breasts)

Pelicans dip and dive.

(He sunk to his knees and hugged her body)

Rise shaking, shocked, half-dead, radioactive fish in their beaks. The sky breaks red and orange. Flowers open as they have always opened, but covered with a thin dust of rocket fuel and mushrooms - poison mushrooms. And in a million rooms, lovers lie entwined, and lost, and sick as peace. Can't we awaken? Must we forever, dear friends, die in our sleep.

Girl on the Beach (Katya Berger) Listening to Charles' Spontaneous Poetry

Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981)

At the height of sex star-goddess Bo Derek's popularity after her hit success in Blake Edwards' comedy 10 (1979) - and its subsequent A Change of Seasons (1980), the star's Svengali husband John Derek (30 years her elder) chose to direct her in this completely tasteless, sophomoric, modernized nude (and sexless) version of the classic jungle tale from the characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs of the early 1930s. The two stars were:

• Jane Parker (Bo Derek)
• Tarzan (Miles O'Keeffe), the legendary "white ape" man (without any lines of dialogue)

Its tagline rightly declared: "Unlike any other Tarzan you've ever seen!"

In fact, the Burroughs' estate was incensed at the softcore treatment of the material and tried to sue to stop the film's release - and forced MGM to agree to four editorial cuts in sequences displaying Bo's Jane Parker in various stages of undress.

Bo Derek won the Razzie Award for "Worst Actress" - and the film received five other Razzie nominations.

[Note: Another even more controversial version of the Tarzan tale was called Tarzan X: Shame of Jane (aka Jungle Heat) (1994), an X-rated version by director Joe D'Amato.]

The film opened with the familiar Tarzan yell replacing the MGM's lion roar in the logo. There were numerous bathing scenes (both clothed and unclothed) to show off Jane's figure. The ape-man was introduced to her, about halfway through the film, when she was swimming in an inland sea and a fearsome lion approached the beach.

Later after being semi-reluctantly kidnapped by Tarzan, she was saved from an attacking giant python. In an infamous banana scene, she phallically peeled open the fruit as she admitted: "I'm still a virgin. Now, I don't know whether that's good or bad." She asked the mute ape-man: "What are you? You'd have to be, I mean, there's no one. You'd have to be, wouldn't you? It's a strange problem."

Again swimming with him, she marveled at his body by babbling this awful line of dialogue: "Do you know you're more beautiful than any girl I know? Oh, you're a lot more!" After she taught the uncivilized Tarzan how to smile, she could only react: "God!...It's wicked, I know," and then closed her eyes when the curious ape man touched her breasts through her wet shirt.

Then, after she and her estranged father James Parker (Richard Harris) and explorer Harry Holt (John Phillip Law) were captured by natives, Jane was ceremonially scrubbed while naked (on her hands and knees) and then painted white in preparation for marrying the brutish, Mohawk-haired native leader. Her father was lethally impaled in the abdomen with a giant elephant's tusk, and Jane leaned over him as he perished and vowed: "I love you too, I always have, and I always, always will."

Tarzan's Jane (Bo Derek) Ceremonially Scrubbed by Natives and Painted White

After being predictably rescued by Tarzan, she followed him into the jungle and the two were seen frolicking in the water with a chimpanzee, with Jane continuing to be topless. The film ended with one of the more controversial aspects of the film - the chimpanzee kissed Jane's right nipple - and she giggled.

Final images were of love-making on the beach at sunset, Jane sunbathing topless (with a butterfly fluttering nearby), and her fun romp and tussle with Tarzan and an orangutan (C.J.) (under the closing credits).

Fantasies (1981) (aka And Once Upon a Love)

This was young and dark-haired Bo Derek's debut film at age 16, shot in 1973, in the role of Anastasia - a film about a young girl's awakening on a Greek island.

The film was unseen until its release 8 years later after her success in 10 (1979). During a bathtub scene, she exclaimed (obviously): "I have bosoms."

Bo Derek's Other John Derek-Directed Films:

Bo Derek attempted to capitalize on her soft-core sexuality in three other films besides Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981). All three films, directed by her husband-producer John Derek, featured her as a sex object who was undergoing some kind of sexual awakening:

• Fantasies (1981) (Tagline: She's the face...the figure...the fantasy!")
• Bolero (1984)
• Ghosts Can't Do It (1989)

Derek retained creative control of her career as a Hollywood outsider, although all failed for their weak plots and wooden performances since all were basically designed to be amateurish vehicles to display Bo's nude and semi-nude shape in as many different poses as possible.

X-Ray (1981) (aka Hospital Massacre)

This low-brow slasher/horror thriller (an obscure straight-to-video release by the Golan-Globus) by writer/director Boaz Davidson told of the haunting of a brunette since her past as a young girl. The main attraction was Barbi Benton (a country music TV HeeHaw cast member, and one of Playboy Hugh Hefner's early girlfriends, plus a frequent Playboy cover girl and nude layout feature subject).

When the story began on Valentine's Day in 1961, young Susan Jeremy (Elizabeth Hoy as child) rejected and mocked young Harold's (Billy Jayne/Jacoby) Valentine's Day card, prompting the spurned admirer to murder her playfriend David (Mikael Romano) by impaling him on a hat/coat rack.

19 years later as brunette divorcee Susan Jeremy (Barbi Benton as adult), she went to the LA county hospital for test results after a checkup. In the hospital, heavy-breathing maniac Harold (Charles "Chip" Lucia) had reappeared, impersonating a surgical doctor, to seek revenge. He had brutally killed off various hospital personnel (using medical instruments), switched her X-ray test results with those of a terminally-ill patient, and forced her to stay overnight - coinciding with another Valentine's Day.

In an unrealistic, exploitative and gratuitous sex scene (a five minute segment!), she was asked to undress for a physical exam. The demented impersonating doctor watched her sexy silhouette as she stripped behind a curtain. She emerged with a white gown and sat down on the exam table. He removed her gown to reveal her nudity except for skimpy panties. For a few moments, he ordered her to breathe in and out as he listened to her lungs. She intently stared back at him during the entire time.

The unprofessonal doctor quickly tested her blood pressure on her left arm and then had her lie down on her back, where she was subjected to a very slow, humiliating body exam from her feet to her head.

The Full-Body Breast Exam

The examination scene was filmed in lingering, extreme close-up from a side-view - and probably the most memorable segment of the entire film! The unprofessional doctor first lingered over her pelvic area and then around her orb-shaped nipples and breasts as he slowly worked his way up her body, asking her to breathe in and out as he applied his stethoscope to her bare flesh. He then put his hands around her neck as she gazed up at him.

The withdrawal of blood from her left arm was filmed as if it was an invasive rape scene.