Arachnophobia (Frank Marshall) – Odd that those most likely to find this scary will be the least likely to go and see it. I’m no arachnophobe (wasps are my pet hate) so the film began at a disadvantage with me and I found myself cheering on the beasties – any hero who is a wine connoisseur loses my sympathy straight away. Most of the other characters are just as obnoxious: Julian Sands as the mandatory scientist and John Goodman as a bug-killer are the best of the (human) cast. After an hour of warming-up, it does provide some nice thrills to justify it’s existence and I suspect how much you enjoy the movie depends a lot on your feelings about spiders. Just spare a moment’s silence for the ones that died in production and those mercilessly crushed by jumpy citizens who’ve seen the movie… 6/10.

Buried Alive (Gerard Kikoine) – Cliche ridden Edgar Allen Poe adaption – you can tell because there’s a black cat in every other frame – seems like a cross between ‘Suspiria’ (lots of insects and a girls’ school) and ‘Reform School Girls’ (they’re naughty bimbos). Someone is doing nasty things to the inhabitants and Donald Pleasence wanders round saying things like “Yvonne sees reality as a warped rejection of her own super-ego” and “Who’s to say they are dead? There are many different levels of existence”. A film with all the problems of Argento movies and none of the benefits, this is a distinct disappointment from the director of ‘Edge of Sanity’ despite the first ever food-mixer scalping. 2/10.

Cafe Flesh (Rinse Dream) – “This is not a porn movie” says the Scala Cinema’s programme in block capitals and a tone of certainty. Oh, yes it is! Despite a surreal post-apocalyptic culture setting, where only 1% of the population are able to have sex (watched by the other 99%) and better characters and dialogue than might be expected, without the hard-core it’d bear a strong resemblance to ‘The Comic’. However, the decidedly cute presence of a pre-‘Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers’ Michelle Bauer (under the name of Pia Snow) is adequate compensation. 6/10.

Dead Calm (Philip Noyce) – Effective, if often predictable thriller has a husband and wife on a sailing cruise, up against a psycho who maroons the husband on the gradually sinking ship belonging to his last victims, and begins to close in on the wife. The setting is nicely claustrophobic and the set pieces work well but some sections require too much credulity. Does succeed in adding a new dimension to the phrase “dumb bitch deserves to die”, however! 7/10.

Deathstalker III (Alfonso Corona) – A third director and a third lead actor remove all traces of continuity (apart from the customary rip-off footage from the previous adventures) leaving little more than a very tired idea and not enough sex or violence to justify it. What’s the point of a sword and sorcery movie without nudity or blood? It certainly isn’t the acting or the plot, neither of which stand up to scrutiny even at 3am in the morning after several beers and a lot of sandwiches. 3/10.

Desperate Hours (Michael Cimino) – Neither Cimino nor star Mickey Rourke are exactly flavour of the month with the critics so this one has been drowned in a sea of vitriol.  A pity, because it’s a very slick, taut and plausible (at least as these things go) thriller. Rourke plays a psycho, sprung from jail by his girlfriend, who takes over the house of a lawyer (Anthony Hopkins) as somewhere to lie low. The police net closes inexorably towards them and the stresses start to show. It may be formula stuff, but it’s beautifully shot (perhaps too much so, it occasionally looks like a Utah Tourist Board promo film), relentlessly cool, Hopkins is as good as ever and Rourke shows that when he isn’t trying to play the sexual animal, he can act – more of this might help his career, though I know at least one female reader who’d disagree!). 8/10.

Fantasia (Walt Disney) – 50 years old, and wearing well, despite, or maybe because of astonishing naivety: it takes a while to work out why the male centaurs look odd, then you realise they’ve no nipples or belly-buttons, leaving their bodies totally blank! At least the females have breasts,  albeit nippleless ones. And while the animation is less detailed than in later pictures it’s still easily as good as anything produced these days. The sequences either tell a story (‘The Sorceror’s Apprentice’ is the best known) or are more or less abstract sequences of pretty pictures, such as for Bach’s Toccata – restful to the point of soporific, so it’s a good job there aren’t many of them. Advertised as “the ultimate trip”, there wasn’t a kid in sight when I saw it and if it won’t replace LSD, it’s more mind-expanding than ‘My Little Pony’. 3-8/10, mostly towards the upper end.

Flesh Gordon 2 (Howard Ziehm) – Subtitled ‘Flesh Gordon Meets The Cosmic Cheerleaders’, this delayed sequel starts off being self-consciously stupid, then hammers the viewer  with an endless succession of juvenile tit-and-fart jokes until…hell, you’ve got to laugh at the awfulness of it all. Good thing too, because the actual jokes aren’t all that funny. Unlike the first, it’s aimed at the ‘R’ market so there’s a lack of blatantly removed hardcore which helps and the performances are at the right level of naffness. Racist, sexist and homophobic to the point where even I began to wince, leave all liberal sensibilities at the door. 6/10.

Goregasm (Hugh Gallagher) – After a man is found murdered and the entire police force is too busy to investigate, the case is assigned to desk detective Chase (Rick Billock). Soon he’s delving into the world of porn videos after discovering an ad for ‘Goregasm’ in the dead man’s house. The murderer turns out to be Tara (Gabriela), the wacked-out bitch in the Goregasm ad and soon Chase is trying to find her while she goes about, killing men, in various states of undress. The film (actually it’s shot on video) isn’t quite as exciting as the synopsis sounds. It is a fun “bad” film loaded with cheesy gore, the topless Gabriela and some bad acting – as a “real” film, this one has some good ideas, just doesn’t execute them well. But taken on the level that Hugh Gallagher (publisher of the ‘zine ‘Draculina’) had the guts to make a film despite having no money or stars, I’d say he did quite well: it’s a big improvement over his first venture into film-making with the dull ‘Dead Silence’. (DP)

Grim Prairie Tales (Wayne Coe) – The problem with anthology movies is that they tend to mediocrity: I’ve yet to see one with four really good  stories and ‘Grim’ certainly doesn’t qualify. The linking sections are better than the tales themselves, Brad Dourif and James Earl Jones providing an otherwise too often lacking frisson. For the record, No.1 has an Indian burial ground being disturbed – I fell asleep during it, so missed the end and the start of No.2, though I did get to see it’s spectacular climax (and ‘climax’ is the word). I was kept awake for No.3 by the guy in the next seat writhing every time the 14-year old daughter appeared (Hi, Jason, isn’t libel fun?); it was otherwise pointless, and No.4, about a gunfighter scared of blood, wasn’t much better. 4/10.

Heavy Petting (Obie Benz) – A group of celebrities, from William Burroughs to Zoe Tamerlis (now with red hair and calling herself Zoe Tamerlaine, still looking wonderful) via David Byrne talk straight to camera about their early sexual experiences with varying degrees of coherency and frankness. While these often strike a chord, the confessions never give more than a glimpse of the personalities behind them, and I enjoyed the interspersed clips from 50’s and 60’s sex-education films more – these varied from the ridiculous to the very ridiculous. 7/10.

Leningrad Cowboys Go America (Aki Kaurismaki) – If David Lynch had directed ‘The Blues Brothers’ while having one of his notorious sugar rushes, this might have been the result. A group of Finnish, vaguely Pogue-like musicians possessing incredible quiffs and minimal talent head for the States on the very reasonable grounds that “they’ll swallow any shit there”. Most of the movie centres round their journey to Mexico to play at a wedding, via encounters with Jim Jarmusch, Nicky Tesco, bikers and police – it’s all highly weird and if the far-too-numerous musical interludes do little except prove that the Leningrad Cowboys are indeed completely untainted by commercial potential, it’s still likeably unique. 6/10.

The Little Mermaid (John Musker/Ron Clements) – There used to be rumours that Walt Disney had made pornographic cartoons, which were locked away deep in the vaults of Disneyworld. While T.L.M. is no X-rated movie, it’s story resembles ‘The Trials of Traci’ (mermaid goes onto land seeking mate) and the heroine looks less like Snow White, and more like Cherry Poptart, star of a comic book high on H.M. Customs’ hit-list. Very suspicious. And then there’s all these hidden messages – beautiful people are good, ugly ones are bad – designed to influence our children. It’s a plot, I tell ya! Paranoia aside, this is good stuff, almost classic Disney and easily better than any of the American competition. While the animation may be simplified to reduce effort, it’s rarely noticeable – people lack teeth, that’s all. Nice songs, an evil villainess and an entirely predictable story: exactly what one expects from Disney. 8/10.

The Match Factory Girl (Aki Kaurismaki) – Probably the most depressing film I’ve seen in ages: a woman has a dull job, a joyless homelife and spends her evenings being gloomy. The first 20 minutes has three words of spoken dialogue: “Half of beer”. The comic highlight is someone getting poisoned. And it’s in Finnish. Yet despite being the visual equivalent of a Joy Division douple LP, it’s more engrossing than it sounds (though I can’t for the life of me work out why) – only confirmed depressives will actually enjoy it and the rest of us should be sure to put away any sharp objects before viewing. 6/10.

Meet the Applegates (Michael Lehmann). The director of ‘Heathers’ has certainly come up with one of the more original films of the year so far: giant insects move to Median, Ohio from the Amazon so they can sabotage the local nuclear plant and save the rain forests. Their instruction manual to “being American” is a Dick and Jane reading book – reality is somewhat different, the husband has an affair with a secretary, his wife discovers the joy of credit cards, their son is hooked on dope and the daughter gets pregnant. This very thin veneer of normality reaches monomolecular levels as people who discover the  truth   end  up  cocooned   in  the  cellar.  The problem is that, like ‘Twin Peaks’, there’s nothing behind the weirdness: while the scenes of the family adjusting to American life are fun, it can’t support an entire movie and the interval between inventive scenes gets steadily longer. However, bear in mind it took several viewings for ‘Heathers’ to take root… 6/10.

Mortal Passions (Andrew Lane) – This fails totally as serious drama, yet provides ninety minutes of tacky entertainment and a couple of the cutest actresses to appear on our screens this year. Zach Galligan plays a suicidal house-painter whose wife (Krista Errickson), the sort of girl who apologises by taking her clothes off, is having it away with a customer at the cocktail bar where she works, and is planning to kill her spouse for his money. But his brother finds out, kills the cuckold and takes over screwing the wife. Then the murdered man’s girlfriend appears. Oh, and both husband and wife are getting therapy from a psychologist played by David Warner. No good comes of all this, you will not be surprised to hear. Victorian melodrama, 1991-style, that gets steadily more ridiculous and sleazy by turns. I liked it. 7/10.

Nuns on the Run (Jonathan Lynn) – TC’s continuing quest to bring you the full range of nun-pics brings you a one joke movie (two criminals hide out in a convent) which by some sleight of hand still manages to be an enjoyable piece of mindless entertainment. This is mainly thanks to Robbie Coltrane (was he a nun in a previous life?) doing miracles with a script that is rarely less than obvious and never subtle. Eric Idle marks time incomparison, being frequently diverted by a love interest, presumably to reassure the audience that he and Coltrane are ‘normal’ and don’t get any pleasure out of cross-dressing. 6/10.

Polyester (John Waters) – Could be considered inspiration for ‘Meet the Applegates’ as Divine and family are so bizarre they might well be from Amazonia. Originally released with scratch and sniff cards to enhance the ambience (I’ve got an unused one – any offers?), even without them it remains trash in a compressed, concentrated form and a monument to tack. While it lacks the deliberate offensiveness of ‘Pink Flamingos’, this is no bad thing, as it’s replaced by vicious parody of American lifestyles, clothes, habits and everything from shopping to Alcoholics Anonymous. Despite a tendency to go on ramming the point home beyond what’s necessary, this is perhaps Divine’s finest moment. The plot? You wouldn’t believe me if I told you… 7/10.

Predator 2 (Steven Hopkins) – Blam! Boom! Bang! Arnie may be missing, but the bad guy is back, or at least one like it. This Predator is even better equipped to kick human ass having all sorts of nifty optional extras: ultra-violet sight as well as infra-red, killer frisbees and lots of freaky weapons, as opposed to the original Predator’s minimalist style (it went for the locking wheel nuts and a stereo radio instead). Virtually an expanded remake, set in the urban jungle of LA, I don’t think this will disappoint – it’s intelligently exploitative, Danny Glover bringing more to his character than Schwarzeneggar did, while the action sequences easily make up for some slack moments early on. The last ten minutes, as our hero finds the alien spaceship, made me sit back and go ‘Whoa!’. An early contender for Pyrotechnic Overkill Movie of 1991. 8/10.

The Presidio (Peter Hyams) – Shaun Connery is a policeman on a military base who has to contend with murders, a renegade ex-soldier turned cop and a fairly un-necessary romantic subplot involving said cop and Sean’s daughter. Needless to say, he ignores them all and proves again that while he may play a limited range of characters (this time, it’s roughly 50/50 ‘Name of the Rose’ and ‘Hunt for Red October’), he’s pretty good at them. 7/10.

Sex Madness (???) – From the same people that brought you ‘Reefer Madness’, a solemn tale of what happens to those who dare to have sex outside the sanctity of marriage. They get syphilis, pass it onto their husbands and children, are forced to the edge of suicide and lose any acting ability they may have possessed. Or maybe it just seems that way, as whoever the director is, he was clearly a one-take man: a half-open window slams shut, making the actress talking at the time visibly jump and the camera keeps right on rolling. These little technical quibbles aside, this is medical melodrama pushed to the limits – do I mark it as such or do I write it off for the dated exploitation it is? Both, and neither. 5/10.

Sugar Hill (Paul Maslansky) – You can tell you’re in trouble from the song on the opening credits of this stinker: a groovy number called ‘Supernatural Voodoo’ (available on Motown records, we’re told). Made during the blaxploitation period, the ‘plot’ concerns Sugar (Maki Bey), the death of her boyfriend and her subsequent revenge. It turns out Robert Quarry wants to get his greedy hands on the bar owned by the boyfriend – first they try buying him out but he refuses. Several minutes later they appear outside and in a totally hilarious fight scene, kill him – don’t ask why they’re wearing ladies stockings on their heads or appear to be dancing on the victim. Sugar Hill pops down to the local swamp and calls on Baron Zombie, a dude who thinks evil is breaking out into a nasty laugh every couple of minutes. He raises his zombie friends, who turn out to be a couple of black actors with silvery eyes, covered in cobwebs, and together with Sugar, they set about knocking off the dudes that killed her boyfriend. The movie is laced with well thought-out dialogue: “Honky, you killed my man – now you’re going to die, sucker” and Quarry’s insistence on calling Sugar a “black bitch”. This one has to be seen to be believed. 3 (but for a good laugh 6)/10. (MM)

The Vanishing (George Sluizer) – Dutch film that got a minimal release at cinemas to critical acclaim and is now out on video as a result. It’s unusual story has a man obsessed by the disappearance of his girl-friend, who vanished three years ago at a service station, and trying to find out what happened to her. He eventually finds the man responsible – to say any more would be unfair. A psychological thriller (roughly translated: “not action-packed”), it concentrates on the characters involved – as a drama, it’s fine (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu as the kidnapper deserves especial mention) – as a horror movie, it lacks punch and I didn’t feel it’s ending lived up to the hype. Mind you, I’m not claustrophobic… 6/10.

Revolting Cocks: London Astoria, January 24th, 1991

Reporters are used to facing danger: Sandy Gall in Afghanistan, John Pilger in Cambodia, Kate Adie in…just about anywhere there’s trouble. Though even she might have thought twice about braving the Astoria theatre in London, on the night of the Revolting Cocks concert.

The current LP, ‘Beers, Steers and Queers’, starts off with a taped phone-call from someone operating under the misapprehension that the Revolting Cocks were a male strip show but I doubt anyone turned up at the Astoria thinking the same thing. The propaganda had been flying: flamethrowers, mechanical broncos, live cattle and a road crew armed with urine-filled water pistols were rumoured to be ranged against us.

It didn’t quite live up to this hype: there were no flamethrowers, no animals (artificial or real), and the road crew were too busy repelling wave after wave of potential slam-dancers to reach for any small arms they may have been carrying. A disappointment? Not really, as it still crammed more deviance and sleaze into ninety minutes than a Ken Russell movie: a topless go-go dancer simulating oral sex on a man wearing inflatable breasts (one punctured), a mask of the Queen and a policeman’s helmet is not the sort of behaviour likely to get them on the next Royal Variety Show.

Mention must be made of the support who were better than average: Godflesh started by apologising profusely for the poor sound before delivering some gut-knotting power noise, while Bomb Everything were solid thrash metal and showed remarkable good humour in the face of the enemy: “if you see anyone chucking a can, smash his face in and I’ll give you a free T-shirt”.

To Revco, though any description will be inadequate. This was apocalypse music with a bad attitude, noise for a corrupt generation, the soundtrack to a remake of ‘Caligula’ set in the seventh level of hell. Even at the sort of volume that would be illegal coming from a jack-hammer, the sound quality was excellent. Long, unrelenting versions of songs from ‘Beers, Steers & Queers’ joined old favourites like the utterly tasteless ‘Union Carbide’ and ‘Attack Ships on Fire’ (bonus point if you can tell me the movie that line comes from!) to give the brain a good kicking until your reality was squeezed to a singularity. The high spot for me was a cover version of Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” which took an already dodgy song and mutated it into something verging on the perverse.

Visually, there was probably too much going on: with three lead singers working in rotation, the idle hands were often found occupying themselves with the charmingly named Revolting Pussies, two ‘dancers’ whose simulated affections were also lavished on each other, the audience and road crew with wild abandon. All of which was terribly distracting, as said dancers kept sinking to the floor of the stage, just out of my line of sight – next time, I’ll head upstairs! Other props included a blood-stained blow-up doll, a fluorescent ski-mask and large numbers of beer bottles used (at about groin level) to spray froth over the go-go dancers. Like I said, any description is inadequate.

If you can imagine being inside a lift as it plummets to the ground, you might get a flavour of the atmosphere that was generated. Your parents wouldn’t like them, Teddy Taylor M.P. doesn’t like them and they’ll never be on the British Rock and Pop Awards – who can argue that when music is safe, ozone-friendly and socially conscious Revco are indeed, in their own words, “making the world a better place for you and your hog-bitch girlfriend”.

[2020 update: The entire gig is on YouTube, and is embedded below for your viewing pleasure…]

Flameon: “You’re absoluteley”

Five things to know about this band and their cassette:

1. They’re not from Manchester.
2. They don’t think this is 1967.
3. The guitarist thinks he’s with the Buzzcocks.
4. No-one in the band is wearing a flowery shirt in the cover picture.
5. The lyrics do not give the impression the author was totally stoned when he wrote them.

I don’t have a high opinion of the indie music scene at the moment. Most bands seem to be vanishing up their own backsides in a drug-crazed frenzy of retro-delia, so the appearance of an almost totally unsolicited tape in the post was greeted with the sort of enthusiasm usually reserved for bank statements. A four-piece band, from Stoke as far as I can tell. “Single and LP out on Release Emotions Records sometime this year”. Hell, I’d better listen to it at least once…

Hang on, this isn’t bad. Eight tracks, most of which leave you wishing they’d go on a bit longer, three songs I definitely liked a lot (“Words can’t say”, “l.p.h.” and “3rd world dream”) and twenty seconds of guitar at the start of “What you said” that involuntarily made me stop what I was doing and grab for the cassette box. The overall sound reminds me of the Buzzcocks, though the vocals bear no resemblance at all – ok, this means it is backward-looking, perhaps, but at least it’s to an era I can remember without having to undergo hypnotic regression!

The tape may sound slightly rough & ready, ‘White Lady’ did seem to be ladling on the drugs references a bit and while all the songs have a similar style, I liked it so I’m not complaining. Heavens, I’ll probably end up buying the LP – unless (hint, hint) I get another unsolicited package…

[No idea where you can get the tape! For further information, contact: Flameon, The Willows, Vicarage Lane, Barlaston, Stoke on Trent, ST12 9AG]

Paul Evans isn’t a name familiar to most people. He had two hits. The first one, recently massacred by Bombalurina, was “Seven Little Girls…”. There followed a seventeen-year gap. Then came perhaps his magnum opus “Hello, This is Joannie”, about a bloke who has an argument with his girlfriend. She is then killed in a car-crash and he phones her apartment to hear her voice on the answering machine (making it a sort of 0898 number for necrophiles). This second hit spawned an LP, full of atrocious songs: this one is probably the worst, and may well have the most sickly lyrics ever committed to vinyl.

She walked into the hospital, when the baby was almost due.
They asked her name and she replied, "I'll leave that up to you".
My lover called me "Darling", but he didn't call me "Bride"
And I'll never be called "Mama", by the little one inside,

And she said, "I'm giving up my baby".
She didn't have to tell them more, they'd heard it all before.
"I'm giving up my baby".
The pain that soon would start, would never match the pain in her heart
(Woh-oh-woh-oh-woh-oh-woh).

That very evening, she gave birth and as soon as the baby cried
They held it up for her to see, but she turned her head aside.
"I don't want to see the baby, it's not mine to enjoy.
Please never tell me if I had, a little girl or boy".

And she said "I'm giving up my baby".
They couldn't change her mind - she wanted the papers signed
"I'm giving up my baby".
No-one bought drinks in bars, and no-one handed out the cigars.

Then suddenly, the one she loved and thought she'd lost rushed in.
He said "I love you darling, oh what a fool I've bin [sic].
Forgive me, honey, marry me" - she looked up and she smiled.
"Can't wait till I go home with you, with you and with our child".

And they said "We're not giving up our baby".
And out of tragedy, was born a fa-mil-eeee.
"We're not giving up our baby".
I know this story's true, and Mom and Dad...         
...Thank you...

Given the short period of time most normal people spend in the shower, there have been a disproportionate number of Trash movies using it to make an impression. The list below is twenty of my favourite shower scenes, though I’ve widened the description slightly to include their close cousin the bath scene as well. All those listed have something to recommend them and are mostly more than gratuitous-wet-bimbos, even if the number of socially conscious shower scenes is still very small.

“Have sex and die”. Not just a general term for the slasher genre, it’s also a pretty good summary of what you can do in a shower, according to Hollywood. The list below falls into three types: nudity (the largest in number) and violence, both of which have distinct lines of descent, plus a few which don’t really fit into either category, and may even be necessary to the plot!

The reason for the nudity is quite simple: it allows a lot of naked flesh without total gratuitousness: most people do take their clothes off when they take a shower, although I suspect women don’t really spend quite as much time soaping their breasts as is shown in films. Violence in the bathroom can be traced directly to ‘Psycho’, since when almost every lunatic-on-the-loose film worth it’s salt (and a good few others) has had at least one pseudo-artistic sequence of blood spiralling down a plughole.

There are also movie that should have had shower scenes, like ‘Videodrome’ (Debbie Harry’s was edited out, to David Croneberg’s eternal shame), and those that ought to have had shower scenes – you feel sure there was one in there somewhere but it’s just your imagination playing tricks: ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High’ and ‘Lust For a Vampire’, which had swimming scenes (a possible future article) or ‘Edge of Sanity’, which had virtually everything else. Here’s a top 10, in alphabetical order:

An American Werewolf in London

This film is enough to make anyone wonder about John Landis. He takes Jenny Agutter, an actress best known for her performance as a young teenage girl, dresses her up in a nurse’s uniform and then throws her into the shower with David Naughton. It seems this movie had a profound effect on Sam Raimi, as I suspect it was no coincidence Jenny played a nurse in ‘Darkman’. The experience would also seem to have been rather stimulating for David, judging from his brain-dead performances since then.

Carrie

Brian de Palma’s adaption starts with a schoolgirl shower scene. Any hopes of some pleasing titillation vanish when the blood starts dripping, as the heroine has her first period. Her classmates are naturally helpful and sympathetic – they throw sanitary towels at her. One assumes this is supposed to say something. What exactly, I’m not sure but it is quite an impressive way to start a movie.

Countess Dracula

This one qualifies both under sex and violence. No-one could deny Ingrid Pitt provides the former, except she doesn’t take baths in water or sissy stuff like asses milk: she prefers the blood of virgins as a moisturiser to anything Oil of Ulay produce (dread to think what her cleaning bill for towels must be like). While it works, and she does snare herself a husband, as with all addictive substances she has to keep upping the dose or her youthful qualities evaporate, leaving her looking as you might expect someone to look who has just spent several weeks in the bath: very wrinkled.

Creepozoids

Gratuitous-wet-bimbo par excellence, with Linnea Quigley scoring highly in all three categories as the ultimate non-actress gets extremely moist in a shower scene with no relevance to the plot. It says a great deal about the movie that this is the best bit but then LQ has a lot of shower experience, most recently in her Horror Workout, where she changed the usual order of things, having the shower before the exercise.

Flesh & Blood

Although it takes place in a bath, it almost counts as a shower scene given the enormous quantity of spray flying. Jennifer Jason Leigh is Rutger Hauer’s bath toy as they do their bit for water conservation, though the amount that slops over the side makes it an easy winner of the Soggy Bath-Mat award.

Heathers

Unique among those here in that showeree Winona Ryder, being a ‘serious actress’, demurely keeps her clothes on although they get nice and clingy. The purpose of the self-inflicted cold shower is to try and bring herself back to a reality where she has murdered her best friend/worst enemy. I might add it wasn’t Winona’s first aquatic appearance, since her earlier ‘Square Dance’ had a fairly long scene with her in the bath. However, as she was supposed to be a 13-year old, it’s of limited interest to the average fan.

House on the Edge of the Park

David Hess walks into the bathroom only to find a beautiful, short-haired lady having a shower. She invites him to join her – this he does (after much drooling) and finds his back on the receiving end of a sponge. Just as we think we’re in for a treat, she leaves poor old David covered in soap, and none too pleased. Film analysts may conclude that it is this that causes David to kill, maim and torture most of the other characters in the film.

I Spit on Your Grave

Idiotic behaviour is the mainstay of the horror-movie: without people merrily wandering into the woods /basement /house when a retarded slug would have had second thoughts, the genre would be much poorer. It allows us to say the idiots deserve what happens to them. If, say, a man helps gang-rape a woman, and is then stupid enough to accept her invitation to a bit of fun in the bath, we should not be surprised when he gets his genitals cut off with a large carving knife.

Reform School Girls

Advertised with the line “Young girls and their struggle for decency, respect and a warm place to take a shower”, it’s the quantity that counts  here: of the 89:47 minute running time, 8:04 minutes or 9% of the movie are spent in the shower, washroom or other personal hygiene area, and that excludes the “fire-hose” sequence. To match this figure, you’d have to spend about 130 minutes/day cleaning yourself – while it’d mean Tube travel was more pleasant what’d it do to the morning bathroom queue?

Terror Eyes

Rachel Ward raises a few (wait for it!) smiles as she slowly undresses, leaving her clothes scattered around the flat, then takes a shower. As she caresses her body with the soap (as you do), an unknown figure stalks towards her. She notices a shape through the frosted glass, pulls the door open and lo and behold… (anyone who’s failed to see what’s coming, go and reread the Horror Cliches piece in TC~) …it’s her boyfriend. So much for suspense, eh?

This could easily have been a top 30 – here’s some more:

• Arachnophobia: Sex-mad spiders crawl along shower-rails to peek at a cute teenager. c.f. ‘Squirm’
• Blood of Doctor Jekyll: bath time for Dr Jekyll leaves him a new man: Mr.Hyde to be specific
• Cat People: Kinski’s natural, outdoor shower scene.
• Chained Heat: Sybil Danning and Linda Blair in the same shower.
• Date With An Angel: Emmanuelle Beart, complete with large fluffy wings.
• Emily: Koo Stark, would be a royal princess if things had worked differently. Also the only shower scene I’ve even seen on the Nine O’Clock News
• Hardware: Dylan McDermott demonstrates glove love to Stacey Travis.
• Immoral Tales: Countess Erszbet Bathory watches her imminent victims cleaning themselves before holding Mass and slaughtering them all.
• Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS: Dyanne Thorne in all her glory, bathing her boobs.
• Ilsa, Harem-Keeper of the Oil Sheiks: Dyanne Thorne in all her glory, bathing her boobs.
• Ilsa, Tigress of Siberia: Dyanne Thorne etc, etc but this time in the presence of five ogling men (or six, including me!). Nothing like variety, is there?

• Lair of the White Worm: Amanda Donohue, playing a member of the gentry and part-time snakewoman, in thigh-length leather boots I might add) tends to a bath full of Boy Scout.
• Mausoleum: Bobbie Breesee, pity about the overabundance of bubbles.
• Nekromantik: Some people have a rubber duck. Some have submarines. Some even have Jennifer Jason Leigh. Daktari Lorenz has a very dead cat.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street: The perils of falling asleep in the bath.
• Nuns on the Run: Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane aren’t actually in the showers so (mercifully!) they can keep their clothes on and leave the nudity to the female students.
• Psycho: Say no more.
• Psychos In Love: a parody of the ‘Psycho’ shower scene taken to the extreme. Not much flesh on view, but funny as hell.
• Society: Billy spots his ‘sister’ doing the twist in the shower. Another step to madness for him.
• Squirm: Sex-mad worms crawl up showers, and squeeze out of nozzles to peek at a cute teenager.
• SS Experiment Camp: A Nazi experiment involving a couple making love in a 60-gallon vat of water could be construed as a bath scene…
• Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down – In which a bath toy (a clockwork frog) turns into a sex-aid. Kim Basinger will shortly reprise this scene in the Hollywood remake.
• Toolbox Murders: Ex-porn star Kelly Nicholls bathes away her aches and pains with her fingers! Accompanied by an absolutely, horribly unsuitable sound track.

Memorandum

• From: J.Chan, Head of Production, Golden Moon Film Company
• To: All Directors

It has come to my attention that attempts have been made to produce ‘artistic’ martial arts films. A long and proud tradition of films cut to ribbons by the BBFC is placed at risk by this thoughtless behaviour – the tendency of certain people to include “camerawork” and “conversation” rather than a good nunchaku sequence is to be deplored by all who care for our industry’s future. In an attempt to stem this tide, all movies must now adhere to the following rules:

1. Plate glass windows have one purpose: to be broken. Whether this is accomplished using animate or inanimate objects is left to your discretion.
2. There will be at least one scene in a restaurant, or similar setting, which provides tables to climb on, chairs to throw and plate glass windows (see 1).
3. Kicks and punches must be accompanied by the regulation sound (midway between a gunshot and an axe hitting an oak tree).
4. Falls onto hard surfaces may only be broken by more unpleasant surfaces e.g. a twenty foot leap onto concrete may, at your discretion, become a twenty foot leap through a car windscreen. All falls most be panned to completion on aforementioned surface – the camera must not cut away at any stage during the fall.
5. Bear in mind the foreign video market. Much amusement can be given to viewers by making dialogue totally undubbable. Alternatively, we have a large stock of humorous typos and mistranslations available for use in subtitled movies.
6. Historical scenes will be included wherever possible as this allows us to maintain our bulk discount at Tung’s Silly Costume Emporium. If modern settings are used, characters may be supplied with fire-arms – these must, however, either jam, run out of ammunition or be kicked from the owner’s hand within 15 (FIFTEEN) seconds of being drawn.
7. Two types of female behaviour are permitted: “vicious, sadistic bitch” and “helpless, giggly kitten”. The latter will always be cute, the former, depending upon personal sexual proclivity and the availability of cute, vicious, sadistic bitches.
8. Two plots are permitted: you-killed-my-brother-and-you-must-pay and you-are-a-drug-dealer-who-has-framed-me-and-you-must-pay.
9. Being based in an area of the world with more centuries of civilization than most, even the most bizarre plot elements can rely on historical precedent. Do not worry about audience reaction, they will be too busy wincing at the stunts (see 4) and deciphering the subtitles (see 5) to notice the plot.
10. The credits will always thank a long list of companies who have nothing obvious to do with the movie itself (e.g. the bottler of Coca-Cola). The advertising revenue gained this way will be used to support future presentations.
11. Despite large numbers of beautiful, sexy, cute (see 7) women, sex will never happen and nudity will not exist. Note: this only applies to Hong Kong nationals, decadent foreign devils are exempt and may take their clothes off if necessary to the plot or your well-being.

Failure to adhere to these rules will result in the offending party/parties being surrendered as our representative in the exchange deal with Merchant-Ivory.

This will be your only warning.

Julie Chan.