The votes are in, the envelopes are ready and the audience waits in hushed anticipation for the announcements that can make or break careers: the TC Top Ten Films of 1990!! The awards will be presented by the winner of the Kathleen ‘Crimes of Passion’ Turner Cup, awarded annually to the Actress with the Most Outstanding Nipples. Last year’s Top of the Paps, Patsy ‘Lethal Weapon 2’ Kensit, was a hard act to follow but in ‘Wild at Heart’, Laura Dern stood up magnificently to the task [that’s enough smutty jokes – Ed].
No surprises as to the film of the year. ‘Miracle Mile’ ran me through an emotional spin cycle not once but twice, thanks to an absolute sucker punch ending, which you could see coming but just couldn’t believe. Apart from it, most of 1990’s best were pure entertainment, ‘Tremors’, ‘Darkman’ and ‘Gremlins 2’ being the pick of the bunch; the last named was the only one of the summer blockbusters I felt lived up to it’s budget. At the other end of the scale financially, Peter Jackson, Aki Kaurism„ki and Frank Hennenlotter led the low budget mob, with ‘I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle’ and ‘Hardware’ (narrowly eliminated) proving we can still join in. An international selection this year, six countries being included – Canada, Japan, Finland and New Zealand as well as Britain and the States.
Top 10 Films of 1990 (chronological order)
Jesus of Montreal
I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle
Tremors
Miracle Mile
Frankenhooker
Akira
Meet the Feebles
Gremlins 2
Darkman
I Hired A Contract Killer
As well as the new films, there were plenty of old ones to discover. ‘Heathers’ is an exception in that it was seen in 1989, but it just gets better every time I see it (and that’s no small number!). While the ‘new’ list was male-dominated, the ‘classics’ had a large number of actresses, led by Zoe Tamerlis whose performance in ‘Special Effects’ was the best of the year. ‘Date With an Angel’ and ‘Not of This Earth’ were both lust-rentals but contained surprisingly good performances even if Emmanuelle Beart had little to do! For sheer stupidity, ‘Deathstalker II’ was impossible to beat while at the other end of the spectrum was ‘Henry’, hammering another nail in Freddy’s coffin…
Top 10 ‘Classics’ of 1990
Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer
Not of This Earth
Queen of Outer Space
Deathstalker II
Dead Man Walking
A Chinese Ghost Story
Date With an Angel
Heathers
Special Effects
Raising Arizona
Honorary mentions:
Hardware, Faceless, Wild At Heart, Psych-Out, Last Exit to Brooklyn, The Kiss, Bride of Re-Animator, Black Rain, A Short Film About Killing, Bride of the Monster, Night Hawks, Revenge of the Nerds, TCM III, Xtro, Mr Vampire Pt 4, The Killer, In the Line of Duty 4, Blind Fury, A Chinese Ghost Story 2 and Celia.
Hugh Gallagher, of Main Force Pictures, Illinois, sent a flyer for a movie he’s writing, producing and directing. Rejoicing in the title of ‘Gorgasm’, it’s about a detective working on a homicide case which leads him “into a dark world of sadism and torture”. It stars Rik Billock and Raisa Hebra, the latter of whom appeared in ‘Easy-Riders Centrefold’. Some instinct (not to mention the stills they sent) tells me it’ll be pleasantly sleazy… More info: Main Force Pictures, PO Box 115, Moro, IL 62067, USA.
On the cultured side, the Edinburgh Film Guild is holding a course of evening film-study session for five weeks from January 17th. It’s examining the work of Val Lewton, producer of many cult classic movies for RKO in the 40’s, including the original ‘Cat People’ which was remade in the 80’s, starring some German actress whose name escapes me for the moment… Nine films are going to be shown, the cost is œ12.50 and there are only thirty places available. More details from Jim Dunnigan, Education, Edinburgh Film Guild, The Filmhouse, 88 Lothian Road, Edinburgh, EH3 9BZ. Tel. 031-228 6382/3.
Malibu Graphics keep sending me promotional material at regular intervals for no apparent reason, so they deserve a mention. Let’s advertise their series ‘Dead Walkers’, which I guess is a follow-up to their zombie comic, ‘The Walking Dead’. It sells in both gross and not-so-gross covers, depending on your taste, a nice twist on a theme, since the same company are responsible for ‘Leather and Lace’, for some time available in adult and regular versions. That comic, together with ‘Black Kiss’, were seized by police during a raid on Birmingham’s Nostalgia & Comics bookstore, who have stocked TC. This raid was provoked by a typically scandal-mongering local rag, the Birmingham Daily News – never mind that the comics in question were only on sale to adults and came in sealed plastic bags! Predictable reactions of shock and disgust from local MP, Clare “I don’t like it so let’s ban it” Short followed. N&C deserve your support if you’re in the area, and are at 14-16 Smallbrook Queensway, Birmingham.
If you want your own copy of ‘Zombie 90’ (see Film Blitz) or ‘Violent Shit’, send £19.99 for the former, £17.99 for the latter or £35 for both to Reel Gore Productions, Steve Aquilina, Rudolf-Kinau Weg 1, 2082 Uetersen, W.Germany. This includes p&p, payment by cash or Eurocheque and delivery is from England in about 14 days. And Black Sunday 5, the Manchester/Edinburgh version (generally regarded to be the better half, going on the B.S. 4’s) is on for February/March. That’s the word from Dave Bryan, who phoned to let me know about it and promised a press release – it hasn’t arrived yet so this’ll have to do! Send an SAE to 51 Thatch Leach Lane, Whitefield, Manchester, M25 6EN.
Samhain is a ‘zine I rarely mention here because it seems perilously close to bum-licking since you’re probably aware of it already. In the past a significant number of TC’s readers have said to me that since the demise of Shock Xpress, Samhain has gradually drifted downhill – I tended to disagree, but must admit the issue 24 is of a seriously lower standard (lack of competition perhaps?), the nadir of which is the phrase in a review, “anyone who can honestly say they enjoy this…must be mentally retarded”. Scarcely film journalism at it’s best, I’ll take author Ian Calcutt on at Trivial Pursuit any day! Elsewhere, they slag off a ‘zine for printing a year-old interview while themselves running a Rob Bottin piece dating from before ‘Legend’, have a chat with Phoebe Legere which reads like treacle (in 3 consecutive sentences, “and” occurs a total of twelve times!) and otherwise, after removing competitions and other ephemera, there’s not much left. There’s still some excellent sections and it looks great but it doesn’t seem as good as it used to. It’d be a shame if it went the way of a certain American magazine.
Having blown our hopes of a mention the next issue (hell, the last one they included was TC5 anyway!), let’s look at the publishing empire of Tim Paxton, who sent a whole load of stuff from his high-school project of 10 years ago up to copies of his current publications Monster (8 A5, $11/yr = 24 issues) and Naked! Screaming! Terror! (24 A5, $2 + 2 IRCs) which look at (surprise!) monster movies and films of the 70’s, though I suspect the latter has a different theme every issue. Both are nicely written, with an informal feel I like, even if the man needs his eyes tested – see the letter column! Getting their bribery in early, Psychotic Reaction 2 (18 A4, 50p?) is the first ‘zine I’ve seen to review illicit pharmaceuticals. There’s also a load of film reviews and books too, not to mention the nifty Psychotic Reaction T-shirts which I possess one of and it’s a fine substitute till those TC-shirts are sorted out!
Douglas Angel goes back to his past, reprinting The Absolute 1 (12 A5, 20p – that may be the original price!) from the start of the 80’s. A braver man than I am (TC0 is firmly out of print) but then, this is certainly looks nicer than TC0. Comics-oriented, it includes his list of desired issues, now presumably hideously incorrect! After some time, Rick Sullivan’s Gore Gazette 102 (10 A4, $1 or so) makes a welcome return – slagged off in the Village Voice for supposedly racist views, Rick decided to jack it in but wiser forces prevailed and he’s continuing for the moment. The best of the US rant-zines, no contest.
Strange Adventures 22 (20 A4, 95p) is the usual eclectic mix of books, films, comics, videos and TV, best summed up by adjacent reviews of ‘The Little Mermaid’ and ‘Meet the Feebles’! Bound to be something of interest in this for everyone. After what seems like forever, Fantasynopsis 3 (56 A4, œ1.95) is here, taking ‘infrequent’ to new dimensions. But it’s worth the wait – glossy, lovely picture quality (jealousy!) and in-depth articles on ‘Don’t Look Now’ and ‘Manhunter’. Most improved layout goes to Bloody Hell 2 (24 A4, £1.50), doing their bit for the rain-forests by printing on both sides of the paper this time round. Concentrating on Abel Ferrara’s films this time, something of a mixed blessing since it means a ‘Driller Killer’ piece as well as one on the wonderful ‘Ms.45’. BH tries to defend the entire genre as artistically worthy, a bravely stubborn stance beyond my comprehension!
The first half of Sheer Filth 9 (32 A5, 75p) is worrying, reviews of performance artists and that sort of thing. The second half is fortunately the SF we know & love, philosophical discussions on unmentionable topics, reviews of weird product and a letter page that defies description totally. Vital reading for sleaze-hounds. Norma K 2 (32 A5, £1) is devoted to the works of Traci Lords – Steve Rag knows his stuff and it’s got a good selection of pictures. I admit ripping off one for our article, in desperation – sorry, Steve, I’ll buy you a pint some time! So as a deadline breathes down my neck, Midnight in Hell 5 (20 A4, £1) is a victim of it’s own quality: there’s no way I can read it before the deadline catches up wi…
The Absolute – Douglas Angel, 69 Chestnut Ave, Bradwell, Gt.Yarmouth, Norfolk, NR31 8PL.
This letter column is brought to you under the influence of some industrial strength throat lozenges, though I’m feeling a lot better since I phoned into work and told them I wouldn’t be coming in today… Let’s start with other things clearly written under the influence of something…
Ronan Farrell, Drogheda, Eire – We just had our presidential elections the other day – I voted for a puppet that appears on kids’ television over here. He’s a turkey and his name’s Dustin Hoffman and he appears with two others called Zig and Zag. This isn’t what you think, they really are brilliant, not like that stupid fucking duck of Gordon the Goper [???] you have over there. These three get away with murder, their humour is better than Python at it’s best. Dustin was running for president and was going to change the National Anthem to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”. I can’t do them justice here, next time you meet a Paddy emigrant over there, ask him/her about Zig and Zag and Dustin. Unless they’re humourless bastards, they’ll be able to fill you in on how dangerously funny they are.
Pete Sheppard, London – What do the letters ACME stand for in the Roadrunner cartoons? I have seen one of them in which the full name was given and thought “Ah, that’s what they stand for”. Unfortunately, that’s all I remember (all I remember about ACME that is, I can remember loads of other stuff like my name, date of birth, etc…).
Andy Allard, Hull – You have my vote on a T shirt…How about a pic of her [Wendy James] and Winona Ryder (who I personally thought was fucking gorgeous in ‘Great Balls of Fire’ when Dennis Quaid takes her cherry at the age of 13) in some form of lesbian sex act? How about Miss Ryder, legs splayed with Wendy going down on her and lots of love juices flying all over the place? If you go for that idea, put me down for half a dozen before the respective lawyers take you for every penny you’ve got.
Mick Slatter, Crawley – It seems we’re fated to disagree on just about everything… I hated the Guinness ads, loved ‘Carnival of Souls’ and was singularly unimpressed with ‘Miracle Mile’, but the worst is yet to come. Steel yourself, ‘cos in all honesty I ner liked Ms.Kinski, sorry, she just does nothing for me, though her father is sexy as hell [???]. Linda Blair and Claudia Christian are my kinda girls (just to give you some ammunition for revenge). By the way I don’t have two heads, but I do have three tongues.
Tim Paxton, Oberlin, Ohio – Loved Trash City, especially what’s her name on the back cover – Mark E. Smith’s ex, right? I can’t recall her name, I even have some of her records. Of course, my imagination could be running away with me.
That was Nastassja Kinski, Tim – the letter bomb’s in the post. As usual, people have kindly [grits teeth] been filling in gaps in the filmographies in TC6.
Dan Pydynkowski, Danvers, USA Monique Gabrielle has appeared in: Electric Blue 32, 33, 35, Return of Swamp Thing, Love Scenes, Fantasies: Romantic Moves (2 vignettes), The Big Bet, Playboy’s Private Party Jokes, Young Lady Chatterly 2, Chained Heat [+Sybil in these 2], Hollywood Erotic Film Festival (“He Believes” segment), Penthouse Video:Penthouse Love Stories (2 vignettes), Cheap Trick video “Up the Creek”, Transylvania Twist and Silk 2. And she was a centrefold in ‘Playboy’ – Dec.82, I think.
Julian Grainger, Yalding, Kent – As to the Hauer films, the most obvious omission is the M.Caine/S.Poitier movie ‘The Wilby Conspiracy’ – 1975.
Glyn Williams, Derby – The filmography has omitted a 1974 German soft-porn movie called ‘Dandelions’ in which Hauer played “a cold, sadistic leather boy in search of his fantasy girl”. The film stayed buried until 1987 when it was dubbed into English and released in the US to cash in on his success with ‘The Hitcher’… I found Andrew McGavin’s horror cliches amusing, although I’m sure there are plenty of others…
— a) The opening minutes of the film show massive Stalk ‘n’ Slash carnage in which the entire cast are apparently disposed of, even before the opening titles have appeared. And then there’s the inevitable out of shot cry of ‘Cut!’ and the camera pulls back to show that we’ve been watching the action taking place on a filmset. This, of course, means that all of the cast have the opportunity to die twice during the film.
— b) The heroine is suddenly confronted by a man with a gun. As her eyes grow wider, he slowly raises the gun, points it at her head and – BANG! Behind, the girl a snake, poised to strike, explodes.
— c) Girl trying to escape from the killer desperately hides in a wardrobe, under a bed, inside a rickety old outhouse, etc. As the killer draws near, the body of a minor cast member (who disappeared from the action half an hour ago) slowly topples out of the surrounding shadows…
— d) Girl kills killer. Girl has to step over bullet-riddled form of obviously dead body. Hand grips ankle.
…I will, however, leap to the defence of Ms Kinski: if she wasn’t very nice during the filming of ‘Revolution’ [letters, TC7], it was probably because (a) she wasn’t very well and (b) she was probably aware that she was involved with a major cinematic turkey which wasn’t going to do her career any good at all.
And finally, evidence sanity has returned to at least one of our readers.
Ronan Farrell – P.S. Jesus, I can’t believe I wrote that bit about Zig and Zag!
With ‘Ghost’, Hollywood would seem to have discovered the ability of the dead to be big box-office, but film-makers in Hong Kong have been aware of this for far longer, and regularly produce interesting and exciting films.
The dead in Oriental mythology seem to be much like the living, and there lies the problem. Because you can hardly distinguish between ghosts and real people, until the former start showing off their powers, it’s very easy to make the mistake of, say, falling in love with a ghost and this can cause no end of difficulties. Breaking up with a vengeful girl is bad enough, but when she possesses supernatural powers capable of blowing holes in space and time, things are even more tricky. Cute female ghosts are only part of the population of the underworld. Rather less pleasant are the vampires, usually skilled in martial arts – no Bela Lugosi lookalikes these, they may be recognised by their hopping motion which may seem comic, at least until they start draining your blood…
Fortunately, humans are not defenceless and certain measure are effective: there are phrases which when spoken or written, can provide protection – in extreme cases, these may be written on the skin but great care must be taken to cover the whole body or you will suffer the fate of a character in ‘Kwaidan’, who neglected his ears and had them ripped off as a result.Priests are also of use, though there is little similarity to their Occidental counterparts – these men of the cloth are just as likely to decapitate as exorcise, and are capable of hurling bolts of force from their fingers.
Of all the films of this genre to have come out of the Far East in recent years, one of the best is universally agreed to be ‘A Chinese Ghost Story’. This was produced by Tsui Hark (who was born in Vietnam but studied at the University of Texas before going to Hong Kong), the director of a string of successful movies beginning with ‘The Butterfly Murders’, the proceeds from which were used to set up the Film Workshop production company with his wife. This specializes in films combining traditional and modern elements – stories are often based on Chinese folklore while the camerawork is straight out of the box marked ‘Sam Raimi’.
Director Ching Siu Tung had no formal training, but worked his way up the cinema ladder, beginning as a stuntman, then being given his own action sequences to direct before finally graduating to a fully fledged feature with ‘Duel to the Death’. While there may remain a nagging feeling that Tsui Hark is as much responsible for the final product as Ching Siu Tung was, it’s all totally irrelevant to anyone’s enjoyment!
As you might expect from a film which credits five action choreographers and four cinematographers, it’s both action-packed and visually stunning. The pace gradually accelerates in each fight scene from the first, which is almost standard kung-fu material, to the last, a climactic battle in hell itself which is unlikely to resemble anything you’ve seen in aWestern movie. Gravity rarely seems to operate in the same direction for two successive camera shots, and the editing is absolutely lightning-fast – fifty or sixty cuts per minute is not uncommon. All of this takes place in a curiously indeterminate era, only to be found in the movies – it’s generally historical but with just enough anachronisms to make you wonder.
The story is from a collection of Ming Dynasty tales, which also provided the inspiration for the earlier ‘A Touch of Zen’. A traveller, in the film a tax-collector, spends the night in a disused temple and sees a beautiful girl there. Unsurprisingly (if you’ve read the second paragraph), she turns out to be a spirit and the rest of the movie concerns his struggle to allow her soul to rest in peace. He is helped and hindered by a Taoist priest, an odd bloke with serious sword skills and a tendency to rap Taoist philosophy. He’s played by Wu Ma, a director in his own right – his films include ‘The Dead and the Deadly’. The hero Leslie Cheung, on the other hand, is in ‘real life’ a pop idol with a slightly effeminate image – the local equivalent of Jason Donovan, say. Anyway, if there’s one thing that Hollywood and Hong Kong have in common, it’s their belief in sequels, so it was no surprise to learn of the imminent arrival of:
A Chinese Ghost Story 2 (Ching Siu Tung) – Leslie Cheung, Joey Wang, Jacky Cheung, Wu Ma.
Our heroic tax-collector, Ning Tsai-Shen (Leslie Cheung) is still unable to stay out of trouble for long! His first encounter is with the bounty-hunters seen in the original, who mistake him for a wanted criminal and haul him off to jail despite his protests. He is thrown in beside Elder Chu (Ku Feng), a philosopher and author who has found he has less trouble with the authorities if he just stays in prison. When Tsai-Shen is about to be executed, Chu helps him escape through a tunnel – outside, he steals a horse belonging to Autumn (Jacky Cheung), a Taoist priest who follows using his favourite mode of travel, underground!
The two meet and sort out the confusion at the ill-named Righteous Villa, containing eight coffins, which gives Tsai-Shen bad vibes. Justifiably so, it seems, as a coffin lid starts to move… Tsai-Shen runs into the forest, where ghost-like forms appear, but after Autumn demonstrates his ability to freeze people with a spell, the pair discover the spirits are a guerilla band, led by two girls Windy and Moon Fu, the former of whom (played by Joey Wang) bears an uncanny resemblance to Tsai-Shen’s love in the first film. They’re trying to rescue their father Lord Fu, who is being taken in chains to the Emperor. They mistake Tsai-Shen for Elder Chu in disguise, mis-interpret a poem he’s carrying as instructions on how to rescue their father and rush off to do so.
Ning and Autumn are left behind – Autumn tries to teach Ning how to use the Freeze! spell, but Ning gets it slightly wrong and manges to paralyze Autumn instead – unfortunate, as this is the moment the creature from the coffin, looking a little like Rawhead Rex, chooses to appear. This leads to a hysterically funny scene where Ning tries to discover from Autumn, who can only communicate with his eyes, how to dispel the magic while simultaneously trying to avoid the monster.
All the plot elements come together, as the guerilla band, the soldiers transporting Lord Fu, Autumn and Ning and the Emperor’s High Priest all arrive at the villas at more or less the same instant. To give away much more of the plot would be a heinous crime (ok – I fell asleep and missed a bit, c’mon, it was a late-night showing!), but it includes demonic possession, vampirism and an enormous centipede.
Virtually all the cast are back, together with director Tung, producer Tsui Hark and a $26 million dollar budget, and the results are suitably spectacular if perhaps a little lacking in the ‘narrative coherence’ department (the resume above was the result of combining two people’s interpretations and extracting common factors!). Unlike the original, which built steadily to a climax, this one plunges in at the deep end and this does mean that the ending is something of a let-down. It’s still breath-taking stuff, however, with all the elements we’ve come to expect from Tsui Hark movies. Relentlessly entertaining, let’s hope it gets a better release than the original did.
Tsui Hark directography
1979 – The Butterfly Murders
1980 – We Are Going to Eat You
1980 – Dangerous Encounter of the 1st Kind, a.k.a Don’t Play With Fire
1981 – All the Wrong Clues
1983 – Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain
1984 – Aces Go Places III a.k.a Our Man From Bond Street
Q. What’s the difference between Traci Lords and a bowling ball? A. You can only get three fingers in a bowling ball.
In the summer of 1986, Nora Louise Kuzma was a big adult movie star. She’d been in movies such as ‘The Graffenberg Spot’, ‘Talk Dirty to Me, Part III’ and ‘Hollywood Heartbreakers’, raking in over $30,000 a month including the fees from personal appearances. But the roof on this pleasant little enterprise was about to come crashing in, for despite having been in porno flicks for the past three years, Miss Kuzma, or as she is better known, Traci Lords, had only just turned 18 years old.
Describing Traci Lords’ life and career as ‘chequered’ is being polite. Born on May 7th 1968, she grew up in Steubenville, Ohio and hated the place. Her father left home at the age of 12. She got pregnant the first time she had sex. She dismisses her schoolmates at Redondo High as ‘clueless’. She left home at the age of 15, changed her name (the Lords bit is in homage to a character from ‘Hawaii 5-0’) and got a job at a modelling agency in California, where she rapidly gained a reputation for refusing to fake anything…
1983 photo of Lords as a freshman inRedondo Union High School. CA
From here on, she was, shall we say, laughing all the way to the bonk. At this point, logic states there should be a review of a couple of Traci’s films but the problem with them is that because she was under age when she made them, they’re technically child pornography, mere POSSESSION of which is a criminal offence liable to some quite severe penalties. Strikes me as a bit unfair to group a movie as innocuous as ‘Hollywood Heartbreakers’ with the REAL video-nasties; no coercion needed with Traci! She doesn’t look underage – if she did, the appeal of her movies would be severely diminished and, hell, if you’re going to start banning films like that, there goes most of Brooke Shields’ career.
However, I think it’s safe to say that Traci’s movies contain pretty much the sort of things that you’d expect, just not the sort of things you’d expect a teenager to do. At least not on film. Not of course that I’d know anything about that anyway [Sound FX: author desperately trying to extract foot from mouth] but you get the picture. Or rather, you don’t and nor do I, because her films are banned so… [Shall we just draw a veil over all this and move on? Ed.] As an approximation, three days after her eighteenth birthday, she was back in the saddle, as a legal performer this time, for ‘The Trials of Traci’ (cf. TC7 – aka ‘Talk Dirty to Me, Pt. 3′, aka’ Sensual Mermaid’), guaranteed a huge success on advance orders alone, tho’ most of the film doesn’t involve her directly.
But then it all hit the fan. No-one is sure who threw down the penalty flag; theories include Traci’s parents, a disgruntled ex-employee of the production company and even Traci herself. Whoever it was, the end results were severe. The man at the modelling agency got a five-figure fine. The distributor got a year in prison. The authorities swept her movies off the shelves and held her up as a prime example of the depths of depravity to which the pornography industry would sink, etc, etc. Traci escaped scot-free, save the occasional rumour about the Mafia putting out a contract on her, took acting lessons and got herself an agent. Jim Wynorski cast her in ‘Not of This Earth’ as a publicity stunt, only to discover the girl’s acting abilities went further than expected! John Waters, another fellow traveller on the road from sleazedom to stardom, also pounced after his original choice for the role of Wanda in ‘Cry Baby’ proved unavailable (Jessica Rabbit, in case you’re wondering).
So what differentiates Traci from all the other starlets? First up is probably her individuality. While undeniably pretty, she isn’t from the production line mould of blonde bimbos in heat favoured by the industry to such an extent that it’s very easy to start getting confused who’s who in a film because they all look alike, especially when they all ‘act’ in…the…same…manner. No risk of this with Traci, whose absurdly bee-stung, I’ve-been-sucking-lemons pout is uniquely hers and who can actually act – no fake Australian accents or tortured Vietnam vets here perhaps, but there are a lot less competent people out there!
Secondly, all the world loves an anti-establishment figure ( except the establishment, naturally) and Traci is again unique in being a rebel in that most anti-establishment of genres, the porno movie. After her faux pas was revealed, she naturally had the market cornered in Traci Lords movies, and wasted no time in making the most of the opportunity, setting up her own company to distribute future product. Traci had turned the tables and exploited the exploiters.
You also have to admire anyone who regards working in John Waters and Roger Corman productions as a major step UP the ladder of respectability. Some actresses whine about typecasting but it doesn’t take much to imagine a director’s reaction when Traci turns up at an audition: “sorry, dahlink, I don’t think you quite the type we’re looking for”. Not that Traci can be accused of being too serious about herself after ‘Cry Baby’ where Wanda was simply Traci taken to ludicrous extremes (especially the pout!), her nymphomaniac virgin proving a highlight of the movie.
What happens from here on is uncertain. Will it be up and away to mega-stardom? Will Traci become the Meryl Streep of the 90’s? Who can say, but I’ll certainly be keeping a close watch on her for some time to come…
