Office Christmas Party ****1/2

Jason Bateman plays straight man to a cast of corporate crazies in Office Hanukkah Party, Hollywood’s latest assault on every decent thing left in this maggoty world. The movie does manage to lampoon the self-negating neuroses bred by workplace compliance with inclusivity policies and political correctness, but ultimately embraces the same sort of idiocy, only spicing it up with vice and obscenity in order to make the New World Order seem somehow appealing. Viewed in isolation from any moral considerations or greater societal impact, Office Hanukkah Party is an admittedly fun film buoyed by a talented cast of comedic actors including Jennifer Aniston and T.J. Miller as feuding tech executive siblings Carol and Clay. Kate McKinnon insults Christians everywhere in the role of the rigid but flatulent “Mary”, while Vanessa Bayer and Randall Park reprise their interracial flirtation from the similarly depraved Trainwreck.

4.5 out of 5 stars – and, to be absolutely clear, this rating reflects not the film’s sociological value but its likely appeal to its intended audience of unredeemed degenerates. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that Office Hanukkah Party is:

9. Disingenuously anti-corporate, disapproving of impersonal business cultures, profit-prioritizing layoffs, and the like, but fully endorsing the atomized hedonism favored by the neoliberal establishment. (I find a pleasing irony in the fact that the film’s initials, O.C.P., are also those of Omni Consumer Products, the evil military-industrial megacorporation from RoboCop.)

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8. Russophobic, with Russians depicted as gangsters. One of them, a thug named Alexei (Michael Tourek), gets nightsticked for calling a liberated American woman “bitch”.

7. Jewish supremacist. Indicating priorities in the opening moments of the movie, a menorah occupies the center of the frame in a shot of a holiday snack table. Aniston also demonstrates the superior merits of Krav Maga. In a possible insult to Arabs, a foreign-looking fellow is seen literally fucking a camel statue in the back of a truck.

6. Feminist. Carol, in addition to being able to hold her own in a fight against her brother, refers to God as “Her”. “Suck my dick,” a woman tells her male supervisor.

5. Anti-Christian. The entire movie constitutes a denigration of Christians’ celebration of the birth of Christ, as symbolized when Clay sleds down a staircase and demolishes a Nativity scene.

4. Anti-family. Learning that Allison (Bayer) is a single mother, Fred (Park) replies, “That’s great. I was raised by a single mom.” Children are bothers and fit primarily for corruption, as in the end credits image of two women who appear to be snorting cocaine in the presence of a minor. Asked what is most annoying about the internet, Jeremy (Rob Corddry) replies, “Pictures of people’s kids.” A youthful caroler thrusts his middle finger at the protagonist, while the inappropriately named Carol tells another child, “Fuck you” – continuing Hollywood’s use of foul language referencing sex acts with children (cf. Cooties).

3. Pro-gay. “I’m talkin’ ‘bout take your pee-pees out and put ‘em in some booties,” proclaims DJ Calvis (Sam Richardson). Clay, meanwhile, is “straight – except for that one time.” Viewers are also treated to a guy-guy dancefloor kiss and the sight of Jason Bateman simulating fellatio with an ice sculpture. Then, too, there is mention of a “Human Centipede situation in the men’s room.”

2. Pro-miscegenation. Josh (Bateman) finds himself attracted to icy Eurasian cutie Tracey (Munn). Allison, meanwhile, after being grossed out by Fred’s mommy fetish, winds up smooching with Indian nerd Nate (Karan Soni). There is also a briefly glimpsed interracial toilet stall orgy.

1. Pro-drug. Drug humor in Office Christmas Party runs the gamut of cocaine, booze, and the abuse of prescription medications. One employee remarks that it is “boring as shit” that no one gets inebriated before noon. It is only after a bag of cocaine is accidentally dropped into a snow machine that the party really comes alive. Straight-laced black executive Walter Davis (Courtney B. Vance, the indispensable negro sonar genius from The Hunt for Red October) gets particularly loose after taking a blast of powder in the face and later declares that this has been “the best night of my life” even after being hospitalized following a brutal fall. Clay, too, snorts a quantity of cocaine and gets into a wreck which serendipitously corrects a previous fracture.

Rainer Chlodwig von K.

Deadpool ****1/2

Marvel antihero Deadpool’s leap to the big screen manages to be highly entertaining in spite of having one of the most unnecessarily filthy and anally fixated scripts this reviewer has ever encountered. Ryan Reynolds is frivolous but funny as the frenetic special forces fighter turned mercenary – “a bad guy who gets paid to fuck up worse guys” – in what may be the most successful incarnation yet of the wisecracking hipster-as-superhero genre. Fast-paced and guaranteed diversion for devotees of the cult of hyperviolence and slow-motion bullets.

4.5 out of 5 stars. Ideological Content Analysis only recommends seeing Deadpool for free, if possible, and indicates that it is:

9. Pro-brony. The hero masturbates while amusing himself with a stuffed animal.

8. Gun-ambivalent. Deadpool owns a number of guns, but forgets to bring these to the final battle. He proceeds to demonstrate how an accomplished action hero does not need an arsenal to dispatch a heavily armed pack of henchmen.

7. Disingenuously anti-torture. Supervillain Ajax (Ed Skrein) subjects Deadpool to atrocities reminiscent of War on Terror interrogations and Abu Ghraib indignities in his efforts to activate Deadpool’s recessive mutant genes, but Deadpool himself also employs torture to get information out of opponents. “I may be super, but I am no hero,” he says by way of a disclaimer – a distinction that will be lost on all of the adolescent boys who watch Deadpool. “And, yeah, technically this is murder,” he says, flippantly dismissing his impalement of a bad guy, “but some of the best love stories start with a murder and that’s exactly what this is – a love story.”

6. War-ambivalent. War, it is suggested, is an evil enterprise, but the film makes light of wartime experiences that allowed Deadpool to travel to “exotic places – Baghdad, Mogadishu, Jacksonville – meeting new and exciting people.” The general incendiary bombast of the movie makes combat seem like a blast.

5. Anti-South. The South, as the above quotation demonstrates, is equated with the Third World.

4. Pro-drug. “God, I miss cocaine,” gripes Deadpool’s roommate Blind Al (Leslie Uggams). Learning a stash of cocaine is nearby, Deadpool’s friend Weasel (T.J. Miller) asks her, “Wanna get fucked up?”

3. Misandrist. A slap on the ass warrants vengeful crotch-clenching. Even gentlemanly behavior meets with genital abuse. Both Deadpool and Colossus must be rescued by women, and National Women’s Day occasions an unreasonable sexual favor from the protagonist.

2. Anti-family. Deadpool, a “sexy motherfucker”, exchanges dysfunctional family stories with a prostitute (Morena Baccarin). “Daddy left before I was born,” etc. Deadpool claims to have been molested by his uncle, to which she replies that more than one uncle raped her. “They took turns.” It is also suggested that Deadpool has carnal knowledge of his father when he reaches behind himself, feels Colossus’s cock, and asks, “Dad?” The film furthers the process of pedophilia normalization by trivializing child abuse.

1. Pro-gay. “Oh, hello. I know, right? Whose balls did I have to fondle to get my very own movie? I can’t tell you, but it does rhyme with ‘Polverine’. And let me tell you, he’s got a nice pair o’ smooth criminals down unda.” One of the most butt-centric movies in some time, Deadpool makes more than one reference to the hero’s anus as a sexual organ. His “on switch” is next to his prostate, he hints, and the viewer is even treated to the sight of his girlfriend (Morena Baccarin) screwing him in the posterior with a strap-on. It is also insinuated that he has been hiding her engagement ring in his rectum. Then, too, he takes a bullet right between the cheeks and threatens an adversary with a reference to his “hard spots”. “That came out wrong – or did it?” he asks, kissing him. Deadpool is “pretty sure Robin loves Batman, too.” An animated version of the protagonist sports an extensive erection when Ed Skrein’s credit comes up at the end.

Rainer Chlodwig von Kook

80s Oddities Month: Post-Apocalyptic Porn

Future Sodom (1987) ****

An initial viewing of Future Sodom may be a disappointment if viewers allow the stylish cover photo of Laurel Canyon to lead them to expect a dark, creative vision of a futuristic world. When friends Mickey (Frank James) and Morgan (Jesse Eastern) find themselves transported into an unknown place and time – “to grow, to advance” in their sexuality – their sylvan surroundings resemble the idyllic woods around a summer cabin more than a dingy, urban vice capital. What follows is mostly a plotless succession of sexual encounters between the visitors and the carefree inhabitants of this sunny natural paradise.

First, Mickey and Morgan double-team a blonde beauty (Canyon), Mickey receiving a boisterous blowjob as Morgan bumps her from behind, all while ethereal synthesizer and mechanized tribal beats convey that this is the future – either that or the 80s. After trading orifices and having their fill, Mickey and Morgan relax indoors and exchange philosophies about sex. Morgan, a hopeless romantic, is disillusioned with what seems to him to be the mechanical nature of sex; but Mickey is perfectly content to screw anything that moves. “It was so impersonal, man, it was hot as hell,” he says, describing why phone sex gets him excited.

Group play follows: first an enthusiastic threesome set to languid electric guitar with Laurel Canyon, Britt Morgan, and Peter North, who find that an open door policy spices up the boredom of marriage; and later a more elaborate session conducted by a toga-bedecked Instructor (gross Jew William Margold) who sets a proper orgy in motion – complete with oral and anal sex and disgusting asshole-licking – before joining the fray himself, ultimately slurping his own semen off of a woman’s back. All of this unfolds to some drab 80s disco.

In one of Future Sodom’s few acknowledgments of the notion that this is all supposed to be taking place in some kind of futuristic setting, one of the sordid celebrants is a tattooed, freakish “robot”, Lucy (played by Viper), who has been “specially programmed as an anal participant.” This bargain basement production’s idea of an android, alas, is a tramp in a Mardi Gras mask, with chains strapped across her chest, nipple and clitoris piercings, and obscenities like “motherfucker” and “eat shit” scrawled all over her body. Lucy explains that mischievous Boy Scouts are responsible for the physical graffiti. “They raped me anally and I castrated ten of them,” she says in Future Sodom’s most outrageous scene. “Yes, I programmed myself to castrate Boy Scouts.”

In the second of Future Sodom’s two standout performances – the first being newcomer Laurel Canyon – Frankie Leigh plays the mysterious “Woman”, a sexual chameleon who suits her behavior to the fantasies of her partner of the moment. This cute but thoroughly debauched brunette has the best scene in Future Sodom, sneering her needs at horny Mickey: “Nah, I don’t think you fucking understand. I want dick, dick, and more dick,  you hear that? And I want buckets of fucking cum. I wanna fuckin’ swallow it, I wanna choke on it. I wanna fuckin’ wallow in it. I wanna fuckin’ bathe in the fuckin’ shit, you know? I want you to turn my mouth into a fuckin’ sewer, into a goddamn toilet.” Leigh then proceeds to blow three guys in creepy transparent plastic masks like the ones in Last House on Dead End Street.

Underlying the flimsy excuse for a story, specifically in the old-fashioned Morgan character, is an awareness of a discomfort left in men’s hearts in the wake of the sexual revolution. Now that moral constraints are no longer an issue, do men really want their women to be voracious sexual beasts? What do women want? Paula Damiano’s script, unfortunately, leaves this speculative thread underdeveloped, the only semblance of resolution to Morgan’s uncertainty being his sullen resignation and determination of, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

Future Sodom, though nothing particularly special, does have a few things to recommend it. The hair is big, the action is hot, and the actors are clearly enjoying themselves; and, with the exception of Viper, whose damaged goods and devilish scowl are a little intimidating, the principal actresses are exquisite. 80s aficionados will appreciate Jesse Eastern’s mullet, and may also be interested to learn the ultimate fate of Ronald Reagan. Viewers, however, should expect nothing profound from a film which, after all, was produced and directed by Deep Throat auteur Gerard Damiano.

4 out of 5 stars.

The Load Warrior aka The Load Warriors (1987) ****1/2

From the first bleak, synthesized notes queuing up The Load Warrior’s ugly orange pixelated opening credits, all the makings of a 1980s pornographic classic are present: movie parody premise, pun title, hokey electronic music, garish eye makeup, and big, beautiful, puffy manes of whore hair. Peter North portrays the titular titillationist in this post-apocalyptic tale of a world devastated by a “great fire” (i.e., nuclear holocaust) followed by the “invisible fire” of radiation that causes fertility to plummet. The result is a wasteland in which “seed became money and men became cattle”, with female barbarians unceremoniously milking their slaves like farm animals, the old ways of love, foreplay, and even vaginal penetration having been forgotten by most – all but the Load Warrior.

The Load Warrior satirizes the seeming reversal of sex roles effected by the sexual revolution, the entry of women into the workforce, and the cold commoditization of reproduction through sperm banks. “‘Married’?” Willow (Krysta Lane) asks, puzzled at hearing the word for the first time. “What’s ‘married’?” Men, reduced to utilitarian sex slaves, are left wanting foreplay, affection, and some sense of sexual autonomy, while women have become violent, impersonal brutes, as typified by ruthless businesswoman Queen Humongous (Lois Ayres), who reigns like a callous CEO over a “bustling rat hole” called Motherload. Here the remains of the wasteland’s men come to sell their sperm at the trading post of Dr. D (Jesse Eastern), who hands out “antique” broccoli and rotten chicken (“Of course it’s got maggots in there. That’s the nutritious part.”) in exchange for their more or less ineffectual sperm. Fortuitously, the Load Warrior comes and pounds into the women an important truth: “A load in the bush is worth far more than any in the hand.”

Sharon Mitchell, who participates in an ambitious fivesome (!) with Eastern and others in the “Blow the Man Dome”, is typically tough and charismatic as the aptly named Wilde, who threatens to cut off a woman’s tits and make lampshades out of them. Too much time is spent on an interracial scene between Eastern and Angel Kelly; but the sex, if not consistently scorching, is solid, and for the most part tastefully photographed, greatly enhanced by the scuzzy art direction of “C.L. Jaz”. Much of the action in The Load Warrior plays like a music video, with the imitation Tina Turner theme song smoothing North’s scene with delectable Gail Force being a definite highlight of the show. Also, the manner in which the hero dispatches the bitchy Queen Humongous is not to be missed! Hot, heavy, and humorous, The Load Warrior is mandatory sleaze for 80s strokers.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

 

A Haunted House ***

To make a comedy that will satisfy its target black audience, experience shows that it helps immensely for certain crucial elements to be firmly in place. Does A Haunted House fulfill these requirements? Serious students of cinema art are encouraged to consult the following checklist of quality standards, not only in judging the movie under consideration, but in all future encounters with the African-American comedy form.

1. Stupid honkies? Check.

2. Honkies with insatiable lust for blacks? Check.

3. Industrial-strength-funk toilet humor? Triple check.

4. Jewish names credited as producers? Check and double check.

Clearly, in renting or (preferably) purchasing the remarkable Michael Tiddes joint/cinematic celebration A Haunted House, the viewer has in hand what promises to be remembered as a timeless classic to rank alongside The Ladies Man and (yes, even) Who’s Your Caddy?.

The flimsy pretense of a plot concerns the haunting of live-in lovers Malcolm (Marlon Wayans) and Kisha (Essence Atkins) and serves to set in motion an unremitting cavalcade of hit-and-miss sight gags and surplus dirty jokes. In its defense, A Haunted House does contain a few genuinely amusing cheap laughs at flatulence, bad breath, body hair, the sight of Marlon Wayans sweatily humping multiple stuffed animals, shitting on his own carpet, and so forth, but the film is only recommended to non-whites or the most contemptible and unsalvageable of white ethnomasochists.

3 stars for the full, screeching, monkey-like intensity of Marlon Wayans’s physiological investment in his part, and Cedric the Entertainer’s earthy turn in a disappointingly small supporting role as a ghetto priest. ICA’s advice: for a funnier, less disgusting movie about spooked blacks bugging their eyes out and acting like utter buffoons, see Mantan Moreland in Lucky Ghost instead.

Ideological Content Analysis indicates that A Haunted House is:

10. Pro-life. “But good thing that clinic was closed,” Kisha’s mother (Robin Thede) says, remembering how she almost aborted her daughter. “Hoo, God is good.”

9. Sexist! Kisha once made a deal with the Devil for a pair of designer shoes.

8. Pro-gay. The ghost has anal sex with Malcolm, and psychic Chip (Nick Swardson) slobbers over the chocolate comic stud and gropes him in every scene in which the two appear together. Kisha experimented with lesbianism in college.

7. Pro-drug. Malcolm and Kisha get high with the ghost (see also no. 4).

6. Anti-gun. Malcolm promises Kisha that no harm will come to her “unless a nigger got a gun – and then you on your own.”

5. Anti-marriage/anti-family. Each couple in the film illustrates the new, childless norm of the West. Dan (David Koechner) becomes hysterical as he remembers how he caught his wife having sex with a mail carrier.

4. Anti-Christian. Father Williams (Cedric the Entertainer) keeps weed in his Bible and cocaine in his crucifix. While possessed, Kisha masturbates with a cross.

3. Racist!/anti-immigration. Mexican housekeeper Rosa (Marlene Forte) is irascible and duplicitous, pretending not to know English when in actuality she speaks it fluently. Kisha, displaying the typical touchiness and quickness to anger of the entitled American negro, suspects Rosa of seducing Malcolm and boils over with rage when Rosa uses the word “negra” (black), with Kisha mistaking it for “nigger”. Further tarnishing the reputation of Hispanics are the revelations that Rosa is running a cocaine ring out of Malcolm’s house and that she is also a murderess and nymphomaniac who has sex on the kitchen table while her employers are away. (Contrarily, if the intention is to portray Mexican women as sexy, sexually available, and proficient in English, then A Haunted House could be interpreted as favoring immigration – at least from the male standpoint – which, considering that one of the screenwriters is named Alvarez, is arguably more probable.)

2. Anti-white. The Caucasians in A Haunted House are awkward, neurotic apes obsessed with stereotypes of blacks. Chip, for instance, assumes that Malcolm plays basketball, while Dan the Security Man (David Koechner) has hardly set foot on the property before he starts blabbing about fried chicken, ribs, hot wings, cornbread, and watermelon. For some reason, he also begs Malcolm for permission to use the word “nigger”. “You can call me a cracker .  . . Let me say it.” Dan’s partner Bob (Dov Zakheim lookalike Dave Sheridan) is brain-damaged, illiterate, and, like Dan, a racist. When the pair first meets Malcolm, Dan asks if the owner is home. “You’re talkin’ to him,” Malcolm answers. “Yeah, right,” Bob objects, clearly disinclined to believe that a black man could be the legitimate owner of such a nice suburban home.

1. Pro-miscegenation (i.e., pro-AIDS). Not only are whites in A Haunted House as dumb as dung; they are also racially suicidal and bent on miscegenation at the cost of every dignity. Sickening prostitutes Alanna Ubach and Andrew Daly play the protagonists’ white friends Jenny and Steve, swingers who constantly try to get Malcolm and Kisha to swap partners. Hoping to entice them, Jenny flashes her breasts and snaps her teeth like an alligator, while enthusiastic cuckold Steve proposes to “double-stuff the Oreo a little bit, huh? Dirty up the white snow . . . black poles, white holes . . .” Finally, the couple settles instead for a “Mandingo party” or black-on-white gangbang with Malcolm’s primitive cousin Ray-Ray (Affion Crockett) and other subhumans assembled to do the job. This scene, which graphically visualizes a bare-bottomed ogre in the process of turd-rodding ecstatically grinning Jenny, is easily the most depressing thing this battle-hardened reviewer has witnessed in some time.

To see that Universal Studios, a brand once known for genre classics like Frankenstein and Jaws, has sunk to distributing biohazardous sludge like this is to realize how close to death this civilization really is. Ubach’s IMDb profile claims that this indeterminate slimewad is “Half Mexican and half Puerto Rican”, but she is no doubt supposed to be portraying a representative Caucasian human female. In any case, this person deserves the scorn of white moviegoers everywhere, who would be entirely justified in boycotting any future productions in which she, Daly, or other perpetrators of this hideous scene participate. Of all of the values, ideals, or lifestyles that Hollywood might spend its time, vast resources, and influence promoting – bravery, devotion, tradition, forbearance, intellect, or self-reliance – screenwriters Marlon Wayans and Rick Alvarez and their backers instead expect audiences to be entertained by the sight of a white woman rapturous in self-immolation and racial death as congoids line up to use her twat for a toilet. Aesthetic considerations aside, one might think that a basic human concern for the public’s health would prevent these lowlifes from promoting promiscuous sex with blacks, one of the most frequent sources of AIDS. But sex hygiene is so boring and unprogressive, right?

The Internship ***1/2

Wedding Crashers costars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson reunite in The Internship, adequate underdog comedy fare that plays it safe and superficial, never deviating from genre conventions, and gives audiences exactly what the trailer has led them to expect. Vaughn and Wilson play Billy and Nick, wristwatch salesmen who, finding themselves the latest casualties of modernization, apply for a competitive Google internship in the long-shot hope of employment.

The protagonists’ plight will be an uncomfortably poignant one to endangered data entry workers, Blockbuster Video clerks, and all of the other expendable relics of the late twentieth century, along with that general portion of the audience comprising the rear guard of the technologically squeamish. There is an irony to the early scene in which Nick and Billy cavalierly order a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle, as they themselves, like Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle, are suddenly made conscious of the fact that the world they knew until now is gone. After being dismissed as dinosaurs by their younger and more brilliant rivals, however, the pair finds that their age and experiences lend them a skill set and a valuable difference of perspective, a reconciliation that finds expression in the image of a tyrannosaurus skeleton wearing Groucho glasses.

Nick and Billy’s obligatory (and unlikely) comeback notwithstanding, the film offers little hope to those still haunted by the words of former employer Sammy (John Goodman) when he tells them, “Everything’s computerized now. [. . .] They don’t need us anymore.” Then, too, there is one cynical young intern’s assertion that, “The whole American Dream thing that you guys grew up on – that’s all it is nowadays – a dream.”

Vaughn and Wilson make a great comedy team, and the supporting cast, from John Goodman to Josh Brener, Will Ferrell, and the delightfully arch Aasif Mandvi, greatly enlivens an uneven script by Vaughn and Jared Stern. The Internship is funny, if not, perhaps, as consistently hilarious as one might hope; but the pacing is impeccable, so that the movie is never in danger of grating on the viewer’s patience – even if that same viewer’s sense of the decent is in for a thrashing.

3.5 of 5 possible stars. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that The Internship is:

13. Statist. The eccentric Yo-Yo’s (Tobit Raphael) traumatic homeschooling serves implicitly to endorse the public education system (cf. The Bling Ring).

12. Feminism-ambivalent. Dana (Rose Byrne) admits that her single-minded careerism has prevented her from having a happy and normal domestic existence. Her solution, however, is not to quit her job and raise a family, but to begin an affair with a new coworker. (cf. The Heat)

11. Pro-gay. “Seriously, same-sex partners make excellent parents,” Neha (Tiya Sircar) gushes. “I so wish my parents were gay.” Strippers engage in lesbian play. Anal sex is a “life changer”.

10. Pro-miscegenation. The sight of curvaceous black booty gets an obnoxious mattress salesman (Will Ferrell) hot to trot. Asian guy Yo-Yo, meanwhile, receives serial lap dances from one or more white strippers. There is also flirtation between Indian Neha and white guy Stuart (Dylan O’Brien).

9. Pro-wigger. Lyle (Josh Brener) appropriates ‘hood lingo throughout. “Hells yeah,” fist-bumping, etc.

8. Anti-Luddite. Things are getting better all the time. One suspects that Nick (Wilson), after finally landing a job with Google, would retract his earlier words of despair: “People have a deep mistrust of machines. Have you seen Terminator? Or 2? Or 3? Or 4?” (cf. no. 7)

7. Technology-skeptical. Despite its basic endorsement of innovation, The Internship does imply critiques of what gadgetry and the internet have done to human interaction. “People hate people,” Sammy observes, and post-adolescent representatives of Generation Y exhibit social dysfunction ranging from crippling shyness to barely human rudeness and lack of any shame whatsoever in the discussion of matters best left private. Neha, like many of her generation, fetishizes Japanese pop-cultural garbage and says she enjoys cosplay (dressing up like anime characters). (cf. no. 8)

6. Pro-slut. Dana sleeps with Nick on the night of their first date.

5. Pro-drug. Billy (Vaughn) unwisely suggests he would be happy to have a “cold one” or “get high” with the severe Mr. Chetty (Mandvi). He also expresses a willingness to procure alcohol for underage co-interns. Students have the best night of their lives getting drunk and raising a ruckus at a strip club. The film does, however, at least discourage drunk driving and warns against overzealous imbibing (“I think my liver hurts”).

4. Anti-family/anti-marriage. Old client Bob (Gary Anthony Williams) has an ugly daughter who Nick and Billy have to pretend is pretty. Yo-Yo’s father (Fel Tengoncion) is a henpecked husband. His mother (Chuti Tiu) was overly protective, breastfeeding him until he was seven. She also mentally and physically abuses him, which has made Yo-Yo overly harsh on himself, so that he feels he must punish himself for “inferior performance”. “My mom calls me a maniac every night when I tell her I love her,” he says. (cf. no. 11)

3. Multiculturalist/pro-immigration. “Diversity is in our DNA,” Lyle says of his company. Intellectually bright non-whites appear in depressing abundance as juxtaposed with dopey white guys Nick and Billy. Anti-American zillionaire and ethnosaboteur Mark Zuckerburg will probably get misty-eyed when he watches The Internship‘s depictions of all the technologically adept diversity awaiting the country as soon as “immigration reform” is passed.

2. Progressive. Google is “an engine for change”.

1. Corporate. The Internship is essentially a feature-length Google commercial.

Apolitical Home Viewing: A Pair of Sheri St. Clair

Working Girls (1985) ****1/2  A humorous, high-quality anthology film about the different incarnations of prostitution – from call girl action to nagging housewifery – Working Girls is tastefully photographed and benefits immensely from featuring some the biggest and most charismatic names in the business.  Ron Jeremy gets things off to a harried start, with spouse Ashley Welles pestering him for a kitchen renovation and using anatomical leverage to pry an agreement out of him.  Jamie Gillis is good as a cocksure male prostitute, and Patti Petite is photogenically limber as a wife trying to squeeze a raise for her husband out of his horny boss (Mike Horner) at the office.

Especially notable is one of the segments directed by “David McCabe” (Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama creator David DeCoteau), in which Sheri St. Clair plays a prostitute who ties mustached wimp Robert Bullock to a chair at his request and then proceeds to display her body, finger herself, and talk dirty in her distinctively scorching, slightly scary, and awe-inspiring fashion.  The concluding vignette, “Kinky Sex”, also directed by DeCoteau, is really just a scatalogical joke, and one of many unusual situations that set Working Girls apart from the rest of the trash on the corner.  Recommended to 80s porn fans and those interested in seeing DeCoteau’s earliest directorial work.

Air Erotica (1988) **1/2  This is a compilation of essentially plotless vignettes about airline pilots, passengers, and stewardesses.  Big names like Herschel Savage and Taija Rae appear (the latter in her less interesting but still sexy slimmed-down and blonded mode of the late 80s), but none of the segments elicits much excitement with the exception of Sheri St. Clair’s irritatingly brief turn as a horny passenger so hot she has to let Tom Byron take her into the airplane bathroom to plug her variously.  St. Clair commands more nasty and sinister magnetism than all of the other performers combined, and Air Erotica might have been saved by having the sense to include several segments featuring her; but what follows her encounter is a series of tolerable but pedestrian scenes of people screwing, licking, and sucking.

Taija Rae looks a little bored in her threesome with Chelsea and Kevin James, whose Nazi superman looks, protruding veins, and noisy breathing interfere with any eroticism his two scenes might have had.  Rachel Ashley is fine as a slut servicing coke-snorting businessman Nick Random, whose goofy pink neckerchief, gold necklaces, and open shirt showing his hairy chest provide one of the film’s amusements.  Overall, however, Air Erotica suffers from what might best be called a sense of jet lag, of bodies not always completely present, with boring music doing little to enliven the proceedings.  For hardcore fans of the performers only.

Deer Crossing ***1/2

A scabrous, wilfully unpleasant film, Deer Crossing wallows in the worst that humanity has to offer.  Perhaps best described as Bad Day at Black Rock meets I Spit on Your Grave, Christian Jude Grillo’s paranoid death trip into the redneck post-apocalypse that constitutes the U.S.A. outside New York, L.A., and Chicago (at least in the minds of those who live in New York, L.A., and Chicago) is a marginally recommendable film for one outstanding reason: K.J. Linhein’s Zeus-like portrayal of the granddaddy of all sadistic white trash antagonists, Santa-bearded superhick Lukas Walton.

So over-the-top it has to be seen by any admirer of things ludicrously compelling, the characterization dares to evoke what foul thing might have been spawned the night Dan Haggerty got drunk, hogtied Wilford Brimley, pumped him full of heroin, and had himself a high old time.  Lukas is basically Democrats’ idea of the typical Republican: a hulking, hairy, overalls-clad figure from distant antiquity who licks his chops at the thought of oppressing women and children and runs amuck in benighted cultural wastelands like Texas and Alabama; a gun-toting rapist and hater of all humanity, but especially African-Americans, and who will destroy us all if he/it is not stopped.

Deer Crossing takes up with old Lukas after he captures and reconditions city mother Maggie Chancelor (Laura L. Cottrel) and her young son Cole (Kevin Fennell) as the playthings of his inscrutable, primitive whims after they hit a deer on the highway and fatefully crash their car in Lukas’s neck of Deliveranceland.  Eight years will pass before the father, Dr. Chancelor (Warren Hemenway), receives evidence that his missing wife and child may still be alive.  If they are, does he want to know?  If so, his son will have lived more than half of his life in a milieu altogether removed that of Dr. Chancelor.

Is Deer Crossing a contribution to the environment vs. genetics debate or just a greasy middle finger directed at every cowboy hat in sight?  At times the film seems deadly serious; but then Lukas Walton will lope into view and elicit a laugh with his hillbilly hijinks.  The exaggerated quality of the characters and situations is constantly at odds with what seems to be Deer Crossing‘s desire to be taken in earnest.  Sunless, despairing, and silly, but also entertaining, the film is a kind of One-Eyed Jack whose belches and mumbled obscenities invite interpretation.

Christopher Mann, who stars as Detective Derrick Stanswood, seems comfortable in the role of the black man hated because he thrives.  Pinhead himself, Hellraiser‘s Doug Bradley, appears as Sheriff Lock, who – odd for a rural Pennsylvania lawman – sports a futilely wrestled British accent.  Among the other locals are callous cowboy-hat-and-eyepatch-wearing homosexual racketeer Randy (Tom Detrik) and drug-peddling madam and hairdresser Gail (Jennifer Butler).  Ernie Hudson, meanwhile, collects a paycheck by showing up in a couple of scenes as Captain Bailey.

3.5 probably overly generous stars of a possible 5.  Only the most tenebrous sense of humor is likely to endure, let alone enjoy, Grillo’s study.  Ideological Content Analysis, meanwhile, indicates that Deer Crossing is:

7. Anti-Christian.  A cross is visible on a sweaty redneck’s tacky shirt as he sodomizes a male prostitute.

6. Anti-drug.  Lukas keeps Maggie doped so he can have fun with her.  Sheriff Lock is an addict.

5. Anti-marriage.  If your spouse becomes a vegetable, it’s just a depressing hassle.  Better is when they go missing, particularly if there’s a mistress waiting in the hospital wings to become wife #2.

4. Anti-gay.  Because sodomy in the world of this film is the province of sexually inadequate white males and self-loathing backwoods hicks, it is evil and a symptom of moral rot.

3. Black supremacist.  If not for competent cops like Detective Stanswood and Captain Bailey, police departments across the country would be run by goofy, giggly white imbeciles like Detective Kushman (Phil Eichinger).

2. Animal rights militant.  Maggie should have watched the road and never hit that deer.  Her ordeal is her punishment, nature’s manifest wrath in hillbilly form for the sacrificial albatross.  Rural hunting traditions are transformed into the pointless stabbing of a rabbit trapped in a box.

1. Anti-white male/anti-redneck.  Deer Crossing admonishes city-dwellers that, not far outside their small pockets of civilization are seas of woods infested with “inbred, mullet-wearing motherfuckers”.

Apolitical Home Viewing: Backdoor Double Creature

The Backdoor Club (1985) ***1/2  Opening with primitively video-doctored travelogue footage of Munich, Germany, where this odd pornographic feature was filmed, The Backdoor Club gets things off to an upbeat start with its suggestive synth-pop theme song, “Slippin’ Through the Backdoor”, performed by Galaxy, with a Kim Carnes soundalike female vocal extolling the pleasures of anal sex: “Don’t ever start at the end, but let it begin.  If there is something you want, don’t leave it alone.”  The flimsiest pretense of plot is provided with the introduction of Herschel Savage and wife Danielle, who have, it seems, inexplicably traveled all the way to Germany just to visit Munich’s world-famous Backdoor Club, where they expect to be initiated gingerly into the art of rear entry amour.  Also visiting the club for the first time is main attraction Taija Rae, who quickly pairs off with Savage for some swing action.

So far, so good, as the viewer at this point is probably expecting to get more than his fair share of anal reaming nastiness for the duration of The Backdoor Club‘s very 1980s eighty minutes – and the prospect of seeing Taija Rae, in particular, get her voluptuous bum pummeled by Savage is likely to get the viewer’s hopes up and at attention.  Unfortunately, after the local club talent demonstrates how it’s done for the tourists, doing their moaning and “Ja”-ing and all in their humorous German accents, the payoff never really comes.  The gradually rising level of excitement in the scenes, with Danielle and Taija both enjoying some euro-lesbo action, would seem to indicate that the ladies are being primed for something really special; but so much screen time is devoted to labia-licking, presumably with the intention of finessing the reluctant women into taking a chance with their asses, that this film might just as well have titled The Cunnilingus Club.

In one especially frustrating scene, Herschel Savage is giving Taija Rae the royal treatment, licking and fingering her before treating her to a solid doggystyle hammering, during which he repeatedly asks her if she’s ready to take it in her ass, but every time receives the same humiliating “No” for an answer.  After the fifty-minute mark, the intensity subsides and never really recovers, with Taija, who, one would hope, might return for a scorching anal climax, not only failing to deliver on the expected reward promised by the premise, but disappearing altogether for the remainder of the story.  One cause for this film’s disappointing payoff may be the fact that it was scripted by a woman, Valerie Kelly, so that The Backdoor Club is ultimately insincere in its commitment to its subject matter.  The Backdoor Club does contain anal scenes, with Tracey Adams and Sandra Nova (Uschi Karnat) doing their duty admirably, but the overall experience, sadly, is one of anatomical bait-and-switch.  3.5 of 5 possible stars.

Backdoor Lust (1988) ***  This all-action compilation lifts generous clips from a handful of 1980s adult films, including more than one scene from The Backdoor Club (see above) that feature rear entry relations, usually preceded by other preliminaries.  The picture quality is less than pristine, but the performers generally seem at least to be interested in what they’re doing.  Patti Petite is a standout in her enthusiastic couch session set to some pretty funky music.  Unusual moments in other vignettes  include a woman taking a champagne bottle up her rear, with the man who twists it cruelly claiming he’s going to shove it in all the way; and Francois Papillon playing a gay shoe salesman in a bowtie who only reluctantly agrees to screw slutty customer Buffy Davis.  Not essential programming, Backdoor Lust does, however, serve its basic utilitarian purpose.  3 of 5 possible stars.

Apolitical Home Viewing: The Science of Sleaze Detection

Spine (1986) ***

In this nicely misogynistic shot-on-video horror, L.A. police investigate seemingly in vain as a madman goes on a spree, murdering nurses by ravaging them with a knife and exposing their spines.  The murderer obsesses over someone named Linda, though none of his victims has that name.

The police and their detective work aren’t exactly fascinating, since it largely consists of sitting around, talking, and typing search terms into a bare, green-text-on-black-screen computer display – and the breakthrough, when it comes, is anticlimactic, to say the least.  There’s something compelling about the unsteady, voyeuristic camera work, the grimy synthesized score, and the whole dangerously sick and seedy sensibility of Spine, however, that artistically lifts it somewhat above the snuff sludge aesthetic from which it springs.

Janus Blythe, a familiar face from a handful of 70s-80s genre classics, and Lise Romanoff, who more notably contributed special effects work to such films as Night of the Creeps and Never Too Young to Die, appear as tortured victims of the elusive back-ripper.  Hippie-bearded R. Eric Huxley gives an interestingly soft-spoken, almost Bob Rossish performance as the culprit, generating menace and humor in moments such as when he pauses in the midst of repeatedly stabbing a woman to lick the blood from his knife.

One aspect of the cast that enhances a film of this type is that none of the actors really seem like actors; they just look like ordinary people you’d see on a street – or would have seen in the 1980s – people you’d see and pass without notice, unaware they were on their way to being hogtied, raped, and butchered by Bob Ross.  Director John Howard, according to IMDb, previously made an adult feature subtly titled Rope Burn, so there’s something to add to your checklists, you unredeemed masturbators.

 

The True Crimes of Passion (1983) ****

Raven-haired, pouty-mouthed Janey Robbins scorches the celluloid as private investigator B.J. Fondel in this adult take on the hardboiled detective genre.  In classic film noir fashion, Robbins delivers dispassionate voice-over narration of her sexual misadventures in a trio of tawdry tales revolving around one or more perversions of varying deviance.

The star is dressed and coiffed differently in each story, which helps to keep it interesting, but the first segment has her looking the best in a shiny maroon jumpsuit as she investigates the lesbian infidelity and light B&D play of a preacher’s wife and her lover – only, of course, inevitably to join in with the sluts.  This is stuff that will have the viewer’s hand down his pants in no time.

Director Kim Christy, who discovered a niche in adult films involving transsexuality, offers more of that in the second story, which features an escaped convict-turned-tranny posing as a maid and exacting revenge against a district attorney by forcing him at gunpoint to screw his sister and get it on in a perverted threesome.  (The maid slips Robbins a mickey, so she’s disappointingly unconscious for most of this one.)

Finally, the flimsiest of the stories is basically an excuse for the insatiable Robbins to take on first one and then two studs in a hotel room – and she earns her audience’s sympathy, if she doesn’t have it already, by bravely taking it in the rear for the climax.  Overall, not at all a bad show.  It’s a shame the B.J. Fondel character didn’t continue through a series of X-rated investigative adventures, as Robbins could have serviced such a franchise with hardboiled and hardbopping panache.

Apolitical Home Viewing: An Alex de Renzy Frenzy

Babyface (1977) ****1/2  Dan (Dan Roberts) is a man on the run after an uptight, psychotic mother (Thundercrack‘s Marion Eaton) catches him with her not-so-innocent pigtailed jailbait daughter Priscilla (Cuddles Malone), so, lucky lug that he is, he gets a gig as a stud at a kinky, upscale bordello for perverted women. Writer John Mulligan’s story is a lot of fun, and director Alex de Renzy shows himself quite the adept at orchestrating sexual mayhem.  By the time Babyface is finished the viewer has been treated to slapping, cougarism, whipping, anal, group sport, plastic wrap mummification, and attempted emasculation, all of which is delivered in a friendly, humorous, lighthearted style. Most important, however, is that all of the participants are clearly enjoying themselves. Oddly, this is the only film listed for both Roberts and Malone at IMDb. Each has a memorable screen presence and, as Babyface demonstrates, had the potential for stardom within the adult genre.