"Paper Lion" (1968) d/Alex March

With NFL training camps kicking off this week, I thought it'd be pertinent for us to discuss my favorite football movie to date and an excellent means to properly perturb all the football-hating female readers out there. Paper Lion stands as a cult comedy that's manes and tails over made-for-tv sniffly Chi-town tearjerkers like Brian's Song (1971) or even the Cowboy-based cocaine and hot tubs of North Dallas Forty (1979), in my book, which is admittedly bound for life in Honolulu Blue and Silver. Tonight's review is based on a best seller by Harvard journo, George Plimpton, and his trials and tribulations while posing as a rookie quarterback for the Detroit Lions for a Sports Illustrated article.In it, the likes of Alan Alda, Lauren Hutton, David Doyle line up against real pro footballers of the day, like Alex Karras, Joe Schmidt, and Frank Gifford, giving the viewer an inside look at the game the way it used to be played, before all the endzone dances, multi-million dollar contracts, and spectacle.See: any number of rotten musical acts plodding through Super Bowl halftime shows for proof of that.


"Listen, Hawkeye. Gap-tooth is gonna stay in and block, Sheriff Brody's gonna run a post route, and I'll be out on the yacht, sipping champagne with the Angels," says Bosley (David Doyle).
After a spirited game of catch in Central Park with the fellows, George's (Alda) editor stumbles upon the really smashing idea of having the thirty-six year old writer pose as a rookie quarterback in the NFL for his next piece for Sports Illustrated, having already gotten him roughed up by boxing champ Sugar Ray Robinson and taken deep by baseball all-stars in his earlier work for the publication. After being denied by a few teams, including Vince Lombardi's Packers, the Detroit Lions agree to take him on, with only coach Joe Schmidt knowing Plimpton's true identity: a noodle-armed weenbag. There's some rookie hazings and drunken shenanigans orchestrated by Mike Lucci and Alex Karras, and we see Roger Brown traded off to the Rams. Plimpton sings his "Newfoundland Newfs" school song, gets roughhoused in practice, and the fellas dupe him into thinking he's scored a long touchdown in front of his girl, Kate (Hutton), until he sees them laughing at him afterwards.


"Oh yeah, some kid from USC named Simpson left that for you, Plimpton."
After much Jerry Lewis-like tomfoolery on the gridiron, his teammates begin to suspect that Plimpton isn't who he says he is, and Lucci and company start to play increasingly cruel pranks on the writer, when a knowing Karras takes him under his protective wing. There's a team talent show where the "Mad Duck" does an impersonation of Coach Schmidt as a nazi, and finally, Schmidt decides to let Plimpton take some snaps in a preseason game against the St. Louis Cardinals after the game has been decided, and George obliges by losing yards on four straight plays, culminating in a self-k.o. into the goalposts. Once again, the writer has come through with another memorable tale for his avid readers...


"Let's discuss it in my office. I'll pack us up a super bowl." says Vince Lombardi.
I should probably mention that, though my Lions didn't make much noise on the field in '67(5-7-2, 3rd place), they scored Offensive Rookie of the Year (Mel Farr) and Defensive Rookie of the Year (Lem Barney) that year, the only time in NFL history that a team has ever snagged both awards in the same season(!).Schmidt's Lions would go on to get blanked in the playoff round to Dallas three years later, 5-0 (!!), in Alex  "Mad Duck" Karras' final season. Meanwhile, Karras would establish himself as a competent actor in his own right, post-Lions, appearing in things like Blazing Saddles, Porky's, and Buffalo '66, before passing away in 2012, still excluded from the NFL Hall of Fame, despite being a four time Pro Bowler and member of the 1960's All-Decade Team.Speaking of Hall of Fame CB Lem Barney, he would also turn up in the football-based blaxploitation epic, The Black Six (1973), with fellow footballers Mercury Morris, Gene Washington, Carl Eller, Willie Lanier, and "Mean" Joe Greene.The real Plimpton would turn up at the end of the decade in commercials hawking something called Mattel Intellivision. Meh, says the old Atari 2600 man from way back. Four big ones.


"You're lined up behind the guard, George..."

" The Devils" (1971) d/ Ken Russell

Before the inevitable influx of knee jerk religious zealotry comes raining down on this post, I've scheduled some flagellation in my personal fornicatory at the hands of twin raven-haired Wop-ettes in nun costumes for myself, having allowed such a blasphemous and incendiary piece of cinematic filth to slither it's evil way among my list of all-time favorite movies. Yea, though I greatly admire the powerful visual style of directorial conspirator, Ken Russell, who also hath writ the screenplay ( based upon the Aldous Huxley novel, The Devils of Loudon),  I shall also give thanks and praise to the dramatic contributions of those actors who would bring these shocking images to light, specifically Oliver Reed, though Michael Gothard, Dudley Sutton, Gemma Jones, and a hunchbacked Vanessa Redgrave all compliment Reed in supporting roles here. Riveting, disturbing stuff whose punch has lost very little, if any, potency, despite the passing of forty-plus years and countless censor's cuts, though one should pay heed to the poster's warning, as this is definitely not a film for every one...


I had a hunch that Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave) would be back...
The time is the seventeenth century, the place is France. At one of King Louis XIII's less masculine get together's, Cardinal Richelieu is buzzing about uppity protestants, suggesting the country's city fortifications all be torn down, to which the monarch agrees, excluding the town of Loudon, of course, as he had made a promise not to do such a thing, to it's governor, in the past. Only the governor has since turned his toes up, leaving the city's control in the hands of Urbain Grandier(Reed), a priest who's as insatiable for political power as he is for snug cunny, as evidenced by the number of Loudon women who daydream about receiving the holy in-out from him (even hunchbacked women of the cloth like Sister Jeanne(Redgrave) wouldn't mind drying his feet after a lengthy water walk with their scarlet tresses), and the growing number of rival priest's daughters suddenly pregnant at his doing is nothing to sneeze at, either.


"Take this spear wound, all of you, and lick obscenely at it, as though it were a vagina.", whispers dream-Jesus(Ollie Reed).
When an elitist Baron's (Sutton) attempt to carry out orders to bring down Loudon's walls are thwarted by a steadfast Grandier, backed by the city's army, he joins forces with Father Mignon (Murray Melvin), whose pregnant daughter has been rejected by Grandier. Meanwhile, Grandier has secretly married another woman (Jones), the news of which bodes ill upon the fragile psyche of Sister Jeanne, who implicates the priest in all manner of blasphemous charges to Mignon und Baron, who, in turn, enlists the services of a lanky drink of water inquisitor named Father Barre (Gothard) to get to the bottom of it all, even if it means pumping foul enemas up the asses of every nun at the convent in doing so.The King shows up in disguise during an exorcism, claiming to have a relic containing the blood of Christ to use in the cleansing spiritual rite, but after Barre appears to have used it successfully to clear the sisters of demons, the monarch flips it open to reveal it was empty in the first place. Good one, Louie. The still-"possessed" sisters pull the crucified statue of Christ from the wall and rape it in every conceivable manner, to celebrate. Grandier and his wife return just in time to catch the party, and are subsequently taken into custody by the Baron's soldiers. All that follows, you should really experience for yourselves.


Q: How many of these women are committing blasphemy? A: Nun.
Religious faith is a funny thing. Some people are content to believe what they believe and carry on their lives in a relatively normal fashion, while some treat their faith as an elitist badge of authority over others who don't share them, and some commit unspeakable crimes against their fellow man within the protective umbrella of their religious teachings. Who's wrong? Who's right? Let 'em scrap it out among themselves until the end of time if it's so important to them to find out what's waiting for them after they're gone. I'm more focused on enjoying the finer things in what life I've got left to live, with the people I care about, that care about me. I think if everybody gave that a shot,  we might be alright, after all. But we're just humans, hahaha. So we won't. I'd be more worried that you didn't give The Devils a shot, though, as it really is an extraordinary film, worth all the discourse and analysis one could possibly invest in it, and then some. Once you have, let me know what you think. Obviously, four wops.


"Is it too late to pass on martyrdom for the five quid and what's behind curtain number two?"

"Altered States" (1980) d/ Ken Russell

Time to tune in, turn on, and drop out here at the Wop with tonight's review, a sometimes dazzlingly perceptive inward journey into man's baser self through the abuse of heavy hallucinogenic drugs and sensory deprivation tanks, as documented through the artful lens of Ken Russell, no stranger himself to bizarre visuals. I walked down to the American Theater for this one, upon release in 1980, and though I was expecting something more from the production, the one sheet still ended up on display in my room for years, as the black sheep of my collection ( long since been replaced  by 'Student Bodies' and 'Poliziotto superpiu', if you're keeping score at home).FX god Dick Smith provides some unforgettable work, as usual, in supplying amorphous face-trippers, cracked bodysuit bitches, schitzy proto-humans, and more, for a game cast headed by William Hurt and Blair Brown, .

"...now cue that copy of "Burnt Weenie Sandwich", maaan, I'm peaking balls!"
Ed Jessup (Hurt) is the local college's Abnormal Psych professor extraordinaire, and as such he's the envy of his colleagues, Arthur and Mason (Bob Balaban, Charles Haid) and the love object of fellow brainiac, Emily (Brown), who somehow convinces him to marry her amid his exhausting studies on schizophrenia and much sweaty couch sex. While grooving his days away in a sensory deprivation tank he surmises that even sleep states of consciousness can be brought to the surface, and pisses off to Mexico to partake in a hallucinogenic Indio mushroom party to prove his point. After tripping his face off in the middle of the jungle (hard, bro), the violent fungal roller coaster ride awakens a sudden desire to devolve into a naked, howling caveman in the prof. His desire quickly becomes obsession, as he ignores the pleas of reason from his assistants, and his now ex-wife and kids in favor of a canning jar fulla the stuff the tribe's medicine man must've let him bring home(!).


I'm not exactly sure what she's doing here, but I like it a lot.
Before too long, Eddie's running around, screeching like a monkey on bath salts, clobbering campus guards to near-death (Ohhh, that explains how Jessup and Co. are allowed back into the campus lab afterwards, he only nearly killed people in a drugged-out haze, gotcha.) and biting antelopes at the zoo, which naturally leads his wife and assistants to 180° their positions on the potentially deadly experiments, now enthusiastically supporting his decision to go ahead and fuck with his inner chemistry like a mad Russian Roulette player. He begins to lose control of his transformations, leading to a knock down, drag out orgy for the eyes as he becomes a shapeless lump of humanity, while his ex-wife naturally realizes that stripping nude and becoming a neon lightning-being is the only way she can rescue him from the mental abyss...


There's something you don't see every day...
A wee Drew Barrymore briefly appears as Hurt's daughter, and since we've never mentioned her before here and she's clearly too hot for such an injustice to continue, I threw that in. Schizophrenic as Syd Barrett in a cellar full o' psilocybin, States never seems certain of its own identity, mixing appropriately trippy imagery and lengthy moral tirades about the dangers of undertaking such a reflective journey, with mixed results in the end. Normally, reporting on Russell's usual level of artistic flair in the director's chair plus solid performances from Hurt and Brown and the Kafkaesque Smith effects work would merit a higher ratings scale score than the pedestrian deuce, but the meh feeling I'm left with afterwards, even after repeated viewings over the years, demands that I give it such. That said, I'll still watch it again sometime in the future, and you should probably give it a look, as well, if any of what I've just discussed grabs you.


Three decades later, we finally see the devastating long term effects of repeated exposure to Lipps, Inc.