"Promises, Promises! " (1962) d/ King Donovan

A lot of folks these days are rediscovering Marilyn Monroe, albeit mostly through misquoted junk mail memes on social networks, but I digress...She was never my bag, personally, I was always more into Jayne Mansfield, the busty star of tonight's review, the movie that saw her become the first American actress to appear fully nude for Hollywood cameras. Publicity shots from the set appeared in the pages of Playboy in June of 1963, earning some consequent obscenity charges for Hugh Hefner. The film, on the other hand, was a big success for the bubbly-yet-brainy blonde with a party girl personality and 40-21-35 measurements. Phew. Also owns the distinction of having been banned in Cleveland, of all places.


Rub-a-dub-dub, bubbly bub boobles, errr, boob bubbles...
Two married couples, the Brooks' and Banner's, respectively,  share a romantic cruise together, with Jeff Brooks (Tommy Noonan) downing Wild Turkey by the fifth in dealing with his wife Sandy's (Jayne Mansfield) obsession with having a child, despite four years together and nary a rug rat to show for their combined efforts, even though Sandy perpetually frolics around their cabin utterly nude. In the adjoining cabin, Claire Banner (Marie McDonald) has her hands full with her husband, King (Mickey Hargitay), a muscle-bound, health food nut/ perfectionist who plays tennis and lifts weights for kicks. Jeff, who may or may not be impotent since his time in the service,  has been seeing the ship's doctor (Fritz Feld), who prescribes him some aspirin as a placebo to finally impregnate his wife, though an alcohol-fueled mix up sees all four down the pills by mistake, leading to a blurred evening where spouses seemingly get swapped, or so Jeff believes and fixates endlessly upon, irl, and in fog machine-enhanced dream sequences.


I'd have that look on my face, too, if I didn't have any scenes with Jayne, sans gear.
Sandy, under the impression that Jeff has gotten her pregnant, lip syncs a few forgettable pop tunes (though one she performs covered only in soap bubbles in the tub...Madonna!) and throws an extravagant baby shower where her swishy stylist, Babbette (T.C. Jones) models wigs and does impressions of Tallulah Bankhead, Bette Davis, and finally, Jayne Mansfield (get it?). Meanwhile, Jeff is convinced that King is the baby's real father, and further drowns his sorrows, alienating his busty spouse, in the process. After that particular joke has been beaten into the low budget set floor with spiked baseball bats, Claire discovers that she, too, is pregnant, having just set Jeff's mind at ease, filling him in that King, is most likely impotent, himself. Oh,  these zany early sixties cruises that folks apparently used to take. So, who's fathering who's babies on this damned ocean liner, and where the fuck is Merill Stubing for these hijinks? Shaken, not stirred on that AMP martini,  Isaac...


"I'm pitching an a- frame tent at the thought of cha cha-ing next to those chachabingos, baby!"
Jayne's bra-battering bobblers, once a gig killer early in Jayne's career, look fantastic here, without regressing too much into a wild eyed Neanderthal, pounding his hairy chest with a rock bat and screaming "Urrrrgghh!!!" into the Paleolithic night air, hopefully. I'm a man, though, and when a man like me sees women of such aesthetic beauty, I can only admire them in my own... many, inimitable ways and twirl the hair in my goatee. There's only one reason you're gonna wanna see tonight's movie, and that's Jayne, who, in turn, rewards the viewer with every last of her natural assets here, at their very peak and at the best possible angles, no less. The late movie critic Roger Ebert venomously dissed her for doing this one in his Chicago Sun-Times column...prior to his collaboration with Tit King Russ Meyer, I'd be willing to wager (two years prior, if you're splitting hairs). Never really appreciated any of that guy's opinions, but I appreciate that he had opinions, in the first place. Rare, these days! Since I also have a few opinions of my own, here are mine on tonight's review: Two wops on the scale, not many laughs delivered in the end, and heavy on the corn, but lots of Jayne to make up for it. Insert wolf whistle here.


Seeing you rolling around like that is getting my Mickey all Hargitay.

"Big Bad Wolf" (2006) d/ Lance W. Dreesen

If I'd stumbled across this one while perusing the new releases shelves at Video World in, say, 1984, this might have been a different review. Director Lance W. Dreesen's first full-length feature has the look, and all the gore and nudity of a movie from the mid to late eighties, when direct-to-video horror flicks were everywhere, but it simply isn't one of those, having been made some twenty years later. And in the new millenium, there's just no excuse for wisecracking were-whatevers that come off like a caustic Freddy Krueger in a Party City Chewbacca costume. The ever-popular Clint Howard bags a Crazy Ralph-esque cameo, and David Naughton of An American Werewolf in London (1981) fame looks more embarrassed here than he did while lip-synching and disco dancing in front of Mike Douglas' audience back in 1979.


"I'ma mosey on down inta town n' git us some tranya. I reckon y'all'll cherish it 'bout as much as this fella chere."
After a trip to Cameroon(!) turns fatal for a group of hunters that are set upon by a ravenous, shaggy beast, with only Charlie (Christopher Shyer) and Mitch (Richard Tyson) surviving the ordeal, we fast forward seven years to Charlie's nephew, Derek (Trevor Duke-Moretz) and his gothy gearhead galpal, Sam (Kimberly J. Brown), as they're about to embark on a weekend of cheap beer and cheaper women with some dodgy frat boys that Derek has designs of pledging with. Derek snakes the keys to his stepfather's remote cabin in the woods, but that night his frat buddies are torn to sloppy pieces, and their airhead girlfriends are raped and slaughtered, respectively, by the aforementioned wisecracking were-whatever-the-fuck-he's-supposed-to-be, with the sense of humor of an eighth grade sporto. Derek's step-father is Mitch, by the way, who married up Charlie's dead brother's widow before Charlie had a chance to. Mitch is an abusive, wisecracking whore chaser prick...just like the werewolf. Hmmmm...


"Something a thirteen year old would laugh at!",  larks the less lupine were-guy (Richard Tyson).
Derek and Sam do some sleuthing about (not really, Sam just gives a pushy Mitch an off-camera blowjob and saves the spilled ejaculate in her mouth for later dna testing...seriously) on the advice of Uncle Charlie, to prove scientifically beyond a shadow of doubt that Mitch isn't just an obnoxious asshole, he's a homicidal were-guy, to boot. While Sam's impromptu pink microphone karaoke puts a strain on their budding relationship, Mitch lures Charlie to a warehouse and eats him, later kidnapping Sam and arranging a late night rendezvous for Derek at the cabin, you know... if he ever wants to see her alive again, man. Oh, and there's some A/V Club dorks with a bevvy of hot young chicks at the cabin, too, to be wisecracked at/raped/added to the body count. Pretty standard slasher/werewolf stuff, right to the very end.


"Maybe you should lay off the Dr. Pepper, Sheriff..."
The practical gore effects are all syrupy good, it's the eighties-tastic werewolf itself that really eats it here. Further amplifying the suck is the lone transformation sequence, heavy on wonky-looking SyFy level CG. Woulda looked more organic if they showed Tyson stepping into the costume one leg at a time, like a pair of coveralls. Still, I suppose it's all worth a look if you're curious as to what grown up Annie Wheaton from Rose Red (2002) looks like after a shopping binge at Hot Topic. Not classic stuff by anyone's standards, but not entirely without some exploitative merit, though Wolf really only delivers on "Bad", in the nugatory mold of typical slasher fare of yesteryear, and for that, it earns a single Wop on the ratings scale. Pass.


I don't know what looks more phony...the werewolf or her buh-hubbas.

"Age of Consent" (1969) d/ Michael Powell

One surefire cure for Monday that might have you dreaming of faraway posh locales and sun-soaked goddesses is tonight's entry,  from British director Michael Powell who gave us the excellent Peeping Tom nine years earlier, and starring two of my favorites, James Mason and Helen Mirren, a statuesque blonde in her first major role, who really strikes a fatal blow against my 'brunettes are better' argument here in a significant way. Not usually the type of thing we'd normally look at, but as someone who confessedly has been into Helen's work for a long time I can say without reservation: If you're a big fan, this film will make you a bigger fan. Nudge, nudge. Snap, snap. Grin grin, wink wink, say no more?


There's a Moray Eel joke I'd make here if I were a lesser man...
Celebrated artist, Brad Morahan (Mason), jaded by his success in the Big Apple, returns to his native Australia to re-ignite the passion he once had for his craft on the suggestion of his agent, but after a week long roll in the hay with a lady friend (Clarissa Kaye, who would later become his wife), his old buddy Nat (Jack McGowran) who's well behind in alimony payments makes the scene, borrows money, and tries to siphon Brad's cool to pull a few birds, to boot. Deciding that isolation is key, Brad sets up in a dilapidated shack on the far end of a sandbar of a small, mostly uninhabited island on the Great Barrier Reef with....Godfrey, his...dog.....of course. (You're gonna have to insert your own breathy dramatic Mason pauses from here on out, folks, the novelty has already worn thin for me). It isn't long before his beach combing, barefootin', n' boatin' is interrupted by Cora Ryan (Mirren), a wild, young blonde (who fishes the reef with her big tits and sticky fingers) who's pilfered his groceries and more recently, a neighboring spinster's chicken, and when Bradley's suspected as the culprit, he pays for the poultry on the promise that Cora not steal anymore. As an added incentive to help the girl realize her dreams of being a hairdresser in Brisbane someday, he pays her to model for him, as well. Half a dollar an hour, too.Imagine, renting Helen Mirren for eight hours for four bucks. You know, I'm not Edgar Cayce, but I'll bet this passionate young creature is exactly what ol' Brad needed in the first place...


The Great Barrier Reef is home to great big tits, errr, triggerfish. Triggerfish.
At this point, Nat shows up on Brad's shackstep looking for a loan to keep the cops off his back and ends up staying. When he tries to seduce the spinster next door for money, she goes for it, after which he expeditiously breaks camp, jacking Brad's money, and even some of his ...drawrings, as well(There I go again). Things get worse when Cora's gin-sucking hick grandma catches her posing in the buff for the older man, accusing him of getting Nugent with her until he parts with the last of his cash to make the accusations disappear like her granddaughter's clothes. When Cora finds out that 'Ma' (Neva Carr-Glynn) has found her tucked away hairdresser bucks, a chase ensues and then a struggle, and finally, drunken old sot tumbling down the hill and eating broken neck death. After the notorious lush's death is ruled accidental, that night Cora goes to Brad's shack but when he shows only professional interest in her, she disappointedly dashes out into the water. He follows her, and in the end, sees her for what she really is...


"I wish I could see how Brad's painting is turning out," said nobody ever.
Dame Helen Mirren, as magnificent a physical specimen (you may need a lobster bib while watching this one) as she is a gifted actress, surely steals the show; director Powell's take on Shakespeare's The Tempest with Mason opposite Mia Farrow was to follow, but lack of funding marked it's premature end. Though Mason's Aussie accent here sounds mostly artificial, overall, he's good as always. Even if this mid-life crisis-turned-unlikely romance stuff sounds like a lotta hooey to ya, at the forty-five minute mark, there's a scene that makes it all worth while, even to callous-hearted sons a' bitches like ol' Woppo. "Coragio, bully-monster, coragio!" Three biggies.


Frankly, even the Sand-Helen has my pulse racing, folks.