unrated

A deliberately silly XXX flick about a Satanic-type cult involved in all kinds of sleazy activities. It's not badly made, it has some funny bits, and there's actually something resembling a plot. Good fun if you're in the mood for this kind of thing.

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

A really sorry excuse for a movie. Basically, an armed man barges into the projectionist's booth at a porno movie house and, for no sensible reason, makes the guy run XXX flicks for him. We see a lot of unrelated porno loops, which seem to have been taken from various sources. Finally, the projectionist decides to turn the tables, probably 'cause he's just as tired of this stupid movie as we are, but instead the hitman shoots him dead. The End. I don't expect XXX movies to have decent plots, but here it's lamer than usual. You can be sure they didn't spend much time putting this thing together.

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

This is the worst kind of art film. BACK AND FORTH takes place almost entirely in an empty classroom. Various people show up now and then. The gimmick here is that the camera continuously moves back and forth, at an ever-increasing rate of speed, and by the end of the picture everything's just a blur. And then, just when you can't take it any more, the camera begins moving UP AND DOWN! You see, the patterns of nature are not merely horizontal--they're VERTICAL! Whatever...

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

Yet another dopey '70s XXX flick about a Satanic cult, ECSTASY IN BLUE is fairly entertaining as far as these things go. You've got this guy, who may or may not be Satan, trying to drag innocents into his hedonistic cult. Much weirdness ensues. One of the actors is a very New Yawk type who reminded me of Joe Pesci (let me make it clear that it's NOT him), and he's great fun. It all concludes with one of those "it was only a dream--or was it?" endings. A breezy movie with some funny moments.

This is a very, very well-made XXX film with an S/M angle; it's usually considered one of the all-time best in the genre. But it's also precious and pretentious beyond all description, and so cold that it's hard to get into. You can admire it, but it's awfully hard to enjoy.

If you've ever heard the rumor that Spalding (SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA) Gray once appeared in an XXX film, this is what they're talking about. The movie has one of those end credit montages where they show each actor in turn and display their names on the screen--and there's "Spaulding Gray" (sic), flashing a dopey grin at the camera. He plays the leader of a gang of escaped convicts who terrorize a farmer's family. The whole movie is very bad. Sadistic, monotonous, and no fun at all. The dialogue is especially embarrassing.

This movie has one of the worst theme songs I've ever heard, though I suppose it would be a difficult challenge indeed to sing the phrase "microscopic liquid subway to oblivion" in a tuneful way. The movie itself is a mess. There's drugs, a Svengali-like college professor--I really couldn't figure out what was going on much of the time. Skip it.

Much of this movie is pretty standard XXX stuff, kinda slow and boring, but it contains some outrageously sick bits. Fans of bad taste movies will love it; the rest of us will scratch our heads at the snoozy pacing and the obviously messed-up takes (when actors blow their lines, they just repeat them and go on with the show). The version I saw had no opening or closing credits. Can't say I blame anyone for keeping their names off this thing.

Country girl comes to the big city, gets into all kinds of trouble. Not a great movie by any means, but it's sexy and fairly interesting, especially if you're into early '70s sleazefests. The director later helmed a couple of the infamous "Ilsa" movies, so you should know what you're getting yourself into here.

Basically a soap opera about a quartet of spoiled rich kids running all over Europe. They fall in and out of love with each other...stuff like that. Some OK scenes, and it's competently made, but overall it's not very interesting. I saw it recently, but I can't say much more because it's already fading from my mind. A little-known movie that should probably stay that way.

First, there's a corny William Castle-ish warning message, claiming that the film you are about to see could cause epileptic seizures. Then the flickering starts. A solid white screen. At regular intervals it turns solid black (flick!). Then the white-black-white sequence begins speeding up. Your brain starts overloading on all the flickering. Pretty soon you're hallucinating weird patterns. I swear I thought I was seeing a train coming out of the screen.

I've never seen anything like THE FLICKER. Like EMPIRE, it's a totally one-of-a-kind movie. Recommended for the mentally healthy.

I consider myself a fairly open-minded person. In principle I have nothing against a movie featuring a pack of transvestites frolicking around and--this is what it looks like--acting out parodies of bad silent movies. It's just not all that interesting to me. I can only take camp in small doses, and there's just way too much here. By the way, did the Everly Brothers even know one of their songs was used in this thing? (P.S. If you ever see Warhol's "Screen Test #2," you'll hear Mario Montez talk briefly about his (her?) role in this movie.)