Rock's Cheapo Theatre of the Damned

I suspect neither requires monogamy in your film viewing.

That tumbleweed really gets around.


I would imagine in the context of discussing a book dedicated to the films Jean Rollin, that Fascination would count as it was cited multiple times in the discussion. (Ftr. I still haven't seen it, but it's a high priority item on my to watch list this October)


Appealing? Appealing how?
Walk around a creepy lake type of appealing; explore a nice, dank, moss-covered dark cave type of appealing; or enamored by a blue-jay's plumage and want to cosplay as it to be a creepy bird at the next birder convention type of appealing?


But more seriously, IIRC Franco wasn't your thing or am I off there?
I can't remember if that came up in the hall infamy Lust for Frankenstein discussion or Rock's review of it here.


I guess some of my pondering on that book is wondering if whether the essayists engage with his films as erotica or not.

I was referring to the "why do some women really love horror-erotica" discussion and saying that I don't think I've seen enough titles in that bracket to offer much of an opinion.

And you really need to see Fascination!

So with the understanding that what I'm about to say is anecdotal to me and to a group of women friends I slightly broached this topic with on Friday night:

I think that generally speaking, women are more tuned into "stage setting", ie clothing and set dressing. (Sample dialogue from yesterday's viewing: "Ooh!" "Are you looking at that wood paneling?" "Yes, WANT!"). So a good costume, like, say, an AMAZING CAPE, will draw attention. It gives a point of aesthetic interest outside of just the person's body.

But I also think that generally speaking, women are more comfortable with the "Want to be them/want to be with them" push pull. In other words, a woman character can be both aspirational and attractive. A woman in a lovely flowy outfit (or in a really well-fitted outfit) activates both "Man, I'd love to look that good" and "Dang girl!" alarms. If you're 100% straight, it might just be the former. But if you're not, it can be some mix of both.

I don't know if any of you have read Emily Nagoski's book, Come As You Are (yes, I recommend this book all the time), but something she really drives home is how much of a role comfort--emotional and physical--plays in female arousal. A certain kind of costuming (especially soft, flowy things) imply some interest in female comfort and also imply that it's something that was picked by a woman to look sexy and actually feel good in a tactile way. When you see a woman in something soft and silky, you aren't just thinking about how good she looks (which for some women can be a negative point of comparison), you're also thinking about how good she feels. Throw in a little danger and little architectural/design interest? Appeal.

I can't really say either way about Franco. I've only seen two of his films, and one of them was Lust of Frankenstein, specifically picked to be off-putting.

However, I just saw on IMDb that he was an assistant director on Death of a Cyclist!

I am a fan, I believe (it's been a while since I watched any Rollin), of Lips Of Blood, The Nude Vampire, Shiver Of The Vampires, Requiem For A Vampire, and The Iron Rose.
Given that that is actually every Rollin film that I have seen, he has a pretty good track-record with me.
On the other hand, I saw Franco's Vampyros Lesbos and Venus in Furs (good), A Virgin Among The Living Dead (haunting in its way but shockingly cheap), then Erotic Rites Of Frankenstein, Zombie Lake and Oasis Of The Dead, the last two of which are among the worst movies I've ever seen.
So, while Rollin remains perfect in my mind, Franco fell off completely.

Zombie Lake is Rollin lol

You gotta watch that and Oasis of the Zombies in a double feature. Pretty sure my brain at least a little when I did that.

You watch enough of these girls with guns movies and a certain sameness sets in. Yes, the plotting is going to be a little slipshod. Yes, there will be at least one of a few actresses who were stars of the subgenre. Yes, there will be a lot of action sequences usually set in none too glamorous locations. I don’t think this sameness is necessarily a bad thing. For one, there’s a certain reliability these movies offer in delivering the goods. You watch one of these movies and you know there will be at least a few great action sequences, which are as thrilling as they were likely dangerous to execute. Probably the best example of this is the closing stunt of Devil Hunters, in which the stars are engulfed in flames from an explosion that went off too early, accompanied by onscreen text wishing them a speedy recovery. (Rarely have such words seemed less reassuring.) But with enough sameness, each movie can be savoured for its slight variations, like sipping different vintages. (Or I assume. I share as much fondness for wine as Bela Lugosi.) You can see how the patchiness in the narrative can be turned into an advantage, like in the first Angel Terminators, which plays less like a cohesive story than a continuous escalation in violence and cruelty, climaxing with another extremely dangerous looking but nevertheless amazing stunt.

A few years ago, in the intro to a screening of Bastard Swordsman (which I now realize shares a director with this), the host cited the ending of this movie as an all time great closing shot. Having seen it, I’m 90% sure he was actually talking about the first movie, although the one here is pretty funny and deserves at least a participation medal. This is not actually a sequel to the first movie, as it bears no relation to the story of the original and does not share any of its stars, and it offers a kindler, gentler take on the genre. The plot here follows a recently released ex-con played by Yukari Oshima, who tries to stay out of trouble with the help of her friends, Moon Lee and Lieh Lo among them, while evading the wrath of an old criminal associate. Along for the ride are Sibelle Hu, a cop whose partner is Oshima‘s disappointed father. Needless to say, things go south and a lot of people end up dead, yet the grimness is somewhat alleviated by the presences of the stars.

I remember a few years ago when online film discourse tried to interrogate the archetype of strong female characters, particularly in action cinema. I’m not going to relitigate the discussions (as with many things on the internet, there was a mix of actual insight and thoughtfulness versus outright stupidity and ignorance), but in light of those concerns, I think girls with guns movies hold up pretty well, as they offer multiple visions of credible female action heroines. Here you get Lee, who has a more overtly feminine, almost girlish presence, contrasted with Oshima, whose presence often reads as androgynous, even masculine (Dreaming the Reality from one of this movie’s directors is even more overt in this regard). If you’ve seen enough of these movies, you know they’ve both been through the ringer, and when you pair the two, their friendship rings true. You also get Hu, who has the uncouth, loose cannon quality we associate with male action heroes like Dirty Harry and John McClane. And as for the men, Lieh Lo’s role is perhaps a stock character, but you think of all the years he’s spent playing villains, and his attempts to resist the criminal element take on a certain poignancy.

The movie plays out mostly as a series of confrontations where Lee and Oshima are attacked by thugs on the street, often at night, often with appealing neon lighting in the background. In this respect, it probably didn’t help that I watched this movie the same weekend as Princess Madam and Iron Angels, both of which are much more varied in their action sequences (the former has Lee blasting her way through the climax in sunglasses like Chow Yun-Fat, the latter throws in cool helicopter shit at one point). But the repetition works in lending a hostile quality to their environment, in that the city is ready to eat Oshima’s ex-con alive at any moment. And when the movie changes things up, like when Oshima goes on the attack, or in the shoot ‘em up climax, it makes more of an impact. It’s worth noting that the climax has two killers in sweatsuits, while Lee is introduced also sporting one (in bright yellow) while practicing martial arts in a class. Is there some metaphoric quality to this, especially in contrast to her legitimately cool wardrobe in Iron Angels? I don’t know, I just wanted to talk about clothes again.

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Moved to hear DJ Spanish Fly pay tribute to Jean Rollin:

I find this a pretty interesting point, and to the extent I've seen any of these vintage hardcore pornos try to capture this dynamic, it's only really been in lesbian relationships, where you have one female character, the object of desire, filtered through another female character, the point of audience identification. And it's only really worked where the object of desire has a certain mystery about them. I'm thinking of Annette Haven in Anna Obsessed, Samantha Fox in Mystique and Lina Romay in Doriana Gray. Anna Obsessed was directed by a bunch of guys who weren't regular porn directors, Mystique was directed by a woman, Roberta Findlay, and Doriana Gray was directed by Jess Franco, who was in a long term relationship with Romay. And all of them have a horror or horror-adjacent dynamic to them. So you have directors who could maybe step outside of the usual dynamics in straight porn and maybe that's why they have a different energy.

On a related note, I don't remember where I read this, but I remember someone suggesting that the popularity of certain unattractive male actors in classic porn was because male viewers could identify with them or at least didn't feel threatened by them. Which is an interesting point as well, although if I'm watching one of these things, I don't appreciate being conflated with ****ing Ron Jeremy. Just an awful, unpleasant screen presence even putting aside his terrible real life actions.

I believe he was also an AD on Orson Welles' Chimas at Midnight and his aborted Don Quixote film. Although I hear the "finished" cut he put together is supposed to be awful.

Managed to do this, but honestly impressed at all the sneaky ways they make the process worse each year. Automatically gave me multiple tickets when I tried to buy just one, then hid the quantity buttons under an obnoxious pop-up that you wouldn't realize is actually a pop-up.

So again with the huge caveat that my exposure to "classic" porn is pretty limited, my take on the "unattractive male porn lead" is a little different. I think that it's less about deliberately creating a male surrogate who is relatable and more about a general disregard for a female audience. The trope of what's required to be a male porn star--ie a large penis--speaks to something that men care about far more than women. Like the bodybuilders, penis size is a male power fantasy and not a ubiquitous female sexual fantasy.

Like, I haven't seen him "in action", but Harry Reems in Deadly Weapons wasn't bad looking (except for that hat, my god that hat) and had a certain charisma. I guess it might be interesting to put the 10 most popular straight male porn actors next to the 10 most popular gay male porn actors and see if there's a notable difference in attractiveness.

It's just amazing to have an IMDb list where such prestigious films rub shoulders with, um, less prestigious films.

Ha! You're right of course. Well, that throws a small fly in the ointment. But just the same, he's batting better than Franco with me so far.

I suspect there’s a bit of both, in terms of getting the male viewer to see themselves in the scenario depicted, but with a freakishly large dick. (Autocorrect kept turning that into duck, which may not be preferable in this genre.) But I think the relative narrative integrity of the better films in the genre helps alleviate this, in that actors actually had to act or were either cast in parts tailored to their presences, so the overt fantasy element doesn’t override the needs of the story.

I’ve only seen two gay pornos and one bisexual one, but my familiarity is mostly limited to gay porn actors who also did straight porn like George Payne and Casey Donovan. I would say they’re better looking than the average straight male star, but I also think there were plenty of at least decent looking guys with good screen presences working in straight porn in the ‘70s. I also get the sense that a lot of the more popular actors were those who could perform reliably and were easy to work with, not necessarily the most attractive. This is just me expressing my annoyance that the best known stars are uggos who could barely act like Ron Jeremy and John Holmes when that’s not representative of all the genre had to offer.


*George Costanza voice*

Worlds are colliding!

Right, and I think that's just generally true about anyone you watch onscreen. My exposure to Nina Hartley is mainly in non-explicit contexts, but she is really funny and fun. I enjoy spending time with her.

Like, it's hard for me to speculate, because I have very little understanding of what men want out of a male porn lead. I also have to wonder if there's some homophobia bound up in there---like that men would be uncomfortable looking at a man who is too conventionally attractive?



Someone please help me understand what men want in a male porn lead.

That cat has been asking a lot of questions lately. 😸

I don’t know how much insight I can offer, as I’m watching these as actual movies more or less and tend to seek out people whose presences I enjoy (and to the extent that I’m guided by more prurient reasons, will tend to go off the female talent involved), but you’re probably not off base. Straight men can be notoriously insecure.

Gay men want him to be hot.

Straight men just want him to shut up and do his ******* thing.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

Finally, someone has answered the kitty cat.

Now, I haven’t seriously engaged with the Dragon Ball franchise since at least my teenage years, when Dragon Ball Z was part of YTV’s regular programming (and during holidays, they’d run marathons of the films too). But as this was playing in theatres, I thought it was a good chance to catch up with all my friends: Goku, Vegeta, Goku’s wife, Goku’s whole family, Piccolo and all his little green friends, the talking pig, the talking cat, the dirty old man, the really uncomfortable racial stereotype, the blue-haired genius scientist chick, the strongest warriors on Earth (and Krillin), a bunch of other guys, and of course *longing sigh* Android 18. (Yes, her name needed italics.) Now, not all of those folks are in this one. For example, the talking pig is absent although the talking cat is still present. And we meet a few new friends along the way, like another talking cat, this time hairless and into green chicks apparently. We learn this detail during a weirdly pervy shot of a green chick’s backside. There’s another pervy shot of Bulma (the blue-haired genius scientist), who is introduced ass first. These are all weird notes for what is presumably a children’s cartoon to strike, but there are plenty of shots of male buttocks as well, including that of the portly Gotenks. One might be moved to see such diversity of bodies presented in this context, but the punchline is that he’s so fat that when he drops on his ass on the big bad’s head, he ends up cracking its supposedly indestructible skull. Body positivity is not chief among the film’s aims.

Now, Goku and Vegeta are surprisingly out of commission for most of the movie, hanging out in another planet to train while everything interesting happens back on Earth, where Piccolo, Gohan and the rest of the boys (and Android 18 *sigh*) do battle against a pair of androids employed by the evil Red Ribbon Army, and eventually against the monstrous Cell Max, who is like Cell, but totally, like, way worse. Although if you’ve ever seen anything Dragon Ball related, you’ll know it’s nothing that a lot of constipated grunting and a punch thrown every ten minutes can’t resolve. This is the part where I reveal that anytime I’d tried to re-engage with the franchise since my teenage years, I’d been put off by the grueling pacing and flimsy world-building, where none of the mythology coheres, every new bad guy is a thousand times more powerful than the previous one, and characters spend entire episodes “powering up” (grunting, occasionally changing colour, like Gohan going blond and Piccolo turning orange), only to be interrupted for the bare minimum of action. So I don’t have the most positive impression of the franchise, although the movie does address some of these concerns. For one thing, it’s a hundred minute movie instead of a fifty episode season of television, so the pacing is considerably tightened. If anything, it’s a little too tight, as I found the climax, where the heroes unite against a kaiju-sized Cell Max, a bit relentless with all its whizbangery.

You also get a constant stream of exposition, helping to jog not just our memory, but those of the characters, who seemingly forgot entire events that they partook in during the history of the franchise. Imagine if you’re the president and you misplaced the nuclear launch codes, only to be reminded of their location at the most convenient moment, and that’s roughly the effect here. All of this is couched in quip-heavy sarcasm, which means the movie falls firmly in the shadow of the modern superhero blockbuster. It’s a dynamic that the movie foregrounds, with the superheroic appearance of the new androids and the superhero worship of the mad scientist who created them. The fact that the villains are motivated by paranoia about the superpowered heroes means that it flirts with genre satire, although this is not pursued forcefully. While I generally find the superhero genre in its current state to be quite offputting, I didn’t mind these elements here. The worldbuilding in the franchise is both unbelievably convoluted and completely goofy, so having the movie call that out was not totally unwelcome.

So I’m maybe not the exact target audience for this, but I found it diverting enough on the whole. The animation is that CGI fake 2D animation style (the kind that pops up in modern fighting games) that looks slick and appealing enough, although if I’m being honest, I prefer the hand drawn touch of the series I grew up with. But it’s bright and flashy, especially when all the characters are punching and blasting each other, and the music is reliably rousing. And I dunno, when Piccolo and Gohan charged into battle against the androids, are when all their friends showed up to take on Cell Max, I couldn’t help but be caught up in the proceedings at least a little. I’m not made of stone.

Android 18


*sigh*

Exactly.

Yo...


I don't think he's been super active on here lately, but MKS is doing a crowdfunding campaign for a short film he's working on. I don't know what the mods' policy is around these things, but if anybody wants to chip in a few bucks, I can send you the link over IM.