Crime Wave (John Paizs, 1985)

Never has the switching on of a simple streetlight seemed so fraught with longing and dread. The sight of it struggling to light itself as darkness is about to engulf a nondescript Winnipeg suburb was one of the many bizarre pleasures peppered throughout Crime Wave, a film about a writer, a girl, and a dream. One of the most unique and inventive cinematic works to come out of Canada during the 1980s, the brainchild of writer-director John Paizs (Top of the Food Chain) puts the creative process underneath one of those newfangled devices that magnify things with an alarming level of detail. A throwback to the days when after school was special and socially maladjusted men could hang out with little girls without it seeming twisted or off-putting, the film uses many different techniques to tell its strange tale. There are parts where it feels like a well-meaning NFB documentary about writing, while others have the air of a cheesy instructional video. A struggling screenwriter named Steven Penny (John Paizs) rents the room above the garage on the property where a girl named Kim (Eva Kovacs) lives with her mom and dad. Thrilled to be in such close proximity with someone involved with the movie business, the curious little scamp, who narrates parts of the story as if it were a school project, takes a keen interest in the solitary writer. Watching him like a hawk, or any number of birds with strong eyesight, Kim starts to collect Steven's discarded writings. While reading what's written on the crumpled paper, she discovers that Steven, despite the illuminating splendour of the streetlight hovering outside his window, is having a spot of trouble coming up with an all-important component to his stories.

You see, he's got a beginning, and an end, but no middle.

The nitty-gritty of Steven's stories mostly involve a series of characters vying for dominance in their particular field of interest. Whether it be music, the world of self-help, or selling Amway (renamed here as "Allway"), an outsider, usually from the northern part of the continent, emerges at "the top," only to end up dying violently when all is said and done. What happens to them on their way to this bloody demise is a mystery, as Steven has no clue how to write it.

The segments that involve the stories without middles are fast paced and boast a loopy sense of humour. The one featuring Skip (Jeffery Owen Madden) and Dawn Holliday (Tea Andrea Tanner), the husband and wife Allway salespeople, in particular, as it had a scene where a woman in a wheelchair is force-fed dog biscuits.

Depressed over the fact that he can't write a middle for what he likes to call his "colour crime movie," Steven passes the time by palling around with Kim (new wave music, taunting rivals, and Freezies), watching a guy count cars, riding his bike and looking at stuff (one of my personal faves - stuff rules), and attending dress up parties as a shirtless bank robber with explosives taped to his chest.

After Dawn (the beguiling Allway salesperson) bludgeons dominant musician Ronnie Boyles (Darrell Barren) with a typewriter in his bedroom (he has since moved from the garage to the house, and has obviously begun to hallucinate), Kim decides to contact a Texan named Dr. C. Jolly (Neal Lawrie) who specializes in creating the middles of screenplays.

The weirdness factor increases somewhat when we hit the sunflower fields of Kansas and meet Dr. Jolly; the spooky look he gives Steven while out the middle of the road will cause you to loose a fair amount of your precious urine.

The decision to make Steven a wordless character was quite risky, as it put the dialogue onus solely on the underdeveloped shoulders of a child actor. Luckily, Eva Kovacs is a spirited delight as the ever curious Kim, a girl whose thirst for knowledge troubles her parents (they think she should focus less on the persistence of vision, and more on her homework). Besides, Steven's voice can be heard loud and clear in the segments I alluded to earlier; in that, he speaks through his ambitious characters.

Filmed over the course of two years, Crime Wave is a fascinating portrait of what must be like to be from Winnipeg and possess an artistic temperament.

Also, if you've seen the Kids in the Hall sketch where Bruce McCulloch plays a little boy who brings a businessman named Mr. Stevenson (Kevin MacDonald) home with him and begs his mom (Scott Thompson) to keep him as a pet, you'll immediately "get" what the film is going for in terms of tone and style. Just substitute "businessman" with "colour crime movie maker," and you'll do fine.

Oh, and only a Canadian film could boast a non-creepy relationship between a little girl and a grown man in such a nonchalant manner.

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Special thanks to Russ for providing the colour crime movie screen captures.

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Torso (Sergio Martino, 1973)

A faceless killer with some serious doll issues is roaming the streets in search of attractive women to strangle and dismember in the luridly trashy Torso (a.k.a. I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale), an Italian giallo from director Sergio Martino (Giovannona Long-Thigh). Now, I realize films featuring women being killed and arty shots of doll faces are as common as the sight of a dozen Canadian dimes stacked neatly in a recently sullied ashtray. But this Euro endeavour is different in that it seems to be obsessed with the female anatomy; specifically, the freshly scrubbed gams of its shapely victims. This shameless display of the right kind of skin creates an elegant balance between the grisly scenes and the more erotic ones. There's moment early on when it looked like the film was gonna start centering its tawdry gaze on the investigative side of the film's first murder, a nighttime strangulation with some mild mutilation. But thankfully the focus stays on the naughty co-eds and the creepy guys who love/want to kill them. The film is set mainly in halls of Perugia, but most of the murdering takes place in the lovely Italian countryside. And since I've already alluded to the film's first murder, I'll skip ahead to the second: a swampy slaying sequence that just happens to be my favourite in the entire film.

A flirtatious co-ed named Carol (the alluring Conchita Airoldi), tired of being molested by two generously haired motorcycle riders at a freewheeling hippie party, wanders off into the forest only to end up face-to-face with a knife-wielding maniac in a ski mask. Probably wishing she was back at the quasi orgy being pawed by gay bikers, Conchita (credited here as Christina) makes a feeble attempt to escape her boggy pickle of a situation.

I don't want to give anything away, but let's just say she doesn't do so well in the not being killed by a psychopathic madman department.

With two girls murdered and a prostitute (Rosaria della Femmina) with darkish nipples nearly asphyxiated, the other tantalizing co-eds are starting grow concerned over the possibility that their primary breathing passage could be forcibly obstructed in the near future. Oh, sure, they're dismayed by the fact that the killer likes to tamper with bodies of his victims, but it's the actual choking that has all bent out of shape.

One co-ed in particular named Daniela (the wide-eyed Tina Aumont) is extremely skittish because she thinks she might be able to identify the killer. The only problem being that she can't remember if the scarf the suspect was wearing was black with red wavy lines on it or red with black wavy lines on it. Of course, it doesn't help that almost every guy in town likes to smirk evilly whilst fondling their duel-coloured scarfs.

Hell, even the scarf vendor (Ernesto Colli) caresses scarfs in a sinister manner. You'd think being surrounded by cloth-based neck beautifiers all day would diminish his predilection for scarf stroking. But that's nowhere near the case, as this motherscratcher is seen touching scarfs like nobodies business.

Better safe than sorry, Daniela, along with her two lesbian gal pals, Ursula (the leggy Carla Brait) and Katia (the wispy Angela Covello), decides to hop aboard a train to a remote village in the mountains to relax until the killer's reign of terror blows over. Lounging during the day and canoodling at night is what's on the docket for these young ladies. Unfortunately, strangulation followed by some unsanitary sawing is never far away. In other words: they should keep an eye out for deranged fellas lurking in the shadows, especially the one's sporting driving gloves (a giallo staple) in a non-driving environment.

Rendezvousing with the trio of women is the modish Jane (the all-purpose Suzy Kendall), an intellectually curious chick who has interests that go beyond drugs and dicks (a rarity for the drug and dick-centric era). Anyway, the killer is completely unaware that she is in the house Daniela and friends are staying at, which creates a tension filled final third where Suzy must use her wits to out smart the butcher downstairs. Oh, and she does all this while nursing a sprained ankle. (She may be smart and junk, but she can't walk down a simple flight of stairs worth a damn.)

Fans of gore will at first be alarmed by the all the cut away shots just as the killer is about to get his mangle on. However, this alarm is totally unwarranted when you consider the amount of dismemberment that takes place in the following scene. I mean, imagine how tedious it would have been had the murder and the gruesome aftermath had been shown. The decision to concentrate solely on the limb liberation was the correct one.

And by showing as little as possible of the actual sawing, Torso was able to maintain the violence to titillating ratio I mentioned earlier.

It should go without say, but the skimpy hem lines, gratuitous leg shots, and perverted camera angles were absolute joy to savour throughout this film. Though, I must say, it was the sheer largeness of the eyes of all the actress involved with this project that was mind-blowing. I don't know if it had anything to do with the makeup they were using. But what ever it was, I loved the way Sergio Martino filmed the eyes of the women in this film.

If I had to choose the winner of the "I had the biggest eyes in Torso" contest, I'd have to go with Tina Aumont; they're like dinner plates.

Yet, despite her winning of the big eye crown, I'd say Conchita Airoldi wins the prize for being the most attractive Torso girl from a sexy point-of-view. Check out the scene where she taunts the scarf guy with her slender Italo-stems. Provocante! Bella donna! Mela manico di scopa!

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John Tucker Must Die (Betty Thomas, 2006)

They may throw around words like "kill" and "die" when making disparaging comments about John Tucker, but the young ladies that populate this flimsy excuse for a teen comedy are simply too wimpy, too wrapped up in their own pathetic brand of adolescent neurosis to do what needs to be done; and that is, straight-up murder his stupid ass in the most gruesome manner imaginable. Of course, I knew better not to think that they were going to actually harm him physically, but the fact John Tucker in John Tucker Must Die doesn't even come close to dying really irked me. Every frame that featured a healthy John Tucker bounding about in a perpetual state of not being mutilated left me with a feeling of profound sadness. Misguidedly waiting for someone to stand up and say: "I will force feed John Tucker his own bloodied genitals. Not only for the betterment of this nonspecific high school and this equally nonspecific town, but for the betterment of humanity." Instead, I sat there, my eyes seeing nothing sexy or violent, my ears hearing nothing salacious or stimulating. Just the flickering din of vapid uselessness. A complete misfire in terms of generating the attributes necessary to be considered a tolerable piece of filmed entertainment, this Betty Thomas directed fiasco may seem innocuous and nonthreatening on the surface. However, deep down, beneath all that frivolity, lies a repugnant message, and that is: "Don't get mad. Get even." The amount of energy the spurned girls in this movie waste trying to get "even" with John Tucker (Jesse Metcalfe) was embarrassing to say the least. It hurts my brain thinking about all the productive things the girls could have accomplished had they focused their rage in a more creative fashion.

Personally, and I don't know if I've made this clear or not, but I would have chopped his head off with a freshly sharpened pair of hedge clippers while he bathed.

If only they had emulated the position taken by their Goth classmates and ignored the problem completely; the scornful glare a trio of Goth girls throw at Kate (Brittany Snow), Heather (Ashanti), Carrie (Arielle Kebbel) and Beth (Sophia Bush) as they wrestled on the gymnasium floor summed up everything that is that is wrong with this movie. Sitting on the sidelines in a passive haze, the look of indifference on the faces of the Goths as the girls fought (they were fighting because three of them had just discovered were all dating the captain of the basketball team simultaneously), perfectly encapsulated the disgust of the audience. (I can't tell you how pleased I was to see Goths sum up the lameness of a film so succinctly.)

This won't come as a shock, but the girls don't use the Goth indifference technique to deal with their boy problems. What they do rather is employ the help of Kate, the only girl in the gym fracas who isn't currently dating John Tucker. Oh, sure, they try to spread STD-related rumours about him and spike his water bottle with estrogen. But the main plan involves the inexperienced Kate dating John and then breaking his heart.

Desperately wanting to fit in, Kate puts aside her dignity, stops flirting with John Tucker's more sensitive brother Scott (Penn Badgley), and begins to heed the advice given to her by her new-found friends.

The quality of the performances can be judged simply by looking at who gets hit in the head with a volleyball and who doesn't. It should come as no surprise that the gorgeous Arielle Kebbel gets hit in the head with a volleyball multiple times. She plays Carrie, an overachiever, heavily into technology, and takes a couple of balls to the face like a seasoned professional.* The lovely Brittany Snow, who plays the shy and reserved Kate, gets hit squarely between the eyes with an errant ball. The fact that she got hit with a ball was one thing, the fact that she fell so adeptly upon being hit was what impressed me the most; a halfway decent pratfall is an important skill for an actress to have.

On the other side of the volleyball court were Sophia Bush and Ashanti. They didn't get hit in the head or face with a volleyball. Call me mentally unsound, but I took this inadequacy when it came to their heads and faces being hit with volleyballs as a total lack of commitment of their part. And since the volleyball scene happens pretty early on in film, every time I saw their non-volleyball plunked heads and faces on screen was a constant reminder of how much they sucked.

On top of that, the insipid Sophia Bush couldn't even make getting her tiny skirt caught in the door of a jeep sexy, and Ashanti played a vile cheerleader, yet failed to imbue her with a single redeeming quality. Which is a pretty hard thing to do, you know, since I'm naturally drawn to vile cheerleaders.

Epitomizing the blandness of the era with a yawn-inducing ease, Jesse Metcalfe combines the charm of a sadistic concentration camp guard with that of an overconfident frat boy doomed to drown in a lukewarm pool of his own sick. Everything from the way the hair on the back of his neck seemed to be perfectly symmetrical to his repulsive swagger screamed Freddie Prinze Jr.; which is a horrible thing for a human being to scream.

Now, I don't want to say that Jesse Metcalfe is the principal reason John Tucker Must Die is a complete failure; the crappy soundtrack, the tragic briefness of Nicki Clyne's appearance as "Beautiful Girl," the duel ineptitude of Ashanti and Sophia Bush, and the obscene premise (the idea of murdering him wasn't even spitballed) might have something to say about that. But the fact that I wanted him dead right from get-go is a testament to his awfulness.

* Just for the record, when I say Arielle "takes a couple of balls to the face like a seasoned professional," I'm referring to balls filled with air, not balls filled with the goo used to help make little boys and little girls. The way I worded it made it sound like she was getting hit the face with testicles (which are sometimes referred to as "balls"), and that was not my intention.

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New Wave Hookers (Gregory Dark, 1985)

Supporting the spiritual trajectory of a decade's counterculture has never been the strong suit of mainstream Hollywood. Take, for instance, the cinematic output of the 1980s. You can scour the frames of countless motion pictures that were made during that particular period of time and still come up empty in terms of finding era specific examples of the fashion, music, sexuality, and interior design that helped shape the Zeitgeist. The people in charge of making these movies clearly had no real interest in the chromatic explosion that was happening all around them. It's true, there were a handful of directors, costumers, and production designers who understood the full magnitude of what was going down. But for the most part, the film's reek of misguided nostalgia and broken dreams. If the bland and the feckless amongst filmmaking elite weren't going to remove their collective heads from the gaping asshole known as "the sixties" and properly capture the essence of the fingerless glove decade, who would? Pornographers! That's fucking who. The unsavoury world of pornography may have a lot going against it: wanton drug abuse, suspect production values, wonky acting skills, and scene after scene of unappealing double penetration action to name slightly more than a few. But when it comes to crystallizing what it meant to be alive in the 1980s, you should look no further than your average adult film made between 1980 and 1989.

Unashamedly embracing everything that has made the 1980s the shining beacon to all those who desire to be a little less lame in their day-to-day life that is today, New Wave Hookers is the most audacious, most shameless, most stain-covered '80s movie ever made. Fearless when it comes depicting new wave culture gone awry, writer-director Gregory Dark and his crack team of perverts (including set designer Pez D. Spenser) have come up with a premise so simplistic, yet so mind-numbingly brilliant, that it's no wonder it has spawned a truckload of sequels and a remake.

It starts off with two slackers named Jimmy (Jamie Gillis) and Jamal (Jack Baker) sitting on their couch watching pornography – this act itself is groundbreaking in that it breaks the pornographic fourth wall rule, you know, the one that stipulates that there is no porn in porn. Wondering aloud about how great it would be if they were pimps and could control their "bitches" with the sound of that newfangled new wave music.

Drifting off (the television is now nothing but static), the pair awake to find themselves sitting at desks in an office setting. Jimmy, wearing a studded collar and a sleeveless t-shirt with word "anarchy" written on it, and Jamal, sporting a yellow jumpsuit with matching sunglasses, are now in charge of New Wave Hookers Inc., a pimping agency that supplies new wave obsessed women to those who need to be sexually serviced. (It should also be noted that Jimmy, on top of getting a funky new wardrobe, now speaks with a bad Japanese accent.)

Oozing coolness from start to finish, New Wave Hookers grabs you from the get-go with its super-terrific opening credits sequence set to "Electrify Me" by The Plugz (the band responsible for the majority of this film's amazing music). Introducing the female cast through a series of tantalizing clips that feature them posing seductively and pawing at their genitalia, this smokey sequence gently moistens our eyeballs for the gaudiness to come.

The first scene involves a gal named Candy (Desiree Lane) roller-skating into the fledgling pimps' office in a pair of skimpy white denim shorts (she saw their ad in the Valley Gazette). The guys slap some headphones on her, no doubt blasting the latest new wave jam, and before you know it, Candy is feign consuming the cock of Jimmy and Jamal's dog (Steve Powers); yeah, their dog is a man (he also makes the ringing sound for the two phones in the office). Anyway, while the dog is getting his biscuit polished, Jimmy repeatedly slams his turpentine estrada into Candy's minimal compact, and Jamal can be seen masturbating off to the side.

Next up, Jimmy and Jamal send over Palace (Kimberly Carson) and Nora (Brooke Fields) to sexually gratify a fella named The Sheik (Peter North) in his indoor tent. Well, the ladies start off by gratifying each other: licking and groping the usual places. Now, don't get me wrong, the sheer amount of spunk produced by Mr. North was awe-inspiring (I thought their respective crevices were gonna overflow), but it was actually the irregular nature of Kimberly and Brooke's wardrobe and makeup that made the scene the worthwhile entity that it is.

With star quality written all over her, the sight of the angelic Ginger Lynn Allen standing between two nerds craving anal sex was the pinnacle of the film's off-kilter sex appeal. Sent over to satisfy the poop-shoot desires of two college students (Tom Byron and Steve Powers), Ginger plays Cherry, a forthright New Wave Hooker in a chi-chi retro number that was poodle rectum red, drive-in theatre blue, and covered in black polka dots. Even though both her southbound holes end up getting prodded with erect penises simultaneously, Ginger manages to maintain an air of dominance about her. Also, the industrial-sounding music that played during the scene was downright awesome and the assertiveness of Ginger's command for one of the dorks to lick her ankle was greatly appreciated.

The action returns to office where Jimmy, Jamal, and the dog expose Kammy (Kristara Barrington) to a three-pronged attack on a desk. All of them seem to love jabbing at Kristara's foxy organic structure with a profound vigour, yet I found Jack Baker's enthusiasm for her dainty curves to be the most pronounced when it came to heaving the contents of his mouth in her general direction.

This dedication to Kristara's ethically complex body continues over to the next scene. Moving to the storage facility of the New Wave Hooker offices, we find a trio of hookers languishing on a red spinning wheel (a.k.a. the "whoring machine"). The aforementioned Kristara is joined by Desiree Lane's Candy and an unnamed new face (the lovely Gina Carrera). When the wheel stops spinning, the dog ends up straddling Kristara's frequently visited undercarriage (Jimmy beats her softly with a belt), and two vice cops (Greg Rome and Steve Drake) busy themselves with Desiree and Gina. As usual, Jamal jerks off from a distance, shouting race-based encouragement ("Fuck those white bitches").

The coda of New Wave Hookers has a surprisingly surreal vibe about it. However, it shouldn't be that surprising; there is, after all, a giant Residents-style eyeball sitting on top of one of the desks and Jamal does go on this strange tangent about disembodied dicks in Borneo. At any rate, the sight of a recently awaken Jimmy driving through the neon-tinged city, reflecting on all the debauchery that has transpired, while the "New Wave Hookers" theme plays over the soundtrack, was the perfect way to wrap up this titillating masterpiece.

If archaeologists in the not-so distant future want to know what life was like during the 1980s, I say show them a copy of New Wave Hookers. In terms of fashion, crude stereotyping, politically incorrect humour, music, stylistic temperament, and sexual deviancy, you can't get a clearer picture than this. Hey, whatta you know, maybe the infamous scene featuring Traci Lords in devil horns and red lingerie will be included in this futuristic version.

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Girlfriend from Hell (Dan Peterson, 1989)

The mundane act of fixing up two shy friends on a blind date becomes a nightmare of epic and mildly irritating proportions in the intellectually appealing Girlfriend from Hell, another in the not-so long line of films that involve demons and dating (My Demon Lover). A sophisticated mishegas masquerading as a foolish slab of empty-headed nonsense, writer-director Dan Peterson (Vampire Knights) does an elegant job balancing the theological with the slapstick. And, not to mention, balancing the cross dimensional with impromptu penis touching (a scripture enthusiast gets his "pee-pee" fondled for the very first time). It's a tough symmetry to maintain – as everyone knows by now, flip-flopping between scenes that feature deep, philosophical conversations with God and frank discussion about what constitutes a "stupid balloon" are fraught with potential complications. But somehow the film manages to deftly allude the fate that befalls the majority of possession-based dark comedies that sport weird tonal shifts and alcoholic devil women. There's an unforeseen intelligence at work here that transcends actual content and the overrated conventions of reality. Now, this is the sentence where I'd normally give you an example of this lofty transcendentalism at work, but I don't really feel like enriching any minds with my sound logic at the moment. What I really want to do is go on a ridiculously worded tirade that sufficiently glorifies the leg coverings that Liane Alexandra Curtis, Lezlie Deane, and Hilary Morse cavort about in during this movie. However, since my "doctor" has instructed me to ease up on the undergarment and hosiery talk, I've decided instead to focus my attention on the labyrinthian plot and the excessive amount of face punching that takes place in this film.

For those uninterested in minutiae, look no further than the film's spiffy title; as you will find everything you need to know just by reading it. I guarantee comprehension. As for the rest of you, the scripted structure of Girlfriend from Hell is part allegory, part wicked satire. The former is about the romantic adversity shy people have to face when trying to connect with one another on an appreciation basis. The latter shows up in the form of physical roughhousing (like I said, there's a lot of face punching) and spiritual tomfoolery (a character is repeatedly seen talking to some kind of cloud-centric supreme being). Nevertheless, these two seemingly incompatible aspects commingle together in such an agreeable manner, that you'd think it was planned that way.

Seriously, the fact that the film's convoluted, and surprisingly far-reaching mythology, was able to gel at all with the dating ups and downs of an unsure girl who finds her body inhabited by the Devil was a minor miracle.

The film starts off with a desert showdown between God's go to "chaser" (Dana Ashbrook) and the Devil, who is actually a glowing glob of undefinable energy. This inflamed ball eludes its pursuer (who's carrying a strange-looking raygun) by shooting across the sky and landing squarely into the chest of Maggie (Liane Alexandra Curtis), a slightly awkward gal who has been set up on a date with the equally awkward Carl (Anthony Barrile) by her friends Diane (Lezlie Deane) and David (James Daughton from The Beach Girls and Malibu Beach). Up until the moment the diabolic entity enters her body, the date, which is taking place at the home of Alice (Hilary Morse) and birthday boy Rocco (Ken Abraham), has been going terribly. (Carl, utilizing his dad's advice, sticks his tongue in her ear.)

This, of course, all changes when the dark forces start to take over. You could tell things were different by the way Maggie's stuffy opera gloves had magically become fingerless (a change she relishes). Also her hair had become more pronounced in the untamed department (evil and big hair are synonymous). Another way you could tell was that the once demure lady had this sudden urge to copulate with every guy in sight.

Making demonic possession seem like fun, Liane Alexandra Curtis (Critters 2: The Main Course) is a delightful scourge as the uncouth Maggie. Reminding me of cross between Bonnie O'Bendix (Papusha Demitro's character in Perfect Timing) and your typical Voivod-loving metal chick, Miss Curtis seemed to be having a hootenanny and a half. I mean, check out her posture during her post-bashful phase, the confident manner in which she stood, her uncreased red pantyhose tighter than Lee Aaron's urethra, is the stuff of upright legend. From a non-standing point-of-view: I loved the way she would yell emasculating put-downs (my personal favourite when it comes to insulting men with dicks) and bark orders at everyone. And the restaurant scene is a comedy classic as far I'm concerned (she openly mocks Jesus and spits wine at her fellow diners).

In a surprising turn of events (and believe me, this film's got plenty), it's the stellar work turned in by Lezlie Deane that dominates the film's dreamlike third act. Taking place in multiple dimensions, Lezlie's Diane helps Dana Ashbrook's "chaser" get back to modern day in order to save Maggie from becoming another satanic statistic (the Devil can only use a persons body for 24 hours). Anyway, on top of looking amazing in black pantyhose and a Heathers-style blazer, I thought Lezlie gave a well-rounded performance that worked well alongside the horny Ashbrook and Curtis's campy temptress schtick.

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