Slumber Party Massacre II (Deborah Brock, 1987)

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Body Double (Brian De Palma, 1984)

Every now and then a guilty thought will inadvertently creep into his head, driving him to look away in mock disgust. But the erotic benefits that come with gazing upon his subject's scantily clad body will always lure him back into the perverted fold. Whether it be your shapely next-door neighbour sunning themselves–the inherent durability of their Turkish heritage providing the dermatological fortitude necessary to allow them to lay out for hours on end–in a chartreuse bathing suit (one with the words "fun zone" playfully emblazoned in turquoise across the garments midsection) on a rusty deck chair by their unfinished swimming pool (every move she makes is greeted with a metallic squeaking sound), or the leggy mother of two who lives down the street struggling to push a red wheel barrel full of nutrient-rich potting soil across the lumpy surface of her weed-infested front lawn (the sweat dripping off her taut calves causes her socks to bunch up around her succulent ankles), the desire to stare awkwardly at people you don't know for lengthy periods of time shall never wane. Never! Sure, tacos smothered in fresh salsa or even an episode of that television program you inexplicably watch will pull you away from time to time, but the forbidden thrills that come with spying on Deborah Shelton as she tries on white panties at a swankier than usual pantie establishment located in the swankier part of town are your primary sources of pleasure.

A yet unseen entity in Body Double, Brian De Palma's stylish ode to stalking in L.A., has pretty much based the entirety their devious plan around on the habitual nature of one who lives to leer at others. A skittish actor, one who flirts with unemployment on a semi-regular basis, named Jake Scully (Craig Wasson) literally hurls himself into the heady world of voyeurism, indoor plant care, covert tailing, and pornography. After finding his live-in lady friend (Barbara Crampton) mounting the retractable stain-maker of another man (her face glowing in response to the quality its retractability), the actor in the light brown corduroy blazer suddenly finds himself homeless.

On top of discovering his lady friend with another man, Jake's fear of enclosed spaces gets him fired from a low budget vampire movie called Vampire's Kiss (he plays a new wave vampire), attends an acting seminar where he pretends to be a sardine ("Feel. Personalize. Act."), and eats at a restaurant that is shaped like a giant hotdog ("Tail o' the Pup").

Asked to housesit by Sam (Gregg Henry), a fellow actor who feels sorry for the down on his luck thespian, Jake ends up staying at an extravagant home (it looked like a flying saucer on stilts) located in the Hollywood Hills. While his new living quarters may have everything a youngish man living in the mid-1980s could want: a rotating bed, cordless telephone, a fully stocked bar, cable tv (the video for "House is Burning" by Vivabeat can be seen playing at one point), it's the spectacular view that grabs the bulk of Jake's attention; a view that is enhanced greatly by a strategically placed telescope. Made aware of a sexy brunette woman who lives across the way, and her proclivity for dancing seductively in her bedroom every night at midnight, Jake, taking a break from watering the plants, decides to watch her do her thing. Interrupted after she had just finished inspecting the integrity of the diamond-encrusted strap on her left shoe by mysterious man in a hat, Jake witnesses an argument between the two that leaves the woman a tad frazzled.

Concerned for her safety, and of course, extremely turned on, Jake decides to keep a watchful eye on her after spotting her being followed by a menacing-looking dude in a ponytail. This sequence, the what I like to call "the posh outdoor mall/panties in the trash encounter" (I know, as far as titles to sequences that appear in Brian De Palma films go, it needs a little work), was my favourite stalking scene in the entire movie. The way Jake was right on top of his subject, the point-of-view camera angles, and the ultra chic local (a sort of open air promenade for rich people) all combined to create one intense shopping experience.

Keen observers will notice that the modest slit on the back of his subject's off-white dress would reveal the back of one of her knees with each womanly step. Turning into a sort of back of the knee peepshow for anybody lucky enough to be walking behind her, Jake drinks in each sway of her hips like he were a booze-starved alcoholic.

When I saw that Gloria Revelle (Deborah Shelton), we discover her name after we see the contents of her purse, had dropped the panties, the same panties we watched her try on and purchase with the intensity of a thousand suns, in the trash, I thought to myself: What a waste of a perfectly good pair of panties. However, when Jake rescues the barely worn panties, in clear view of Gloria (who is busy tipping the mall's valet), from the crumpled grip of their soon to be trashy tomb, I cried misguided tears of joy. In all my years of looking at stuff, never have I seen a decision this logical, this sane implemented in a movie before. I doubt Will Smith would ever star in a movie where he ends up pocketing a pair of panties that weren't his. Of course, the hallowed panties end up shining an unsavoury light on him later in the movie. And even though a square detective (Guy Boyd), one straight out of a 1940's film noir, has the nerve to call him a "pantie sniffer" during questioning, I'm sure everyone will agree that his impromptu pantie adoption was the correct course of action.

The rescued panties aside, everything that happens after Jake enters the mall was filmmaking at its finest. The beach/tunnel chase, the fact that the sequence was mostly dialogue-free, the bizarre make out session (complete with aggressive neck kissing), the sly smirk Jake sports every so often as he's following Mrs. Revelle, the close call with "The Indian" in the elevator (one that was filled to the brim with freshly scrubbed yuppies), they all came together to fashion one seriously gripping slab of suspense cinema.

Recovering from a dog bite and the mental strain that normally transpires after one sees a bloodied power drill snake its way through a chunk of drywall, Jake does what most people do after experiencing something traumatic: He opens up a bottle of Jack Daniel's and throws himself head-first into the warm, non-judgmental embrace of pornography (the salacious images on the screen will not hurt you). While watching a bunch of trailers hyping the latest in adult entertainment, Jake notices something eerily familiar about the body of one of the performers cavorting about on the screen. Now, to the non-voyeur, the idea of noticing someone's body might sound ridiculous, but you've got to remember the peeper code, which is: "I like to watch." In other words, every inch of your body, yes, even the back of your tasty knees, whether you like it or not, have been meticulously cataloged in their depraved minds (a depraved mind is a fertile mind).

Not one to let a half-baked hunch go unexplored, Jake heads down to the local Tower Records and buys a copy Holly Goes to Hollywood on VHS (it was also available on Beta). After some diligent fast-forwarding, he soon discovers that the body in question belongs to Holly Body (Melanie Griffith), a svelte porno queen who seems to be modeled after Cara Lott (who appears briefly in a scene with Brinke Stevens). Determined to get close to Holly, Jake weasels his way into the adult film industry. Actually, all he did was make a phone call, show up for an audition, recite his two lines, and he was in.

When I first heard the thumping intro to the iconic "Relax," Frankie Goes to Hollywood's anti-ejaculation smash hit, playing on the soundtrack, which, up until now, has been awash with the tantalizing music of Pino Donaggio (an hypnotic masterwork, if I ever heard one), I thought to myself: Interesting song choice. Since the decor was bathed in every kind of animal print imaginable (my fave was the pink zebra print on the wall outside the washrooms), I would have went with something by Vicious Pink ("CCCan't You See"). Nevertheless, it made perfect sense to have Holly Johnson play the club's doorman. Leading Jake (who looked nerd-tastic in an argyle sweater) into the depths of an S&M nightclub featuring a bevy of neon maniacs in studs and leather, the FGTH frontman (along with fellow band member Paul Rutherford) serenade the impish actor, as he attempts to make a name for himself as a porn star.

The nightclub/adult movie shoot was merely one of many kooky surprises Brain De Palma (Phantom of the Paradise) throws at you in Body Double. I mean, I anticipated the stylish directing, and, not to mention, the satirical jabs at Hollywood (Dennis Franz plays a sleazy, De Palma-esque horror director). But the aforementioned make out session at that mouth of that ominous-looking tunnel solidified this film's standing as one strange and trippy ride. Getting back to the directing for a second, you'll be hard pressed to find another film that is this skillfully directed from this or any period. I'd even go as far as to put it up there with William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A. in terms of craftsmanship.

I'll admit, the overall configuration of her leather mini-skirt was sublime (the front zipper was to die for), as were the opaque tightnesss of her pantyhose (which looked extra opaque in the lighting of the Jake's garish ufo pad). Oh, and the casual manner in which she declared she wasn't into "water sports" was downright adorable (no "animal acts" either). They were all pluses as I carefully scrutinized Melanie Griffith's nuanced performance. (I won't lie, the actress can come off as a tad shrill at times.) But when it came to representing Reagan-era femininity, nothing comes close to topping the sight of Deborah Shelton walking in heels, driving convertibles, talking on the phone, window shopping, trying on panties, removing her sunglasses, adjusting the fit of her shoes, riding escalators, and brushing her hair in Los Angeles circa 1984.

Billed fourth in the credits, the gorgeous Deborah Shelton doesn't need to say a word (and apparently she didn't, as it's rumoured that Helen Shaver dubbed all of her dialogue in the film). Regardless, the sheer power of her delicate physique is enough to convey the thoughts and wishes of her character. If Deborah, as she looked in Body Double, walked down the street of any North American today, she would have to constantly worry about tripping over the passed out bodies of all the feckless degenerates unaccustomed to witnessing such a statuesque example of self-assured womanhood.

Oozing the quirky styles and idiosyncratic fashions of the period, yet, at the same time, not sacrificing one iota when it came to projecting an air of class and dignity, Body Double is one of the few films to successfully blend technical proficiency with a lurid premise in a way that seems effortless.

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Deadly Prey (David A. Prior, 1987)

Whenever I see a musclebound man running around the jungle in jean shorts, my mind immediately starts to imagine what kind of tomfoolery his slumbering cock must be getting up to in there. Tucked away in an impregnable denim prison, what is it doing, what is it thinking? I know, I know, what in the name of lint-flavoured kielbasa am I blathering about? I mean, tomfoolery? Tucked away? Denim prison? Cock? Rest assured, I am not deranged. What I'm trying to do is make an elaborate point. Besides, can't a man think about another man's compressed junk for five, maybe ten seconds, without being peppered with prying questions and accusatory glances? Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, even though they're probably as sweaty and damp as a trailer park dishrag in the middle of monsoon season, the ripped protagonist in Deadly Prey, a movie where the sight of one man beating another man to death with his own severed arm is commonplace, at least has the piece of mind to know that his securely packed genitals won't be popping out while he's knifing yet another clueless mercenary in the chest. If you're about to ask yourself: "Why do you always seem to focus on the inner workings of the crotches of others"? Let me cut you off by saying: I dare anyone to watch this film and not constantly think about the stuffed adventures of his heterosexual dick.

He basically wears cutoff jean shorts for the entire movie! You tell me, what am I supposed to think about? And don't say his taint, as I lost my taste for taint years ago. You should have seen me back in my shemale hustling days, I was a scrotal-licking maniac with high self-esteem.

Mock his lack of clothing, if you must, but Michael "Mike" Danton (Ted Prior) knows a thing or two about stabbing mercenaries. The reason they're being stabbed has nothing to do with his dislike for men who wear green, it's because they want to kill him. When Col. John Hogan (David Campbell) told his subordinates to abduct another sap off the street–you know, so his gang of ragtag mercenaries could practice hunting human prey in a jungle-like setting just south-east of Los Angeles–the last person he expected them to grab was a highly trained killing machine, especially one that he had a hand in training.

Nabbed while putting out the trash, Mike Danton is brought to their super-secret training facility and told to run. Armed only with his wits and a skimpy pair of jean shorts, the scantily clad ex-soldier takes on the bloodthirsty, yet totally incompetent mercenaries with a truckload of gusto and back pocket full of pizzaz. Showing no mercy for the mercenaries, he uses stealth, and a recently acquired knife, to bump them off one by one.

As you would expect, this stabbing spree angers Col. Hogan, who, up until now, has been sitting at his pathetic desk (which is adorned with the world's saddest collection of hand grenades) underneath a ratty-looking tent blissfully unaware of the goings on out in jungle. The reason he's unaware is because Lt. Thornton (Fritz Matthews), Hogan's loyal number two, is the one responsible for conducting the hunts, not the colonel. While out inspecting the carnage for himself, Hogan realizes that the slaughter bares many of the trademarks of his old student. In other words, the colonel and his men (the ones who are unlucky enough to still be alive) are in a whole lot of trouble.

Meanwhile, back at home, Mike's wife, Jaimy (Suzanne Tara), who has since replaced her silky black negligee with a practical white tank top, is starting grow concerned about her husband's well-being. After all, the last time she saw him, he was being hit over the head by some Roddy Piper-looking motherfucker and getting dragged into a windowless van. Instead of calling the police, Jaimy decides to seek help from her father (Cameron Mitchell), a retired cop with over thirty years of crime-fighting experience. After a brief discussion about the colour green (she tells him, while clutching a brown throw pillow, the van Mike's kidnappers drove was a "funny kind of green"), Jaimy's daddy swings into action.

Just for the record: I love it when adult woman call their fathers "daddy." It's even hotter when they say it while they're tilting their heads slightly to side. (The blame for this abnormality rests squarely on the supple shoulders of Michelle Johnson from Blame It on Rio.)

Making the transition from leotards to camouflage with a buttery smoothness, writer-director David A. Prior puts aside the neon thongs of his previous film, Killer Workout (a.k.a. Aerobicide), and embraces the decidedly macho realm of outdoor violence with a rambunctious vigor. However, the inclusion of Dawn Abraham as Sybil, the lone female mercenary in the film, is proof that the director was not quite ready to leave the clingy world of spandex behind completely. Actually, it makes sense on a number of different levels to include a female mercenary, as the film's testosterone allotment was starting to make my brain hurt. Just having her stand there in the background, drinking New York Seltzer, wearing these ridiculously short camouflage short-shorts and scowling like Jane Badler on a bad hair day, was enough alleviate the macho pain I was suffering.

Call me a complete imbecile, if you must, but I thought Dawn Abraham's shorts were a little too short. Insane, I know. But it looked like she was wearing a baggy camouflage diaper. And, as most erection experts will tell you, the words "baggy" and "diaper" are titillation dead ends.

Speaking of short length, Suzanne Tara, who was cute as a fucking button, brought some much needed colour to the proceedings when she shows up midway through the film wearing a pair of pink shorts. You'll notice I didn't say, "short-shorts," well, that's because they were just shorts. At any rate, if I had a time machine, I would go back and alter her shorts so that they came down to a level I could live with. How much would I remove? Excellent question. Let's just say enough to appease the short length overlords that live inside my normal subconscious. However, since time machines don't exist yet, I've learned to begrudgingly accept the fact that I can't control the way fabric is strewn about the bodies of my fellow human beings.

Tired of the colour green, and sick of watching men kill each other–or in the case of Deadly Prey, watching one man with a blonde, finely-tuned mullet kill extras with impunity–Suzanne's no-nonsense pink shorts, despite the length issues I had, brought me a fair amount of joy. You could call it short-short fatigue, or cutoffs overload. Well, whatever you want to call it, I felt like Ted Prior's jean shorts and I had hit impasse in our relationship. What we needed was to take a break and see other shorts, and that's where Suzanne came in. The second my eyes slipped on her undemanding shorts, I knew they would fit. The way they stood out amongst all that drab greenery was like tripping over a jewel-encrusted tiara in the ladies room of a high end topless disco.

A bushy-haired William Zipp plays Jack Cooper, a mercenary with conflicting loyalties (he's an old buddy of Mike Danton), has an interesting way of making a name for himself in the Deadly Prey universe. My calling card used to be that I would rarely appear in public without a My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult t-shirt on my back, his signature is to leave live hand grenades underneath the heads of unconscious men. Weird.

Cleaning earthworms with his own spit, resetting a dislocated shoulder with an easy-going nonchalance, and setting boobytraps like an acne-scarred boy scout with nothing to lose, Ted Prior's performance as Mike Danton is the stuff of manly legend. His infamous cutoffs may get all the acclaim, but it's his steely brawn and headstrong determination that make Deadly Prey the action-packed classic that it is.

Impervious to shrapnel, yet prone to being snuck up on, Mike Danton kills because he has to, not because he wants to. It seems that most action heroes do not adhere to that simple credo. Sure, there are times where Mike appears to ignore the basic premise of the aforementioned credo as well (he must kill at least fifty people in this movie). But, then again, how would you feel if you were snatched away from your home (your shapely wife lying spread eagle on your jiggly waterbed patiently waiting to receive the pounding rhythm of your purposeful thrusts) and forced to stab strangers in a homoerotic setting? Not too happy. No, his rage is pure, much like the overall make-up of this totally badass movie.

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Breaking Glass (Brian Gibson, 1980)

Judging by the way its depicted in nearly every movie I've seen made about the subject, you'd think the music industry was the most soul-destroying life form on earth. Sucking up raw talent like an empty-bellied sponge, only to squeeze it out onto the cold, concrete floor when an artist's music no longer scratches them where they itch, the music biz is notorious for its fickleness. Whether this reputation is justified or not is debatable. Not that anyone cares, but I happen to think the door-to-door dildo racket is much worse when it comes to random cruelty. I mean, have you tried to sell a vein-covered piece of phallic-shaped plastic to some puritan puke in an ill-fitting pantsuit? It's damn near impossible. Nevertheless, the cliché that the music industry is a pitiless hellhole holds firm in Breaking Glass, your classic rise and fall rock 'n' roll fable about a pair of dreamers who find the trappings of Money; Success; Fame; Glamour to be a tad overwhelming. Written and directed by Brian Gibson (What's Love Got to Do with It), and, get this, produced by Dodi Fayed, the film manages to capture the surge of creativity that was sweeping the U.K. after the unofficial demise of punk in the late 1970s.

Speaking of things that are "a tad," I was always a tad jealous of the mods I knew during a brief, yet developmentally important chunk of my teenage years. You see, they had a film, Quadrophenia, which captured the spirit of their idiosyncratic subculture, and I didn't. Sure, I was able to extract a smallish amount of solace from the fact their movement was outmoded (the sixties are over, man) and terribly unappealing from an aesthetic point-of-view, but they had an actual movie to call their own.

Don't feel too sorry for me; after all, I did have Repo Man to keep me warm–you know, during that long, youthful stretch of time before films like, Liquid Sky, Dr. Caligari and the Forbidden Zone came along to paint a much more precise portrait of what the inside my head looks like on a day-to-day basis. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking: "Isn't Repo Man more of a punk movie?" Maybe. But I've always felt that its power as a righteous piece of filmed entertainment enabled it to cross over that non-existent barrier that keeps us unnecessarily separated from one another.

Anyway, back to the movie at hand. While it's true, I found the film's subtle jabs at the garish radiance that is disco to be rather troubling (the record charts are manipulated in order to keep an innocuous disco jam at the #1 spot), and it seemed to be missing scenes that featured impish cultural icons cavorting about in pointy boots affixed with shiny buckles (Who's That Girl), it does, however, boast headstrong women in blue lipstick, an impromptu race riot, radioactive clothing, globs of totally awesome new wave music by the fabulous Hazel O'Connor and producer Tony Visconti (Les Rita Mitsouko and Sparks), and, last but not least, robot dancing. In other words, I think Breaking Glass would have been a solid candidate to counter the dreaded mod movie.

Taking place in Great Britain during the so-called "The Winter of Discontent," a bleak period in the island nation's history rife with labour disputes, civil unrest and inclement weather, a wannabe record industry insider named Danny (Phil "Parklife" Daniels) and Kate (Hazel O'Connor), a struggling musician/petrol station attendant with a do it yourself approach to self-promotion, form a tentative alliance with one another in a London alleyway circa 1979-80. After auditioning band members, some talented, others just plain loony (if you ever wanted to see Jonathan Pryce wail competently on a saxophone in front of a B-52's poster, this is your movie), Danny lands Kate and the boys a gig at a dingy pub (one crawling with pool-playing skinheads). It's a rough start, but things gradually get better for the band, or do they?

Since the film follows their meteoric rise, that means we are privy to the more negative aspects of instant stardom. The journey just to get their music heard is a treacherous one, as apathetic audiences, jaded record label execs, and the constant fear of police harassment manage to impede their progress. As you would expect, once the band reach their desired destination, they're plagued by drugs, in-fighting, jealously, exhaustion, and artistic differences. Actually, the whole situation between Kate, Danny and the members of Breaking Glass reminded me of Berlin, the L.A.-based outfit that went from being this edgy new wave band to a group that sang mushy, asphyxiation-promoting love songs.

Well, the exact same thing happens to Breaking Glass, which, in case I haven't mentioned it yet, is the name of the band we follow in the movie. Convinced by duplicitous music executives to procure the help of a pompous producer, they compose a ballad called "Will You." Which, in turn, nets the band its first hit record, one that comes with a stylish music video ("I want a forest of neon tubes," demands the producer). This, of course, causes some of their old fans to question Kate's integrity, drives a wedge between Kate and Danny, proceeds to make their saxophone player feel unwanted, and leads to the bands overall downfall.

While I appreciated its realistic depiction of the music industry, there's a part of me that wished the film had included more surreal moments like the one that takes place on the subway. And, no, I don't mean the opening scene where we see Kate covering the inside of a train car with promotional stickers while singing the terrific "Writing on the Wall," nor do I mean the one where Kate and Danny snuggle aboard a train on Christmas Day (keep an eye out for Jim Broadbent as the porter). I'm talking about that eerie moment when she comes face-to-face with a bunch of Kate clones. After performing the song "Eighth Day" at a concert, a real show-stopper that comes complete with iridescent costumes and robotic gesticulations, Kate stumbles aboard a subway car only to be confronted by a group of cataleptic lookalikes. At any rate, it features the kind of dreamlike weirdness I live for.

Channeling the rage of Diane Lane from Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Strains and the sheer enthusiasm of Jo Kennedy from Starstruck–despite the fact that Breaking Glass was made before both of these films–Hazel O'Connor imbues Kate with a feisty brand of uncut exuberance. (She's the gal who can turn the world on with her sneer.) This spunk is probably best observed in an early scene when Hazel slaps this colossal wanker wearing a Specials t-shirt in the face after one of her gigs. It was right then and there that Hazel signified to the audience that she was not someone to be messed with in any way, shape, or form.

I'm sure there's gonna be a smattering of people out there who'll be shocked, or, in some rare cases, flabbergasted, by the lack of colour used in the costumes seen throughout Breaking Glass, I thought Hazel O'Connor's wardrobe perfectly reflected the desolation of the era. Designed by Lorna Hillyard and Monica Howe, Hazel's outfits feature mostly black and white prints (with a strong hint of silver in places) that looked at ease amongst the decay and desperation of James Callahan's England. You've got to remember that the lively pinks and the calming blues usually associated with the 1980s were still light years away.

Even though my cinematic wheelhouse seems to be getting smaller with each passing year, there will always be room for demented English women who wear excessive amounts of makeup, sport whitish blonde hair, and scream angrily in a rock concert setting. Working in perfect harmony with one another, makeup artist Pat Hay and hair stylist Sarah Monzani have created one of the most iconic looks in new wave history.

Okay, sure, it's not quite up there with Siouxsie Sioux, or even Lene Lovich, in terms of pizazz, but if the sight of an animated Hazel O'Connor hurling obscenities at a charging throng of unruly skinheads, her frazzled platinum bob hairstyle shimmering in chic defiance of their follicle reductionism, fails to get your juices flowing, then you my friend are not alive.

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