Robot Holocaust (Tim Kincaid, 1986 )

Penetrating the pink mist with a homoerotic panache, humanities last hope for survival in a world controlled by robots is about to saunter down a flight of stairs. While he's taking his time doing that–I've heard sauntering down stairs isn't as easy as it sounds (it takes careful planning and a passing knowledge of proper foot placement)–is it okay if I show two men wrestling with one another in their post-apocalyptic underwear for an inordinate amount of time? Hey, Tim Kincaid. How's it going? Oh, and to answer your question: It's your movie. In other words, you can show as much man-on-man action as you want. You mean to tell me I can have a male character spend the entire film in nothing but a furry loincloth, and not have to worry about feeling the wrath of the straight mafia? What are you nuts? Guys who are purported to be sexually attracted to women love to watch musclebound fellas roll around on the floor together in a veiled attempt to achieve physical dominance over one another. Walk into any room that sports a man, or a group of men, sitting on a couch in front of a television set, and I guarantee the program they're watching on it will feature two scantily clad men breathing in the fetid air swirling around their unshaven taints. Unshackled by the flavourless constraints of heterosexual mediocrity, writer-director Tim Kincaid (Riot on 42nd Street) has finally  been allowed to embrace his three loves: 1) Unbridled masculinity; 2) Sycophantic villainesses; and 3) Man-hating warrior women. You could put wise-cracking robots and parasitic sewer worms on that list as well, but let's just focus on those three for now, as they're the things drive Robot Holocaust, an epic sci-fi adventure film that takes genre filmmaking to a whole new level of epicness. Of course, not before pushing it to the ground and then proceeding to kick the living shit out of it, but I digress. Probing the farthest reaches of his cornhole-adorned imagination, Tim Kincaid pulls out all the stops to bring us his bold vision of the future. Sparing almost every expense you could possibly imagine, the film uses the latest in non-state-of-the-art technology to recreate the robot takeover that is surely to come. And if that means driving around New York City looking for rundown locations that pass the calamity smell test, than so be it.    
 

 

Now, to some, the words, "written and directed by Tim Kincaid," will strike fear in the hearts of the sheepishly lame and the totally not gay. But not me, I'm one of the few people on earth, or in the entire galaxy, for that matter, who "gets" the Tim Kincaid aesthetic. And while Robot Holocaust isn't his best film, it is certainly his most ambitious. Like his European cousins, Bruno Mattei, Jess Franco, and Joe D'Amato, Tim Kincaid doesn't let the fact that he's got a miniscule budget to work with dampen his creative output. If anything, the lack of money only seems to motivate him to try harder as an artist. You really get the sense that a lot of extra effort was put into this project, as every frame seems to have been painstakingly rendered for optimum enjoyment.
 

 

The ambition I just alluded to is obvious right from the start when we quickly discover that Robot Holocaust has a narrator. Yeah, you heard right. This isn't your average cinematic anomaly. No way, man. This puppy is straight-up legit in terms of authenticity. Welcoming us to the last remaining city on New Terra, the narrator informs the audience that the robot rebellion of 33, the year a billion robots rose up against their human masters, is the reason the planet looks like a radioactive wasteland.
 

 

How's humanity doing now, you ask? Well, the robot rebellion hit them pretty hard, but a small group are eking out an existence as airslaves. I don't know, that doesn't sound like much of a life to me. I mean, for starters, the word airslave contains the word "slave." You're right, there's no positive way to spin this, but there are several reasons to remain hopeful. As two airslaves fight to death in a robot sanctioned death match, Neo (Norris Culf) approaches the makeshift arena (a smattering collection of fuel sacks) and blends in with the crowd that has assembled around the two combatants. Under the watchful eye of Torque (Rick Gianasi), a menacing-looking robot, the airslaves continue to pummel one another. However, he doesn't seem to notice that a robot named Klyton (J. Buzz Von Ornsteiner) is picking the pockets of various audience members, which is mostly made up of airslaves. Of course, when he tries to pick Neo's pocket, he is quickly thwarted. And not only that, Neo somehow manages to control Klyton; he is even able to communicate with him telepathically.
 

 

It's obvious from the get-go that Neo isn't an airslave; a point that becomes even clearer when the Dark One, the ruler of the Power Station, turns off the atmosphere and it seems to have zero effect on him. You see, the Dark One, a powerful super-computer who sees all, controls the air the airslaves breath. And whenever the Dark One is displeased with them, he simply switches it off. Yeah, but why doesn't it effect Neo? What makes him so special? He breathes air, doesn't he? The question you really should be asking is why aren't Jorn (Michael Downend) and his daughter Deeja (Nadine Hartstein) falling to ground and gasping for air? 
 

 

Someone who really wants to get to bottom of this atmosphere issue is Valaria (Angelika Jager), the Dark One's shapely, charismatic, fashion forward henchwoman. Trotting onscreen with a thunderous aplomb, Valaria enters the pink mist of the Power Station, and stops to ponder. "Something is wrong, I can sense it," she says to herself. And, for once, she's absolutely right. There is something wrong, and it's transpiring as we speak over at the airslave mines. Chanting "no winner" over and over again, the airslaves are upset that Torque has been instructed by the Dark One to rig the fight between the two airslaves by giving one of them a weapon. In order to prevent an insurrection, the Dark One turns off the atmosphere. Realizing that it would cause suspicion, Jorn tells Deeja to feign air sickness. Yet the fact Jorn seems to have acclimated himself to the poisonous air (he stands unaffected in defiance as the others choke around him) angers the Dark One, who is determined to get to bottom of this.
 

  

As Torque takes Jorn to the Power Station to be questioned in the aptly named "Room of Questions," Neo quickly organizes the others. Utilizing his calm, deliberate way of speaking, Neo convinces Deeja, and two warriors named Bray (George Grey) and Haim (Nicholas Reiner) to join him on his mission to destroy the Dark One. While four humans and one kleptomaniac robot doesn't exactly constitute a rebel force, I'm sure they will make do. Actually, they're gonna have to, as the film's budget probably won't allow them to bring along any extra muscle.

 

 

While traveling through the harsh wilderness that lies between the airslave farm and the Power Station, the rebels spot many mutants lurking in the undergrowth. Horrible as that may sound (there's nothing quite as terrifying as mutants who lurk behind bushes), they're the least of their worries, as the rebels are about to enter the She Zone. The She what? The She Zone: A leafy realm where no man is to be trusted. Stumbling upon a race of female warriors who wear animal print bikinis, the rebels are confronted by their leader Nyla (Jennifer Delora), who demands that Deeja, the lone woman in the rebel alliance, explain why she is consorting with "male scum."
 

 

On top of not trusting them, Nyla dislikes men because they "chatter so." Which is explains why they removed the tongue that used to flap around inside the mouth of the musclebound Kai (Andrew Howarth), the warrior women's primary provider of sperm (to prevent him from running away, they keep him tied to a tree). Anyway, in order to avert an all out war, Haim and Nyla decide to settle their differences the old fashion way. And so, as our pesky narrator informs us, "the battle of the warriors begins." Placing a knife in the ground, the two fight to death. Just when Haim is about to get the best of Nyla, Neo steps in to stop him. While Nyla would prefer death, she accepts Neo's terms; which are: to free Kai and for her to join them in their quest to destroy the Dark One.
 

 

The addition of the He-Man-esque Kai and the headstrong Nyla to the team now means that Neo and his merry band of sword-wielding mouthbreathers are a force to be reckon with. Should the Dark One be quaking in his non-existent boots? Maybe. But you have got to remember, they haven't even reached the Power Station yet. Meaning, they have got to get past the mutants, as you know they're tired of lurking and itching to attack (a cool battle scene between the rebels and the mutants takes place, one where even Deeja gets her stab on); a subterranean corridor filled with hungry sewage worms (a sequence where Neo saves Nyla from being eaten by a sewage worm is quickly turned on its head when Nyla saves Neo from a similar fate seconds later - Nyla is not one to dilly-dally when it comes to paying her debts); the beast of the web, as Klyton calls him, is no picnic, either; dozens of booby traps (in a thrilling scene, Neo helps talk through Kai in disarming a bomb); surveillance drones; guard-bots; and an electrified fence.
 

 

The sound of her black and white heels hitting the cold concrete, her black mesh shawl of villainy gently caressing her ankles as she moves, Valaria wanders the murky halls of the Power Station with a weird mix of confidence and trepidation. She relishes the fact that the Dark One depends on her to carry out his orders, but she also knows that she's expendable. Pushing her luck on an almost daily basis, we run into Valaria just as she's about to push it yet again. Entering the Pleasure Machine, a large orgasm machine bathed in pink mist and supervised by a couple of rejects from La La La Human Steps circa 1987, Valaria disobeys the Dark One with this act of corporeal self-indulgence. Scolded for her insolence (the Pleasure Machine is not a toy, it's meant to reward those who excel at toadying), Valaria responds in the only way she knows how: subservience glazed with a coat of no-nonsense nonchalance. 

       

 

 

Imbuing her character with the temperament that reminded me of a bored French prostitute who has just passed yet another in a long line of AIDS tests, Angelika Jager is indifference personified as Valaria, the coolest henchwoman the holocaust, robot or otherwise, has ever seen. Employing a style of acting that can best be described as detached malevolence, the reason Angelika was probably selected to do the majority of the heavy lifting when it came to delivering the film's adjective and noun-laden dialogue is because she's the only one who could it recite it without conviction. Think about it, most actors, if given the chance to utter lines with a piece of furniture, which is what the Dark One essentially is, would ham it up, Raul Julia in Street Fighter-style. But not Angelika Jager, she approaches the dialogue from a more measured, analytical point-of-view.
 

 

"Yes, Dark One," is Valaria's passive aggressive mantra, and Angelika never fails to deliver it with a saucy aloofness. In fact, it's the only thing she seems to say during the film's early going, as the Dark One is always hounding Valaria to do shit. It's no wonder that she begins to roll her eyes at certain point. You would to if you had this overbearing robot on your shapely ass 24/7; an ass, by the way, that was always ensnared in a pair of lace pantyhose.
 

 

When Valaria experiences an unexpected makeover during the film's final third, was anyone else reminded of that War Amps PSA from the '80s? You know the one: "I'm Astar, a robot. I can put my arm back on. You can't. Play safe." It's all I could think about as chaos reigned throughout the Power Station. In addition to her appearance, Valaria's voice also changes near the end as well. Yet, funny enough, the modulation change didn't affect the pitch of her performance one bit.
 

 

Appealing in almost every way imaginable, in that, it's got chiseled hunks for the gays, thoughtful heroes with sharp cheekbones for the ladies, Jennifer Delora (Bad Girls Dormitory) in furry white boots for the fellas, brash warrior women for the lesbians, clumsy robots for the kids, and deadpan henchwomen who sound like Julie Delpy, if she was a manic depressive, for weirdos like me, Robot Holocaust proves once and for all that all you really need in order to create a fully lived-in universe filled with mutants, sewage worms, and moments of shirtless suspense are some fireworks, about a half dozen sock puppets, and bunch of friends who are willing to run around Central Park swinging swords for very little to no money.
 

 

Call me someone who has spent way too much being tortured by Valaria and her robot goons in The Room of Questions, or someone who isn't afraid to admit that they were strangely turned by Jennifer Delora's extreme form of misandry, but this film had a soothing effect on me. Chalk it up to Angelika Jager's affected way of speaking, the fact that two of the airslaves had Brooklyn accents, or the knowledge that Rick Gianasi, Matt Riker from Mutant Hunt himself, was actually inside that bulky robot costume, but I felt at home in New Terra. In fact, if I could choose to live in any post-apocalyptic universe from popular fiction, it would be Blade Runner (flying cars, replicants that look like Sean Young). But my second choice would definitely be Logan's Run (rapid transit, half-naked Jenny Agutter's delivered straight to your door). What I think I'm trying to say is that I would, after much hand wringing, eventually get around to choosing the Robot Holocaust universe as the place to raise my ungrateful spawn; after all, it's where Valaria lives. I know. Yes, Dark One, indeed.

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Bad Girls Dormitory (Tim Kincaid, 1986)

When I first caught a glimpse of the giant wall fitted with barbed wire that surrounded the correctional facility at the centre of this deft love letter to female captivity, my initial reaction was: Damn, someone clearly doesn't want anyone living behind it to escape. However, after spending a few moments inside the inadequately run dormitory for wayward girls, I've come to the conclusion that the concrete and barbed wire wasn't there to keep the girls from breaking out, it was there to keep me from breaking in. Now, I've seen my fair share of films over the past couple of months that sport incarcerated ladies under duress, but none of them have featured as many potential life partners as Bad Girls Dormitory does, the overpriced root beer of women in prison flicks. One-by-one, I would fall deeply in love with their gruff exteriors, can-do spirit, and murderous gusto–and, not to mention, their feathered hair, parched lips, and the ease in which they were able to dance to the music of Man Parrish in an enclosed space. The only logical explanation I can come up with is that all the girls were from New York City. Sure, one of them was playing a fresh off the bus small town girl. But even then, I think she was from Staten Island. (I'm no authority on the subject, but her curly hairdo was definitely styled somewhere within the five boroughs.) While I worshiped the girls for their brash, big city attitudes, I was mildly horrified when it came time to unveil the uniform the girls at this unnamed dormitory (which seemed more like a prison, than an actual "dormitory") will be wearing for the duration of this awe-inspiring motion picture. Suddenly, the girls appear onscreen, and low and behold, their lower extremities sheathed in a pair of blue jeans and the upper part of their torso is adorned with a no-nonsense white t-shirt. In other words, the girls are being forced to dress like that asshole from that ketchup commercial that was inexplicably popular twenty years ago. (Oh, and, just for the record, I'm a big fan of that commercial.) Oh, and when I say, "a pair of blue jeans," I don't mean, "jean shorts." What I'm talking about are your run-of-the-mill blue jeans (the kind your mom wears when she's pulling weeds in the garden).

Did I let the fact that I was a tad underwhelmed by the ho-hum nature of the uniforms the girls had to wear in this movie undermine my enjoyment? What are you fucking kidding? If anything, it actually enhanced my enjoyment. You see, writer-director Tim Kincaid (Riot on 42nd Street) is an artist, and like any artist, he knows how to turn something that is bland and uninspiring into something that will uplift and arouse greatness in others. The blue jeans and the white t-shirts were like a blank canvas, and Mr. Kincaid's imagination was the paint. In a stroke of genius, he allowed each inmate to tinker with the structural makeup of their white t-shirt. Some simply rolled up the sleeves, while others just cut them off all together. I don't want to overstate this, but I think the decision to let the girls to endow their t-shirts with individual characteristics was one of the greatest in film history.

In the spirit of transparency, some of the t-shirts were already sleeveless (i.e. they were manufactured as such). But for the most part, the girls did add personal touches to their shirts. I guess when you first enter the dormitory you're given a choice between a t-shirt with sleeves or a t-shirt without sleeves; what you do with after it's been handed to you is entirely up to the person wearing it. One girl who wisely chose to go sleeveless was Paige (Natalie O'Connell), as her ample bosom would have suffocated underneath all that excess t-shirt fabric. Anyway, mere seconds after arriving at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Paige finds her ample bosom in a degrading situation. Hoping to make some money as a model, Paige is suddenly topless in the office of a sleazy pornographer. Just as she was about to be violated by a naked man named Roland (Harve Soto), the operation is busted by some prudish vice cops. And Paige is, you guessed it, sent to a juvenile detention centre run by Miss Madison (Marita), a stylish Colombian woman.

Earlier that day, in another sketchy part of town, Marina (Teresa Farley) is left holding a bag of cocaine in a ramshackle room on the third floor of a condemned building. Is she shocked when her boyfriend Paco (Jeffrey Iorio) and a female drug dealer wearing a leopard print fingerless gloves bail on her when the cops arrive. Actually, I bet she wasn't surprised at all when the spiky-haired drug dealer (her vest was leopard print as well) took off when things started to get out of hand, but she was definitely hurt by Paco's actions. (Why, Paco? Why?) You could totally tell, as she stood there in her black, mesh tank-top, that she didn't expect to be left in the lurch like that.

In the crazy, mixed up world of Bad Girls Dormitory, there's no time to ask Paco why he bolted or explain to the cops that I'm a simple country girl from Staten Island, because, before you know it, Marina, Paige, and another girl, who we'll later come to know as Eula (Renata Cobbs), are listening to Dr. DeMarco (Dan Barclay) and the lovely Nurse Stevens (Rebecca Rothbaum) lay down the ground rules as they prepare to administer a full body search. Telling them to "lean over," the doctor begins his examination. I wonder if he found anything? I doubt it. In fact, I have a nagging suspicion that the whole ordeal was just an excuse for Dr. DeMarco, and, yes, Nurse Stevens, to get a sneak peak at the latest line of underage undercarriages to hit the dormitory, as both of them, as we'll soon find out, are unabashed when it comes to idolizing the vaginal plateaus of others.

Meanwhile, Miss Madison, who obviously does not share the orificial obsessions of her pussy-starved staff, is giving Ron (Rick Gianasi), a handsome social worker, a tour of her first-class correctional facility (well, in her mind, it's "first-class"). Informing her that he'll find his own way out after the tour is over, Ron starts poking his head around the place. The first place he pokes his head is the basement, but all he finds down there is Jen (Jane Donadio), a shy, virginal redhead smoking weed. However, he hits pay dirt with the next place he pokes his head when stumbles upon some young ladies showering. Lathering her taut body with enough soap to clean a small Guatemalan family, Tim Kincaid's camera is in love with LeeAnne Baker (a.k.a. the reputed pleasure droid from Mutant Hunt). Playing an inmate with short hair, LeeAnne's unnamed character is a pro when it comes to washing her perky frame in front of her bratty peers. Strangely enough, Ron's not interested in the svelte brunette from Necropolis, no, his lustful gaze is focused squarely on Lori (Carey Zuris), an equally slender woman with dirty blonde hair. Unlike the other so-called "grown ups" who work in this hellhole, Don's perverted leering is tinged with an air of sadness. Staring at one another for quite some time, Lori, who's too depressed to bother to wash herself with any zest whatsoever, eventually tires of his empathetic leering and curtly asks him, "Seen enough?"

Feminine chaos is best way to describe what transpires next, as we're ushered into the dorm's mess hall. A veritable cornucopia of charming tough chicks, the cafeteria is awash with cigarettes, soda pop, plastic utensils, chocolate bars, white t-shirts, big hair, and, of course, the sound of Man Parrish's expertly programmed sequencers and drum machines. Now, I should warn you, people who are unaccustomed to seeing this many attractive women gathered together in a small space might want to look away during this sequence. As for the rest of us, let's dig in.

The mess hall scene is probably the most important in the entire film, as it introduces us to all women we'll be spending next eighty or so minutes with. Having already been introduced to the so-called "fresh meat," this section of the film gives us an opportunity to meet the dormitory's more hardened residents. And you can't get any more hardened than Lisa (Jennifer Delora) and Rebel (Donna Eskra), two gals who take bullying to new and exciting places. Eyeballing Lori almost immediately, Lisa stakes her claim by telling her she has pretty eyes. However, she's distracted when she discovers that Barb (Frances Raines) is cutting Jen's meat. The "Red" of the Bad Girls Dormitory universe, the excessively blonde Valeska (Charmagne Eckert), the dormitory's most alluring "guest," tells Paige, Marina, and Eula that she's the girl to talk to if you need anything (whether it be a nail-laden baseball bat or a slightly used box of tampons), because she's got "connections."

Even more eyeballing takes place when we encounter Dottie (Kate McCamy), a shock-haired cauldron of bewitching unpleasantness who takes exception with the fact that Deke (Parri Shahmanesh), a butch lesbian, and her bubble-headed gal pal Lenka (Cathryn Bissell), are giving her the stink-eye. I'm guessing the reason behind their stink-laden stares might have had something to do with Dottie's plastic fork-themed attempt to flirt with McCoy (Bill Peterson), a guard/rapist who works at the dormitory. At any rate, employing an undercooked hot dog to help accentuate the overall impact of her hand gestures, Dottie tells them point blank, "Don't make me get up. If I do, I'll be twisting some tits." After she finished uttering that line, I couldn't help but notice that I was starting to develop strong feelings toward her. As this was happening, I began to think to myself: Try not to get too attached, you never know which of these girls is going to die horribly.

Luckily, we only see Dottie two more times after her verbal spat with Deke and Lenke, as the more I thought about her, the more I wanted to swoop in and rescue her from this banal existence. After lights out, we see Dottie, who I didn't recognize at first, screaming, "Shut up, you stupid fruitcake" to a disruptive individual in another bunk; her brash demeanour reminded me of Antonia Basilotta (a.k.a. Toni Basil), as I could totally picture the famed actress, singer, choreographer, and all around fabulous person telling someone to be quiet in this manner. Her final appearance takes place during visiting hours in the mess hall when she is briefly seen talking to her boyfriend. Well, "talking" is a bit of a stretch, as he says, "Hey, baby," to which Dottie responds, "You motherfuckin' scumbag!" I'm no expert when it comes to inner workings of the human brain, but I think Dottie even realized that "motherfuckin' scumbag" might have been way harsh. But then again, her assessment could have been right on the money. Hey, maybe he was a "motherfuckin' scumbag." Who knows.

Okay, with Dottie out of the picture, who am I supposed to obsess over now? I liked the transition Paige makes in the film, as she goes from being a naive bumpkin with large breasts to a savvy sex pot...with large breasts. The way she slumped in her chair, opened a couple of buttons on her button-fly jeans, and told Dr. DeMarco, "I'm a whore," in response to his question, "Why are you here"? was, I'll admit, pretty bad ass. Yet, I still found her to be too soft. No, I like my bad girls to be always hard.

How 'bout Rebel? Oooh, I loved her. She was complex, horny as fuck, scrappy (she picks a fight with Marina in the mess hall after mail call), and always full of surprises. Choosing a sleeveless top to express herself, Rebel is essentially Lisa's big haired sidekick (one who gets told to "shut her hole" on occasion), but she wasn't a mindless sycophant. Far from it. Her decision to help Gloria (Sherry Hoard), a girl who is trying to hide her pregnancy from Miss Madison and the guards, was very out of character. (You would think that Dr. DeMarco and Nurse Stevens would have noticed that Gloria was pregnant–you know, with them being on the cusp of the medical profession and all. But I doubt they took their jobs seriously. In fact, I bet the only reason they worked there was to capitalize on the abundance of cheap heroin and guilt-free poontang.)

While the unexpected kindness she displays was a nice touch, the Rebel I prefer is the one who's constantly craving sex and facilitating the murder of her friend's rivals. The best examples of the former come when she finishes appeasing the carnal desires Dr. DeMarco and Nurse Stevens with the mollifying moistness of the throbbing fissure festering between her legs. Sapped of their strength, Rebel takes advantage of their post-coital lethargy by ridiculing them. My personal favourite was the way she told the doctor he was the "worst lay" she's ever had while simultaneously flipping her hair with her hand (the best after sex hair flip I've seen all year). Actually, telling Nurse Stevens, "I don't want a bitch, I want a man," while she smoothed out the creases in her white pantyhose was pretty great as well.

In terms of facilitating murder? Hmm, I'd say the look on Rebel's face when Lisa dispatches one of her rivals in the basement with piano wire was the best example of this specific character trait. Oh, and if the nonchalant look on the Rebel's face while Lisa murdered her rival reminded you of the equally nonchalant mug the luminous Laurie-Ann Gill wears in the music videos for Nudimension's "Amour Programmé" and "Living On Video" by Trans-X, then we share the same brain.

In one of the film's more bizarre scenes, Rebel agrees to escort Gloria to the bathroom (she is suffering from morning sickness). However, instead of helping her, she winds up getting sidetracked when the opportunity to have sex with a male guard (Mark Umile) comes along. The back and forth between the two, as Rebel fucks and Gloria pukes, was memorable because it's set to the music of Man Parrish, the electro pioneer behind such classics as "Hip Hop Be Bop (Don't Stop)" and "Boogie Down (Bronx)." The result is a strangely musical scene, where Gloria's repetitious cry, "Rebel, I need you," and Rebel's reply, "Just a minute...I'm coming," come across as lyrics when paired with Man's beats and synthesizers.

If the scene with Rebel and Gloria was the most bizarre, the mess hall sequence set to "Hose Me Down" by Man Parish and Beth Rudetsky was definitely the most awesome. Determining that the girls need to blow off some steam after the recent rape-induced suicide of one of their own (permitting male guards to work at a girls dormitory was a questionable decision), Miss Madison chaperones what has to be the greatest mess hall dance party scene in the history of cinema. Since she allows their boyfriends to attend, the scene suddenly becomes veritable haze of headbands, tank-tops with Japanese writing on them, Jheri curl, faint facial hair, studded bracelets, Polo cologne, and fingerless gloves. The way their break dancing duds combined with the residual new wave and punk styles that were still prevalent at the time was quite the eyeopener (the gap between masculinity and femininity was virtually nonexistent). Anyway, not only do we get to see LeeAnne Baker dance, we also get a glimpse into how shoddily run the dormitory actually is (while Miss Madison is overseeing the dance party, drugs are being sold and guards are groping girls right under her nose).

Judging by her pushy nature, you knew she was doomed the moment she started boasting to the new fish about her talents when it came to acquiring smuggled goods (which, as everyone knows, is Lisa's racket). But you got to give up to the gorgeous Charmagne Eckert for being so delectable as Valeska, the slenderest slice of womanly excellence to ever stalk the grimy halls of a girls dormitory. Sporting a natural gift for self-promotion, and, not to mention, the most lickable thorax in the known universe, Valeska's downfall may have been rapid, but her knack for laughing at the misfortunes of others was downright adorable.

Since they probably didn't shoot enough material to qualify as a feature length film, someone decided to include three drawn-out fight scenes to pad things out. And since Jennifer Delora (Frankenhooker) is a black belt in judo, why not have her fight one of the female guards? Sure, the rivalry between Lisa and a guard named Harper (Rachel Hancock) isn't really explained (I guess they just don't like each other), but their brawl in the girls' sleeping quarters was still pretty great. However, midway through their rematch in the basement, I couldn't help but notice that I was starting feel a tad sluggish. It got so bad, that I almost fell into a coma when another extended fight scene breaks out between a male guard and Marina's boyfriend. The fact that this fight occurs immediately after Lisa and Harper's second dust-up had ended was just plain egregious. In spite of that, I'm happy to report that Tim Kincaid's first non-gay porn foray into the lube-free realm of exploitation cinema is a smashing success.

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Frankenhooker (Frank Henenlotter, 1990)

How any plot-based motion pictures got made after the uncontaminated perfection that is Frankenhooker was unleashed onto an unsuspecting world in 1990 is totally beyond me. Okay, I realize that what I just said might sound a tad implausible as far as warped theories go (people are gonna continue to make movies no matter how amazing a film that combines the Frankenstein legend with New York hooker culture is). However, I should say, with its prostitute-related mirthfulness, playful leg measuring, grisly yet totally preventable lawnmower accidents, wacky depiction of indoor crack consumption, bunion filing, and multiple scenes where budding mad scientists deliver morbid dialogue in deliciously deadpan New Jersey accents, you really gotta wonder why anyone would even try to top its awesomeness. I guess it's just one of those things you've got to accept and move on. Careening wildly from the demented skull of Frank Henenlotter, the warped genius behind cinematic classics such as Basket Case and Brain Damage, this cautionary tale about a man and his collection of mangled but gout-free body parts is awash with the properties essential in the rapid creation of a mind-blowing work of art. Yeah, that's right, I used the term "art" to describe this strange undertaking. How else would you describe a film that manages to shine a light on the importance of lawnmower safety, while, at the same time feature a touching scene where an increasingly anti-social individual has dinner (pizza with a nice Beaujolais) with his beloved girlfriend's severed head? Personally, I can't think of one.

First of all, the protagonist sticks a power drill into his own head (it's a pre-drilled hole and sticking a drill in it helps him think and alleviates his "cluster headaches"). And, as most sort of sane people know, head drilling is one of the key ingredients that go into the metaphoric sauce that spices up things that lack head drilling.

Secondly, nine (count 'em, nine) harlots of various shapes, ethnic groups, and deviating levels of attractiveness are seen exploding in a semi-orderly fashion. Actually, two of them blow up "real good" simultaneously, which irked the flow a tad. But I'm not gonna be the one who complains about the manner in which hookers explode after consuming a chemically enhanced form of crack cocaine (a.k.a. super-crack).

The third, and probably most important component to the film's undeniable awesomeness, was the cut and paste hooker of the film's title. The purple streetwalker gear, chunky footwear, mismatched body parts, and delightful facial ticks all fused together to forge one of the most striking movie monstrosities to emerge from a fake movie laboratory in recent memory.

A simple man named Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz), one who works for a New Jersey electrical company, dreams of becoming a scientist. Unfortunately, medical school's upset him, so he's pretty much stuck doing experiments in his girlfriend's mother's kitchen (when we first meet him, he's working on some sort of eyeball-brain creature). On the day of his girlfriend's father's birthday, tragedy strikes when the lawnmower they're giving him as a present runs over Elizabeth Shelley (Patty Mullen) and sends her limbs all over the backyard.

While a normal person would classify this as an accident, and move on with his life as a failed scientist, Jeffrey, sensing an opportunity to prove himself, is determined to put his girlfriend back together. Only problem being, there's not much left of her to work with (the lawnmower took care of that). Whilst dining with Elizabeth's severed head (he managed to salvage her head), Jeffrey comes up with a fiendish idea. Why not use the limbs of prostitutes? After all, Manhattan is apparently full of them. And so... the search for replacement parts begins.

Wearing his lab coat with pride, James Lorinz (Street Trash) is a comedic tour-de-force as aspiring mental case Jeffrey Franken (a.k.a. "Jersey Boy," a nickname given to him by his new prostitute pals). An amateur (mad) scientist who finds himself flirting with amorality after the untimely death of his pretzel-loving girlfriend ("I'm not killing them," his says, "I'm just placing a lethal form of crack in their presence"), James imbues the skittish New Jerseyan a complexity you don't often find in your average dead girlfriend reassembled from dead prostitute parts. Sure, a lot of the credit has to go to the film's writing, which is extremely clever at times, but I thought Mr. Lorinz's line delivery was spot-on. Plus, I just loved the way he was able to keep a straight face most of the time, especially while apologizing to a room full of unattached hooker limbs (their shapely legs still wearing their lacy socks and no-nonsense pumps as they lay scattered across the room).

Even though her role as Elizabeth Shelley is reduced to being an inanimate head floating in a freezer full of pinkish feminine fluid for the first half of the film; she's even likened to a tossed human salad at one point by a witty newswoman. Nevertheless, the moment the gorgeous Patty Mullen is reanimated and then reborn as "Frankenhooker," she injects the newfangled trollop with a zesty, almost ebullient air. The aforementioned facial ticks and clumsy walk were wonderfully realized, but it was her repetitive vocalization of non sequiturs and frank hooker come-ons that sealed the deal.

"Wanna date?"

If you thought Carissa Channing was scrumptious as a brunette on Seinfeld (she appears in "The Keys," but I mostly know her from "The Cigar Store Indian" episode), you should see her as a blonde. Yowsa!

I literally had to stop watching Frankenhooker at one point, not because of Carissa Channing's innate hotness as a blonde, but because the crack ingestion scene in Jeffrey's hotel room was too much for me to handle. Its twisted approach to wayward stimulation, the sheer amount of gyrating floozies, the focus on body parts (Jeff is definitely a leg man), the abundance of fishnet stockings, and the overall titillating nature of the scene was so awesome, that I could hardly contain myself.

I tell you, if I was five and a half years younger, and perhaps named Claudio, I would go into great detail about the physical makeup of each individual prostitute. Well, fuck age and to hell with this Claudio clown, Honey (Charlotte J. Helmkamp), the de-facto leader of the Zorro's girls, her second-in-command Amber (Kimberly Taylor), the goofy Angel (Jennifer Delora), the leggy Crystal (Lia Chang), Anise (Susan Napoli), Chartreuse (Heather Hunter), the bosomy Snow (Gittan Goding), Sugar (Vicki Darnell), and Monkey (Sandy Colosimo) deserve to be lavished with an inordinate amount of praise for their scintillating work as the hookers of Frankenhooker.

While my perverted gaze was immediately drawn to Gittan Goding as Snow (her short blonde and black opera gloves were a divine combination), all the ladies had something about them that made my spirit soar. Even though I was able to take comfort in the fact that their sexy parts were being recycled, it's a shame they all had to blow up as a result of inhaling a giant bag of tainted crack.

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