Flesh Gordon (1974)

Directed by Howard Ziehm
Starring Jason Williams, Suzanne Fields, William Hunt
Rated X
USA

"Nobody burns my ass and gets away with it."

Flesh Gordon began like most of Howie Ziehm's movies, with a bunch of willing sex-hippies freaking freely. But after a troubling run-in with the law, Mr. Z changed the film's course mid-stream, hired a special-effects team, and accidentally crafted an enduring sci-fi cult hit. It's a long story, and Ziehm tells it better than I can - listen to the commentary track on the DVD for the hilariously awful true tale - but in a nutshell, the producers had to prove they weren't making a sex film to beat an obscenity charge, so they came up with the cockamamie "It's a sexy spoof of the old Flash Gordon serials" angle, and Flesh Gordon was born.

As our twisted tale opens, the world is in the grips of sex madness, and no one knows why. A group of scientists host a press conference.
"I think it was bad Passover tuna fish," suggests one brainiac.
"Tuna fish? Tuna fish? This guy's got mercury on the brain," deadpans brainiac number 2.
The head scientist, Professor Gordon (John Hoyt, RIP), announces that he's dispatched his son to the Himalayas to figure it all out. Why the Himalayas? Well, why not?

Prof's son Flesh (Jason Williams, Cheerleaders Wild Weekend) and Dale Order (Suzanne Fields, The Stewardesses) are both on that fateful Himalayan-bound flight when the plane is struck with Sex Madness. Bolts of red light strike the plane while a quite-annoying "Whatwhatwhat!" sound drones away on the soundtrack. Everybody starts ripping their clothes off.
"Sir, I've got a boner!" Yells the co-pilot.
The two pilots head to back of the plane to join in on the orgy. Flesh is the only one that's unaffected. At first he tries to land the plane himself, but can't, so he grabs Dale and they parachute out just as the plane goes down. She blows him on the way down. Sex madness!

When they reach the ground, they run into eccentric scientist Flexi Jerkoff (Joseph Hudgins), who has built a penis shaped rocketship that will take him to the planet where the Sex Ray is coming from. Flesh and Dale agree to go with him, so they screw in some lightbulbs, and blast off. Unfortunately, they fly right into the sex ray, and have a boisterous three-way.
"Another incident like that, and I'll be ready for the old folks home!" Says Flexi.

Afterward, they spy anthe offending sex-ray planet and decide to check it out. It is called Planet Porno, and it is not friendly. One of Porno's attack-ships shoots Flexi's penis-rocket, and they're forced to crash-land. When they get out of the ship, a bunch of half-naked Roman soldiers start shooting at them with laser guns, so they duck into a cave, where they're menaced by a Penisaurus. A bunch of them, in fact. Penisauri? Dale narrowly escape from...I'm not sure what. Monster rape, I guess. Then they're captured by the gay Roman dudes, and brought back to Emperor Wang's palace, where an orgy is taking place. An orgy is always taking place at Wang's.

Wang (William Dennis Hunt, in seriously creepy Fu Manchu drag) decides he wants Dale for his bride, which does not sit with Flesh. Not one for competition, Wang sends Flesh off to the 'Sex Depleter', but Amora, Queen of Magic (Mycle Brandy, The Geek) shows up to stop him. They make a deal - if Flesh survives in the arena, he will be spared Sex Depletion. Flesh fights three monster girls with orange frightwigs, and then the queen nabs him, and they disappear in a puff of smoke.

Flesh wakes up in the Queen's swan-shaped ship, and they make sweet love while a green monster watches. Wang finds out what they're up to, and has her ship shot down. Meanwhile, he stages his wedding with Dale. It includes bottomless cheerleaders. Also, he wears the wedding dress.

Also meanwhile, Jerkoff escapes from Wang's palace, and finds Flesh. He tells Flesh about the wedding, and then the dead queen shows up to give them her magic pasties. They're the only thing in the galaxy that can stop Wang and his "insidious schemes".

After Scooby-dooing around in the forest for awhile, Flash and Flexi burst in on the wedding, but they're too late: Dale's been snatched by the Amazon Underworld. Wang pulls a lever, and our two heroes fall through a trap door to who-know-where.

Captain Nelly (sexploitation legend Candy Samples) - a peg-legged, hook-handed, cigar chomping pirate queen, explains to Dale that the Amazon Underworld is dedicated to overthrowing Wang and his regime. Dale gets strapped down to a table and then a black chick with a giant afro has sex with her. Flesh and Flexi, who are stuck in a pit, hear Dale's cries, and try to figure out how to save her from the sweet lesbianic lovemaking. Flesh's idea is to just run into the wall. It does not work. Flexi uses the magic pasty. It busts down the wall, and they save Dale. For about a minute.

And then a stop motion metal cricket monster shows up, and Flesh battles with it. It totally kicks Flesh's ass, but Prince Precious (Lance Larsen, dressed up like a gay Robon Hood) shows up and shoots it with an arrow. The prince explains how he's the rightful heir to the throne. Porno used to be the Pleasure Planet, you see, and everybody had an awesome time. But then Wang, an impotent botanist, invented the Sex Ray, because he couldn't stand everybody else having a good time, and used it to enslave the planet.

Flesh and Precious decide to band together, and, after a quick visit to the forest kingdom (another orgy, this time in the woods), they head off to the palace. Jerkoff has developed a counter-ray that will blast Wang's sex ray to smithereens. Unfortunately, one of Wang's henchmen has infiltrated Precious' gang of merry men, and he sabotages their mission by stealing one of the magic pasties and jumping out of the ship with a plastic umbrella.

Our heroes narrowly escape crashing, and make it back inside Wang's palace. Unfortunately, they take a wrong turn and end up getting flushed down a giant toilet. Wang celebrates with a song and dance number. Everybody does the bunnyhop, and then they have yet another orgy. At some point, Wang accidentally inserts the magic pasty into some chick's vagina, and it gets stuck there. Flesh and his pals manage to swim their way out of the toilet, and while Flesh tries to retrieve the pasty from the girl's crotch, Wang lets loose his rapist robots. They have spinning corkscrew penises. All you have to do is turn a dial to stop 'em, though. Bad design flaw.

And then a smooth-talking giant monster (Coach himself, Craig T Nelson) shows up. He snatches Dale.
"This is a tower of murder," he says. "This is where I hang out."
The monster yanks off Dale's dress.

"I just wanna look at your tits," he tells her.
Who knows what he has planned for her?

So...will Flesh save her, defeat the monster and Wang, and the world?

Seems likely.

If you're looking for boners, Flesh Gordon is not the place to find them. With the possible exception of Fritz the Cat, it's probably the least erotic X-for-sex film of the 70's. There is no explicit humping, just lots and lots of hairy black bush. But for sheer disco-era weirdness, it's a must-see. You literally never know what's going to happen next in this film, and so you remain glued to the screen, a near constant 'what-the-fuck look plastered on your confused face.

Many of the FX guys that worked on Flesh later went on to the very heights of the industry - famed and fabled monster maker Rick Baker was on board, as well as several future Nightmare on Elm Street alumni, and one-half of Industrial Light and Magic, and all that talent is evident in the myriad of weird creatures and surreal set designs that litter this loony film. It's no masterpiece, but you do probably need to see this mess before you die.

Ziehm went right back to porn after this one, and didn't manage to crank out the sequel - Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders - until the late 1980's. It did not have the impact that this one did. That's probably because people stopped eating fistfuls of pills all day by then.

Clip: Flesh Gordon trailer!

Availability: Flesh Gordon is available on DVD.

- Ken McIntyre

The Lost Empire (1985)

Directed by Jim Wynorski
Starring Melanie Vincz, Raven De La Croix, Heather McClure Unrated
USA

"I'm very popular with the chicks."
"So why don't you go back to the farm and be popular?"

Lost Empire was originally slated to be shot in 3D, but the budget suffered some deep slashes before filming, and the three-dimensional gag was dropped. This did not stop first-time director Jim Wynorksi from trying to poke your eyeballs out with pencil-eraser nipples. I've never seen a non-stroke flick open with a close-up of cleavage before, but Lost Empire does exactly that. Clearly, Jim Wynorski paid attention in Russ Meyer's 'Heaving Pulchritude 101' class before launching into this one.

Said cleavage belongs to Anita Merritt (Serpent Princess, the mud wrestler chick in Stripes), a dramatic-looking blonde in a Chinatown jewelry shop. She picks out a shiny, diamond-encrusted bracelet, and hands the old guy behind the counter (Peter Pan - really!) a wad of cash. It's actually about $37, but I don't think you're supposed to look that close. The jeweler runs the cash through his credit card machine, for some reason. That was weird. After she leaves, a bunch of dudes in black hoods show up. The old guy shoots at them, but they have wildly-spinning throwing stars on a string, one of which embeds itself in the old guy's head, causing him to smash through the store's glass front door.

Then a bunch of cops show up to fight the hooded guys, and one cop gets stabbed, but then stabs the guy back. I think they're trying to steal a statue with a glowing red eye. Hard to say. Cut to a narrative scroll, ala Star Wars:

"In t a time before history, there existed a forgotten civilization - a strange, mystical race ruled by fierce creatures of myth and magic. They were called the Lemurians. To protect their great power, they implanted their secrets of super-science into a pair of incredible jewels - the Eyes of Avatar - shimmering stones that possessed a life of their own. Then, during a cosmic battle that nearly destroyed the Earth, the Lemurians were vanquished and the eyes were separated. It was written that whoever brought the jewels together again would rule with absolute power.

Today, and unscrupulous evil genius seeks to do just that...letting nothing or no one disrupt his nefarious plan. And so it has been - until now..."

Cut to: A tense stand-off between cops and kidnappers outside an elementary school. Some punks have taken a bunch of kids hostage in a classroom, and have demanded a chopper for a quick getaway. Instead, they get Inspector Angel Wolfe (Melanie Vincz), who rides in on her motorcycle, and shoots them all. In slow motion.

Later on that evening, she has sex with Rick (Paul Coufus), her mustachioed FBI agent boyfriend, on a bearskin rug, with a roaring fire in the background. They are luxuriating in the afterglow of their 70's style lovemaking when Angel gets a phone call.

She finds out that her rookie cop brother, Rob, has been critically injured. So she puts on a skintight silver jumpsuit to go see him.

Rob (Bill Thornbury), it turns out, is the cop that got stabbed by the ninja at the beginning. It doesn't look like he's going to make it. Angel, naturally, wants some answers. Rick is already on the case. He tells her about Lee Chuck. Lee Chuck is the evil genius from the scroll. He has to kill once every 24 hours for Satan. There's clearly a new Lee Chuck in town.

Angel, now dressed in a halter top, goes to the jewelry store to investigate, and runs into Inspector Charles Chang (Art Hern), a white dude with a Fu Manchu mustache, dressed like Charlie Chan.
"You've got to be kidding me," says Wolfe. I was thinking the same thing.
The missing Eye of the Avatar jumps into Wolfe's purse. She doesn't notice, even though it's glowing red. She has lunch with Chang and Rick, who explains that Chuck has one Eye of the Avatar, and he's desperately seeking the other. Also, there's a guy named Sin Do who has his own island, and he is somehow linked to Chuck.

Rob dies, so Wolfe wants to get revenge by blowing the lid off of Sin Do's operation. Rick tells her he holds competitions of some sort on his island, but he'll only take trios. So first Wolfe gets a perm, and then she goes to an Indian reservation, where she holds a white feather and calls out for "White Star" over a crackling fire. After a couple minutes, a big-titted chick (Russ Meyer girl Raven De Le Croix) in a porno Indian costume materializes on a white horse.
"White Star!"
"Well, who'd you expect, Tonto?"

White Star and Angel head over to a local bar, where Angel tells the whole sordid story over beers. White Star agrees to help her, and then they beat up a couple asshole cowboys. Afterward, they head over to the women's penitentiary to pick up their third girl, Heather (Angela Aames, RIP) just as she's having a fight with a leather-clad dominatrix(Angelique Pettyjohn, RIP) wielding a whip.

Lost Empire Girl Fight
by Sleazegrinder

Heather wins the fight, and later on, while she's taking a shower, Angel and White Star drop in to tell her she's getting paroled, as long as she goes with 'em to Sin Do's island.


She doesn't really like prison all that much, so she agrees. And so, our bosomy trio is complete.

After bullying their way into the competition, this bald guy with a crazy fake nose and eyebrows in a robe named Koro (Robert Tessier, RIP) picks our heroines and a bunch of other girls up in a tiny propeller plane and tells them he's taking them to the island of Golgotha.

"You will now surrender all alcohol, drugs, and stimulants of any kind," he says.
"I wonder if that includes vibrators?" Asks Heather.
Angel accidentally leaves her purse on top of Rick's car, and the plane takes off before he can give it to her. This will be important later.

After the girls get off the plane, they walk up a dirt road to a sci-fi matte painting. After a quick trip through a cave, they end up in what looks like an old Roger Corman spaceship set. They're given blue bathing suits with white belts to wear, and then they all get screwy medical exams.

One girl has to get naked in a big clear tube, and Angel gets her mouth shot full of white light. I think another girl got fisted, too. Can't be sure. One girl gets busted for being a spy, so Koro strangles her, just so everybody knows who's boss.
By the way, sometimes Koro has fake eyebrows, sometimes not. From one shot to another, I mean.

Meanwhile, back home, Rick is relaxing and watching TV when he hears a weird beeping sound. Instinctively, he grabs his gun (it's on an end-table next to a bottle of Wild Turkey and a pile of magazines - Playboy, Mad, and Cracked), and when he turns around, he sees a pink light emanating from his girlfriend's purse.
"Angel, I know now," he murmurs, "And I'm on my way."

Back at the island, Angel tries to sleep (in her bra), but somebody lets a tarantula loose in her bed. She smashes it, and it turns out to be robotic.
"I hate robot spiders," she says to the camera.

After a hard day of jumping jacks and archery, the girls sneak out to finds out what's really going on. They beat up some guards and take their robes, but the alarm goes up, and Sin Do sends a gorilla (!) out to look for them. White Star runs into a former competitor named Cindy (Linda Shayne, Screwballs) who was sent to the slave pit, where they sell the losers off to Arabs. Luckily, she escaped. Unluckily, the gorilla snatches her up. Bye, Cindy.

Some indeterminate time later, the girls are forced into gladiator fights while Sin Do sits in his office, watching on a black and white TV, stroking his snake. During a break in the action, White Star gets a message that she is to meet him for dinner. White Star wears a white fur bra for the occasion.

While she's dining with the boss, Angel and Heather are Scooby Dooing around the joint. They head down a dark hallway and end up in front of a giant iron gate where a bunch of girls are being held captive.

They eye all the horrors and vow to free the girls and kill the bad guys.
"What about the gorilla?" asks Heather.
"White Star gets dibs on the gorilla," says Angel.

Sin Do, meanwhile, tells White Star he wants her as his bride. Then he says, "Behold the Gorgon," and opens his robe. I guess his penis is called Gorgon? Anyway, a bunch of smoke pours out and White Star passes out. When she wakes up, she's naked, and a python is crawling around on her.

The next day, Sin Do decides to address the girls directly. No one's actually seen him yet. The girls are all assembled, and he comes out. He takes off his hood and reveals himself. He's the Tall Man, Angus Scrimm! He tells them an intruder has arrived, and although he was at first pissed, he's happy about it now, since said intruder brought the other Eye of the Avatar. It's Rick, that dummy. He's forced to fight Angel to the death, but they're clearly faking it, so Sin Do orders Koro to shoot them with his machine gun. Luckily, White star shows up with her bow and arrow, and mayhem ensues.

Angel chases down Sin Do and finds out his terrible secret. When she sees what it is, she does one of the greatest 'what-the-fuck' faces ever. It's a pretty awesome secret, but he takes an awfully long time explaining it, and if he doesn't kill Angel in five minutes, Satan will reclaim him. That's not really a spoiler, by the way, since Wynorski didn't offer any other characters for Lee Chuck to be. Ok, I guess this part is a spoiler: it turns out that he's only wearing an Angus Scrimm mask. He's actually a charred skeleton, and he's got an amazing laser weapon that looks just like a penis and balls.

The ending is incredible and ridiculous in, like, 17 different ways.

The climactic explosion, by the way (again, not a spoiler; all of Wynorski's movies end with explosions) is gigantic. I can only assume it was borrowed from some other movie.

In summation: Not only is this clearly Wynorski's finest work, it's probably one of the greatest movies ever made. Filled with hot girls, preposterous bad-guys, ridiculous dialogue, shoddy sets, cheap-o special effects, and a cast of cult favorites and weirdoes, there's really no way you can watch this without falling deeply and madly in love with it. It's junkfilm Nirvana, and well-worth the dig to find it. Next time you're in town, Mr. Wynorski, the drinks are on me.

Availability: The Lost Empire is available on (out of print) VHS. Also on Region 2 DVD. If somebody would get it together and release this on a proper Region 1 DVD, I'd appreciate it. Thank you in advance.

- Ken McIntyre

Bad Biology (2008)

Directed by Frank Henenlotter
Starring Charlee Danielson, Anthony Sneed
Unrated
USA

"Where's my fuckin' jimmy jig?"

Bad Biology is cult legend Frank Henenlotter's first film in 15 years. Most horror and trash film enthusiasts know him for his pioneering sex/gore epic Frankenhooker (1990), evil-brain bloodbath Brain Damage (1988) and, of course, the Basket Case series (1982-1992), a trilogy of grungy, sick-fuck flicks about Siamese twins. 60 year old Henenlotter grew up in the shadows of the Deuce, and his films have always reflected his love and admiration for grimy, 42nd St gut-spillers. Bad Biology is no exception, but it's the first one he's done without an obvious point of reference. 42nd Street is glitzy and clean now. The grindhouses are long gone. Most of the kids who will read about Bad Biology in Fangoria or on horror movie websites will likely have no idea who he is or why he's so obsessed with vaginas and penises and monster babies. Will the new generation of splatter-kids embrace this aging weirdo like we did in the 80's? Or will they just roll their eyes at the crude, stop-motion mutant penis and hold out for the next big budget slasher remake? And most importantly, will old-school sleaze-beasts like you and I dig it? Well, let's take a look at the evidence.

The first thing you may notice about Bad Biology is its distracting soundtrack, a thumping, pumping mélange of rap tracks by people like Reef the Lost Cause (who makes an appearance) and Atmosphere (featuring star Danielson). Is this an attempt on Henenlotter's part to be 'down' with the sounds of the street, ala Abel Ferrara? Maybe, but most likely it's due to the fact that hip-hop artist Rugged Man fronted the money for the project, and co-produced. Henenlotter shot a music video for the rapper, and the two found they shared a similar vision. So there's that. There's also an odd gloss to the film. Given its subject matter, the director chose to shoot Bad Biology on film, fearing it would look too pornographic on video. First-time cinematographer Nick Deeg clearly took Henenlotter's concerns seriously, because the film has a clinical, well-lit, TV movie look, quite at odds with the punk rock grime of Frank's earlier work. Otherwise, it's business as usual for Henenlotter: tits, latex monsters, stilted dialogue, and sex-gone-wrong.

Bad Biology offers up one of the most audacious opening lines ever:
"I was born with seven clitorises."
It lets you know, right from the gate, that this is going to be a very bumpy ride.
No pun intended.

We meet Jennifer (Charlee Danielson), our many-clitted heroine, a wispy blonde who haunts dingy NYC clubs at night looking for sexual prey. In the first scene, she brings home some bar-trash and fucks him with such enthusiasm that she forcefully slams his head into the floor. After she cums, she sees the pool of blood under his fractured skull. She is not upset about this. Instead of calling the police, she grabs everything in the guy's fridge and orgasms while she's scarfing down fried chicken and cole slaw. Then she sits in the bathtub and gives birth to a bloody, screaming, mutant baby. And then she splits.

We soon find out that Jennifer is some sort of mutant who requires sex on a constant basis. She also requires an internal climax, which leads to conception, a lightning-fast pregnancy, and the inevitable messy live birth of a monster, a mere two hours later. She does not know why this has happened to her - she first started menstruating at the age of 5, and it's been pretty nuts ever since - but she suspects it's God's idea. She thinks God wants to fuck her.

So she's got that going for her. She's got a day job, too. She's an edgy photographer/videographer who specializes in hip-hop videos and album covers. By day, she stages confrontational photo shoots and by night, she either finds some dude and fucks him to death, or she masturbates with scary, sparking electrical contraptions. You may, at this point, be wondering if we actually get to see the cause of her misery/ecstasy, and the answer is sorta. Around the 18 minute mark, you get a glimpse of her monster vagina - from the inside. I can only describe it as gnarly. Literally.

Jennifer is not only physically deformed, she's also mentally unstable. She explains, via narration, that much like her sexual organs, her brain processes emotions at a much higher rate then normal. This frequently leads to erratic behavior.

For example, in one scene, she meets a guy who she actually likes. It's never happened before and after they bone, she starts feeling romantic. He gets up to bail on her - he had assumed it was merely a one-night stand - and she kills him, messily, with a lamp.

Meanwhile, across town, Batz (Anthony Sneed), a guy with a giant, drug-addicted penis, tries to eat a sandwich in a deli while some kids a few tables over talk about John Holmes and his veiny 14 inch dick, which causes the peni-sensitive Batz to puke in an alley. Later on he stays up all night because his penis wants to watch porn. Then he duct tapes it down.

After spending a long night screaming at his dick, Batz is woken the next morning by a pounding at his door. Some guy shows up at and asks to use his house for a photo shoot. You can see his point - Batz lives in a bright yellow mansion. He agrees and takes his rental advance to a crack house to buy drugs. While he's there, a crazy girl - who looks remarkably like Stephanie Fondue - keeps yelling about 'Jimmy Jigs'. It is the comic highlight of the movie. It might be the highlight of the movie, period.

Bad Biology: Jimmy Jig!
by Sleazegrinder

Anyway, Batz buys a bunch of steroids or something, and shoots them into his penis. His penis likes intravenous drugs.

Afterward, he goes home and puts his penis in some sort of milking machine, and then he starts hallucinating that the girl in the porn flick he's watching is talking to him. So, Batz is pretty fucked.

The photo shoot at Batz's place is being directed by Jennifer. It involves some rap dudes interacting with topless girls wearing vagina masks. One of the girls in the shoot is pseudo-scream queen Tina Krause (Psycho Sisters, Vampire's Seduction, etc). When she's getting dressed after it's over, she notices a creepy dude watching her from around a corner. It's Batz. It is his house, after all.


For whatever reason, Tina starts teasing and flashing him, and his penis tries to break free and attack her. Luckily it's still duct taped.

Later on, everybody cleans up and splits, but Jennifer goes back into the house to get her cell phone. When she walks in, she hears somebody arguing. She opens up a door and finds Batz wrestling with his giant dick. It looks exactly like you think it does. Jennifer vamooses, but she has clearly made an important discovery.

That night, Batz brings home a hooker (dressed, interestingly, in the same purple outfit as Frankenhooker). His monster dick literally fucks her senseless. She just lies on the floor moaning for hours. He ends up carrying her outside and leaving her on the sidewalk, still in the throes of painful orgasm. Jennifer, who's been skulking around the mansion and spying on Batz the whole time, videotapes her and takes the tape home to masturbate to. The whole scene is pretty annoying. Imagine non-stop fake orgasm sounds and hip-hop thumping mixed together for ten minutes.

I'm not sure how, but the monster penis escapes from Batz's crotch and bursts through some woman's floorboards and fucks her stupid. And then he goes to another house and does it again. These scenes are shot with the same sort of primitive stop-motion effects Henenlotter used in the early 80's for Basket Case. The penis goes through four of five girls, providing us, if nothing else, with a whole lotta nudity. At one point, he attacks this melon-breasted chick(fetish queen Jelena Jensen), and it's clearly just a dude slapping her in the tits with a modified rubber dildo. Ed Wood's got nothin' on Henenlotter, man.

After getting blasted at work for the disastrous vagina face shoot, Jennifer splits and heads over to Batz's joint. She thinks that she's finally found her mate. Unfortunately, he no longer has a dick.

The end.

Well, not really. Other stuff happens. But most of it so ridiculous that you really better just see it for yourself.

So, is Bad Biology worth the 15-year wait for Henenlotter fans? Possibly. After all, his last film was the atrocious Basket Case 3 (1992), and there's no way he could make a worse movie. Given that grading curve, it's clearly a step up. Long-time cohort Gabe Bartolos is back heading the FX team, so all the slime and goo and stop-motion hijinks you remember from Basket Case is on deck here, and even though NYC is too cleaned-up to provide much atmosphere, Henenlotter brings us to as many filthy warehouses and crack dens as he can cram in. However, unlike even his most visceral movies, Bad Biology has almost no sense of humor, and without it, we are left with a ghastly, low-budget shock show about dysfunctional assholes and mutated private parts. And that's not really what I was looking for.

But hey, it's got rap. The kids love rap. So maybe the kids will love it.

Clip: Bad Biology trailer!

Availability: Bad Biology is in limited theatrical release. A region one DVD will be available in the fall of '09.

- Ken McIntyre

Say It Isn't So (2001)

Directed by James Rogers
Starring Heather Graham, Chris Klein, Sally Field
Rated R
USA

"Do you know what the Bible says about fucking your own sister? Don't."

Although it's less than ten years old, there's something oddly quaint and antiquated about Say It Isn't So. Directed by the co-producer of There's Something About Mary, it carries all the earmarks of the Farrelly Brothers' short-lived comic reign: a village of idiots, adolescent gross-outs, and most importantly, a well-meaning but bumbling hero who is constantly humiliated and mistreated by everyone around him. This sort of role usually goes to Ben Stiller, but in this case, the abuse is heaped on aw-shucks nice guy Chris Klein, the blandly handsome semi-star of American Pie. Another sign that we're dealing with a pre-Apatow comedy is the love interest: Heather Graham. It's almost laughable to think of her getting top billing in a Hollywood film at this point, but in the dark days of '01, the golden-haired, alabaster-skinned beauty was still being fast-tracked to movie star status, hustled and bustled by producers and money-men who were sure this adorable, doe-eyed, young(ish) actress was the next Sandra Bullock, if not the next Sandra Dee. That never really worked out - she pretty much peaked in the late 90's with Boogie Nights (1997) and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) - but you can still see the glimmer of glamour in her here. Even in a dumb shock-comedy about incest.

Gilbert (Chris Klein) is a small town dog catcher, a friendless orphan reduced to spending his Friday nights having awkward dinners with his boss Larry's dysfunctional family.
"Why don't you have a girlfriend?" asks the boss's tow-headed son Buddy over take-out spaghetti. "Dad says it's because you're confused about your sexuality."
"I believe the term he used was 'fagnostic'", says Larry's teenage daughter Cher (Courtney Peldon). Annoyed, Larry tries to send her to her room, but she refuses.

"She's always doing whatever she wants," Larry complains. "Like getting her ears pierced."
"I got my ears pierced because I like it," she says. Then she rips open her shirt to reveal a pair of oversized pendants hanging from her nipples.
"And I got these because I hate you."
And that's Gilbert's life, pretty much.

Gilbert starts to notice that his co-workers are all getting terrible haircuts, and after asking around, he finds out why: there's a new hairdresser in town, Josephine (Graham), and although she cannot cut hair to save her life, she's gorgeous enough to get away with butchering dudes' heads. Gilbert decides to get a haircut himself and, despite the fact that Jo cuts his ear off, he falls head over heels for her. They start dating, and, naturally, Jo wants Gil to meet her parents.

Jo's dad, Walter (Richard Jenkins) has just had a debilitating stroke. That's why Jo's moved back to town, to help her Peggy Bundy-esque mother, Valdine (Sally Field), take care of her. Despite her teased hair, tight pants, and boozy breath, Valdine imagines herself to be someone of taste and distinction, so she's not exactly thrilled when Jo brings home a lowly dogcatcher.

A word, if I may, about Sally Field. This doesn't get addressed very often, but Sally Field is totally, utterly hot. It is a combination of many things, surely: the petite, lithe frame, her ice-melting smile, the teacup-shaped breasts, those half-remembered Gidget memories, that nutty Oscar speech, that time she walked away from a plane crash without a scratch, Smokey and the Bandit, who knows what else. She was 55 years old when she made this, and she's still sexier than Graham. I know, you probably never even considered it before - the Flying Nun thing throws people off - but Sally Field = boners popping. And yes, she's done nudity. Not here, but in the late 70's. Now, back to our review in progress.

Despite Valdine's protests, Gil and Jo decide to get married, and everything's going swell until a private investigator shows up to tell Gil some very terrible news: Valdine is his mother. News spreads around town very quickly that he and Jo are having an (accidental, but still) incestuous relationship. Humiliated, Jo leaves town and moves to Beaver, Oregon, where she gets engaged to Jack (Eddie Cibrian), the town's golden boy. Gil moves in with his new mom and dad, and his lonely life goes on.

And then, one day, Leon (Jack Plotnick) shows up, looking remarkably like a younger version of Walter. Seems the detective was wrong. Leon's actually Valdine's son, not Gil. Emboldened by this stunning turn of events, our hero hightails it to Beaver to snatch up his true love before she marries that fuckin' cad Jack. But there are, of course, a few snags to deal with along the way. For one, he ends up running over a legless cropduster pilot named Dig (Orlando Jones). Luckily for him, Dig's a forgiving guy, and instead of suing him, he decides to help Gil on his quest.

And what a quest it is. You remember these kinda movies, right? Gil gets his hand stuck in a cow's ass, wears a beard made of vagina hair, gets beaten up by rednecks, gets thrown into a mental asylum, etc.


Oh, and Sarah Silverman, who plays a cop, blows a dude underwater.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, after Superbad's geek-chic revolution, stuff like this suddenly seemed terminally square, and a lot of Say It Isn't So's attempts at spit-take gags will have you rolling your eyes and wishing for a snarky Paul Rudd cameo. On the other hand, Klein's Gil is a very likable doofus, and you really do end up rooting for him.

Graham doesn't actually have much to do here, but she is very lovely, and you can see why a guy would go to such ridiculous lengths to pursue her. Jones is hilarious, and, as mentioned previously, Sally Field is quite bone-able. So everybody wins, really.

By the way: don't count Heather Graham - or the Farrelly Brothers' brand of super-stupid comedy - out just yet. Both appear to be on the verge of roaring comebacks. Graham's new movie, The Hangover, looks really dumb. And The Farrelly bros next project is the Three Stooges, which looks tragically dumb. So, you know, prepare for the Revenge of the Idiots.

Clip: Say It Isn't So trailer

Availability: Say It Isn't So is available on DVD.

- Ken McIntyre