Takin' It Off Out West (1995)

Directed by Ed Hansen
Starring Julie Strain, Buck Flower, John Goff
Rated R
USA

"Your condition is keeping us from getting rich. Why don't you just try playing with yourself?"

Sadly, this is the final installment in Ed Hansen's Takin' It Off trilogy. Not so sadly, it's probably the best one. It's still not good, mind you, it's just not as eyeball-abusingly bad as Takin' It Off or Takin' It All Off. So that's something.

It's the Wild West. Well, it's one of those low-rent Wild West backlots, really. John F Goff resurrects his flouncy Elliot role from Takin' It All Off, only now he's Virgil, and he's leading a trio of out-of-work strippers (Anastasia Brown, Kimberly Knight, and un-credited girl number 3) to some mining town in the desert via stagecoach. They stop at a ghost town for water (classically not the best place to find any), where they proceed to strip down and frolic. They meet the longhaired marshal (of a ghost town?), Quiet Earp (Dallas Austin), and make themselves at home. Earp is supposed to help them safely make it to the mining town.

Meanwhile, Julie Strain, dressed up like some sort of glamazon American Indian, skulks around with a bow and arrow, while Buck Flower, as Pappy, and his idiot son Pink (Anthony Mitchum), watch from the bushes. Apparently Pappy has recently sold his horses for a 'Wishing Stone'. Pappy and son both wear eye patches. So does Pappy's other son, Purple (Jeff Beasely). So they might be pirates, not cowboys.

The Marshal's name is Quiet Earp, by the way, because he doesn't say much. Also, Pappy's sons are named Pink and Purple because he already had a dog named Blue. Also, I'm guessing, because both are penis colors. Haha.

In one gutbusting scene, Purple rides up to the mining camp on an invisible horse. Also, there's a classic Ed Hansen scene early on where Virgil, wearing a chef's hat, attempts to make dinner outside. One of the girls says, "I feel like somebody's watching us. It's a different feeling from when I take off my clothes."
And then the other girl knocks into her, and she falls down. This is accentuated with Hanna Barbara boinks. She gets up and calls the other girl a slut, and they start to wrestle, with Virgil between them. And then fiddle music plays. Hansen never realized the sound cues make things less funny, not more.

Then Julie Strain smears on some war paint.

The "guvmint" is paying the strippers $500 a day to entertain the sad-sacks at the mine. Pappy's plan is to kidnap the girls and hold them for ransom until the government pays them off. It seems like a solid enough plan, but he is somewhat stymied by the fact that Pink, whenever he sees a beautiful woman, starts doing backflips and making boinking noises like a flipped-out Daffy Duck. This makes stealth-y operations like kidnapping nearly impossible.

Under the cover of darkness, Pappy and his sons creep into the camp. "Wake up, Marshal. Time to die," Pappy says, brandishing his pistol. "Nothing personal."

The noise wakes up the strippers. One of them says "Somebody do something!" which makes her boob fall out which, in turn, makes Pink go into boinging backflip convulsions. This thwarts their plans, and they are, sadly, forced to retreat.

Meanwhile, Julie Strain sharpens her arrow.

Free of marauders once more, the girls take soapy baths. Pink and Purple use the opportunity to sneak back in, but instead of shooting the marshal (who is suggestively shaving a plank of wood), they just have sex with the girls.

Ands that's it for quite some time, just softcore fucking, Julie Strain working on her weapons, and Pappy getting drunk.

And then Virgil accidentally shoots his dick off.

Meanwhile, at the mining camp (actually just a patch of mud), the men are airing their grievances at Marshmallow Malone (Hardy Oliver). They paid good money for strippers, dammit, and they've yet to show up. All they have to amuse themselves with is Magic's (Jimmy Sarno) lame-ass card tricks.

Magic: Wanna see my new card trick?
Cowboy: Magic, you can take those cards and shove them up your ass.
Magic: How'd you know that was my trick? I only came up with it last night!

Marshmallow sends his tomboy daughter, Catastrophe Kate (Kathy Pasmore), to fetch the strippers. Kate is dressed in layers of what looks like burlap, and her face is coated in dirt. She gets to the town and berates the girls for being tramps and floozies. They, on the other hand, are unsure whether she's a boy or girl. Five minutes later - after Kate falls head over heels for the monosyllabic marshal - she's taking a soapy outdoor shower, giant silicone melons glistening in the sun, her face now miraculously slathered in make-up.

Pink and Purple attempt another raid, and Kate takes off on her horse. Topless.

Meanwhile, Julie Strain takes off her leather bra and paints her nipples.

Pink and Purple find out they're not Pappy's kids after all ("We're Peckers, not Putzes") and chase Pappy out of town. Everybody clops on over to the mining camp, where the men finally get their strip show. As in all Ed Hansen productions, it goes on forever. And then, for whatever reason, Magic does a striptease.
And then Julie Strain, who it turns out is not an Indian at all, just a pissed-off white chick, shoots Pappy in the ass with an arrow, and becomes Mayor of the ghost town. The end.

Alright, so on the plus side, the new hillbilly Takin' It Off theme is less annoying than the previous disco version, and the girls in this one are far better looking than the over-the-hill two-dollar strippers from the first two films. Everything else, however - Flower's drunken lurching, the childish gags, the sound-effects album abuse - is prime Hansen. The Wild West theme just adds that extra slug of lunacy to the proceedings. Seems kinda nuts to leave jaw dropping force-of-nature Julie Strain out in the woods for the entire movie, but I'm sure Ed had his reasons. At any rate, it will take you about ten seconds to figure out whether Takin' It Off Out West is for you or not, but odds lean toward the latter.

Ed followed this up, amazingly enough, with a zombie movie.

Availability: Takin' It Off Out West is available on VHS.

- Ken McIntyre

Cougar Club (2007)

Directed by Christopher Duddy
Starring Jason Jurman, Warren Kole, Kaley Cuoco
Rated R
USA

"What is that?"
"That, my friend, is a gold lame banana hammock."

First off, I should point out the obvious: if you use the word "cougar" when describing older women who prefer the company of younger men, then please, stop reading. Just get the fuck out of here. This "cougar" business is so obnoxious that it can really only appeal to college-age power-pukers, so how this film managed to get produced - and with an actual budget, and with actual actors - is seriously beyond me. But here it is, and it's about girls, and its got adorable Kaley Cuoco in it, so what the hell. Let's get nuts.

Spence Holmes (Jason Jurman) has just graduated from business school. He's got the perfect girlfriend, Amanda (Cuoco), a great job already lined up, and a bright future ahead of him. But he's also got a rascally best friend, Hogan, (Warren Kole, coasting like a poor man's Neil Patrick Harris) who loves fucking older women and, if possible, ruining Holmes' day.

It is not an easy task, identifying with a protagonist who has a perfect life handed to him, so when we find Spencer at a lavish graduation party hosted by his future boss, Stan Birnbaum (Norm Crosby, a very long way from the Phyllis Diller Show), you almost want to see him crash and burn. And so he does. Before that, however, we get to meet the only likable character in the entire movie: Casey Dixon (Nicole Rayburn).

So Casey, a wispy blonde, waltzes up to our two main fuck-faces.
"Well, I lost the bet," she says to Spencer.
"What bet?" Hogan asks.
"I bet Spencer you wouldn't graduate," she says. "Now I have to show him my tits."
And she does. It's pretty amazing.
"Do you want to touch them?" She asks Spencer.
He does.
Casey Dixon was fucking awesome.

The downward spiral kicks in soon after, though. During Spencer's speech, the wall of the boathouse comes crashing down, revealing Hogan and their new boss's wife, Edith (Faye Dunaway), fucking on the floor. Needless to say, they lose that job and end up working for a screwy law office where a fat bald guy makes them clean his toes. Parenthetically, not only is there an abundance of foot fetish gags in this movie, there's also a lot of boner humor. At one point, there's a scene with a cat is licking one Hogan's morning wood.

Anyway, the law firm is run by Mr. Stack (Joe Mantegna, seriously slumming). Mr. Stack sends Spence and Hogan out on various dirty deeds. They have to slash one guy's tires so he misses a court date, and then they have to hand Stack's estranged wife her divorce papers.

So they slash the douchebag's tires, and head over to see wifey. When they get there, they are greeted by wrestler/freak of nature/plastic surgery disaster Chyna. She's Stack's sister. Or possibly brother. Hard to tell. At any rate, there's a sex toy party under way, hosted by Edith, who is now sexually liberated, thanks to Hogan. She suggests that he get together a bunch of his friends to have sex with her and her friends. Meanwhile, Stacks' wife, Daniella (Polish beauty Izabella Scorupo) shows up, and she happens to be the blonde chick in the office that gave Spence a boner the day before all this bullshit. So that's happening.

And so, the "Cougar Club" starts up, and things are going ok. Hogan turns the fuck-buddy scheme into an actual business, charging guys a thousand dollars to join, and then hosting sex parties. Spencer is into it as well, but Amanda wants him to move in with her, and he wants to bone the boss's soon-to-be ex-wife. So it's complicated, man.

Somewhere around this point in the film, there's a scene where Amanda's having a serious discussion with Spencer about their future, and there's a gardener in the background watering the lawn with a hose. He's holding said hose so that it looks like he's pissing. They stay on to this shot for at least five minutes. Five minutes for a the-hose-makes-it-look-like-I'm-peeing gag. Spence ditches Amanda and then gets his parents to leave the house for the evening to he and Hogan can throw a "Cougar Party".
Various party hijinks ensue, including one scene where Chyna makes one of the kids jams her foot into a jar of jelly and then eat the mush off her toes.

So all of this fucking is going on, and then Spence's dad suddenly comes home with Mr. Stack to discuss getting Spence into Yale, and he has to run around closing curtains and slamming doors so they don't notice all the wife-banging going on outside. And then Amanda shows up, and it all goes to hell. Oblivious to the anguish he's putting his fiancé through, Spence tries to convince Daniella to stay. He just got finished fucking her.

"Spencer, are you having a relationship with this old lady?" Amanda whines, which seemed a little rude to me. I can understand her frustration, though. This kid Spencer sucks.

So, some interminable time later, while Spence and Hogan are out on some reconnaissance mission (it involves the two of them wearing camouflage in a tree, while they take pictures of two chicks frolicking in a pool with a musclehead), Mr. Stack finds Hogan's files on the Cougar Club. He finds them because Hogan left them in an expanding folder with "Cougar Club" written on it in magic marker. Not surprisingly, given that the kid is fucking his wife, Mr. Stack calls the cops, and an undercover mustache guy shows up and arrests them.

So they get arrested, and it looks like they're fairly fucked, but one of their Club buddies just passed the bar, and agrees to represent them. One of the firm guys threatens to blow up Spencer's car, so they figure they can frame him for making terrorist threats. Eventually it all comes together, and they slither out of their jam. Spence moves in with Amanda, and everyone lives happily every after, except the fuckers that got arrested.

And then Hogan shows up. Apparently, Spence loves him more, so he leaves Amanda in her wedding dress.

There's a twist ending. It's so fucking stupid it's not worth repeating.

Listen, I'm not saying you have to be a dickhead to like this movie, but...well, I guess that is what I'm saying. Cougar Club clearly has superior production values, especially for a project this throwaway, but it is soulless and unfunny, and a supreme waste of talented character actors like Moriarty and Mantegna. They even managed to make the otherwise lighter-than-air Cuoco seem overbearing and shrewish. Really, the only reason to watch this is for Casey Dixon, and she's only onscreen for 40 seconds. They should have made a movie about her instead.

Availability: Cougar Club is available on DVD.

- Ken McIntyre

Just One of the Girls (1993)

AKA Anything for Love
Directed by Michael Keusch
Starring Corey Haim, Nicole Eggert
Rated R
Canada

"This is all your fault. You wouldn't let him play with guns."

Further proof that it was still the 80's in Canada until at least 1997, Just One of the Girls is a gender-flipped take on 1985's boy-is-girl classic Just One of the Guys, only this one substitutes Joyce Hyser's amazing rack for Corey Haim in a cheerleader outfit. Crazy Canucks. Four years past his last (modest) hit Dream a Little Dream, and clearly suffering from Two Coreys separation anxiety, a 22-year old Haim stars as...well, Corey Haim, really. His character, Chris, is amiable but dimwitted, just like the real thing. He's obsessed with keyboards and the horrible 80's synthpop they're capable of (again, just like Haim), and Nicole Eggert is his love interest. I can imagine the pitch:
"It's the Corey Haim Story, only with cross-dressing!"

You know, if that kid stayed off drugs, he would've never made movies like this.

Just One of the Girls is so alarmingly childish that you really wonder whether it was originally written for actors ten years younger. The story - Chris vs. the neighborhood bully - seems like something out of a Little Rascals episode. Dad gives his spindly son boxing lessons in the basement, but, lacking the guts to take the lumbering giant in the Metallica shirt on, he opts for more drastic measures: borrowing his sister's clothes and dressing in drag to safely get through the school's front door every morning. In what crazy universe (besides the 80's teen movie universe, of course) would this be a viable option to a bully situation?

Surprisingly, given that he looks like Corey Haim in lipstick, Chris manages to saunter right past his tormentor wearing a wig and a polka dot dress. Not surprisingly, given the confused sexuality of most high school bullies, Kurt-the-asshole (Cameron Bancroft) finds himself powerfully attracted to this mysterious new boy-girl.
"Give me a week," he says to his cronies, after Chris/Chrissy rebuffs his advances.
So, that's creepy.

Chris has just transferred to this new school, so no one, save for his childhood chum Dan (Gabe Khouth) actually knows who he is. After all, his name is "Chris", right? That could go either way. Never mind that his school records would clearly mark him as a male, or that it's fucking obvious he's a boy. Chris just wills himself into the land of the ladies, and so it is done.He makes fast friends with cheerleader Marie (Nicole Eggert) and then tries to negotiate his way out of gym class. Dan forges a doctor's note, so his gym teacher, Ms Glatt (Rachel Hayward, Breaking All the Rules) puts him on locker-room mop duty.

Crazily, given the squeaky-clean proceedings thus far, the locker room soon fills up with nude girls, providing us with several sets of perky boobs as well as a few flashes of full-frontal. Chris can't take it, and promptly passes out. I don't blame him, really. Nothing is fresher than Canadian cantaloupes.

Marie encourages Chris/Chrissy to join the cheerleading squad. Since Chris wants to bone Marie, he agrees, and they start spending a lot of time together. Turns out, Marie is Kurt-the-bully's sister, so that's happening, as well. At one point, Chris is over Marie's house studying when Kurt barges in and starts hitting on the drag-princess.
"Kurtis, Blow!" Says Marie. It's the funniest line in the film, by far.

So, then you get to watch Corey Haim shave his legs. But, right after, you get to watch the girls' gym class jog in very bouncy slow motion. So it's a pain/pleasure sort of segment. Ms Glatt notices the thin line of drool on Chris/Chrissy's lower lip, which means either the jig is nearly up, or that she thinks there's a teenage lesbian in her ranks. She schedules a meeting after class to figure out what's going on, and he accidentally admits he's a boy, but then conjures up a backstory about trying on his sister's dress when he was 11, and the confusing mess his life's been ever since. Teach, being the understanding type, offers to counsel him, and to keep his identity secret. He's no longer allowed in the girl's locker room, however.

And so on. Dad finds a bra in Chris's room, and thinks he's gay. Ms Glatt is sure he's a mixed-up transvestite. Kurt wants to fuck him, regardless of what he's packing under his skirt. Marie has no idea her best friend is a dude. Clearly, this flimsy house of cards cannot stand. One night at cheerleading camp (!), Chris/Chrissy tries to kiss Marie, and things quickly devolve into low-grade mayhem from there. Don't worry, though. It's Canada. They're quite liberal up there, so everything works out in the end. In fact, Alanis Morrissette even shows up to jam with Haim!

There are exactly two reasons to watch this lame movie: the aforementioned shower scene (neatly clipped out of TV prints, which is where most people saw this), and Nicole Eggert in a cheerleader outfit.

I imagine it might be some sort of cult item among teenage transvestites, but T&A fans will just walk away woozy. At one point, when a justifiably pissed-off Marie faces off against her former best friend-turned sleazeball dude, Haim looks at the ground and says, "Maybe I'll get it right in the next life."

So far, the next life still looks like his best bet.
I'll keep rooting for him, though. He is my favorite Corey.

Availability: Just One of the Girls is available on DVD.


- Ken McIntyre

Cannibal Hookers (1987)

AKA I Will Dance on Your Grave, Volume 3
Directed by Donald Farmer
Starring Annette Munro, Amy Waddell, Sheila Best
Unrated
USA

"This sorority has a reputation on campus, and I just hope you're able to live up to it."
"I think so. After all, how hard is it to act like a drunken bitch?"

First off, this is not a movie about cannibals. Nor is it about hookers. It's about big hair, and big dreams. To be fair, it's not even a movie at all, really, it's an hour long home-video, part of that first awful wave of horror-themed, shot-on-video junk that cluttered video store shelves in the 80's, a shoddy, eyeball-bruising wave that included sheer lunacy like Boardinghouse (1982), Killing Spree (1987), and 555 (1988). It was in these cut-and-run days that Tennessee-born filmmaker Donald Farmer first forged his empire, crafting no-budget tits n' blood epics like this, Demon Queen (1986), and Scream Dream (1989), and selling the VHS tapes via ads placed in horror-zines like Draculina. Despite a near constant stream of bad press, both for dubious business practices and dubious product, Farmer never stopped believin', and never stopped doling out sleazy SOV garbage. He's still doing it. Cannibal Hookers, however, is still, not surprisingly, his most well known work.

Lobo (Gary Levinson), a mute cannibal maniac, chomps on a chunk of bloody (or perhaps barbequed) meat in a cellar full of chains and weapons. Camilla (Diana Cruz), a blonde woman with severe eyeliner and S&M garb, tells him to prepare for the evening's entertainment.

Cut to: A skinny, tiny-titted chick with teased hair (Sky Nicholas) strolling down Hollywood Boulevard. She walks into a dark, threadbare bar, where she's quickly picked up by a john (Drew Goderis). He brings her to some rathole with a stained mattress, and they commence to get frisky. She excuses herself and comes back topless and armed with a hatchet. And then she bites off his finger and eats it.

Cut to: Hillary (Amy Waddell) and DeeDee (Annette Munro), two big-haired college girls head off to pledge a sorority, Gamma-Zeta-Beta, the "Sleaziest sorority in the state," according to DeeDee. Stephanie (Priscilla Barnes doppelganger Sheila Best), the president of the sorority, tells them that they have to dress up like hookers on Sunset Boulevard and pick up two johns for their initiation. They agree, but once they get outside, DeeDee has second thoughts.

"Maybe a sorority's not such a good idea," she offers. "Couldn't we just find a frat house that needs two little sisters?"
"Little Sisters?" Snorts Hillary. "For your information, being little sisters holds about as much social status as being gang-raped by nazis."
What?!

Cut to: Another hooker (Kristie Etzold) picking up a couple idiots with child molester mustaches. She brings them back to some crumbling mansion, and after stripping naked and sloppily humping one of the guys on an ugly checkered couch, she bails so that Lobo can choke the fucker to death.

Then he brings a cup of blood down to the basement, where his vampire queen - or whatever she is - sleeps topless, holding a plastic skull.
She wakes up and gulps the blood down.
"How nice," she hisses. "Breakfast in bed."

Cut to: Hollywood Book and Poster, where Hillary and DeeDee are shopping for hooker outfits. A poster store seems like a dumb place to look for such items, but whatever. It's a good excuse to ogle the awesome merchandise.

Cut to: Saturday night. The girls have their slutty outfits on, and after a pretty bitchin' tour of the strip and all it's X-rated theaters, Stephanie drops them off in the sleazy side of town. She gives them a few pointers ("Avoid vice, and charge extra for blowjobs,") and hands them an address to bring their customers to.

The girls are, naturally, nervous about the prank, but luckily Hillary's boyfriend Bruce (Tommy Carrano) and his goony friends show up. Since Stephanie doesn't know who his friends are, Hillary figures they can just bring Dwight (Matt Borlenghi) and Darrell (Don Trimborn) back.

They all head to the address Stephanie gave them: the crumbling castle/mansion. They are greeted by Lobo and the goth-y cannibal hookers. Hillary and DeeDee have had about as much of this bullshit as they're gonna take, so they bail, taking Darrell with them. Dwight, however, thinks he's hit some sexual jackpot, so he sticks around. Not surprisingly, he ends up with his heart torn out and eaten.

The next morning, Camilla calls Darrell and tells him that Dwight had too much to drink last night, and wants him to come pick him up. Darrell happens to be on his way to have lunch with DeeDee, so he picks her up first, and they zip over to the cannibal house. In a bizarre turn of events, Darrell gets turned into a zombie, and DeeDee ends up chained to wall, her bright yellow Buckwheat shirt torn wide open, the now-ghoulish Darrell inching towards her.

Cut to: actually, I'm leaving a bunch of stuff out, but it's not all that important. The important bit is that Stephanie throws a party for the new sorority sisters, and zombie DeeDee shows up, looking exactly like Courtney Love. So that's pretty funny. She chomps Hillary on the neck, and she turns into a zombie-cannibal girl, too.

How's it all end? Badly. How else?

Considered laughably cheap and amateurish when it was initially released, this hopelessly dated romp now has considerable kitsch appeal. It might even be a low-level classic, at this point. If you weren't there and wonder what 1987 really looked like, this is the perfect time capsule for that ridiculous era. Younger sleaze-beasts will be both pleased and amused to find out that hookers, metal chicks, and sorority girls pretty much dressed the same back then.

Surely, as the days of Aquanet and Casio slip further into time's incinerator, the legend of Cannibal Hookers will only grow in stature. 100 years from now, it'll probably be a holy relic. The inevitable digitally remastered version will surely look amazing.

As to its bizarre alternate title, a fly-by-night distro called Eden snatched up a bunch of these SOV flicks during the early days of DVD and released splotchy, washed-out, budget dupes in a 'series' called I Dance On Your Grave. Other titles included Killing Spree, Farmer's own Savage Vengeance (1993), and Lethal Victims (AKA W.A.R., Women Against Rape, 1987).

Farmer is still at it, of course. 2006's Dorm of the Dead amped-up the star power with appearances from Tiffany Shepis and Miss Howard Stern, Andrea Ownbey. In classic Farmer form, it featured blood splashing walls, murky camerawork, and hysterical non-acting. You may scoff at the man's shaky technical expertise, but you do have to marvel at his rock-solid consistency. I have no doubt the 50 year old Farmer will be churning out witless splatter-porn 20 years from now, and it will still look exactly like this. His latest film, Chainsaw Cheerleaders, is currently making the festival rounds. Call me a glutton for punishment, but it looks fuckin' awesome.

As to the hookers themselves, well, they've all moved on. But I'll bet half of them still have the hair.

Availability: Cannibal Hookers is available on DVD.

- Ken McIntyre

Hookers Inc. (2006)

Directed by Tim Pingel
Starring Joy Somers, Camille Solari, Shay Astar
Rated PG-13
USA

"Are you discriminating against a perfectly good epileptic hooker?"

Wholly improvised comedies are being churned out a rapid pace these days. Dunno why. Maybe screenwriters are dicks. It's alright though, because when you've got the right crew of quick-witted, with-it actors, they can create something funnier than the most tightly-scripted, well-rehearsed Hollywood production. You do, however, need a certain amount of polish and continuity to keep things together, or it all turns into Youtube-y mush. The 95% improvised Hookers Inc, shot on a shoestring over a six-month period in 2006, rides that fine line between genius and amateur. It's episodic and ill-planned and would probably have made more sense as a serious of loosely connected webisodes. Luckily, it's also got the greatest half-naked duo since the Crazy Babysitter Twins in Starship and Starshyp, so cohesion is a minor quibble.

Director Tim Pingel apparently spent his first couple years of film-school working a side-job as an escort driver, and he's used his experiences in the sex-trade as a taking-off point for Hookers Inc.

The story is about two fledgling filmmakers, Slim (Pingel) and Stew (Matthew Dowling, a sort-of supersized Seth Rogan/Dana Snyder mash-up) with a strip club habit, who snag a job driving escorts around for a crazy-fro'd, low-level pimp named Hollowpoint (Kareem Elseify, RIP). It's never really explained how their arrangement works, but apparently if they bring Hollowpoint enough money, he'll introduce them to a foreign-backed movie producer who can green-light their project, an interracial porn/action epic called Black Cock Down. They figure if they meet the right girls, they can form their own escort company, and make even more dough. They already have one hooker on the payroll, Apple Martini (Shay Astar), but are looking to expand their business.

One night at Jumbo's Clown Room, the boys meet the worst strippers in the world, Starship (Joy Somers) and Starshyp (Camille Solari). So inept they only make ten bucks an hour, the two bubble-headed dancers attempt a two-for-one grinding session on the men, but midway through, Starshyp hits the floor and starts flopping around a like a fish out of water.
"She's having seizure," shrugs Starship.
Slim is, naturally, alarmed. "Is there something I should do?"
"Naw," she says. "Just let her ride the wave."
Naturally, Stew and Slim think they've stumbled onto a goldmine. I don't know why they think this, but they do. They hire the girls as 'massage therapists'. The strippers are, of course, too stupid to realize that 'massage' is code for sex, so they agree. They make plans for their first training session.

First, though, a quick flashback to Stew's first gig, driving Apple to a session with a fast-talking bald dude. He invites them both in, and sends Stew off to the rec room to watch TV. Apple smokes cigarettes and reads a copy of Little Women while the john bangs her from behind. Halfway through, Stew interrupts them to ask the guy if he's got the director's cut of Apocalypse Now in his DVD collection.
"Naw," the guy says, mid stroke. "But I've got Saturday Night Fever 1 and 2."

Getting back to the story, Slim attempts training his two new hires, but it's pretty tough going.
"Ok, he says, "Pretend you're on the phone and the guy asks for sex."
"Fuck you, pervert!" Starshyp yells into the phone. And then she hangs up.
Apple refuses to work with these idiots, and quits in a huff.

Eventually, the boys decide to just send them out cold to see what happens. They book a session with a John named, erm, John (Lightfield Lewis, Revenge of the Nerds TV Pilot, and Juliette's brother), but they don't even get in the elevator before Starshyp starts spazzing out.
"She's having a seizure," Stew points out. "You think guys are really gonna pay $400 for these two?"

John is slightly disturbed when he opens his door to find two disheveled hookers - one clutching a large plastic zebra - and two slacker pimps.
"I only asked for one girl," he says.
Stew barters with him to include both girls.
"So, she's $200, and we'll throw the other one in for, like, a deuce," he says.
"Plus, you get the giraffe," says Slim, pointing to the zebra.
"You get the giraffe, a rub and a tug."
He reluctantly agrees. A half-hour of fumbling around, seizures, and lotion abuse later, everybody ends up crying.

The next gig is at a 'swanky' hotel with a 'high-profile' client, also named John (Richmond Arquette, Patricia's brother), a greasy fucker in a white suit jacket.
"Are you on Miami Vice?" Asks Starshyp.
John pulls out a pile of cocaine, and then explains how he wants everything to go down.
"You blow me," he says to Starshyp, "while you strip."
"We don't give blowjobs," Starshyp explains, her nose buried in powder.
"But I really like your coke."
The girls freak out when John demands sex. Starship locks herself in the bathroom and calls the boys. Starshyp, meanwhile, has a seizure on the floor. John attempts to utilize the spasms to his sexual advantage, but then Stew and Slim burst in with plastic cap guns to save the day.

Etc.

There's a few more disastrous dates - including a particularly weird evening with Kato Kaelin - but eventually, the girls start earning some money. When they finally get a few grand together, Stew and Slim go to visit Hollowpoint at his house, where he's having sex with two women while playing X Box. The guys explain all the solid work they've done, and remind Mr. Point that he promised them a meeting with the film producer if they succeeded.

"I'm gonna let you have it, I'm gonna let the foreign money come your way," a pleased Hollowpoint tells them. "It's gonna be raining ducats and dollars and fuckin' coins and cadadadots."

After meeting their producer, a madwoman named Tess (Jennifer Cook), and their mealy-mouthed cameraman, Sac Boy (James Anderson), Slim and Stew begin auditioning the cast for Black Cock Down. There's a couple of fake porn actresses, Chita Bonjour (Noelle Lee Kane) and Dusty Rose (Sheila Lussier, Glitch) and one real one (Hayley Rivers) who all get choice roles. And, of course, Starship and Starshyp get a reading as well. It goes badly.
Starshyp stares at the blank sheet of paper Slim gives her.
"Can I, um...can I get one with the words on it?"
"Turn it over."
"Oh."
Naturally, she has a seizure midway through the audition. Frustrated, Starship demands they have a therapy session to work this seizure bullshit out. It is conducted in a room that looks suspiciously like a stage with a couch on it.
"I can see you two are a team," says the therapist. "Lots of teams have problems. Can you name any?"
"Joannie and Chachi," says Starshyp. "Also the Ringling Brothers."
The therapy session is going pretty well, until the doctor tells Starshyp to give Starship an imaginary rope that connects to her heart. Starshyp chokes her with it. And then she wakes up. It was all a dream. They got the parts!

And so, shooting begins. Well, first all the actresses fuck the crew for bigger roles, and then shooting begins.

They nail the key action sequences, but the film's star, Larry Hung (John Davidson) is having trouble getting sufficiently excited for his sex scenes. Luckily, Stew and Slim were thinking ahead, and hired a fluffer, ex porn star Misty Canyons (Jeannie Roshar) to help him out. Unluckily, she's recently become a born again Christian.
"He died for you," she chastises, while stroking away on Larry, "The least you can do is talk about him while you're getting a handjob."

Look, I don't know what a good half of this movie was about. That's bound to happen when you're just making shit up as you go along. That's immaterial, though. The important thing is, with Starship and Starshyp, Pingel and Solari and Somers have created one seriously dynamic duo. These two are like bacon, man. They just make anything better. Too bad they're not real. I would definitely pay $200 for an hour's worth of their gibberish and antics.

Once this DVD starts making the rounds, I expect reams of Starshyp and Starship fan-fiction, if not action figures and lunch boxes. A sequel seems, sadly, quite unlikely, but most of the cast reunited for the upcoming Boston Girls. If it's anything like the Boston girls I know, expect mayhem.

Hookers Inc is available on DVD.

Clip: Hookers Inc trailer!

- Ken McIntyre