Hanna D: The Girl From Vondel Park

Directed by Rino Di Silvestro
Starring Ann Gisel Glass, Karin Schubert, Tony Lombardo
Unrated
Italy

"It's not enough that you gave me the Clap?"

Directed by notorious cheese dealer Rino Di Silvestro (Women in Cell Block 7, Werewolf Woman), Hanna D is an amusingly overwrought riff on Christiane F, the '81 movie based on the '62 youth-gone-wild autobio about a Euro-teen flipped out on heroin. Starring wispy Ann Gisel Glass (Rats: Night of Terror) as the wayward waif, this lurid melodrama drags wide-eyed Hanna down the thorny path to Loserville with a remarkable lack of subtlety, humiliating and degrading her at every turn until she is reduced to a quivering, self-destructing mess of abused flesh.

And then it turns into a love story.

Hanna lives with her mother (Karin Schubert, Black Emanuelle) in a relatively fancy apartment. Mom used to be some sort of dancer/beauty queen, so now she spends all her spare time guzzling hooch, pawing at her sagging boobs in the mirror, and blaming her teenage daughter for everything.

Mom really does drink an enormous amount of booze, so Hanna is forced to blow guys on trains just to pay for it all. She's also started dabbling in intoxicants herself - mostly coke nipped from rich clients. Even though her mom knows exactly what she's up to, whenever Hanna heads home, she strips off the slut-ware before she goes in, always presenting herself as a fresh-faced, flat-chested innocent to her soused mother. That ruse cannot hold much longer, however, because Hanna is quickly sinking into the muck of the heroin underground. She hooks up with an aggro pimp who gets her hooked on the hard stuff and forces her to make porn to support her habit and his lifestyle.

One day while riding the crosstown bus, Hanna meets a nice guy, for once. She's sorta beyond the nice guy phase at this point, but she accepts his offer to make her dinner and ends up having a pleasant little date with the young gentleman. And then she abruptly splits, because there's drugs to do and penises to suckle for cash. Eventually, our bedraggled heroine gets tossed into jail and, while kicking the lethal cocktail of drugs swimming around in her system, adopts all manner of strange behaviors, including tap-faucet-sucking and slurping her own blood. Naturally, this freaked out her roommate something awful.

While she's waiting for her hearing, the still-twitchy Hanna is offered a hit from one of the other jailbirds, who had the stuff jammed up her ass. By the way, they graphically show that bit. It's pretty alarming.
"No one could guess the things we have hidden in our asses," says the girl with the heroin in her ass.

Hanna eventually gets out and goes back to her life of sin, but her true love Axel has not forgotten her. Can he make a respectable woman out of this "Dope and Syphilis filled" whore?

Maybe. Seems like a long shot, though.

Hanna D manages to somehow seem like sleazy grindhouse trash and a ham-fisted, G-rated, TV Movie-of-the-Week at the same time. Even when it's deep in exploito-scuzz territory - hooker beating, asshole extracting, puke-kissing, drunk mom fondling - a heavy morality play vibe lingers over the proceedings. It's like a long buildup to a bloody Charles Bronson revenge spree that never happens.

While it may be missing the bone-cracking justice of similarly themed films, Hanna D does, however, have its own demented charm, thanks largely to a going-for-it cast that never treats the preposterous story as anything less than a Shakespearean tragedy. Even in this (largely unobtrusive) dubbed edition, it's obvious that Gisel Glass figured she had the role of a lifetime on her hands, and she is pretty fearless here, going from lovesick high school girl to dopesick demon-bitch in the blink of an eye.

Hopelessly weird, wrong-headed, overheated and undercooked, Hanna D: The Girl from Vondel Park is well worth a look for Euro-sleaze fans and 80's hooker-gone-wrong enthusiasts.

Hanna D is available on DVD in a pristine new print from Severin, complete with an illuminating (and half-mad) interview with Director Di Silverstro.

- Ken McIntyre

The Pig Keeper's Daughter (1972)

Directed by Bethel Buckalew
Starring Terry Gibson, Peggy Church, Gina Paluzzi
Rated R
USA

"I kinda like rough lookin' girls."

Directed by softcore mogul Bethel Buckalew and produced by exploitation giant Harry Novak, The Pig Keeper's Daughter takes a sliver-thin premise - the salesman and the farmer's daughter joke - and stretches it out to feature length with a seemingly endless series of dusty, farm-bound sex romps. Cheap, brainless, gleefully grimy, and littered with buoyant double-D's, The Pig Keeper's Daughter was clearly influenced by Russ Meyer. In fact, if ol' Russ was a moonshine guzzling yokel with holes in his shoes and a two-dollar budget, this is exactly the movie he'd make.

Skinny, carrot-topped podunk Moonbeam (Terry Gibson) wishes her pet pig Lord Hamilton was a little taller, so he could take her to the movies. Until that fateful day, the lonely Pigfarm girl is content to let Hammy nuzzle her denim-clad crotch until local stud Jasper (John Keith, A Scream in the Streets) shows up to bone her in the hay. And that's Moonbeam's life, pretty much.

Jasper doesn't even like Moonbeam all that much. Truth be told, his heart belongs to willowy Pretty Patty (Peggy Church, A Touch of Sweden), but she won't put out. She will, however, happily masturbate on the barn roof while she watches Jasper and Moonbeam rut like...well, like pigs, pretty much.
A happy-go-lucky panty salesman zooms into this sleepy glen to peddle his wares, singing a cheerful ditty as goes. He happens upon a poor soul who's been hogtied to his own ankles by a thieving hitchhiker and forced to walk along the rode bent over in a very compromising position. The salesman pulls over to find out what happened, and the man tells him his sorry tale. "Well," says the salesman, pulling down his zipper, "I guess this is your unlucky day."

Sometime after raping the poor bastard on the side of the road, Mr. Salesman picks up a busty hitchhiker, who turns out to be a prostitute. At first he scoffs at her advances - he did just fuck a guy, after all - but then she takes off her t-shirt, letting her ample milkjugs bob in the breeze, and he cannot resist. They pull off to some nearby woods and have very awkward 70's sex in the grass. Once they're finished, the girl demands $50, twice as much as they agreed on. When the salesman balks, she says, "Hey man, I'm only fifteen. You wouldn't want anyone to know you raped a fifteen year old girl, would you?"

So he pays her. Of course, even a cursory glance would tell you she's closer to 30, but whatever. That guy sorta deserved it.

The salesman ends up at the pig farm. He tries to sell his powders and lotions to Moonbeam's top-heavy mom, Molly (Gina Palluzi), but she keeps slipping out of clothes and convincing him to just give her stuff until they're both naked and he's out of things to sell. And then they fuck, awkwardly, on the sofa. This whole movie is about awkward sex. He's pretty happy with the way things are going until he finally pops, and then he's just bummed that he gave away all his stuff. Molly, however, has a proposition for him, and if he plays his cards right, he may just get all his garbage back.
Meanwhile, Jasper goes to visit Pretty Patty. Well, first he beats up her little brother and rolls him around in the mud. Then he visits her. She tells him to wait until she changes into her new outfit, which turns out to be an eye-bleeding, midriff-baring, blue daisy-festooned monstrosity. Strangely, this works for Jasper. They decide to consummate their love on a haystack. He promises to only put it in a little. Ladies, never believe that line.

So, with Jasper and Patty rutting away, Moonbeam is free to smooch with Lord Hamilton. And that's exactly what she does, until the salesman wanders over to her and lures her into his web of lust with the promise of "store bought stockings". Before you know it, the two of 'em are splashing away together in an outdoor bath tub, and Moonbeam is happily over her porcine sex obsession. The end.

Well, not exactly. Turns out this entire film has been leading up to a gag. Long fuckin' way to go for a laugh, man.

If you are looking for anything resembling a sensible piece of filmmaking, than you should probably stay away from The Pig Keeper's Daughter. But if you really like looking at busty 70's chicks with full bush and no shame, then run-don't-walk to your nearest discount website/physical media dealer and snap this minor masterpiece of southern fried filth up. Senseless and sleazy, it strips softcore of all its erotic pretensions, and just lets it all hang out. Street-level sleaze hounds will love it.

The Pig Keepers Daughter is available from Something Weird Video.

- Ken McIntyre

Plaguers (2008)

Directed by Brad Sykes
Starring Steve Railsback, Alexis Zobolis, Noelle Perris, Paige Le Pierre
Rated R
USA

"You're more trouble dead than alive."

In the gooey, slime-dripping vein of 80's sci-fi/horror-mash-up Aliens (or, more accurately, dimestore Aliens knock-offs like Galaxy of Terror, Creepozoids, and Contamination) comes Plaguers, a spunky bit of outlandish space camp that pits sexy space pirates - disguised as mini-skirted, go-go booted nurses - against extra-dimensional, face-eating demons.

The story involves a fuel-transport ship called Pandora, which is listlessly floating back to Earth to bury its dead captain. Said deceased cap's girlfriend Darian Holloway (Alexis Zibolis) is now running the show, much to the chagrin of her motley crew. One fateful day, the Pandora gets a distress call from another ship nearby. They stop to investigate, and find a crew of gorgeous girls dressed in tight dresses and knee high boots wandering around the ship, dirty and disoriented. As it is lonely in space, Darian allows them to board the Pandora. Bad move.

Besides their new guests, the Pandora also picked up another stray along the way - a glowing green orb with mystical powers called Thanatos. The nurses, who are actually pirates in disguise, attempt to take over the ship, disturbing the magical ball. Somehow or another, it starts turning everyone into slavering cannibal demons. Mayhem ensues.

Toplined by Steve Railsback as a sympathetic man-droid, Plaguers is clearly a very low-budget effort - the ship miniatures are almost Ed Wood-ian - but it makes up for its threadbare qualities with a stripped-down, always-moving script and a cast of good-looking, enthusiastic newcomers.

Strangely, with one glaring exception, the actors all play this absurd premise as straight as possible, derailing the film's potential high-camp factor. And then there's Paige La Pierre. As Sadie, the most aggressive of the sexy space nurse/pirate crew, La Pierre chews the scenery wildly and gloriously, rampaging through the ship like a lusty, wild-eyed glamazon. Even with half her face ripped off, she's the hottest, wildest space-girl in this demon-possessed galaxy, and she tips the film over from agreeable time-waster to potential cult classic.

Plaguers may be the first DVD-era film that would actually make more sense on VHS, since everything about it positively screams Saturday night at Blockbuster Video in 1987. Egg crate spaceship? Check. Copious gore? Got it. Rampaging monsters? Sure, half a dozen of 'em.

In fact, the only missing factor is a high-profile scream queen (Tiffany Shepis must have been booked that weekend) and a slathering of gratuitous nudity. Luckily, according to the lengthy behind-the-scenes featurette included on the DVD, director Sykes claims that two sequels may eventually surface, so perhaps those glaring omissions will be rectified then. In the meantime, if you're looking to scratch that old retro junk-horror itch, Plaguers should do the trick.

Visit the official Plaguers Website!

- Ken McIntyre

Happy Holidays!

Hi everybody. We just want to wish everybody a Merry Whatever-you-want.
It's a been a great year, and we appreciate everyone who read the blog or listened to the podcast.
If you're looking for us, we'll be guzzling Nyquil and eggnog and listening to Blowfly does Christmas.


And also watching psychedelic Mexican Xmas movies.

See you on the 26th!

- Ken, Stacey and the whole gang at Movies About Girls

Swinging Sorority (1976)

Directed by Don Trendall
Starring Ann Marie, Donna Hart, Susie Carlson
Rated X
USA

"There's a good chance you'll get to ride on the float."

Ok, so nobody's expecting high quality filmmaking from no-budget, mid 70's grindhouse scuzz like this, but I don't think Don Trendall was even trying with this one. Getting through the first half-hour of Swinging Sorority feels more like an act of defiance than anything else - the random, aimless footage, the awkward, fumbling porn sequence, the laughable voice-looping - it basically dares you to keep watching, despite the fact that you know, deep in your heart-of-hearts, that it will offer no payoff for your precious wasted time.

So why bother at all? Because this is - supposedly - the only other (semi) legit place to peep Miss Eufala Roop herself, gravity-defying Russ Meyer girl Ann Marie*. The runaway star of 1979's Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens, Ann Marie's breathless, innuendo-jammed orations and awe-inspiring curves turned many boys into men over the decades. Tragically, it was her last role, and besides a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in Russ Meyer's magnum opus Supervixens, Swinging Sorority Girls is the only other film she did. And it's horrible. But it's apparently got Ann Marie in it, so we must endure it.

There's this dive bar where all the local frat assholes go to swill Schlitz. That's where most of this ugly mess takes place. Apparently there's a bedroom in the back, because two hippies go back there to fuck. The sound goes out midway through, so it looks like a silent 8MM loop. In the bar, a couple of fledgling sorority sisters complain about school.

"I wish I could join the sorority," says Karen, the round-faced, Rachel Ray-esque girl. "But I'm not sure I'll be able to.I'm not doing too good with my grades. I'm just not that into studying."
"Well," says her bra-less friend Lynn, "Maybe you should just, like...make it with your professors."
"Yeah, maybe I will," says Karen. "That's a good idea."
Exactly three minutes later, this same conversation is looped back in, presumably to pad out the scene.

So then, the frat brothers tell a skinny girl with a brassy wig named Marybeth that they've chosen her for homecoming queen, but if she wants to ride on the float with the football team, she'll have to endure the initiation ceremony. She agrees, so they take her back to the frat house and spray paint her gold.

And then they gang bang her on a waterbed. Once again, this scene is loaded with sound-loops. Some dude says, "C'mon guys, give Poochie a turn!" about 17 times during this scene. Also, it's shot so that all you can really see during the gang bang is the ass of whichever dude is fucking her. And this all goes on for about ten solid minutes.

One of the gangbang guys looks like Abbie Hoffman. Another one is a deadringer for a skinny Glenn Danzig. So that's at least amusing.

Karen decides that yes, she will fuck her biology professor in order to pass his class and then be eligible for the sorority, but she chickens out at the last moment, and bails. So he just bangs some other coed. Luckily for Karen, she barges in on them when she returns later to pick up her missing book, and the prof gives her an A in the class in exchange for her silence. So she gets into the sorority. So does Lynn, who has since become a weed dealer.

With the scholastic/financial heat off, everybody fucks, half of them in a closet. There's also a lesbian hair brushing situation going on. And then everybody goes to the prom. All the guys that gangbanged her show up to take Marybeth. That's the big gag. The end.

But wait, where's Ann Marie?

Dunno. Didn't see her.

I paid $8.00 for this thing. This is turning out to be a bad day.

*Ann Marie's "real name" was Kathy Ayers. In the 70's, she reportedly made $4,000 a night as a stripper. You could buy a house with four grand in the 70's. Shortly after her Russ Meyer adventures, she moved with her family to Norway, where she most likely is right now, ice fishing and listening to Turbonegro and scoffing at idiots like us trying to find her in fuzzy X-rated movies from 1976.


PS: Here's 57 seconds of Ann Marie doing aerobics. Merry Christmas!

- Ken McIntyre

Slumber Party 57 (1976)

AKA Teenage Slumber Party
Directed by William Levey
Starring Janet Wood, Noelle North, Debra Winger, Rainbeaux Smith
Rated R
USA
"First time, here I come!"

Director Levey has a pretty spectacular resume, stacked high with late 70's scuzz and high 80's cheese. He helmed the infamous square-headed Blackenstein (1973), cheapo sci-fi sex epic Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman (1975), The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington (1977), starring 60's sex kitten and future topless disco star Joey Heatherton, and the godawful roller-discosploitation epic Skatetown USA (1979), among others. He also wrote 1984's Night Patrol, which featured the immortal triple-threat of Linda Blair, Billy Barty, and the Unknown Comic. A wild-eyed, dimestore visionary operating during one of American pop culture's lowest ebbs, Levey somehow managed to carve out a solid career working with threadbare budgets, ridiculous scripts, and a ramshackle collection of desperate psuedo-celebrities and creaky has-beens. He deserves his own movie. William Levey, King of Garbage. If you are out there, sir, drop me a line. It's time your tawdry tale was told.

Slumber Party '57 is one of Levey's more obscure works, which, given his track record (Hellgate, anyone?) is really saying something. A teen sex comedy set in the late 1950's, it was clearly influenced by the success of the similarly themed American Graffiti (1973) and Happy Days (1974), and it paved the way for Sweater Girls (1978), Porky's (1982), Losin' It (1983), and all the other faux-50's/60's hornball flicks. However, unlike the majority of those films, Slumber Party '57 is an incoherent, episodic, nearly plotless mess that would be very rough-going were it not for its remarkable, good-looking cast, and it's wonderfully sleazy tone.

A group of bored high school girls (in reality, everyone was well into their 20's) get together for a slumber party. After frolicking topless in the pool, they settle in for the night, exchanging stories about their 'first times'. Each girl's deflowering is exhibited in a series of cheap and dirty flashbacks.

Backwoods cutie Bonny May (Bridget Holloman, Evils of the Night) and her moonshine brewing beau barely escape the clutches of 'revenuers' in an old timey, Roger Corman-esque car chase before slipping quietly into the drive-in and making sweet late 50's love while Boris Karloff's Cauldron of Blood (1970 release, but who's counting?) unspools on the screen.

Angie (voice-over actress Noelle North), seduces one of her parents' middle-aged friends (Will Hutchins) on her sixteenth birthday. The already scuzzball scene goes right over the top when her monster-faced dad (Bill Thurman, RIP) barges in and spanks his bare-assed teenage daughter. "You little cunt!" Grunts dad, while he swats Angie's quivering butt-cheeks. Angie, meanwhile, smiles wickedly, having just realized she sorta likes being spanked by her father. If that's not a queasy enough scene for you, the rest of the girls readily agree with her. "Getting spanked by my dad does kinda hurt, sure," says Debby (future Urban Cowboy star Debra Winger), "But it's also kinda hot."

Wait, what? Who the fuck are these people?

Debby eats a banana while her boyfriend Buddy (Randy Ralston) beats up a bunch of bikers at the beach. Impressed with this manly display, Debby balls him in the backseat of his convertible. Celebrity Skin fans will be pleased that Miss Winger let her ample sweater-puppies loose for this scene, although the DVD (and the VHS, where I believe the DVD was sourced from) is a little too fuzzy to make out the finer details of said famous boobs.

Back in the present, Sherry (70's B-Goddess Rainbeaux Smith, RIP) races - and beats - a wildly vamping Mexican gang-member (Rafeal Compos, The Doll Squad. Also RIP) in a drag race. "Fast Martha" (Robin Mills) waves the starting flag. Well, she has no flag, so she just shakes her tits. Same thing.

Flashback time again. Smitty (Janet Wood, Russ Meyer's Up!) has sex with stable-boy David (Bryan Englund, who also happens to be Cloris Leachman's son. True story.) on a pile of hay in a barn while his topless sister Hank (Janice Karman, instantly recognizable from her role as Bunny in Switchblade Sisters) sits in a couple feet away, licking her lips and flicking at her nipples.

"I thought I'd died and went to Heaven," Smitty tells her friends. Holy smokes, what a slutty gang of girls!

Then the girls thwart a cat burglar (omnipresent 70's/80's character actor Larry Gelman) and call the cops. Seeing at this mess is supposed to occur in 1957, Car 54 gets the call. A 60-something Joe E Ross shows up to huff and puff around the joint, chasing the bad guy. Hilarity ensues.

Finally, aspiring actress Joanne (Mary Appleseth) has a quickie with an aging 'movie star'(Victor Rogers, RIP) on the hanky-panky filled set of a Tarzan film. Afterward, the natives chuck her into a pot with vegetables and make soup out of her. Really.

And then, as they always do, a group of horny rabble-rousers crash the slumber party. How'd they find about it? Sherry made a deal with them. Seems that she's the only virgin in the gang, so she told "Larry and the guys" they could crash the party if they promised to gang-bang her.

Here's the thing, though. As Sherry dutifully tromps upstairs to get violated by five dudes, the rest of the girls admit to each other that they made all those stories up. They're all virgins, too. What a mix-up!

Can/will they stop her in time?

Nope.

Slumber Party '57 is full of historical inaccuracies - most of the songs on the soundtrack are from the early 1960's - and it often drags as it weaves drunkenly along from one fuzzy flashback to another. But it's got such a high 'What the fuck?' factor that you cannot help but to keep watching, right until the final (and sorta shocking) shot. It's not exactly fun, but it's remarkably pervy stuff, and the cast is littered with classic 70's B-girls, all of whom (except, shockingly, Smith, who was naked nearly constantly in the 70's) doff tops and drop trousers for the cause.

So, it's pretty mandatory stuff, really.

- Ken McIntyre

Sexy Adventures of Van Helsing (2004)

Starring Darian Caine, Erika Smith, AJ Kahn, Isadora Edison, Andrea Davis
Directed by Max Von Diesel
Unrated
USA

"Say...do you like boys?"

Without a doubt, this is the perviest Seduction Cinema lesbofest I've seen since the crazed Witches of Sappho Salon (which, admittedly, wasn't a thousand years ago, but still). I mean, there's always a nipple nuzzle or tongue tango around the corner in these flicks, but this one, Christ, it's wall to wall. And here's the really weird/good part: if you took out all the softball girl-girl sex, you'd still have a funny, well-acted, entertaining little film. It'd only be about 7 minutes long, but it'd be good.

As the runaway cult success (well, relatively speaking) of Angela Bettis in May ably illustrates, spazzy girls are in, and they don't come much spazzier than uber nerd girl Erika Smith. Hot on the heels of her starlet-making turn as a half-blind stripper in EI's big bug movie Bite Me!, Ericka reprises her patented geek-chic shtick as Willimena Van Helsing, great-great-grand daughter of Dracula's famous un-doer. The part of the story that is yet untold, however, involves the elder Van Helsing's brush with Dracoola, (foxy Darian Caine), a lusty busty vampiress who bit VH in his ass a cuppla hundred years back, resulting in a prolonged, bitter ghost-hood.

It is after a goofy late night BLT binge at the local diner with exotic cutie AJ Khan that Erika finds herself tromping alone and confused (does she like girls instead of boys? Yep) through the local cemetery. Suddenly, great Uncle Van Helsing, sporting ratty threads and a face fulla blue goo, appears to his young niece and lets her know she's got a revenge-fueled destiny to fulfill.

And that is pretty much where the plot dissipates into a sleazy, Isadora Edison-drenched orgy of girl on girl mayhem. Isadora, wearing nothing but a leafy tiara and a landing strip, appears in Erika Smith's fevered imagination as some sort of Sapphic earth-mother-goddess, gettin' licked all over by Misty Mundae and AK Khan in a foggy softcore scene that seems to last for hours onscreen, but was probably an even longer ordeal for the girls.

Later on, there's a pretty graphic - and completely gratuitous- scene of Izzy with her hands jammed down her black panties, furiously jilling off while the ass-bit Van Helsing demon dude peeks on. Even later, she's dressed in skin tight hotpants and the top half of a police uniform, her face covered in pink frosting and her tongue somewhere deep inside real life porn star Tatiana Stone.

Finally, she appears in a climactic 4 (5? 6?) way lesbo freak-for-all at the funeral home, where Willimena finally accepts her sexuality and her lineage, Dracoola finally gets hers (in the end, natch), and the rest of the girls get plenty of theirs, as well.

I know, it sounds like I'm skipping a lot, but I'm not. Erika and Darian engage in a battle of half-wits, Dead Van Helsing cracks a few corny jokes, and the very funny Andrea Davis has a brief cameo as a dominatrix with a taste for older men. But mostly, it's hot girl on girl action, daddy-o.

It's up to you how you want to watch this one, man, pants on or off. I have so far tried both with equally positive results.

- Ken McIntyre