The Ruins (2008)

Directed by Carter Smith
Starring the chick from Saved and some jerks
Rated R
USA

"We're not cutting his leg off with a fucking hunting knife, Jeff. "

If you raked up some leaves in your backyard and hid one of your friends underneath, and then made a movie about the leaves coming to life and chasing people, you’d probably look at the resultant footage and think, “Well, that was a dumb fucking idea.” Then you’d erase it and shoot homemade porn instead. Right? Well, Carter Smith took the idea and tossed several million dollars at it. And now it’s too late to erase.

If you’ve seen the trailer, you know the whole plot. Bunch of dumb kids on vacation in Mexico get chased by weird locals to the top of a Mayan temple, and then the leaves and vines in the temple try to kill them. And since there is nothing remotely frightening about plants, they try and liven up the proceedings with some gooey self-mutilation, which seems to be a requirement of all R-rated teen horror films since Cabin Fever. It was no fun to watch then, and guess what? Still no fun.

The only high-point of this entire tedious affair is the lead blonde, Laura Ramsey. She has very large breasts, and she bares them in the first ten minutes.

Also, she is, in fact, in her underwear for the last hour of the movie, but at that point she’s covered in open sores, which sorta ruins it. Maybe that’s why this movie is called The Ruins, because it ruins any fun you could possibly have watching it. If so, good call.

- Ken 

Foul Play (1978)

Directed by Colin Higgins

Starring Goldie Hawn, Chevy Chase, Dudley Moore 

Rated PG

USA

“ Take these. Without them, you are a walking light-bulb... waiting to be screwed.” 

The arch-bishop of San Francisco (I have no idea if that’s a real thing; seems feasible enough) has a murderous twin-brother who happens to be a member of a nameless revolutionary group. Said group plans to make a statement by assassinating  the pope while he’s in town visiting  the opera (!). In order to achieve this goal, first he assassinates his twin brother and takes over his duties. Then he hires a trio of hitmen to pull off the job. This team consists of a guy with a giant, jagged scar ripped down the middle of his face (Return of the Living Dead’s cremator, Don Calfa), a creaky old bastard called “The Dwarf” (Marc Lawrence, who is not dwarf-y in the slightest), and an albino (William Frankfather)  named Whitey Jackson (!) who, distractingly, looks just like SNL’s Jon Hader in a Col. Sanders outfit. 

So, that’s the plan. Seems flawless enough. But there’s one complication. Goldie Hawn.

She plays a librarian (!) named Gloria, who picks up a hitchhiker one fateful day. He happens to be an undercover cop about to bust the pope assassination scheme wide open, but he’s being hotly pursued by the albino and his gang. He hides the photographic evidence of the plot in a cigarette pack and asks Gloria to hold it for him. She thinks he just wants to quit smoking. They agree to meet later that evening at the Nu-art Theater (which is actually in LA, but whatever) for a ‘date’, and she’s supposed to give him back the cig pack then.

The Nu-art, by the way, is managed by a smarmy, licentious Chuck McCann, who is having an affair with one his ushers, played by Russ Meyer’s Up!/Slumber Party ’57 star Janet Wood! 

Anyway, when the undercover cop shows up, he’s already bleeding to death. Gloria reports the crime but the body quickly vanishes, so everybody thinks she’s just some kind of  nut. I should mention at this point that Goldie Hawn looks amazing in glasses. However, she does not look like what they probably intended, i.e. “smart” Goldie. She still looks like  ditzy Goldie, just a hot-nerd ditzy Goldie. 

Before he croaked, the cop told Gloria to “Beware of the dwarf”. So when she hears a dwarf was looking for her at the library, she starts to get nervous. Things really get dicey for our heroine when the albino shows up and attacks her in the stacks. She escapes his clutches and runs through the streets looking for safety. She ducks into a bar and picks up a harmless looking schlub named Stanley (Dudley Moore), insisting he take her home immediately. He agrees. As you would. 

Of course, she’s not out for sex, just a temporary safe haven. Unaware of this, Stanley pulls out all the ridiculous pervy-dude stops, including porno 8mm loops projecting on the wall, Bee Gees blaring away on his Quadrophonic stereo, blow-up dolls, disco lights, a drop-down bed, the whole bit. She’s pretty horrified at this display and promptly storms out. 

When she gets home, scar-face is waiting for her. She stabs him with knitting needles and then the albino shows up and stabs him in the heart. Then he knocks her out and dumps the body. Long story short, rogue police detective Tony (Chevy Chase) and his partner Fergie (Brian Dennehy) are assigned to the case. Naturally they think Gloria’s insane (dwarves, albinos, missing bodies, etc), but Tony’s sweet on her, so they go along with the ruse. Eventually they figure out she’s legit, and it’s up to Tony and Goldie to get to the opera house in time to stop the sinister plot before the pope is popped. Along the way, they destroy nearly every car in SF. 

Oh, also: a dwarf bible salesman (Billy Barty) shows up at Gloria’s. She thinks he’s the dwarf assassin and throws him out the window! 

Foul Play is marred a bit by a syrupy Barry Manilow soundtrack, but otherwise it’s a fun and twisty ride. The plot is ridiculous, but for the most part, the cast plays it all pretty straight, making this more of an action movie with laughs  than a straight comedy with action/mystery elements. Speaking of ridiculous, casting Goldie as a librarian  is almost as insane as casting Chevy Chase as a functional, no-nonsense cop. So, clearly, a few leaps-of-faith are required for maximum enjoyment.  Everybody’s game, though, and Foul Play is littered with great character actors, including Burgess Meredith as Gloria’s feisty landlord, Reform School Girls’ own Pat Ast as the madame of a low-rent rub n’ tug, and Marilyn Sokol as Gloria’s man-hating best bud Stella. Also – and this may be a singular thrill – I very much enjoyed peeping at all the stereo systems so prominently (and inexplicably) featured throughout the proceedings…so much  8 track!

Anyway, fun, kooky stuff, well worth a look. 

- Ken 

Vixens of Virtue Vixens of Vice: Season 1 Special Edition (2011)

Directed by Rob Longo
Starring Sarah Burns, Ella Jane New, Natalie LaSpina, Tara Lee
Unrated
USA


"When you wake up you will feel very different in the morning."

Being akin to the MAG YouTube favorite, Bikini Crime Fighter (of whose videos have been tragically removed from the internet) and countless other micro-budget productions created and produced by lonely dudes who have no shame about coercing innocent women to get their Cosplay on and pretend to act in front of what often looks like a camera phone video or VHS camcorder for what seems to be no other purpose than to give the creator a chance to get close to women who otherwise would intentionally avoid them and as a bonus get to play and replay the evidence of said interactions for their entire awkward existences.

Don't get me wrong, I am not attempting to discourage or berate the creators of these videos, but you do have to admit that its a bit creepy. Sure, it sounds like a great idea in your head, but I can only imagine what the ladies think when they show up for work in an alley or abandoned warehouse, are told to throw on a colored wig, grab a cardboard tube and pretend to fight with each other. At least porn is honest about its intent.

Fortunately, this world has no shortage of those brave enough to be creepy, and the web seriesVixens of Virtue, Vixens of Vice helps support this idea, albeit with a slightly lesser percentage of creep than other such offerings. If fact, besides the ample use of cleavage, there is nothing in this series that would discourage watches from lovers of campy fun of all ages.

The series concerns itself with the sibling rivalry of the superpower enabled Sweet Sisters(blue-haired Sweet Burden, who can control gravity, Sweet Burn, who can burn things, andSweet Frost, who can freeze stuff) and their ingenious villain kin, the Bitter Sisters (Bitter Evil, the mad scientist/inventor of the bunch, Bitter Pain, the ninja master, and Bitter Pill, the chemist of the crew).

While the Sweet Sisters are content enough in just being goodie-goodies and trying to find their parents, the Bitter Sisters are all about getting rid of their sisters altogether and while their at it, take over the world.

Not only do they have an ever expanding supply of "Bitter Bots" to help in their evil plots, but they also have recently created a fem-bot style cyborg named Bitter Metal. Strong enough to resist blades and bullets, Bitter Metal is the Bitter Sisters finest hope yet to destroy their sisters.

With 10 episodes coming in a less than an hour total, Season 1 of VOV/VOV does a good job at holding your attention, even if it is only to look at boobs. The plot is pretty clumsy and disjointed, the acting varies from terrible to vicariously enjoyable, and I having a sneaking suspicious that the actors aren't always the same from episode to episode, but as time wasting trash-candy, this is well worth a watch.

Get the DVD at MVD or directly from the official website. Until then, check out the sneak peek below.

Vixens of Virtue Vixens of Vice Theme Song from Live Body on Vimeo.

- Jeremy Vaca

White Lies (1998)

Directed by Kari Scogland
Starring: Sarah Polley, Tanya Allen, Jonathon Scarfe, Lynn Redgrave
Unrated
Canada

Who would have thought that the Canadians, our kinder, gentler cousins up north, the Stepford Wives of the Western world, would have the same problems with white power goons as we do? I guess wherever you put a bunch Caucasians together, crosses will eventually get burned, and bad punk rock will fill the air. And so it goes in White Lies. Originally a made for TV movie, it tells the strange and terrible tale of Catherine Chapman (Sarah Polley- the Canadian Uma Thurman), an idealistic high school student who begins to notice a disparity in the treatment of whites and minorities in Canadian society, particularly in hiring practices. She was looked over, you see, for a job at McDonald's because she didn't speak Korean. Never mind that there are half a million jobs a Korean born woman living in Canada would lose out to her- she wants to flip her goddamn burgers, and she's willing to join a neo-nazi group to do it. By the way,  Canadians call them "Nutzis".

This group is called the National Identity Movement, a shadowy activist group led by Lynn Redgrave (!). Catherine begins airing her vague grievances on their website. Eventually, they ask her to start writing for their newsletter, and she becomes a poster girl for white power, even going so far as to date the lead singer for one of those awful skinhead punk bands. It's interesting that she gets sexier as she gets more evil, going from cornsilk wallflower to red and black racist glam in one church torching. Eventually, though, saner heads prevail, and Catherine has a last minute change of heart, but not before much havoc is wreaked on the streets of Ontario as a result of her big mouth.

Belying it's TV origins, the language in White Lies is pretty subdued for a movie about nazis, but otherwise, it's a tightly wound ball of racial tension that speeds to it's climax with an escalating series of atrocities and rampant stupidity from the NIM camp and plenty of scenery chewing from Redgrave and smoldering sex appeal from Polley. The only problem with this film is the same as any movie about white power movements- it's never really explained just what 'white culture' these jackasses are trying to preserve. Country music and baseball? They can have it, man.

This DVD edition of White Lies also features a wordy but smart 'making of' featurette that, at the very least, will show you how to successfully film a giant cross burning in a rain storm. Who knows? It might come in handy someday.

- Ken 

Teenage Caveman (2002)

Directed by Larry Clark 
Starring Andrew Keegan, Tara Subkoff, Richard Hillman, Tiffany Limos
Unrated
USA

“I hate outside.”

Despite the fact that it's packed wall to wall with teen sex antics and hinky splatter, Teenage Caveman was produced for TV as part of an ultra low-budget series of late-night Cinemax snacks delivered by infamous B-movie mogul Sam Arkoff (who, coincidentally, croaked the same year this was released). I am unsure what other films, if any, were made for this series. I am also unsure whether this was meant  to be a remake of Roger Corman's Teenage Caveman (1958), since I have not seen that particular teenflick, although I do sorta doubt it was also about a post-apocalyptic sex cult. The only thing I am sure of is that this is one seriously whacked-out piece of work, a softcore/gore mash-up so wobbly and weird that it almost passes for outsider art.

The first part of the film justifies the title. Sort of. There are, in fact, a group of teenagers living in a cave. It's after the fall of man, and a hard-scrabble group of survivors live together as a rag-wearing, expletive-spewing tribe just outside of Seattle. They learn to read by studying old issues of Penthouse Forum, and the leader of the gang is, of course, a corrupt perv who continually tells his flock they must abstain from sex while secretly banging the hottest tribe members, because god told him to.  Annoyed because his tribal leader dad tries to god-rape his girlfriend Sara (Tara Subkoff, Freeway, who was actually 30 when she made this), brooding teen rebel David (Andrew Keegan, 10 Things I Hate About You), stabs his father in the eye with a crucifix, killing him. The other tribal elders tie him to a stick to die in the sun, but his loyal gang set him loose and they all split for better days and better lays. After wandering through the wasteland (actually just some shrubs) for days, they stumble upon a ruined old city (actually a painted/CGI-d backdrop of a smudged Seattle). And then a brutal storm hits (actually just a filter on a the camera lens) and then everything goes black.

The gang wakes up naked in a groovy room full of artifacts from the good ol' pre-apoc days ( Basketball! Vacuum cleaner!). Before they can figure out what the fuck is going on, a coked-up glam rocker named Neil (Richard Hillman, who may or may not be dead, according to IMDB) bursts in and serenades them with the early Misfits jam, “Where Eagles Dare”. Things get weird from there.

Long story short, Neil and a big-breasted Asian chick named Judith (hilariously wooden, fancy-named  non-actor Tiffany Limos) are both genetically modified mutants. They were part of a college medical experiment a hundred or so years ago, and were granted powers of self-healing and (provisional) immortality. So, when the world ended, they were still around. They hang out in this solar-powered pop-culture emporium, snorting up their self-cooked cocaine, guzzling  booze, listening to punk rock, and fucking. Luckily for the kids, Neil was on meat-safari in his SUV when he spied the kids in the storm, and brought them back for some x-rated entertainment.

Seeing as this a Larry Clark film, it is inevitable that the man who foisted Kids on the world would use this opportunity to get the cave-Kids naked. And so he does, in a ten-minute (it feels like hours), unscripted, booze-crank-sex orgy that feels as icky as you imagine it does. I think that's Larry's lasting contribution to modern cinema, bad nudity. Sure, he'll get the hot chicks naked, but at what cost? Larry Clark wants to ruin boobs for everybody. And he very nearly does with this brain-numbing “party scene”. It's like a community college production of Caligula.

Anyway, it turns out that Neil and Judith can spread their super-virus to others via sex. And they managed to fuck everybody during their coke party, except for David and Sara.  Thusly, the all turn into  a super-hero team ala the Justice League and build a new world free of disease and sorrow.

No. That's not what happens at all. Some of the cave-gang can't handle the process. The next morning, one of the chicks ends up writhing around in pain on Neil and Judith's bed. While Judy vigorously fingerbangs herself, the chick explodes.

So that was messy. Dave and Sara figure out pretty quick that they're dealing with a couple of lunatics, so while the other kids either transform into super-beings or bags of jelly, they do their best to A. Avoid fucking Neil and Judith and B. find a way out of this nuthouse. This proves harder said than done, and ultimately, Dave gets tricked into a quickie with Judy in the warehouse (and then it hit me: the WHOLE MOVIE is shot in the warehouse of, like, a K-Mart!) and before you know it, he's a pseudo-mortal like the other two creeps. Well, almost. He's still the hots for Sara, so instead of raping her – as his super-pals requested – he socks Neil in the mouth.

And then Neil turns into a caveman. So THAT'S what the title means!

And then they fight.  And one of 'em wins. And then there's an ending so ludicrous you'd be outraged, f you hadn't already spent the last 80 minutes being outraged.

In conclusion, take 1: what the fuck just happened?

In conclusion, take 2: So, this movie was co-produced by 70's jiggle-queen Colleen Camp. Camp, Arkoff, and Larry Clark walk into a bar...and 17 drinks later, this is the movie they make. It's so cheap it sometimes looks like a public access show and some of the acting is cringe-worthy, and yet, there's something undeniably alluring about this goopy, disgusting, pervy  mess. If your biggest problem with Kids is that it didn't have enough decapitations or mutant cavemen – and let's face it, it didn't – then this is the movie for you. Actually, this isn't the movie for anybody, really, but you know what I mean.

- Ken McIntyre 

Bloodsucking Babes from Burbank (2006)

Directed by Kirk Bowman
Starring many hot girls in their underwear
Unrated
USA


"Sexy cannibals who will touch your heart...with their teeth!" 

Awesomely sleazy low-fi splatter comedy about warring teams of hot young archeologists (!) out to win some vague prize for digging up the most  compelling artifact in Burbank. Turns out there’s a mystical, magical jewelry box buried deep in the ancient hills of upper Burbank, and when the jewels inside the box are fondled by any woman, she grows plastic fangs and eats the nearest male. And that happens. A whole bunch of times.

This film has it all, really. It’s got a brain literally made out of jello. It’s got hilarious bits of junky CGI. It’s got a Pia Zadora lookalike who chews off a guy’s thumb. It’s got an incredibly hot blonde who poses in the woods in her panties, with her skin-tight jeans around her ankles, while she eats a dude’s arm. It’s got a non-nude shower scene that rivals Austin Powers for sheer, um, cheek. All the men in the film are buffoons or douchebags, and they all sorta resemble well-known character actors. There is very little nudity but an amazing amount of panty scenes, which seems much sleazier than nudity, for some reason.

None of it makes a lick of sense, but it all comes together seamlessly anyway. It’s like HG Lewis meets Russ Meyer in the bargain basement. Director Bowman is either a genius or a lunatic. I’d bank on the latter, but hope for the former. Whichever. If you’re looking for a low-budget, blood-splattered jiggle-fest that works just as well with your pants on or off, Bloodsucking Babes from Burbank is for you.

- Ken 

Suburban Shootout (2006)

Suburban Shootout (2006)
Directed by Vito Rocco 

Starring Anna Chancellor, Felicity Montagu, Amelia Bullmore, Rachel Blake 

Genre: Crime-comedy 
UK

“I just  want you to know I just had anal sex with your boyfriend in the toilets.”

“Really? That's so cool!” 

Perpetually put-upon plain-jane Joyce (Bullmore) has just moved into the fairytale suburb of Little Stempington, a picturesque, upper-middle-class paradise where crime simply does not exist. Her husband, Jeremy (Ralph Ineson), is Stempington's new chief of police, and her teenage son Bill (Tom Hiddleson) is home from his year in Africa building an  orphanage. Pleasant people, pleasant town. Or is it? 

It is not. There is a very good reason why there's no crime in Stempington. Turns out there's a trio of gun-toting soccer-moms who beat, shoot and terrorize anybody who even thinks of doing anything untoward in their perfect little 'burb. Worse still, they have competition – there's another rogue trio of 40-something ladies who do their best to thwart their arch-nemeses at every turn.

Joyce hasn't even unpacked her boxes before Camilla (Chancellor) and Barbara (Montagu) start having gun battles over which team Joyce is going to join. Joyce gets blackmailed into joining Camilla's crew when she unwittingly blows up the local wicker basket shop, but secretly works with Babs' team to rid Stempington of Camilla's evil cabal. Things get even more complicated when they get caught up in the estrogen-dealing trade (estrogen patches are a new underground drug sensation! Get into it!). When Camilla's tarty daughter Jewel (Ruth Wilson, doing a sort of slutty, grown-up Veruca Salt) steals their drug money, they end up being stalked, kidnapped and menaced by French gangsters.

Outrage piles on outrage, leading to a...well, the title of the show is Suburban Shootout, after all. 

Frequently hair-raising but always funny, Suburban Shootout is pretty delightful stuff, deftly balancing the escalating crime story with character-driven humor. Fans of Hot Fuzz and Weeds should love it. 

- Ken McIntyre

Vampire Sisters (2004)

Directed Joe Ripple
Starring Darla Albornoz, Jeanie Jameson, Syn Devil, George Stover
Unrated
USA

"I feel like a hooker."
"You look like a hooker."

The name Don Dohler oughta strike fear into the hearts of Z movie-watchers everywhere, if the ultra-dismal Fiend (1980) is any indication of what the cat has up his sleeve. If you haven’t had the displeasure, you're better off- I think that ‘film’ has the ability to literally bore you to death. Luckily, the Dohler-penned Vampire Sisters- while being about as by-the-numbers, softgore schlocky as ya can get- is still about 666 times more watchable than Fiend, and, if you're in a god enough mood, you might even get a few chuckles (or boners) along the way.

The premise- hell, the whole plotline, really- is neatly summed up in the film’s title. Darla Albornoz, Jeanie Jameson, and busty goth pin-up queen Syn Devil star as the sisters in question, who run a pay-porn website together. Their highest paying customers are privy to special “Bonuses”, which means that when they get hungry, they invite said slobs over to their nondescript suburban home and suck ‘em dry. Literally. ‘Cuz they’re vampires, see? Vampires with fake wood paneling!

Although I am confused as to why the guys that are paying the most to see their dirty pictures are the ones that get offed- you think they’d wanna keep those guys around to help pay the rent- the rest of the film is a very linear affair, with dope after dope (a few chicks, too) arriving at the house, getting teased by the sexy gals, and then getting stalked, slashed, and vamped. Occasionally, there’s a hint of wit- when vet Dohler actor George Stover shows up at the girls’ house, he brings ‘em a box of Stover chocolates (zing!)- but there’s very little in the way of character development, and the only way to distinguish between one girl and the next is exactly the way you do it in porn flicks- hair color and breast size. There’s a sub-plot involving a private detective (or undercover reporter, maybe, I couldn’t really tell which) who decides to infiltrate the vampish cabal, and there’s a monster in the garage, too, but otherwise, it’s a standard blood and jiggle-fest.

But, you know, I like blood and jiggling, so this one was alright with me. Don’t expect a nightmare of depravity- or hardcore goreporn- but if yer lookin’ for a goofy, kinda sexy, old fashioned b-movie, albeit one shot on a camcorder, then you just found one.

- Ken McIntyre 

Cindy and Donna (1970)

Directed by Robert Anderson
Starring Debbie Osborne, Nancy Ison, Alice Friedland
Rated X
U.S.A.

This forgotten little drive-in diversion first appeared in 1970, one of numerous titles churned out by the Crown International Pictures factory. It follows the usual skin & sin formula, with more emphasis on the peepshow than the plot than you’ll find in other titles like The Teacher or Pick-Up or Malibu High.

Is perhaps a tad more scandalous than the usual fare, too, with underaged protagonists, sorta-kinda incest, sorta-kinda lesbianism, and other more obviously exploitative elements, all of which helped get Cindy and Donna tagged with an early “X” by the MPAA.

Things begin with 15-year-old Cindy (Debbie Osborne) enjoying an idyllic end-of-summer walk on the beach with her boyfriend, Bob. Their stroll is accompanied by the film’s theme song, a syrupy dollop of pop in which the singer advises “Don’t be afraid to discover, Cindy / Don’t be afraid of a lover, Cindy” and the like.

In other words, the pressure on Cindy begins from the get-go. She and Bob make out a little, then Cindy goes home and is bored for a little while.


Soon her stepsister, the 17-year-old Donna (Nancy Ison) comes home. Cindy quizzes Donna about the boy with whom she’s been hanging out, Greg (Tom Koben), while Donna drinks some booze. Then their mother, Harriet, arrives.

She, too, immediately hits the bottle, a harmonica blasting away as if to mark her as “southern” or “white trash” or something. She speaks with a weird-sounding, highly affected accent, almost as though she’s trying to sound British. Or maybe trying to sound not British.


Harriet is kind of a spectacle, really. Interestingly, for the IMDB entry the obscure actress who played her (Suzy Allen) jumped on to comment on the film. “I agree that Cindy and Donna was a terrible movie,” she writes, “but the stagehands and crew said I was the best actor in the movie!”

One suspects the stagehands might have been being nice. Then again, it isn’t as though the best-actor-in-the-movie title should have been especially coveted by anyone here. Allen says a few more things about the making of the film, which sounds like it was quite fun for her. Her post is under the name “britwit” so perhaps she is British after all.


Meanwhile Dad, Ted Weeks (Max Manning) -- Cindy’s father, and Donna’s stepfather -- is driving home from work. He can’t help but eye the legs of female drivers from the cab of his truck...


...thereby rapidly alerting us to his “dirty old man” status.


He ends up stopping at a bar where he gets a drink and talks to some other dirty old men about this “unbelievable doll” they want to tell him all about.

Then comes a quick, unannounced cut to a strip club, where we are invited to ogle an oily Alice (Alice Friedland).


An unknown here (in fact, she’s uncredited), Friedland would later appear in some small roles in high profile flicks such as John Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) where she played one of the “De-Lovlies.”

Her dance lingeringly lasts for three solid minutes, the lengthiness of the scene obviously vital to the plot.

We cut back to Ted, who has left the bar and ends up calling Alice from a phone booth and arranging a meeting later that night. (One of the other dirty old men has given him her number.)

Back home Cindy is still bored. She undresses and puts on a nightie. That takes a couple more minutes.


Then Dad comes home and he, too, hits the booze without hesitation. When he hugs Cindy, she asks if he’s drunk. “You gotta be a little bit drunk to get through the day” he explains.

We watch him then linger over Donna in her bra a little longer than he should, after which he has a drunken shouting match with his wife. She knows all about his “little whooahs,” but that doesn’t deter him much as soon he’s out the door and heading to his rendezvous with Alice.

We hang out with Cindy some while she takes her top off and is bored some more. Then we look in on dirty Ted with Alice who after some small talk quickly get it on.


“You’re blowing my mind, you know that!” says Ted.

Meanwhile, Donna sneaks out the window to meet Greg for a midnight frolic. Cindy sneaks out, too… easy enough since Dad is away and Mom is passed out blotto. Donna and Greg get high and engage in some dimly-lit, semi-clad groping in his car while Cindy watches, then Cindy returns to her bedroom. She rolls around by herself in the bed a little gropingly, too, then frustratingly, teen-angstingly exhales.


Back to Ted and Alice, where Alice is showing Ted some magazines. She’s a model, too, she explains. “I'm kind of a star, you know. Do you know how many men buy these things just to look at me…? It makes me feel kind of creative.”


More small talk, during which we learn she’s 17. “Same age as your daughter,” she notes pointedly, referring to Donna.

We move on to the next day. Cindy chats with her friend Karen at school about what she saw the night before. "I felt like it was really ugly and offensive," she tells Karen, going on to explain how she and Bob haven't gone that far. Karen is only slightly more worldly-seeming than Cindy, her lecturing to Cindy about love-making revealing her to be a bit naive as well.

Cut to Harriet, getting drunk at a bar. Hey, it’s five o’clock somewhere and oh by the way what the hell are YOU lookin’ at? She comes on to a couple of old dudes who play along a little then unceremoniously dump her in her car.


That night Cindy writes a letter to Bob, seemingly away at school, in which she expresses various frustrations.

A drunken harpsichord then announces the drunken arrival of Ted, also frustrated because Alice wasn’t available for a second straight night of fun. He creeps into Donna’s room and kind of shockingly joins his stepdaughter in bed while a horrified Cindy looks on.


The next day Cindy commiserates some more with Karen about her screwed-up family. Then we see Donna meet up again with Greg. She wants weed, but only has five bucks, and he gets her to agree to a favor to make up the rest.

At this point Ted and Harriet take an unexpected business trip to a convention in Las Vegas which they only tell Cindy and Donna about moments before leaving.

They leave, again weirdly accompanied by those banjos and harmonicas. We’ll look in on them again a couple of times -- finding Ted looking and acting like he’s ready to blow his mind out in a car after being forced to endure Harriet -- although they’re essentially riding out of the picture.


What’s left? Well, Cindy takes a shower. Karen comes over and they go to the beach, where Karen shows Cindy how to put on suntan lotion in order to attract the fellas.


The trick works, and soon they find themselves with a couple of horny dudes in their groovy love shack by the shore. Karen is into it, but Cindy not so much.


Eventually Cindy has her way and they leave.

Meanwhile we learn that the favor Greg had asked of Donna involves her posing for some topless photos, and the session quickly devolves into a couple of other horny dudes taking turns engaging in some semi-nude couch wrestling with their model.


Back to Karen and Cindy, who get high and wrestle some themselves.


That goes on a while, complete with freaky-deaky echoes helping to indicate their baked status. They talk about what happened over breakfast the next morning, with Karen assuring Cindy she was “marvelous” but that “you’ve no idea what it's like until you’ve tried it with a guy. I mean it’s wild! It’s the greatest.”

Cindy remains skeptical, but when Greg comes around for Donna a little later, Cindy’s trying the suntan lotion thing again.


Could it be? Is Cindy is finally no longer afraid to discover? No longer afraid of a lover? And, well, is anybody gonna face any consequences for this uninterrupted sequence of hedonism, or are lessons never gonna be learned?


While Cindy and Donna isn’t exactly what I’d call a swinging good time, it is certainly engaging enough for those with a tolerance and/or penchant for low-budget ’70s sexploitation, with crazy Ted and Harriet adding a touch of added camp value and a few groovy jams along the way.

- Triple S