Happy birthday to us!

As you may have guessed from the title of today's post, February 1st marks the anniversary of the day I launched the B-Movie Buffet into cyberspace. Therefore, if this day is to be viewed as the website's birthday, we are three years old today. Hooray for us! (Technically the BMB as an entity has a few birthdays; interested parties can read more on that topic here.)

Speaking of which, I probably should have had the forethought to save the Kommandant's review of Happy Birthday To Me for the occasion but I did not.

Anywhoo, as mentioned in that post mentioned in the earlier aside, the B-Movie Buffet started out as a column on a now defunct website, CrimsonAndCherry.com, before moving into the pages of c14 & relaunching to cyberspace. But what really inspired me to start writing about movies was my tenure at Candy For Bad Children. (Another defunct website.)

CFBC editor Miss Stacey Dawn & I met via her husband, the man known to the world wide web world as Sleazegrinder. (Who I met via our respective columns in Hit List, yet another now defunct publication.) When she first approached me about writing for her site she asked if I'd do some music reviews but, at the time, I was feeling burned out on writing CD reviews from c14 (and, actually, I still feel that way; but let's not get off topic) so instead I volunteered to review some movies. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Well, OK, it's not really important enough to be considered historical but I think, between this post and the previous ones on the subject, I've already covered the rest of the story.

Seeing as how the CFBC archive has disappeared from cyberspace, I've decided to post a sampling of the stuff I wrote for her in honor of the part the site played in the Buffet's existence and, of course, our birthday.

Tune in next Friday for another batch from the vaults; of my hard drive. Enjoy!

The Double-D Avenger

(Elite Entertainment)

I first heard about this movie when it was reviewed by the ever knowledgeable Dan "Dante" Taylor of Exploitation Retrospect fame in my humble publication, carbon 14; since then it's gained the official Joe Bob Briggs seal of approval, which means... well, I'm not sure what that means. Except now the man behind the Double-D Avenger, William Winckler, gets to see his film re-released on DVD with generally inane and annoying commentary from some faux redneck dude with a bolo tie as a "bonus." (Whatever; I'd imagine whoever WW is, he was more than thrilled when these ladies returned his calls - let alone agreed to appear in his film - so anything on top of that is icing and the rest of us can just ignore or appreciate the JBB part based on their own prejudices. I guess mine are fairly clear so we'll move on.) Obviously based on the title and the film's stars - for the benefit of those who don't know who Kitten Natividad, Haji and / or Raven De La Croix are, all three women have starred in classic Russ Meyer films and, subsequently, many a young man's fantasy - you know this isn't exactly Shakespeare. Unlike Up, which featured two of the three. (Kitten and Raven.) That wasn't Shakespeare either, but was structurally similar to Shakespeare. You know, with the Greek chorus and all. Nonetheless, given a choice between good ol' fashioned T&A and plays by some dead English dude, who wouldn't choose the former? I would and I love plays by dead English dudes! This doesn't exactly revisit the glory days of those classic breast-centric films but expecting it to do so is just expecting too much. It might also be a little too much to expect fans of RM's films to get equally excited about the prospect of seeing Kitten, Haji & Raven naked now that all three have a little more, um, life experience to their credit but thankfully everybody keeps their clothing, and thus their dignity, in check. Although the viewer does get to see the ever bubbly Kitten fellate a plastic banana (it's a long story and I wouldn't want to spoil the plot for you) which, dare I say it, might just do the trick for some of the males in the audience. If you're not looking to this film to give you a boner, just some mindless entertainment - and you like nudity free, bad joke heavy superhero spoofs - then step right on up to the Double-D Avenger. I don't really like those things but even I can't hate on this. Plus, I love Haji! (Cost of the DVD - well, for me it was free but you know where I'm going with this. Hearing her spit out witty repartee like "weef bin denzin ur phennties uff buss" for an hour - priceless.) The film's existence is proof positive of the American dream and it's general right to be is not to be denied. Not by me anyway.

Superstarlet AD

(Guerrilla Monster)

This time around the videos I got from the lovely Miss Dawn came courtesy her main squeeze, Sleazegrinder. There was no press kit or even a box cover with the videos though; so I went over to his site to see what I was in for. It was there that I saw him refer to Supestarlet AD as "the Ben Hur of lowbrow cinema." My curiosity was suitably peaked. (Even though I've never seen Ben Hur.) Could the film really live up to such a high expectation? There's only one way to find out. Five minutes into the film I had to admit, I really couldn't figure out what was going on. Ten minutes into the film I realized it really didn't matter. Films like this one are a rare and special breed and to some extent cannot be judged by the same standards used to judge other films. (I tend to call them "Something Weird" films, only because I have seen so many films similar in style to this that are distributed by the fine company of the same name; but I guess it could be categorized in a number of terms: psychotronic, exploitation, etc.) You cannot look at this movie and say, "You know, the lighting is poor. And sometimes I can't hear the girls talking very well." I mean you could say those things, but you'd just look like a dumb bastard. The movie was made for under 20 grand! We're lucky they even had so many prop guns and crap to throw around. They sure did have a lot of cool lingerie in this flick though. And enough false eyelashes, black liquid eyeliner and lipstick for at least two drag nights at Bob & Barbara's. (Excuse the Philly reference, insert name of your local bar that hosts your city's finest drag show instead.) So I guess between that & the cost of film we know where the budget went. I'd hate to re-tell the whole plot but I'll give you a teaser: the movie takes place in the future, in a place called Femphis, where all men are extinct. (Yep, even gay ones; which is apparently why there is no clothing—only lingerie—in the future. Levi Strauss was gay? No shit!) Only women, and the occasional caveman, have survived in this post-apocalyptic world and, in order to stay alive, they've banded together while segregating themselves by hair color into "Beauty Cults". The brunettes dubbed the Satanas, the redheads the Tempests and the nearly extinct blondes, the Phayrays. (Perhaps some kind of societal commentary or maybe just a reflection of the director's personal taste in women?) Ah, but not all is so black and white; or blond, brunette and red-headed. There are a few girls who want to intermix and mingle with sisters of varied hair color. Two of them, brunette cutie pie Naomi & her blond, strangely accented gal pal Rachel make up the Superstarlets. Of course to really be diverse, they need a redhead; which is just what they set out to accomplish—and you know what comes next. Wacky hi-jinx! Duh. Oh yeah, and they're also on a mission to view their grandmother's respective ancestral stag films. Do you even need any more encouragement to see this movie? I should think not.

Sex Friend Nurezakari

(Screen Edge)

Nothing says "what the fuck" like Asian cinema, am I right? A friend was over here the other day & posed the following question while checking out the box cover: "So... is this like... porn or what?" I hadn't watched it at the time so I said I didn't know. Having seen it, I'm still not sure. Compared to the American version of adult cinema, which heavily features people's genitals and "money shots", probably not. There are two quotes on the box cover; one states that the film is "a journey of enlightenment where it isn't just the road that's long and hard." I didn't see anything long or hard - unless they're referring to the plotline, which is long, and the subtitles, which are hard to read. (Note to whoever subtitles movies: white type is very hard to read when run over white or light colored background.) The other quote boasts that the film is "Bizarre, fascinating and kinky." I can really only agree to the first one, although I suppose by someone else's standards this could be considered kinky. Overall I found it kind of dull. It took a long time for the plot to move along and even when it did, it still didn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense. Apparently this flick is representative of a semi-obscure film genre known as Pink Cinema (basically an Asian version of sexploitation movies) but unlike, say, your Russ Meyer type sexploitation movie that has a lot of action - not necessarily meaning XXX action but just stuff happening in general - this one has a whole weird extended story involving a dead childhood friend, baseball and a lot of silence. Aside from that there are a couple scenes where people appear to be having sex but again, there's nothing that graphic just some naked boobs and the occasional shot of a guys butt. Weird? Yes. Fascinating? Sorry, but no.