Sandy Hook Lingerie Party Massacre (2000)

Directed by:
Tim Beckley

As it turns out, the tragic recent school shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary aren't the only horrors that have befallen that quaint coastal New England town... Christ, this was awful. With a title containing the words "lingerie" and "massacre," one can probably guess that this was made - first and foremost - to show off nude or scantily-clad women. To its credit, it does show off nude and scantily-clad women. However, most of the featured "actresses" are not going to be everyone's Helen of Troy. This has to be the biggest collection of skanks I've ever seen gathered together for one of these things. I'm talkin' tattoos and piercings all over the place, fried hair, bruised legs, cottage cheese thighs, stubbly armpits and guts that manage to extend out even further than their generous DD proportions, all clad in the ugliest and least flattering clothing imaginable. It's very true that there's not just one standard of beauty, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, some men like women with more meat on their bones and so on and so forth, so I won't comment any further on these lady's physical attributes. I will just say that I guarantee the majority of men's eyes will gravitate either right toward its star: prolific B-movie vixen Debbie Rochon, or perhaps to fetish model / professional dominatrix Mistress Persephone. The rest of the chicks in this movie are "homely" to put it kindly.

We start out at a strip club, where the dancers are introduced via a voice-over from each one. Mona Crowley (Rochon) is "just a psychic who happens to be sexy." Natasha (Zane Ka) is the educated one who fancies herself an artist and is stripping only because she can't find work as a belly dancer. Barbara (Tanya Harsh) is proud of her hooters and thinks "a man would have to be stone cold gay not to enjoy these natural beauties." Paula (Mellissa) has an anxiety disorder, is antisocial and wants to break out of her shell. Didi (Di Di Delicious) is a bisexual punker chick into sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll. Dusk (Persephone) has a kinky side and incorporates a cat o' nine tails into her stage act. These six gals decide to head out to Sandy Hook during winter off-season for a little rest and relaxation. Their trip plays out like your own vacation home movies (with comparable production values) as they try to figure out a map, get lost, flash a horny, hook-handed guy holding a road sign and recite a chant ("Sandy Hook, Sandy Hook. Rain and wind, sand and thunder, is gonna put you six feet under.") that ends up biting them in the ass.

So the girls go to their beach house, dance wearing masks and have extremely awkward, mostly sex-oriented improvised conversations; one of which involves whether or not they'd have sex with this film's director. They go to the beach to fly a kite and knock a beach ball around with their tits. One of the girls goes to a tattoo parlor to get her nipple and tongue pierced and hears a story about the ghost of the Sandy Hook Lighthouse Keeper. According to legend, the keeper committed suicide because he felt guilty for not turning on the light one night and now he haunts the area. The house the ladies have rented happens to be located right next to the lighthouse where the Keeper worked. But that's all for naught since nothing is explained and the psycho who does eventually show up is decked out as some leather-clad BDSM freak.

After a game of "Titster" (Sex Twister) and a tarot card reading spelling doom, the psycho finally shows up to kill everyone off. After he decapitates one girl in a hot tub, her friend lifts the head up and says, "This isn't what I meant when I said I wanted to get ahead in life." in a monotone voice. Another girl is chased down the beach and gets hooked behind a rock. There's a machete through the neck, a drowning in the toilet and other such nonsense; all horribly staged. Almost all of the violence takes place off-screen and we just get to see the Karo-smeared aftermath... and it takes an entire hour to get to any of it!

I cannot stress enough how painfully bad this is. The whole thing reeks of being a terribly disorganized production made by complete amateurs who had no clue what they were doing. The continuity is non-existent, the camera is frequently out of focus so entire scenes are blurry, nearly every frame is either over-lit or too damn dark to see what's going on and there doesn't appear to have been much of a script since the actresses constantly talk over and interrupt one another. There are a gazillion shots of the lighthouse cut throughout the film, sometimes in negative image, and the comic relief  - involving some foul-mouthed, nasal-voiced old pervert named Mr. Creepo (played by the director) is embarrassingly bad. Awful, awful, awful, and not even a bit of fun. And this is coming from someone who quite likes the 'sexy chicks have a slumber party and get slaughtered' subgenre.

These same people behind this also made BARELY LEGAL LESBIAN VAMPIRES: THE CURSE OF ED WOOD (2001) and SKIN EATING JUNGLE VAMPIRES (2002).

NO STARS!

La donna del lago (1965)

... aka: Lady of the Lake, The
... aka: Possessed, The

Directed by:
Luigi Bazzoni
Franco Rossellini

Bernard (Peter Baldwin) has tried having a relationship with Claudia. He likes her. She loves him. He feels like he should love her, but he either doesn't or is unsure of his capacity to love her or anyone else for that matter. He just feels empty inside. He calls it quits over the phone. Her last words to him are "I won't forget you." Bernard decides to run away from his problems and takes an extended vacation to a place he's visited on and off throughout the years ever since he was a child. He arrives in the small, quiet, peaceful, lakeside village during the wintertime; the tourist off-season, when not many other people are around aside from the locals. Bernard goes to a hotel where the owner and staff know him because he was just there the previous year. A writer, Bernard claims he's there to work on an autobiographical book, but he's actually there for another reason: Tilde (Virna Lisi). Tilde was a very attractive young maid from the wrong side of the tracks who'd worked at the hotel the previous winter when Bernard had visited. Despite the fact the two were never intimate and barely even knew each other, she made quite the impression nonetheless.

Bernard had followed Tilde back to the old hotel and spied on her making love to a man whose identity he couldn't quite make out before he left the previous year. It's one of those moments he's not been able to forget and he's been infatuated with her ever since. She's also perhaps the reason he's not been able to successfully move on in his love life; one of those "What if...?" moments in life that hangs over our heads until they're resolved. Because of the lasting impact their brief encounters had made on him, Bernard has decided that he wants to be with her. Unfortunately, he learns that she committed suicide by drinking poison. Francesco (Pier Giovanni Anchisi), a hunchback photographer in the area, believes otherwise and informs Bernard that not only did they find poison in the girl's system, but she'd also had her throat cut. He also believes she was pregnant (and has photographic proof) and was possibly murdered for that very reason. Rumor around town has it that the wealthy hotel owner Mr. Enrico (Salvo Randone) had paid off the cops and doctors, who have in their autopsy report that she died a virgin, while Bernard certainly knows better.

Now intrigued by what's going on and fueled by his obsession to discover the truth, Bernard tries to find out all he can about about the intriguing girl. He learns her father Saverio is a guilt-stricken drunk living as a vagabond who occasionally comes into town to curse at the hotel and its owners. Mr. Enrico seems overwhelmed by sadness at the mere mention of Tilde's name, as does his put-upon daughter Irma (Valentina Cortese). Living across the street from the hotel is Enrico's son Mario (Philippe Leroy) and his wife Adriana (Pia Lindström), who run a slaughterhouse. The townsfolk are scared of Mario and his violent temper and he may have been the young man Bernard saw Tilde making love to the previous year. Adriana is a foreigner new to the area who seems almost like she's being kept prisoner inside her home. She never comes outside during the daytime and likes to take lonely strolls after midnight. When she unsuccessfully tries to pass along a note to Bernard, she too ends up dead; drowned in the very lake she'd usually take her late night walks around.

Often listed as a giallo, I suppose this qualifies to an extent because it's an Italian murder / mystery. However, it lacks the violence, slasher scenes and sleaze one usually associates with that subgenre. This is much more of a stylish, eerie mood piece. It's well acted, very well made and really gorgeously photographed in black-and-white. Through much of this film, Bernard is suffering from a fever, which may be due to slowly being poisoned, though we're never explicitly told that for sure. He's the ultimate in unreliable protagonists, not only because he's confessed to being "sick" earlier in the film but also because part of what we see are hallucinations or fantasies. Some of the scenes which relay information to us are simply fever dreams that play out his own hunches and expectations about what's going on, not what's really going on. These are seamlessly integrated into the film at various points to parallel what we are probably thinking and are an attempt to dash our expectations as we try to sort out the mystery in our own heads at the same time the protagonist is. It's an interesting idea and fairly well executed here.

For the flashback and many of the fantasy sequences, the directors and cinematographer have interestingly toyed around with the film exposure to give them a hazy, dream-like appearance. These sequences are overexposed, drowned out in light and sometimes even blurry. Much of the action and character movement in these scenes even leave behind phantom trails; a very cool effect. Lady of the Lake also brought to mind Polanski's classic The Tenant (1976) on multiple occasions. There's lots of voyeurism and tons of shots of suspicious people looking out of windows watching the action or each other.

Four writers are credited, including both directors, Renzo Rossellini and Giulio Questi, who'd go on to direct the surreal films Death Laid an Egg (1968) and ARCANA (1971). It's based on a novel by Giovanni Comisso. Bazzoni returned with a more standard giallo: THE FIFTH CORD (1971) a few years later and the sometimes-admired Footprints on the Moon (1974). To my knowledge, Lady was never released in America. It's definitely worth tracking down for mystery fans, though.

★★★