THE INSIDER (1999)

Much like he began the decade in 1992 developing seemingly unconventional material to fit his cinematic vision with The Last of the Mohicans, Michael Mann followed the success of 1995’s Heat and closed the 90’s out with The Insider (1999), a taught, thinking-person’s thriller that, like The Last of the Mohicans, seemed worlds away from […]

THE SIN SYNDICATE (1965)

“I learned on my wedding night that love was really a trap that could make you hate. A hate that made you want to kill your husband.” — Actual dialogue from The Sin Syndicate (that was probably jotted down by Michael Findlay while Roberta was talking in her sleep) The cinematic path of Roberta Findlay […]

HEAT (1995)

On the grandest throne at the center of Michael Mann’s universe, relatively undisturbed, sits 1995’s Heat. While one can argue all day about every one of his films’ merits and haggle about what represents his greatest work, it is without question that Heat gave Mann the ability to see a long-simmering dream project finally realized […]

ANYONE BUT MY HUSBAND (1975)

C.J. Laing is in a lather. Continually demeaned and berated by her philandering husband without any kind of conjugal respite, she is rooked into embarking on a tour of infidelity which proves to be as challenging and unrewarding than her home life. After a tryst with a well-meaning but far too serious paramour, Laing breaks […]

EAT AT THE BLUE FOX (1983)

Two things are done extremely well in the opening of Eat at the Blue Fox, Dick Aldrich’s (credited as Damon Christian, natch) 1983 follow-up to Titillation. The first thing is that a hot, sweaty, south of the border atmosphere is immediately established with a fade-up sex scene between Frank James and Desiree Lane. The second […]

HARD SOAP, HARD SOAP (1977)

One of the true joys of vintage hardcore is that the films are generally better time capsules than most any piece of entertainment from the period save and except daytime talk and game shows. A lot of times, the films made in the adult industry were written, produced, and released within mere weeks meaning that […]

PIT STOP (1969)

After toiling on more Roger Corman-produced stitch jobs in which he directed additional footage that was subsequently pasted onto existing projects, writer/director Jack Hill set his sights on the exploitation-friendly world of stock car racing with the 1967-shot, 1969-released Pit Stop (originally titled The Winner). Dressed in juvenile delinquent clothing and featuring the delivered-on promise […]

TITILLATION (1982)

After Russ Meyer packed it in with Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens, he dabbled in projects here and there, utilizing actress and then-girlfriend Francesca “Kitten” Natividad in Mondo Topless Too, some of the footage of which turned up in 2002’s Pandora Peaks (though, sadly, none of it including Natividad). But despite their lifelong admiration […]

PANDORA PEAKS (2002)

If Russ Meyer’s last three films of the seventies were a reckoning of his career and his views on sex and sexuality as the golden age of pornography pushed him out of the market, Pandora Peaks, Meyer’s direct-to-video final film from 2002, was a way to reckon with the first half of his career, namely […]

BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE ULTRAVIXENS (1979)

In Up!, Russ Meyer’s gory sex mystery from 1976, Raven De La Croix’s Margot Winchester grinds on a hillbilly cop through multiple marathon sex sessions in which no position goes untried and no location goes unexplored. Yet, despite all the physical exercise, Margo Winchester eventually looks down at her stud and, in her best Mae […]