Wednesday, January 29, 2014

A Fling with Space Thing, Part 6

If new to this series, start here.

You're still here?  What, you think this movie is going to improve?  There's probably something better you could be doing, like sort playing cards or grains of sand.

Don't drink and drive, and especially don't drink angry.

Our space captain is getting annoyed that all the women are having sex with other men and not with her.  She's every religious blow-hard's idea of what lesbians are, minus the clothes those blow-hards assume she stole off the dead (male) lumberjack after killing him -- obviously in a fit of gay rage -- over the way he gripped his hard and stout ax handle.

Damn it, people, don't you see the danger?  This kind of behavior is tearing the very fabric of our crappy cardboard spaceship nudie film apart!

Planet popcorn, dead ahead!

The ship needs to land to complete necessary repairs after the plot device sabotage.  I want you to compare this port view of the planet with the actual landscape of the planet below.  You'll notice a alarming lack of:
  • red
  • aquarium rocks
  • guy in charge of continuity
I know that DeSoto hubcap is around here somewhere ...

Our poor, flabby comedy relief is sent out to check if the surface is compatible with life and also compatible with shooting some really boring soft-core scenes.

I don't care if you're movie was from a major studio and had a big budget or just a bit of schlock designed to make a quick buck on the grind house circuit, forced perspective never, ever worked.  Especially when you work on Space Thing and don't care enough to focus the camera.

.... and don't let that ladder get away!

Sister bossy-pants (er, bossy bikini) captain lady gets the crew off the ship, and our cliche movie heel gets so mad his face becoming the same shade as the tanned blonde lady.  It's quite a feat as he's doing it emotionally and she did it at 450 in the bottom rack of an oven for 2 hours.

I'm glad they are laying down a blanket, don't want the planet to get a STD.

This planet is perfect for the necessary repairs, so they get right to the sex.  I do have to give the costuming department (blind hobo in a dumpster) some credit, there are quite a few ludicrously impractical costumes in this one, which is a staple of space movies.

... and they only had to pay him in those little cigars on toothpicks!

Sunday, January 26, 2014

A Fling with Space Thing, Part 5

If new to this series, start here.

More Space Thing, and this time with actual sci-fi concepts and action!  Kind of.  I guess.  Your mileage might vary.

Somebody has been hogging the tanning booth.

Our hero has attempted the sabotage the ship.  Badly.  It's equivalent to attempting to stop a bulldozer by putting a 1/100th scale toothpick replica of the Empire State building in front of it.  It doesn't go well, but somebody is forced to go out the airlock to fix it, and it's Mr. Grumpy Pants misogynist.

For moral support, the most tan woman in all the universe shows up.  When she was a fetus she was gestated in an Easy Bake Oven.

I can tell they are just moving the camera because the wigs are staying put.

Things don't go well for the crew of the SS Gray Drywall and we get the Star Trek-ian (I'm sorry to say this but my built in dictionary doesn't recognize "Trek-ian" as a real word, start a petition!) everybody leans left and right.

Luckily this ultra-advanced spaceship has the extra stability of gluing the bowls to the table.

And after that excitment?

I like the space version of the lollypop guild!

... right back to the sex.

After his heroic table grabbing, our hero is invited to the room of a woman who's height is 25% hair, and, for once in this forsaken movie, hair on her head and not a tangle of back hair.  

Slim Goodbody wants to get in on the action!

So our alien-in-disguise hero has to once again go through the motions.  This being a late 60s soft core film, everything just IS the motions.  Nothing goes in anywhere, if you don't count the bile pushing it ways up my digestive track.

Speaking of digestive tracks ... what the heck is up with the silly mannequin?  Did they really need to add some scenery that's made of plaster and out-acts the real actors?  It seems like a real jerk move! 

Who's turn is it to clean the space china?

The repairs get made, the non-sex sex happens, and we all sit down for space lunch, which consists of peanuts and crunch-a-munch.  Oh, wait, space peanuts and space crunch-a-munch.

Next, it gets more exciting.  There's an actual ray gun!  No, not the fleshy type.  The real toy-like plastic type!

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

A Tribute to Mike Vraney

I'm interrupting the Space Thing review to put up a special tribute to the man that made it possible for me to be snarky about the movie and and many other pieces of wonderful 60s shlock.


Mike Vraney
1957-2014

To many people, the films of, say, somebody like Doris Wishman mean little ... if they disappeared tomorrow few would care.  So many of the cult films of the 60s -- usually dealing with nudity or other subjects that were shocking at the time -- but now seems more silly than threatening -- would have been lost to the winds if not for the man you see above, and his business, Something Weird Video.

So much of what I review on this site comes from that single source.  Mike loved the material, Mike saved the material, and Mike carefully restored it.  From crumbling film stock to digital downloads, large sections of drive-in, grind house, and road show movies -- movies never meant to be seen after making a quick buck on these circuits through sex, drugs, violence, and rock n roll -- would never have survived.

My love for this quirky type of film -- a genre that is so intricately tied to a time in America -- came through a show called Reel Wild Cinema, hostess by Sandra Bernhard and produced by Mike, with films that he found and restored, or just saved.  A show that got in interviews with people like Maila "Vampira" Nurmi and Tura Satana deserved to be on longer than it was.

I wasn't sure if I should post this -- frankly, this blog is basically a snarky comedy blog.  But, it's necessary, because regardless of if it's a monster movie with boobs or a psychedelic biker flick, Mike's love and enthusiasm for the genre made a life long fan out of many people, including myself.  He will be missed.  Rest in peace.

A Fling with Space Thing, Part 4

If new to this series, start here.

Continuing on with our look at the 60s soft core nudie film Space Thing, we've gotten to the point where I won't be surprised by body hair on men.  Which is good, because behold:

We offer our paisley in two exciting colors, "blood" and "windex."

That's nearly an area rug.

I've had dogs with less hair on their backs.  We've veered dangerous close to freak-show wolf boy territory here.  So our jealous crew member (ha, sorry) from the last segment now proves his manhood by bedding the object of his affection.

Of course, he could have skipped the non-sex sex scene and just proved his manhood by taking a weedwacker to that thatch hut he's got growing on his back.

Iiiieiiieiiieieeeee .... will always love yoooooooouuuuuuu!

Watching the proceedings is our sexy captain.  Rank for Terrian woman is based on the amount of eye shadow they can heap on their creaking eyelids.

As captain, she demands that she gets dibs, kind of like old time pirates and rum, but with less peg legs and more pegging (sorry, again.)

Our advanced spaceship has the same controls as the Intellivision.

Our spy uses this time to familiarize himself with the controls so that he may sabotage the ship later.  From left to right, it's volume, treble, bass, toggle for the 8-track, and the disco intensifier.

The disco intensifier is useful as our hero is dressed to hit the dance floor of Studio 54, and our shlub is dressed to clean up the coke residue on the toilet rims.

Is this being shot from the inside of Jeannie's lamp?

Our captain takes her dibs and you get a scene that just a few years earlier wouldn't have shown up on any film -- a lesbian scene.  It's amazing that this one shows up on film, you'd expect the pastel primary colors to clash so badly with the paisley that the entire scene would be sucked into a black hole.

I'd really like to meet the set designer.  Who thought "this isn't enough, it's missing something" and then came up with a bright orange tiger-stripe pillow?  As I said, I'd like to meet the set designer, but probably just to punch them.

The most interesting and least interesting man in the world.

Evil Captain Kirk Lite and Tubby McPJs get to watch the action on a monitor that we are supposed to pretend exists.  The entire scene is lit with a green light, probably because it forces pubic lice to flee into the fat folds on our hunky lead.

Will our hero manage to sabotage the ship?  Will he be forced to participate in the sick sex rituals of the Terrians?  Will the gold lamé cause a rash?  Sadly, probably all three in our next installment!

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

A Fling with Space Thing, Part 3

If new to this series, start here.

My last excuse for a late post was the polar vortex, and there's a new one this time: I moved from one house to another. It's almost as if nature and some type of deity was trying to deter me from watching more of Space Thing.

Well, screw you forces of nature!  Screw you infinite omnipotent beings!  I'm going to review Space Thing and nothing is going to stop me ...

Examples of bumps in the wrong and in the right places.

Except Sir Flabby McDonut there.  Hot chicks in space bikinis?  Check!  What else does this production need?  I know, a guy with a lot of rolls squeezed into a blue tube sock.  Why other soft core productions didn't latch onto this brilliant ideal I'll never know!

I should explain to people that have only seen modern porn (gasp, not you, too!)  In the 60s you usually had a guy that was comedy relief, a sad sack that never got into the sack.  That's Baldy McStuffins there.  Honestly, who answers these ads?  Needed: actor, must be ugly, to be humiliated in stupid boobs and spaceships movie.

Soak it in, ladies, both front and back of our hunky lead!

The woman two pictures above is the captain of this ship, which really needs a good scrub down after all the sweating and grunting.  Everybody on this ship -- I assume a five year mission to boldly get STDs -- tries to make it with our in-disguise hero.  We meet another crew member that is either trying to get in his pants, or she's a hardware store employee telling a disco dancer just how much a bargain this aluminum extension ladder is.

Maybe that butt is too well defined ...

It seems the blonde woman has a very jealous boyfriend who's in a real punching mood, driven slightly mad by the space mirror and space extension ladder.

Also, more than likely, the fact that his girlfriends instantly tries to jump a mysterious stranger that just appeared on their ship -- a ship that is about the size of a utility shed.

We here on Terra suck at security when sex is involved!  Wait, that's not a joke, that's actually true.  Political Commentary!

Red Alert: Fan Service!

I'd be more excited about the lesbian stuff if somebody didn't roll that turkey stuffed into a 12-year old's blue jammies back onto the scene.

Our captain tries to re-assert authority by snuggling.  I think they tried this once in the Navy, or that just might have been a Village People song.

Held together by charged ion anti-grav beams and ties made of yarn.

Our hero, recovering from his vicious beating -- and in my estimation not vicious enough because he recovered to continue this movie -- begins to search the ship.  He stumbles upon the most secret of Terrian technology, the green and pastel-blue fabric drive.

What will happen next?  Will those gold pants chafe?  Will he discover the secret to the fabric drive, i.e., the foam-board center?  Or will there be more boring sex scenes?  Probably the later.

Monday, January 6, 2014

A Fling with Space Thing, Part 2

If new to this series, start here.

While the January 2014 arctic vortex blows our doors down and turns us into human popsicles with the slight taste of twinkie filling and menthol, let's warm up with the next dose of the 1968 sci-fi nudie Space Thing. Everybody cuddle in tight, gold and silver lamé costumes don't conduct heat well.

You can only get away with toys for special effects when you are 5.

Star Trek (the words "Star Trek" and "Nudie" in one post?  Hello high google ranking!) was only off the air for one year when the makers of Space Thing thought using a toy Enterprise -- flying by in reverse and in the blackness of space and/or bad lighting -- would be something they could get away with.

They were absolutely right.

People have to remember that Star Trek didn't become a cultural touchstone until a number of years after it was cancelled.  Space Thing becoming a cultural touchstone, however, is certainly right around the corner -- and when that happens, this blog will be noted as the beginning -- and then I will probably be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.

Somebody page Ed Wood Jr, his model's been stolen!

The Enterprise (just go with it) is trailing this ship -- of the bad guys -- the Terrians.  Yes, us.  Our hero is an alien in disguise with a mission to destroy this ship, but somehow ends up just having a lot of disgusting human sex.

Our hero thinking the sex is disgusting is a plot point in this movie, but it ends up being a case of art imitating even worse art as the sex is actually not disgusting but hideously boring.

The fishbowl of crappy special effects.

Our set consists of both table mounted bowls and wall mounted bowls, plus up-turned garbage cans and an aluminum ladder.  I just saw a classic episode of Doctor Who that also had an aluminum ladder, but it correctly mitigated that by including a giant paper-mache insect monster.  So, I guess, a draw.

It looks like somebody tied up the ham hocks too tight.

You spelled "thigh" wrong.

After a lot of crappy models and the cliche "credits on the naked chick" sequence, we finally get the first view of our hero, in all his gold lamé glory:

It's the interstellar representative of the lollypop guild.

Of course, his space costume also looks a bit Star Trek-ian.  Like a low-budget Khan, but instead of selling corinthian leather he sells ass-less leather chaps.  Used.  And, like Richardo Montalbon, the first person that rushes to him is a naked Tattoo.  Honestly, 30% of that woman's height is hair.  She must be 4 space feet tall.

By the way, that door behind them is the air lock.  I especially enjoy the hardware store gate hinges.

So, how will our disguised alien interact with the Terrians?  Does it involve grunting?  Why, yes!

Thursday, January 2, 2014

A Fling with Space Thing, Part 1

Welcome to 2014.  A little warning about this post, which starts the review of Space Thing, a 1968 soft-core Dave Friedman nudie.  This kind of multi-part, navel-gazing review is nothing new to my readers, all of whom are prisoners forced to read this blog Clockwork Orange style in order to repay their debts to society.

What is new is some of the most upsetting images you're ever going to see.  This is 1968, long before plastic surgery and razors.  Razors for men.  You've been warned.

A small preview of the horrors to come.

Our hero -- don't snicker, it's the best we are getting -- is ignoring his wife while reading sci-fi pulp novels.  He's pretty smirky for somebody that's half wildebeest.

Having the side of the bed that's next to the plywood bar is bad enough, but now the wife finds herself being ignored.  She's going to have to step it up.

Twiki had a hard time finding work after Buck Rogers was cancelled.

That is one sexy curl!

I'd say something about the woman but I'm fascinated by the painting, which seems be of the Salem Witch Trials, from the perspective of the burning witch.

This tactic works, and our first soft-core scene starts.  It's a doozy.  Buckle in.  Have your barf bags ready.  Here we go with the nightmare fuel.  First up:

She's going to get a back full of newsprint ...

There's parts of the 60s I don't think anybody wants returned.  For one, false eyelashes so big that they've formed their own gravitation wells, which for interstellar navigation help were marked by white parking lines.

Also, indeterminate neck and/or possible breast muscles, or just summer sausage sewed in underneath the skin in case there is a surprise famine.

I'm not hugging, I just can't get my fingers untangled from your back hair!

Tightie whities.

Thank whatever dark gods got into google and sent you to this blog that those things are clean.  They are tight.  They are white.  And, I suspect, they are barely holding in whatever terrible jungle -- full of crawling and clawing monsters -- that growing down there.

Are you still with me?  Here it comes.  I'm even nice enough to tell you what it is.  It's a picture of a woman licking a man's stomach.  That doesn't sound that bad, does it?

Oh, you fool.

You stupid, stupid fool.

... that or part of my dog.

It's OK to scream.  It won't get the image out of your head, that's there forever, but it will make you feel better.  For a little while.  The horror never dies.