Monstervision's Joe Bob Briggs looks at

Play-Mate of the Apes (2002)

Roddy McDowall never had it like this!

"Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In" for the week of January 15, 2002

GRAPEVINE, Tex. -- Have you ever noticed how those "sexy hour" movies on Cinemax--those 11 o'clock movies with names like Temptress-- only hire actors who are deformed?
Watch when they have sex. First girl gets nekkid. Then boy doesn't get nekkid. (What's up with that?) Then girl sits on top of him like she's settling into the bull-riding chute at the National Finals Rodeo. And then you get a lot of violin music and a camera that pans up and down, over and across, all around her garbonzas while she squints her eyes and exhales a lot. Half the time the guy doesn't even touch her, and if he does, it's like he's reading Braille--fingertips only, making sure he avoids anything sensitive.
Every once in a while you think he's about to do something. He's moving his hand, he's almost got it, he's gonna... whoops! And, of course, he's got his eyes shut too. He wouldn't want to actually see the Silicone Sister who's sort of occasionally resting her pelvis on his... well... this is my point..
Their bodies don't line up.
If you look at em real close, they're freaks of nature. If they're having sex, then their sex organs are either way too high or way too low on their bodies. And that's disgusting..

Anyhoo, there's obviously a market for this stuff in America--in Europe, on the other hand, they just have plain ole raunchy hot and sweaty sex--and the guy who does his own special version of sex-but-no-sex for the video market is John Bacchus, well known to readers of this column for his recent epic "Gladiator Eroticus." I've watched a few John Bacchus flicks now, and a theme is emerging. This may be the only filmmaker in America who casts lesbians in every major role of every movie he makes.

His latest effort is "Play-Mate of the Apes," the lesbian answer to Tim Burton, in which three lusty lesbo astronauts crash-land on a jungle planet inhabited by talking apes who think humans are inferior because they can't get funky on the dance floor. Pretty soon the astro-bimbos are collecting every available leopard-skin bikini so they can prove to the ape military that they can indeed boogie, but meanwhile they keep sneaking off to the woods with various cavegirls to canoodle like comatose weasels.

Sure we've seen it before, but have we seen it with an extended outdoor party scene featuring rapping primates? I think not.

Misty Mundae, the slinky little brunette who stars in almost all of John Bacchus' flicks, stars as the lead lesbonaut, and she eventually leads the human revolt featuring frenzied scenes of bikini-clad kung-fu Amazons beaning hapless apes over the head with clubs, spears and strained dialogue. In the meantime, as I mentioned, they do sneak off into the woods. Frequently.

Absolutely no plot to get in the way of the story.
Four dead bodies.
Fifty-sex breasts.
Multiple aardvarking.
Two cheesy video-special-effect crash landings.
Fondling.
Rubbing.
Bone-bashing.
Bimbo net capture.
Two ape riots.
Two orgies.
Multiple blows to the simian groin.
Gratuitous lemonade stand.
Gratuitous scarecrow.
Gratuitous guy in a chicken suit.
Kung Fu.
Rap Fu.
Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Darian Caine, as the wild-eyed cavegirl, for having zero dialogue and speaking it well; Kinky Kong

Anoushka, a Slavic girl with two enormous talents, as the Russian lesbonaut who can't resist being caged up and nekkid;
Dan Schwab, as the gay Roddy McDowall ape in pink fur, for saying "How's my butt? It's not glowing like a baboon's, is it?";
Debbie Rochon, as the sensitive Kim Hunter ape in a blonde fright wig;
Misty Mundae, as the fearless lesbian leader who strip-teases for the ape general to show him how smart she is, then shouts "This is a madhouse!";
Zachary W. Snygg, as the ape general in an Elvis jumpsuit who says "These humans can't rock!";
Shelby Taylor, as the barbarian queen who shows up at the end of the movie because they've run out of bodies to put in sex scenes;
John Link, as the Missing Link who descends in a glitter ball and sings "The Ape Man Disco Song" in a misguided effort to tie up the loose ends of the movie;
and John Bacchus, the finest lesbian writer/director working today.

Two and a half stars. Joe Bob says check it out.

Official "Play-Mate of the Apes" websites: SeductionCinema.com and mistymundae.com

To check out Joe Bob's voluminous guide to all the B movies ever made, go to www.joebobbriggs.com or email him at JoeBob@upi.com. Snail-mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, TX 75221.

Joe Bob Briggs looks at

Gladiator Eroticus (2001)

Roddy McDowall never had it like this either!

Parody of Ridley Scott's masterpiece that opens with a nekkid Roman lesbian general (did they have those?) walking through a golden meadow, rubbing her hand over the waving stalks where her homeland of Lesbius once stood before the emperor demolished it. (Uh, shouldn't that be Lesbos, the Greek island popularized by Sappho? Obviously director John Bacchus didn't pay attention in Latin and Greek class, perhaps because he has the surname of the god of drunken revels.) And then comes that staple of historical movies, the slow type-crawl:
"Many things are known. Many things are unknown. But few know the legend of the lesbian gladiators." That legend begins in Germania, in 285 A.D., where the Emperor Gluteus Maximus commands General Eroticus (the sinewy brunette Darian Caine) to lead his army against the barbarians. The warriors refuse to fight until she shows them her breasts, Mardi Gras-style, but then they engage in an orgy of limb-hacking that may be historically accurate or may be a couple dozen thinly-garbed extras in a New Jersey field, tossing around rubber limbs from somebody's Halloween party. After a long lesbian sex scene between Eroticus and a blonde warrior, both of them wearing authentic period thong bikinis, Gluteus Maximus claims victory and Eroticus addresses her troops: "Let's just say we licked 'em." Gluteus Maximus asks her to assume the emperorship, to preserve it from the designs of his wimpy mincing son, Dickus Minimus, who has already printed up T-shirts that say "I Am the Emperor!" and spends most of his time trying to make his babe sister pose like Madonna and remove her blouse. When he discovers that his father is about to pass him over, he raises his toga and exposes himself in a fit of rage, causing the emperor to fall over laughing and drop dead of a heart attack. Soon the conniving son is dispatching identical-twin blonde lesbian big-breasted legionaires to slit the throat of Eroticus. Instead they end up groping one another under a tree until the heart-broken homesick lesbo general can make her escape and trek home in the nude to the ruins of Lesbius. In other words, it's pretty much a documentary about the third century A.D., told from the lesbo point of view.
Fifteen dead bodies.
Eighty-five breasts.
Arm-chewing.
Hacking.
Goring.
Groping, with wailing Muslim music.
Head rolls.
Arm rolls.
Multiple aardvarking.
Multiple orgiastic grimacing.
Nekkid slow-motion gladiatrix practice.
Extras eaten by giant Disney animals.
Multiple piercings in interesting places.
Gratuitous vomitorium.
Broadsword Fu.
Bimbo Fu.
Mace Fu.
Tattoo Fu.
Darian Caine has the best line:
"Most of all, I wish for the return to my homeland of Lesbius, to listen to the sweet sounds of etheridge, and laugh in jest at the brilliance of Degeneres, and on Tuesday nights head down to the local playhouse theater for the Xena episode."
With Misty Mundae as the oversexed young imperial sister Clitoris ("Uh, I dropped my contact lens and she was helping me look for it"),
John P. Fedele as the evil Dickus Minimus who proclaims new signs for the city reading "Welcome to Sunny Decadent War-Mongering Rome"
("I need to be down with the ladies in the 280's"),
Debbie Rochon as the lesbian gladiatrix boot-camp slavemistress ("You will play in the Lesbian Games or DIE!"),
Jade Duboir as the muscular ebony warrior Orgasmus ("You may lunge at my breasts now"). Two stars.

When a man lost his penis to cancer, doctors replaced it with one of his fingers; according to Ripley's Believe It Or Not

Erotic Survivor (2001)
Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In
By Joe Bob Briggs, Drive In Movie Critic of Grapevine, Texas
For the week of August 29, 2001

What's the favorite Greek word of the film industry? (Hint: it's not souvlaki or Oedipus.) That's right: erotic. You can pair the word "erotic" with virtually any other word in the English language and conjure up all kinds of nasty ideas. "Dancer" is boring, but "erotic dancer" is an adrenaline rush. Reading a "novel" sounds like a chore, but reading an erotic novel makes Anne Rice a millionaire. "Pictures" is a neutral concept. Erotic pictures require Supreme Court decisions. We could have chosen a French word, like sensual, or an Anglo-Saxon word, like sexual, or a German phrase, like "himmelfarb eichendichter." (Actually, no we couldn't. Nobody tries to score by whispering in German.)

But "erotic" is the magic word, especially in the wonderous world of late-night pay-cable. Just since the nineties we've had "Erotic Boundaries," "Erotic Heat," "Erotic Journey," "Erotic Passion," "Erotic Possessions," "Erotic Prison," "Erotic Liaisons," "Erotic Stalker," "Erotic Nights," "Erotic Choices," "Erotic Confessions," Erotic Fantasies, "Erotic Underground," "Erotic Ghost," and, of course, the 1996 classic "Erotic House of Wax."

If you go back before that, you get the 1980s gems of badly-dubbed European sleaze: "Erotic Dreams," "Erotic Images," "Erotic Passion," "Erotic School Girl" (Italian, of course), "Erotic Games," and "The Erotic Dreams of Cleopatra."

You have to go all the way back to the wacky seventies to find "erotic"-hounds who used the word to advance the medium, though. These guys would take a hot movie and do the sexy version, like "Erotic Inferno," or "The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein," or "The Erotic Adventures of Siegfried," "Erotic Tales from the Mummy's Tomb," "The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio" (there's a joke that goes with that, but I can't tell it in the newspaper), and, my personal favorite, "Erotic Encounters of the Fourth Kind."

Continuing this noble cinematic tradition is the video that's been breaking records for several months, "Erotic Survivor." Yes, it's a straight-out parody of the hit TV show, filmed in New Jersey by our old friend John Bacchus, director of the immortal "Gladiator Eroticus" (he's all over this concept), and in this case he doubles as the "Erotic Survivor" on-air producer, who solemnly intones, "Eight people. Two tribes. One winner. And the grand prize: Twenty dollars"

Hundreds of feet from civilization, the Pu-Nanni Tribe of four easily distracted lesbians battles against the Hey-Hu-Nanni Tribe of a doper, a nerd, a holy-roller, and an anger-repressed uptight crusader for TV morals (Debbie Rochon, in a non-aardvarking role). They build huts, run relay races with sex toys, see who can open a beer can in the wilderness first, play Sexual Trivial Pursuit, plot against one another, and wander into the forest for frequent orgies involving tapioca and volcanic mud.

The straight-to-camera "reality" footage is pretty decent, and fortunately, there's no plot to get in the way of the story.
You gotta love that burgeoning New Jersey film industry.

No dead bodies.
Twenty-five breasts.
Sexual tree-trimming (Don't ask)
Tapioca sap-licking.
Dead-leaf-eating.
Beer-can-bashing.
Two orgies.
Volcanic mud-rassling.
Hiney-smacking.
Multiple aardvarking.
Barfarama.
Gratuitous dead gorilla.
Pogo-stick Fu.
Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Justin Wingenfeld, as the overweight bearded Christian who says "I feel my path is a righteous one";
Joey Smack, as the booze-guzzling tripper in a daishiki who gets his inspiration from the stars;
Darian Caine, as the hot brunette who just can't seem to keep her clothes on in the woods;
Debbie Rochon, as the troubled Mary, saddled with a group of male losers, for saying, "They all bring me down in their own way"; and

Misty Mundae, whose strategy is to win by sleeping with every member of the cast.
Two stars. Joe Bob says check it out.

© 2001 Joe Bob Briggs All Rights Reserved.

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Duck! The Carbine High Massacre (2001)

Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In
By Joe Bob Briggs, Drive In Movie Critic of Grapevine, Texas
For the week of January 21, 2001

You might have read about these guys in New Jersey who did a satirical movie about the Columbine massacre within, like, four months of the event, which is faster than they got the Amy Fisher movies released. The strange thing is, I could never find the movie. There were all these editorials in the newspaper about how disgusting it was that someone would make a movie about the subject at all, much less dramatize the actual killings, much less add humor to the mix, and so Blockbuster wasn't real quick to stock that title. It's one of the few examples I've ever seen of more or less successful censorship by popular consent. The last time this happened, the victim was Andrew "Dice" Clay of Ford Dairlane, who was going about his business, doing his show for his audience, and a lot of people who were not his fans and had never been to his show pretty much wrecked his career by saying that these other people, these disgusting people, shouldn't be allowed to watch him. Same deal here.

Well, I found the movie. And if you write to me, I'll tell you where to get it. It's called "Duck!: The Carbine High Massacre," and it's told from the point of view of the two Trenchcoat Boys who went postal in the cafeteria. If I had to guess, it was put together by some friends who have spent their whole lives being called "freaks"--punk kids, goth kids, headbangers--and so wanted to point out a few things that might have motivated the suicidal mass murderers. Of course, that just makes it all the more likely to be consigned to the Dempster Dumpster of low-budget direct-to-video failures.

But what we've got here is eerie and powerful--if you can get through it. The acting is horrible. The soundtrack is so shaky that, when scenes take place on the playground, you can't hear the actors because the mike is too close to the bouncing basketballs. The parents of these kids are either way too young to be parents or refugees from a Weekhawken improv group.

What the flick does have is outstanding gore effects (these guys must be lifetime subscribers to Fangoria magazine) and a final sequence that is gruesome, shocking, sad, frightening, bloody as hell, and--at the moment of truth--beautiful. It's a really bad movie that delivers in the final few moments.

You already know the plot, but the leads are played by Joey Smack and William Hellfire, as two high school misfits who like to smoke, surf the Net, buy weapons, read the works of Adolf Hitler, wear Army helmets and trenchcoats, and annoy the jocks, rich kids, and Bible-study girls. They use pretty much every obscene derogatory term in the book, but when it comes to the black guy that they hate, they call him--oddly enough--"that African-American." When one of them gets stomped by the cool kids at school, they briefly consider suicide, then come up with a more stylish solution.

Nineteen dead bodies.
Four breasts.
Multiple gunshot wounds.
Bullet through the head.
Barrel-to-the-mouth.
Wife-beating.
Stomach-carving.
Vodka-guzzling.
Multiple barfing.
After-school gang-pummeling.
Nuclear-bomb-making.
Kicking.
Spitting.
"Mein Kampf"-ripping.
Bikini gun-modelling.
Hammer to a cat's brain.
Bulletproof-backpack demonstration.
Amazing double-suicide.
Exploding high school.
Great tattooed shirtless banshee band called Today Is The Day.
Gratuitous fart noises.
Vending-machine Fu.
Spam Fu.
Dynamite Fu.
Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Kendall Ward, as the African-American who wears an "I Hate White People" shirt and despises everybody;
Henry Krinkle, as the retarded kid in a wheelchair who talks about sci-fi all the time;
Misty Mundae, as the Bible girl who begs everyone to come to her prayer meetings;
Marie Mazur as the sweetness-and-light folk singer whose music is so awful she deserves to die;
Stephen Harris as the violent alcoholic dad who says "Not my good guns!";
William Hellfire, the bald producer/director/writer who plays the trenchcoat freak who says "I wanna leave the planet";
and Joey Smack, the producer/director/writer who says "I don't hate you, mom, but I'm gonna kill myself at school today."
Three stars. Joe Bob says check it out.
*
© 2001 Joe Bob Briggs All Rights Reserved.
For more of Joe Bob's non-TNT reviews in Grapevine, Texas, go to his Drive-In/B-Movie Reviews Archive over yonder at www.JoeBobBriggs.com
or email him at JoeBob@upi.com. Snail-mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, TX 75221.

Lord of the G-Strings: The Femaleship of the String (2002)

From the DVD Back Cover:
In a mythical realm long ago,
beautiful and diminutive Throbbit Bildo Saggins (Mundae)
is sent by Smirnoff the Wizard to destroy the legendary G-String --
the most powerful weapon in the land.
The String was forged by an ancient villianess,
and those who possess the slinky and sexy undergarment
experience supreme invincibility...
and a whole lot more!
Misty Mundae, Darian Caine, A.J. Khan, Paige Richards, Chelsea Mundae

Bite Me! (2004 monster/horror film spoof)

A crate of bio-engineered marijuana winds up at a strip-joint after a drug deal gone bad, bringing with it a renegade DEA agent and a swarm of monstrous critters. Just what owner Ralph and sultry dancers Crystal, Trix and Amber need as they struggle to save their club from shutting down. An exterminator is called in to thwart the infestion, but quicker than you can say "roach motel," these oversized insectoids prove they are made of tougher stuff.
The Breeastford Wives

The club is under attack by a stealthy, skittering invasion of bad-ass, bloodthirsty bugs, and there’s nowhere to run, no place to hide, and not a lap-dance in sight. And when the DEA heavy falls victim to a hungry horde, you can be sure he’ll be back...but he might not be quite human anymore.
Erin Brown, Julian Wells, Rob Monkiewicz, Erika Smith, Michael R. Thomas.
Directed by Brett Piper (the Screaming Dead)

The Breastford Wives (2007)

Sexy, unrated 'spoof' of the classic horror film Stepford Wives ---
Directed by noted genre veteran Jim Wynorski
(Chopping Mall, Swamp Thing 2, Bare Wench Project)
and stars popular Adult actress Taylor Wane
and sexy 'B' veteran Glori-Anne Gilbert.
Misty Mundae is Spider-Babe

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