Carnal Highways / Carnal Olympics - 1979 / 1983

I was gifted this random DVD by my ex wife.  Your ex wife gives you porn, things must be at least kind of good right?

This is actual porn.  I expected softcore with a plot and more of "that kind" of thing.  Also, I wonder if there are still the theaters showing porn these days.  I wonder when that stopped being so much of a thing.  I'm sure there were protests, lawsuits, arrests, which ended that whole fad.  But it's fascinating because these DVDs come in a case that shows all the old advertisements and fliers for seeing these porns, in actual theaters.  Where presumably you could jerk it.

Vinegar Syndrome put out this double DVD pack and I put it on last night, in a weird mood I guess.  I enjoyed a glass of cheap wine and watched Carnal Highways first.

Carnal Highways is the story of two aimless dudes who buy a semi truck, and they're eager to hit the roads to deliver their load of desks to San Francisco.  They know that truckers apparently have a reputation for being horny all the time, and so they are also looking to get laid.   They encounter a woman who first recounts a lesbian experience before both truckers fuck her.  Then they continue on, having sex with many women before the end scene where they deliver the desks and group sex ensues.

Carnal Olympics is a kinkier story.  There is a competition on to see which porn actress is the best, and naturally the way to decide this is to have the actresses engage in a lot of porn.  They have a threesome lesbian scene first, then group sex, then they have to seduce police officers.  In the end, there is like a 30-40 minute group sex scene where every guy jerks off into a bucket!

There's so much to say about this double set.  First of all, the actor in Carnal Highways who plays the Mexican dude was not hard most of the movie.  In fact, one thing I noticed is that a lot of the times the dudes would start off flaccid and the girl would have to excite him.  Seems like every guy I see in porn now is rock hard from instant one.  Second off, the hairy girls and the hairy armpits is of course different.  Full on pubic hair, hairy armpits, it's just not seen anymore.  And of course, the difference in girls bodies.  They went for a theme here, having really tall women.  And some of their breasts and other bodies are just not seen in porn nowadays, which I think is kinda too bad.

Was it hot?  Yes, I think so.  I found myself aroused.  Hell, I'll say it, I masturbated to one of the police seduction scenes.  They have anal sex once on the DVD, the lesbian scenes are good, and the long orgy scene in Carnal Olympics is pretty phenomenal.

I haven't reviewed true actual porn on this site, nor was it ever my intention to.  But this is honestly really fun to revisit.  The dialogue is as bad and forced as you remember from being a kid, the music is wacky, the acting terrible.  The people fucking look like some person you'd see at a book store, and that's both refreshing and hot in a way.  Porn, plots aside, used to be way more realistic.  I think we can all agree on this.  Also, the camera work and angles are more like real sex too.  You don't see a lot of insertion or anything else like we see now.  Sometimes the closeups are on literally two blurry thighs sort of moving.

I'd recommend it for fun, definitely.  3 stars.

Planets Against Us - 1962

I put in this 60s film.  A bit about my life now first.   I have been in the cabin, and I literally went through a long period of not watching anything.  I just haven't been in the mood, and with the library and all closed, and since my video rental store has a shitty as fuck collection, I was getting by on only watching The Twilight Zone...  which will eventually get a review, cause fuck it, why not.

This is a typical 50's feeling sci fi flick complete with all the dialogue, vague plot pieces, and glacial movement you'd expect.  It has been a long, long time since I saw something like this.  But I knocked it out, as I do.

This movie is very much dialogue driven, and I guess that makes sense.  Essentially, there is a alien on Earth who has taken the image of a recently deceased guy. This alien somehow appears at multiple places on the globe in the first few minutes of the movie, and when the government finds out about this, they begin an investigation and there is a mystery afoot.

You know, I watched this a day or two ago I guess, but I seriously don't remember anything about this.  I might have fallen asleep, I did sip a nice Irish whiskey during it, but was not drunk for sure.  I think it was completely unremarkable....that might be the problem...?

Either way, it kept me mildly entertained sometimes, but it was slow as cold molasses and it had no thrills to it at all.  Cool monster shots at the very end for like 15 seconds.  1.5 stars.

Prophecy - 1979

Aw, my breeding ground.  The 70's, horror, sci fi.  I rented this from the very limited and extremely random selection had at my local Super 1 Foods, where there's a built in little movie rental place.  It's still open and running.  Essential business y'all.

Prophecy was a movie I'd seen before many years ago.  In one of my killer animals/giant monster marathon runs I used to have in the day, I rented this and saw it for the first time probably 12 years ago.  I kept it in the back of my mind, and this is my first time rewatching it.

Robert Foxworth, Talia Shire, and Armand Assante star in a film by John Frankenheimer.  Those are a lot of names for a late 70's horror, but since Jaws had made a big "splash" earlier in the 70's, this got made and made with a surprisingly high amount of seriousness and budget.

Phophecy starts with some killed hikers and a environmental specialist being brought in.  He is Robert Foxworth, and he doesn't want kids but his wife (Talia Shire) is pregnant and hasn't told him yet.  They reach the land where the deaths happened and are greeted by hostile Indians, led by Armand Assante as John Hawk.  They investigate the land and a nearby paper mill.  Turns up that there are giant mutant fish and other things everywhere, and it might be because the paper mill is dumping mercury into the water.  Sure enough, that's the case and the proof is in the 9 foot mutant bear that's hunting and killing people.

This movie kicked my ass.  It has tons of cool acting first of all, and the violence ranges from hilarious to some of the best of it's time.  Visible wires during several scenes clash perfectly with prime puppet sort of practical effects, but it all looks awesome and every other part of this movie is selling the shit out if it.

The fact is that I was unprepared for the pacing, and even for it's time it moves very slow in parts.  I checked several times to see how much was left.  That said, it really brings the thrills at other parts.  Yes, certain things prevent it from being taken seriously, but if you look at it as a prime so-bad-it's-good specimen, than it definitely succeeds.   I'd give it 3.5 stars.

The Street Fighter - 1974

I don't know if I ever really saw this movie before. I know Sonny Chiba and I know I've seen some of his movies, I also know of the Street Fighter series and I know of the multiple sequels therein. But I honestly don't remember if I'd ever seen this movie before. I guess I fail.

I put it on last night having recently re-watched both Kill Bill 1 and 2. It's easy to see where that movie got its lineage. Street Fighter is brutal and violent and groundbreaking and overly stylistic and all that would later be known as Quentin Tarantino's trademark Style.

Early on in the film it's apparent that Street Fighter draws a lot from classic japanese Cinema. Toshiro Mifune was basically the same character in most of his movies, and even looks very similar to Sonny Chiba. They both have similar facial expressions and I would have to think that Chiba was deliberately modeling himself after Mifune.

There's all sorts of fun and wild things happening in this movie too. Besides the fact that the plot moves fast, there is multiple story lines going on at the same time, there is brand-new groundbreaking special effects, and there is an antihero dark main character who we want to learn more about.

I've started to watch the sequel right after the first one, but honestly without getting too much into the sequel let me just say that the first film is a necessary, amazing, still relevant and groundbreaking film to this day and I give it five stars.