Another exciting week

Yes, Tuesdays at a weekly paper are like Fridays for regular people. Except they get to kick back for two days and we just keep trudging ahead.

This week has been loonier than usual.

In fact, it's been —

ACTION-PACKED!!!

Rockford Files, winter sports, horrible movie

So I am slowly working my way through "The Rockford Files," courtesy of Netflix. and every so often Jimbo is wearing a sack jacket. He wears it well, much better than the darted, twin-vented things with the five-inch lapels and the loud checks.

He's also a bit of a cad, something that didn't register when I watched these as a kid. In one episode, he begins by kissing his lawyer/main squeeze Beth Davenport, but ends up sucking face with Linda Evans. Not that I blame him, but...

We had lots of snow Friday night, Feb. 8, into Saturday morning. Not nearly as much as the coastal areas, but enough that the Salisbury Winter Sports Association had to cancel and/or delay a lot of events on this, their big weekend of the year.

On the style front, this is where LL Bean really comes in handy. Especially for great big thick warm wool pants. These come with suspender buttons, only they don't sew them in very well, so I had to reinforce them. Yes, I know how to sew on a button, and I cook for myself, too.

Filson wool sport shirt, with a buttondown collar, which is a little unusual (they usually come in plain point collar).

Tending the fire this afternoon was this eccentric fellow, and sometimes the only reasonable thing to do is paint your face, dress up like a Viking, and enter a human dogsled race.

You might suspect it's a Jean Rollin flick on account of the poster for a Rollin flick on the wall, filmed in exciting Slant-O-Vision.

Never drink cheap vodka, because you'll wind up doing something embarrassing. Oh wait, that's Smirnoff.  Never mind.

What do you do with a spy from the evil cult? Make a big dogpile, that's what!

Reason # 18 to be a Leader of an Evil Sex Cult: When you say "Suck my toes," the girl says "Which ones?"

The Great Jean Rollin Quest rolls on, with a viewing of the long version of Bachanales Sexuelles from the aptly named Synapse Films. (Apt because I ruined a few during the hour and a half of this turkey.)

The flick is blamed— er, credited to Michel Gentil, but even the drunkest viewer can't help but notice the posters for Rollin's other epics on the walls of the apartment.

See, Valerie is apartment-sitting for her cousin, and she gets a little jittery, so she calles up Sophie. They drink vodka and have sex. 

Lost in post-erotic langour, Valerie doesn't notice that two refugees from the very obscure Marcel Marceau-Jacques Cousteau collaboration, Le Danse Aquatique, have snuck into the apartment.

But Sophie does, and calls her male friend whose name I can't remember to come over. Before he arrives, however, the intruders have snatched Sophie, and there's a joke here that I am not going to make.

So the Dude has sex with Valerie instead.

Next day they have sex, and then this girl comes over and says she's the maid, which she proves by having sex with them. But then another maid shows up, but it's time to go to the lair of the evil cult leader, who looks like Botox was maybe around in 1974.

And have sex there. Also toe-sucking, which, if you're the leader of an evil sex cult, you get to enjoy pretty much whenever you want.

There is a lot of sex in this movie. In fact, there is more sex than plot, which, given the screenplay, is a good thing. 

And if you have been wondering about things that two women and one man could get up to, well, here's your chance to see a demonstration.

The only thing that doesn't make this a pornographic film is...

Nothing. This is a porno flick with some plot attached. 

Because of its limitations, it is actually a better film than the other, "legitimate" offerings I have seen from this auteur.

But the sex scenes get tedious, so I give this a modest two coils.

(This guy knows a lot more about it than me.)

Edit: Ye Gods, I just realized that Jean Rollin directed the immortal Zombie Lake, an Iron Coil nominee.

Un Veritable Catastrophe

"No, let them go. In the meantime I'll just fondle your breasts."

The title character is neither nude, nor is she a vampire. "The Mutant in Orange" would have been a more accurate name for this film.

However, "The Nude Vampire" does have a man in an antler hat — always a plus.

Jean Rollin's The Nude Vampire (1970) lacks actual vampires and doesn't have all that much nudity. It does have green slime on rocks by the ocean, and girls dressed up like I don't know what, and a guy with the best antler hat this side of Wendigo.

And capes. Lots of capes.

See, Pierre's kinda torked off that his rich father is up to something at the fancy house in Paris. He finally mugs a guy and steals his ticket, only to find that it's a suicide cult, and the participants blow their brains out so this semi-chunky gal in a flimsy orange wrap can lick their blood. Not drink it, mind you, but lick it.

Pierre's pop and two other old pervs are convinced the girl is a vampire and they want to know the secret of immortality.

The joke's on them, however, as what the girl really is is a mutant that represents the next stage of humanity, but that little tidbit is only revealed at the end of the flick, down at the ocean with the green slime on the rocks.

We're talking one seriously incomprehensible story here, and not nearly enough nekkidity to make up for it.

Man in cape. New race of mutants, many of whom appear to have just beamed down from The Planet of the Hal Holbrooks. Girls in red capes, standing on rocks covered with green slime. Fourteen breasts. Three stripteases. Gratuitous belly dancing. Avant-garde music on the soundtrack makes the entire experience even more forgettable.

It's not as bad as Requiem for the Vampire. But it still sucks.

One coil.