Hot Thrills and Warm Chills

What you will witness in the video to the right is the first few minutes of HOT THRILLS AND WARM CHILLS. (It's totally Safe for Work, though the film itself is not.) But the trailer can only begin to convey the true stupefying awfulness of the film.

The gal doing the dance is actress Rita Alexander, and she's the ringleader of a trio of female jewel thieves. She meets with her cronies in her apartment, where they discuss their sex lives, with flashbacks of some assorted mattress workouts. The gals are topless during these bouts, but both males and females retain their underwear during the tussles. The love noises are dubbed in, over unmoving or unsynced lips. And the mambo soundtrack makes everything seem as if it's taking place at a bullfight or a Herb Alpert concert.

Anyhow, the girls--who live in Reno--are planning a heist-- During Mardi Gras! That's right, I bet you never knew Reno had an annual Mardi Gras, and a "French Quarter" as well. But they do in this universe, even though all the exterior shots are plainly shot in New Orleans. Reno seems to have been chosen as "Sin City" because New Orleans wasn't bawdy enough!

Having outlined the heist, the girls go out on the town, to a club that features an energetic but awkward topless dancer. One gal picks up a stranger, but our protagonist decides to go home with a local cop she knows!

In due course, the fabled heist is committed--off camera and past tense! One cop chases the fleeing Rita and a pal through the Mardi Gras parade and into one of New Orleans' famous above-ground, crypt-filled cemeteries. Rita eludes him by darting into a crypt, but gets locked in. She freaks out--despite having plenty of air and light and a gun in her hand with which to shoot off the lock--and commits suicide, and the closing credits roll.

You may now pick your jaws up off the ground.

Sexy Camo

What does the luscious Sarah Palin wear, when she's lounging around the Alaska Statehouse on an evening when she's trying to determine which books to censor from the state libraries? Possibly this sneak-up-on-your-man camouflage camisole and shorts ensemble from the hunting and fishing supplier Cabela's.

Virgin Sacrifice

VIRGIN SACRIFICE completes the trilogy of films contained on a single disc I recently netflixed. We covered the other two--WILD WOMEN OF WONGO--and BOWANGA BOWANGA--here and here.

VIRGIN SACRIFICE was the second-best, after WONGO but before BOWANGA. You're getting the juciest bits in the clip here. But there is a scene in the film not present in the trailer, a shot that lingers on the completely bare breasts of the (white woman) sacrificial victim for longer than a subliminal moment. I thought that highly unusual for the era, but as we are reminded at this site chronicling the history of sex in the cinema, such moments have existed since motion pictures began.

Follies of the Mad Men #25

Didn't you enjoy the vivacious and perkily sexy Tad Tadlock in yesterday's DESIGN FOR DREAMING? How could anyone resist a sequel?

Let's watch A TOUCH OF MAGIC.

Follies of the Mad Men #24

And now, something different for this series: a video titled DESIGN FOR DREAMING.

Black Magic Woman

Now it can be told!

Carlos Santana and Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi are one and the same person!

Check out the identical looks to the right! But if seeing is not believing, further proof is offered in this article from today's New York Times, in which "Qaddafi" rhapsodizes about his favorite babe Condoleezza Rice in unmistakeably lyrical terms:

After all, the Libyan leader had professed his “love” for the American secretary of state. “I support my darling black African woman,” Colonel Qaddafi told the network Al Jazeera last year. “I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders.”

He continued: “Yes, Leezza, Leezza, Leezza... I love her very much.”

Bowanga Bowanga

BOWANGA BOWANGA, or "The White Sirens of Africa," is a lot less fun over sixty minutes of viewing than this select snippet pretends. So be content with what you see here, and save yourself a rental.

Eugênio Hirsch

Discovering traces of a forgotten surrealist/pop artist is always nice and weird. That's why I'm happy to present here some data on Eugênio Hirsch--a name I believe will be little-known to English-speaking art-lovers.

I took the liberty of having Google translate his Spanish Wikipedia entry, and then cleaned up the text a bit.

Eugênio Hirsch (Vienna, 1923 - Rio de Janeiro, September 23 2001) was a visual artist of Austrian origin, considered one of the pioneers of Brazilian graphic design.

Eugênio Hirsch was born in Vienna, Austria in 1923. Given the imminence of World War II his family emigrated in 1938 to Argentina, where Hirsch was highlighted as a graphic artist. During his stay in Argentina, he lived in Buenos Aires where he worked for the Encyclopedia Codex. In 1947 he met Monteiro Lobato, who illustrated texts mentioned in the editorial. He also lived in San Miguel de Tucuman where he worked with Lino Spilimbergo Enea.

In 1955 he emigrated to Brazil. Beginning in 1960 he was hired by the publisher "Civilização Brasileira" and in a short time revolutionized the concept and design of book covers, becoming one of the biggest names in this specialty. In 1960 he won the Jabuti Award (highest distinction in the field Brazilian literary and artistic). He was considered a pioneer of graphic design with decisive influence on subsequent generations. One of his favorite quote was "Uma feita layer is to attack, did not to please" ( "A cap is used to attack, not to please"). In 1965 he traveled to the United States where he collaborated with Playboy magazine and then to Europe, but then returned to his adoptive country, Brazil.

Among his most famous works include the illustration done for the novel Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. He was also recalled for his eccentric personality.

Eugênio Hirsch died in Rio de Janeiro on September 23, 2001.

You can see some of his book covers on this Flickr page. But my favorite is this one he did for the novel Flesh by the great Philip Jose Farmer.




How did I chance upon Hirsch's work? Through this pictorial in Playboy for December 1965. The mildly NSFW totality of the feature is to be found after the jump.



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Spermula

A science-fiction film about semen vampires titled SPERMULA?!?

Need I say any more to get you to watch the trailer below?

Incredibly, it's totally Safe For Work, and more boring than erotic. But just to show you that the film actually contained more than pompous mystical windbaggery, we reproduce after the jump the NSFW five-page pictorial about the film from Playboy for January 1977. Why did that prestigious magazine devote so much space to this trashy epic? Could it be because they had a hand in bankrolling it? Nah!



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Lez Zepplin

Loyal and perceptive reader Rain Oubliette, commenting on the Space Age Fridge Ladies, mentions that they resemble an all-female Devo cover band, possibly named "Shevo." Well, no such weird group exists, to the best of my knowledge. But we do have the incomparable Lez Zepplin.

Watch them perform in the clip below.

All original content in posts is Copyright © 2008 by the author of the post, either Alex Boese ("Alex"), Paul Di Filippo ("Paul"), or Chuck Shepherd ("Chuck"). All rights reserved. The banner illustration at the top of this page is Copyright © 2008 by Rick Altergott.