D. Otto Van De Mille
Colour (although the sex scenes are in black & white, so we can pretend they’re art)
The first Sexy Goth Detective film was like an episode of ‘Columbo’, but the second one is like the weirdest episode of ‘Murder, She Wrote’ you’ll ever see. There’s the small town where everyone knows each other, the dramatic discovery of a body, a cavalcade of suspects, and one lone woman who is prying into everyone’s lives, rustling feathers and generally making sure she’s irritating as hell in her quest for the truth. But what differentiates this from Jessica Fletcher (or Jane Marple) is that this film screams modern.
And sexy.
Sexy and wild in a way that Jessica Fletcher never ever was.
(Well, maybe in her younger days).
The corpse of a 22 year old goth girl is pulled from the lake in the charmingly named town of Girdle. She was an outsider so her death isn’t investigated as thoroughly as it might be by the chief of police, but she has a friend driving to town determined that justice must be done. Enter Liddy D’Eath as the sexy goth detective – there to turn heads and cause discomfort in every way she can.
It really is a tour de force for both her and Von De Mille’s dialogue. All those scenes we’ve seen so many times before: the tense interrogation in the booth of a cafeteria; the leaning on a post office counter to interrogate a witness who is cagy as hell; the car chase on the dark country lanes outside the town; the screaming confrontation with the relative of the deceased who doesn’t think the detective is doing her right. All of that is here and all of it crackles. It of course helps that Liddy has gone full on goth for this, with every harsh line of make-up and elegantly torn piece of clothing screaming that she is part of an alternative culture.
Okay, this may sound tame as hell. “What happened to the edgy promise of the original sexy goth girls film?” you may ask. Well, to counter balance the softness we do have a small town femme fatale who Liddy falls hard for her and goes skinny dipping in the lake with before a long soft-focus sex scene. Those expecting a movie to watch over their cocoa will no doubt choke on their marshmallows at this point. It sticks out as much as a full blown S&M scene would in the middle of Cabot Cove. I’ve always said De Mille would be happier making porn and now he has.
The other characters aren’t well drawn and the plot has not only run away from the director by the end, but gone and hidden, yet thanks to a classy performance by the heroine this is a much watch.
Showing posts with label sexy goth girls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sexy goth girls. Show all posts
Sunday, 23 November 2014
Sunday, 24 August 2014
The Sexy Goth Detective (2003)
D. Otto Van De Mille
Colour
Liddy D’eath could undoubtedly scrub off that dark make-up, take out those intimidating piercings and sling on some loose fitting pastels, then leave all this sexy goth girl stuff behind forever. But really that would make her just another pretty girl in an entertainment industry full of pretty girls – all of whom are looking for that one break. So there’s no point her doing that, she has her niche and it’s a good niche, even if it isn’t that big a niche. And to help her exploit it she always seems to have Otto Van De Mille on hand, like some kind of faithful, salivating lap-dog with a viewfinder.
Rarely has such an enduring cinematic relationship been created by two such uneven talents. At his best Van De Mille looks like he’s directing adverts, he has a way of capturing the sharp, memorable, but ultimately meaningless image. At his worst though, he’s basically a porn director, voyeuristic with an alarming lack of subtlety. (Although, to be fair, the same criticisms could be made of Michael Bay, but at least he knows how to blow shit up). Whereas Liddy D’Eath can be a brilliant and transcendent and often darkly erotic actress, Van De Mille films her in such a way that at his best makes the actress look striking and incredible and you want whatever she’s selling; but at his worst it’s like she’s just going to hump whoever else happens to be in the room with her.
Fortunately Van De Mille’s skills with dialogue haven’t yet deserted him. And it’s double, roll-over fortunate that this time they seem to have been married to an actual grasp of plot (as if he’d spent the last two years sat at home reading a book entitled ‘How to Plot Your Way out of a Paper Bag’), making this movie their best since the first sexy goth girls film.
How best to describe what we have here? Well, think of ‘Columbo’, with the killer all smug as he commits the perfect crime and then high-handedly underestimates the shabby, trench-coated detective. Now think of a ‘Columbo’ with the same kind of recognisable guest villain (Eric Roberts, if you’re interested), but instead of a shabby cop investigating him, it’s a “goth, lesbian bitch with bad PMT.” And there you have ‘Sexy Goth Detective’.
Clearly Von De Mille is going for the mainstream, a lot of this film couldn’t be any more pitched at easy Sunday night viewing if John Nettles showed up as a put upon senior detective. But in his leading lady, he has a presence – which no matter how much he wants to sanitise it – remains spectacularly dark, weird and off-kilter. D’Eath dominates this film and even though she’s the heroine, she makes every scene she is in much more tense and scary than it ever need be. It’s a disturbing and fascinating performance which truly upsets Van De Mille’s stabs for some kind of respectability and creates a disturbing and fascinating movie.
Colour
Liddy D’eath could undoubtedly scrub off that dark make-up, take out those intimidating piercings and sling on some loose fitting pastels, then leave all this sexy goth girl stuff behind forever. But really that would make her just another pretty girl in an entertainment industry full of pretty girls – all of whom are looking for that one break. So there’s no point her doing that, she has her niche and it’s a good niche, even if it isn’t that big a niche. And to help her exploit it she always seems to have Otto Van De Mille on hand, like some kind of faithful, salivating lap-dog with a viewfinder.
Rarely has such an enduring cinematic relationship been created by two such uneven talents. At his best Van De Mille looks like he’s directing adverts, he has a way of capturing the sharp, memorable, but ultimately meaningless image. At his worst though, he’s basically a porn director, voyeuristic with an alarming lack of subtlety. (Although, to be fair, the same criticisms could be made of Michael Bay, but at least he knows how to blow shit up). Whereas Liddy D’Eath can be a brilliant and transcendent and often darkly erotic actress, Van De Mille films her in such a way that at his best makes the actress look striking and incredible and you want whatever she’s selling; but at his worst it’s like she’s just going to hump whoever else happens to be in the room with her.
Fortunately Van De Mille’s skills with dialogue haven’t yet deserted him. And it’s double, roll-over fortunate that this time they seem to have been married to an actual grasp of plot (as if he’d spent the last two years sat at home reading a book entitled ‘How to Plot Your Way out of a Paper Bag’), making this movie their best since the first sexy goth girls film.
How best to describe what we have here? Well, think of ‘Columbo’, with the killer all smug as he commits the perfect crime and then high-handedly underestimates the shabby, trench-coated detective. Now think of a ‘Columbo’ with the same kind of recognisable guest villain (Eric Roberts, if you’re interested), but instead of a shabby cop investigating him, it’s a “goth, lesbian bitch with bad PMT.” And there you have ‘Sexy Goth Detective’.
Clearly Von De Mille is going for the mainstream, a lot of this film couldn’t be any more pitched at easy Sunday night viewing if John Nettles showed up as a put upon senior detective. But in his leading lady, he has a presence – which no matter how much he wants to sanitise it – remains spectacularly dark, weird and off-kilter. D’Eath dominates this film and even though she’s the heroine, she makes every scene she is in much more tense and scary than it ever need be. It’s a disturbing and fascinating performance which truly upsets Van De Mille’s stabs for some kind of respectability and creates a disturbing and fascinating movie.
Sunday, 13 April 2014
Privates Lives (2001)
D. Otto von De Mille
Colour
Two years after the disaster that was the final Sexy Goth Girls movie, Liddy D’Eath and Otto Van De Mille reteamed for this spin on Noel Coward’s ‘Private Lives’. It’s difficult to see from the outside what kept D’Eath and Van De Mille together, why one of them didn’t explore what other opportunities there were. There are rumours of an affair between the two, but it seems to have finished before they started making films. So far, so Woody Allen/Diane Keaten, but Keaten did at least go off and make ‘The Godfather’, Liddy D’Eath just stayed true to Von De Mille. This is surprising as whereas he is an adequate director, there’s something quite special about her screen presence. Not just her physicality, which is waif like, with blonde hair and big eyes and tattoos which suggest a tarnished angel, but also a genuine charisma that only Van De Mille seemed to want to capture. And that’s odd, as once again in a collaboration between the two we see Liddy D’Eath using a defibelator on the struggling material she has been given, going so far as to give it frantic life to life in a struggle to give it any kind of pulse. It must have been disconcerting for her to work so hard and still only get phone-calls from her weirdly named ex-boyfriend.
Before long the two of them would embark on another series of films which would match the best of the Sexy Goth Girls movies, but first there is this interesting, curiosity of a mis-step. A comedy of modern sexual manners, a bedroom farce which doesn’t get near achieving the right balance between bedroom and farce. Having married impetuously, Liddy and her new wan-faced husband (played by the void like, Jackson Wilson) find themselves on honeymoon in a remote desert hotel. But she is shocked to discover that in the next bedroom is not only her ex hot and heavy boyfriend (the big and brooding, Douglas Conifer) but his new bride, who happens to be her college lesbian lover (Jenny Picard). The stage is set for passion, jokes, recriminations, misunderstandings, fetching leather lingerie, laughter, tears, innuendo, broken hearts and more exploring of sexual confusion than even Noel Coward would ever have dreamed possible.
Let’s be clear, this isn’t porn. There are points when it looks like it’s just going to tip into porn, particularly when the women seem about to reignite their passion with a breathless, full-on session. The camera lingers and it feels as if the bass line is going to strike up and we should either be watching this in a darkened room alone, or in a cinema with lots of other shifty men. But it never quite tips over into porn, although nor does it really become anything else. The dialogue, as you’d expect from the man who made the ‘Sexy Goth Girls’ movies, is frequently very funny – but it’s hardly likely to reach the standards of Noel Coward. (I think that Coward would have enjoyed this film though, perhaps with martini in hand and a bemused, amused look on his face). However the dialogue never touches the emotions it needs to. And because in a set up like this the emotions need to be addressed, there are whole amateurish scenes with craply written dialogue just to get them out of the way. As such what we end up with is a drama which isn’t dramatic enough, a comedy which isn’t funny enough and a porno which isn’t pornographic enough. Liddy D’Eath doesn’t even look that gothic, for god’s sake. It’s an odd faltering stumble of a movie, although one massaged into some kind of decent shape by the charms of its leading lady, but better isn’t far away.
Colour
Two years after the disaster that was the final Sexy Goth Girls movie, Liddy D’Eath and Otto Van De Mille reteamed for this spin on Noel Coward’s ‘Private Lives’. It’s difficult to see from the outside what kept D’Eath and Van De Mille together, why one of them didn’t explore what other opportunities there were. There are rumours of an affair between the two, but it seems to have finished before they started making films. So far, so Woody Allen/Diane Keaten, but Keaten did at least go off and make ‘The Godfather’, Liddy D’Eath just stayed true to Von De Mille. This is surprising as whereas he is an adequate director, there’s something quite special about her screen presence. Not just her physicality, which is waif like, with blonde hair and big eyes and tattoos which suggest a tarnished angel, but also a genuine charisma that only Van De Mille seemed to want to capture. And that’s odd, as once again in a collaboration between the two we see Liddy D’Eath using a defibelator on the struggling material she has been given, going so far as to give it frantic life to life in a struggle to give it any kind of pulse. It must have been disconcerting for her to work so hard and still only get phone-calls from her weirdly named ex-boyfriend.
Before long the two of them would embark on another series of films which would match the best of the Sexy Goth Girls movies, but first there is this interesting, curiosity of a mis-step. A comedy of modern sexual manners, a bedroom farce which doesn’t get near achieving the right balance between bedroom and farce. Having married impetuously, Liddy and her new wan-faced husband (played by the void like, Jackson Wilson) find themselves on honeymoon in a remote desert hotel. But she is shocked to discover that in the next bedroom is not only her ex hot and heavy boyfriend (the big and brooding, Douglas Conifer) but his new bride, who happens to be her college lesbian lover (Jenny Picard). The stage is set for passion, jokes, recriminations, misunderstandings, fetching leather lingerie, laughter, tears, innuendo, broken hearts and more exploring of sexual confusion than even Noel Coward would ever have dreamed possible.
Let’s be clear, this isn’t porn. There are points when it looks like it’s just going to tip into porn, particularly when the women seem about to reignite their passion with a breathless, full-on session. The camera lingers and it feels as if the bass line is going to strike up and we should either be watching this in a darkened room alone, or in a cinema with lots of other shifty men. But it never quite tips over into porn, although nor does it really become anything else. The dialogue, as you’d expect from the man who made the ‘Sexy Goth Girls’ movies, is frequently very funny – but it’s hardly likely to reach the standards of Noel Coward. (I think that Coward would have enjoyed this film though, perhaps with martini in hand and a bemused, amused look on his face). However the dialogue never touches the emotions it needs to. And because in a set up like this the emotions need to be addressed, there are whole amateurish scenes with craply written dialogue just to get them out of the way. As such what we end up with is a drama which isn’t dramatic enough, a comedy which isn’t funny enough and a porno which isn’t pornographic enough. Liddy D’Eath doesn’t even look that gothic, for god’s sake. It’s an odd faltering stumble of a movie, although one massaged into some kind of decent shape by the charms of its leading lady, but better isn’t far away.
Sunday, 22 December 2013
Sexy Goth Girls Take on the World (1999)
D. Otto Van De Mille
Colour
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
Noted rock critic T.S.Eliot understood the path of the rebellious rock phenomenon. Be you Elvis Presley or The Rolling Stones or The Sex Pistols or Madonna or some sexy goth girls, you start your career as an affront to everything decent and good, but end up a respectable shadow of what you once were. It’s a fixed and unalterable law – a rule which is true in nature, physics and life. Some processes are faster than others. Elvis was singing to an actual hound dog on The Steve Allen Show within a year of his breakthrough, and the Sexy Goth Girls were appearing in ‘Sexy Goth Girls Take on the World’ within two and a half years of the first film’s release.
Let’s begin at the beginning. The first Sexy Goth Girls film was a plucky little indie with the skimpiest of plots, that just revelled in hanging out with some really sexy goth girls. Yes, there was a murder at some point, but it wasn’t trying to be a crime drama, it was something totally different; a film that luxuriated in life, that was quirky, fun, alternative and – yes – sexy. The sequel arrived surprisingly quickly and already a change was noticeable. Suddenly murder plots were something the sexy goth girls did. In fact they were sanctioned to fight crime and help the innocent. They were super heroes now, there to save the world. It was all very strange. Clearly the sexy goth girls had lurched towards the mainstream, and the mainstream wasn’t a place that suited the sexy goth girls. So in the third film that lurch would be corrected, right? The sexy goth girls would return to the alternative, quirky style we all loved?
Well, the short answer is no. This is a film decidedly intent on the mainstream. Indeed it is knocking the mainstream over in the street and binding it with a leather muzzle and harness and making the mainstream its bitch. (Actually, no, that’s far too weird an image. It’s actually walking up to the mainstream and giving it a nice big cuddle and saying that if you look past all that goth stuff, these girls are just as lovely as you – only a bit more sexy). This is a sexy goth girls film you could take your grandmother to see. This is a sexy goth girls film you could take your children to see. Do you have a maiden aunt and would like to show her some sexy goth girls without making her cover her eyes and issue frightened squeaks about what passes as decent entertainment these days? Well, come right this way.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the sexy goth girls Christmas movie.
Here’s the plot: the President of the United States (Robert Vaughan) is kidnapped by right-wing Christian fundamentalists (led by Randy Quaid) who are disturbed by the decline of morality in today’s America. Government agent Mr Lazarus (Quentin Tarantino, in what is little more than a cameo) gets his operatives, the sexy goth girls – led by Liddy D’Eath – on the case. They team up with the President’s twelve year old daughter to track down the President and rescue him using their sexy goth girl skills (which consist, as far as I can see, of black leather weapons and feminine wiles) and various adventures, escapades, and scrapes ensue. Suffice to say there is a lot of running about in dangerous looking heals. The President’s daughter is suspicious of her new companions at first, but eventually learns that the key lesson of being a sexy goth girl is (apparently) to be yourself. And by being herself she helps them rescue her father and they’re all together for Christmas. Hip-hip Hooray!
It’s hard to put into words how crushing a disappointment this film is. It’s hard to put into words how wrongheaded a film this is. It’s totally different in tone to the previous entries, with none of the slow-motion leering or perviness, but also none of the smart and sassy dialogue. Instead this is a full blown assault on the mainstream, and like all self-conscious attempts to get in good with the mainstream it aims for the lowest common denominator. It’s obvious, sentimental, silly and often quite boring. But it still in no way belongs in that sunny, bland locale they call the mainsteam. Who after all would make a family friendly film with the words ‘sexy goth girls’ in the title? Who would create a kid friendly bunch of superheroes and dress them in suspenders with their cleavages all a-go-go? (Although I suppose we’re inured to not seeing Batman and Superman as the fetishists they so obviously are when they wander around in their nice, shiny tights). Who would really imagine that ending a film with a bunch of goth girl stood in the oval office with their leader’s arm around the President’s daughter wishing the audience a very Merry Christmas was in anyway an appropriate or good idea? It’s not, instead it’s ever so weird, on many levels – and none of them good weird.
So overall this trilogy is a tale of a group of girls who were there to be sexy and perved over, to have funny and foul-mouthed conversations, to be the epitome of rebellion. They were stars for a group of fans who didn’t want to see normal types of films, who wanted to fall in love with a different type of heroine. But their decline was quick and before long that quirky, fuck you, independence had been totally blown away, and without changing their clothes or even altering their make-up, the sexy goth girls were smiling big American smiles as they appeared in anodyne crap designed supposedly for the whole family.
This film was as successful on video as the other two (sexy goth girls fans are clearly not very discerning), but – really - where did it all go wrong?
Colour
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
Noted rock critic T.S.Eliot understood the path of the rebellious rock phenomenon. Be you Elvis Presley or The Rolling Stones or The Sex Pistols or Madonna or some sexy goth girls, you start your career as an affront to everything decent and good, but end up a respectable shadow of what you once were. It’s a fixed and unalterable law – a rule which is true in nature, physics and life. Some processes are faster than others. Elvis was singing to an actual hound dog on The Steve Allen Show within a year of his breakthrough, and the Sexy Goth Girls were appearing in ‘Sexy Goth Girls Take on the World’ within two and a half years of the first film’s release.
Let’s begin at the beginning. The first Sexy Goth Girls film was a plucky little indie with the skimpiest of plots, that just revelled in hanging out with some really sexy goth girls. Yes, there was a murder at some point, but it wasn’t trying to be a crime drama, it was something totally different; a film that luxuriated in life, that was quirky, fun, alternative and – yes – sexy. The sequel arrived surprisingly quickly and already a change was noticeable. Suddenly murder plots were something the sexy goth girls did. In fact they were sanctioned to fight crime and help the innocent. They were super heroes now, there to save the world. It was all very strange. Clearly the sexy goth girls had lurched towards the mainstream, and the mainstream wasn’t a place that suited the sexy goth girls. So in the third film that lurch would be corrected, right? The sexy goth girls would return to the alternative, quirky style we all loved?
Well, the short answer is no. This is a film decidedly intent on the mainstream. Indeed it is knocking the mainstream over in the street and binding it with a leather muzzle and harness and making the mainstream its bitch. (Actually, no, that’s far too weird an image. It’s actually walking up to the mainstream and giving it a nice big cuddle and saying that if you look past all that goth stuff, these girls are just as lovely as you – only a bit more sexy). This is a sexy goth girls film you could take your grandmother to see. This is a sexy goth girls film you could take your children to see. Do you have a maiden aunt and would like to show her some sexy goth girls without making her cover her eyes and issue frightened squeaks about what passes as decent entertainment these days? Well, come right this way.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the sexy goth girls Christmas movie.
Here’s the plot: the President of the United States (Robert Vaughan) is kidnapped by right-wing Christian fundamentalists (led by Randy Quaid) who are disturbed by the decline of morality in today’s America. Government agent Mr Lazarus (Quentin Tarantino, in what is little more than a cameo) gets his operatives, the sexy goth girls – led by Liddy D’Eath – on the case. They team up with the President’s twelve year old daughter to track down the President and rescue him using their sexy goth girl skills (which consist, as far as I can see, of black leather weapons and feminine wiles) and various adventures, escapades, and scrapes ensue. Suffice to say there is a lot of running about in dangerous looking heals. The President’s daughter is suspicious of her new companions at first, but eventually learns that the key lesson of being a sexy goth girl is (apparently) to be yourself. And by being herself she helps them rescue her father and they’re all together for Christmas. Hip-hip Hooray!
It’s hard to put into words how crushing a disappointment this film is. It’s hard to put into words how wrongheaded a film this is. It’s totally different in tone to the previous entries, with none of the slow-motion leering or perviness, but also none of the smart and sassy dialogue. Instead this is a full blown assault on the mainstream, and like all self-conscious attempts to get in good with the mainstream it aims for the lowest common denominator. It’s obvious, sentimental, silly and often quite boring. But it still in no way belongs in that sunny, bland locale they call the mainsteam. Who after all would make a family friendly film with the words ‘sexy goth girls’ in the title? Who would create a kid friendly bunch of superheroes and dress them in suspenders with their cleavages all a-go-go? (Although I suppose we’re inured to not seeing Batman and Superman as the fetishists they so obviously are when they wander around in their nice, shiny tights). Who would really imagine that ending a film with a bunch of goth girl stood in the oval office with their leader’s arm around the President’s daughter wishing the audience a very Merry Christmas was in anyway an appropriate or good idea? It’s not, instead it’s ever so weird, on many levels – and none of them good weird.
So overall this trilogy is a tale of a group of girls who were there to be sexy and perved over, to have funny and foul-mouthed conversations, to be the epitome of rebellion. They were stars for a group of fans who didn’t want to see normal types of films, who wanted to fall in love with a different type of heroine. But their decline was quick and before long that quirky, fuck you, independence had been totally blown away, and without changing their clothes or even altering their make-up, the sexy goth girls were smiling big American smiles as they appeared in anodyne crap designed supposedly for the whole family.
This film was as successful on video as the other two (sexy goth girls fans are clearly not very discerning), but – really - where did it all go wrong?
Wednesday, 18 December 2013
Sexy Goth Girls Get the **** Out! (1998)
D.
Otto Von De Mille
Colour
It’s amazing that the Sexy Goth Girls films are so tightly grouped together. Surely the first movie was cult, barely seen on release and in the normal course of things taking some years for the groundswell of support and goodwill for it (or in more brutal commercial terms, to give the impression there were enough suckers out there willing to pay good, hard money to see a sequel) to take the story forward. And yet a year after the original one limped into the cinema on a broken pair of six inch high heels, here was the second part. The Sexy Goth Girls were back and still looking sexy.
How could this be? How could this sequel have come so fast?
Well, firstly it’s still quite cheap. Noticeably the production values are not much higher than they are on the first Sexy Goth Girls movie. Much like ‘The Evil Dead 2’, this is a sequel/remake, but then Sam Rami’s film looked a damn sight better than his cheap original. Here we have the same flaws repeated all over again – the boom shows up in shot, there’s often no real sense as to where to put the camera and the acting has not improved one iota. However in amongst the various returning Sexy Goth Girls, there’s one actor who – while he doesn’t improve the quality of the performances by a single atom – does explain how exactly this film got made.
Step forward the big Q himself, Mr Quentin Tarantino.
I talked in my write-up of the first film of the debt it had to Quentin. Indeed the only thing that stopped it being a fetishists wet-dream (oh, all that naked young flesh, all that leather) was the Tarantino-esque ear for dialogue and love for the minutiae of culture and life. Clearly Quentin thought so too, as here he is in the key role of Mr Lucifer – a friend to the Sexy Goth Girls. It must have been a great thrill for Von De Mille (I’ve hunted online to see whether that is actually his real name, it’s inconclusive so far but my money is on probably not) when Quentin agreed to come on board. It was a blessing, an anointment that the first film did things right. But he’s also the biggest symbol of where this film is going wrong.
The aesthetic of the first movie remains, the whole Russ Meyer look of things. So we get Liddy D’Eath (very much the star here, rather than just one of the ensemble) in tight black shorts and a sheer top covering a studded bra. We get other girls with their cleavages crammed into the kind of leather bodices likely to suffocate, a group of girls bending over a pool table while shooting the breeze (and badly shooting pool), and two girls interrupted entwined together in what looks like a heavy canoodling session (or a money shot). Again it’s all very pervy, all very seedy. But what held together the first film – the very Quentin-ness of it – is more muted here. That’s odd as surely that was the thing Quentin liked and approved of the first time around, but here all that is much more in passing. Instead the murder plot that was an afterthought crammed into the end of the first film, is front and centre and the motor of the thing. As such it becomes a completely different animal, a thriller, with most of the cast in tight clothes and ripped suspenders with the occasional flash of great dialogue. It’s like the presence of the media star Quentin Tarantino (rather than director, Quentin Tarantino) gave Von De Mille the opportunity to aim at the mainstream, and he wasn’t going to pass it up. And the mainstream likes murder plots, not weird little pervy films which nevertheless revel in bizarre but hilarious dialogue.
And ironically there’s no bigger sign of this change of focus than the role Quentin is playing. He is Charlie to their Angels, Mother to their Emma Peel. He’s the one who tells them what’s happening, suggests what they should do, makes sure they have the equipment to do it. But hang on a second, aren’t goths a subculture? They’re not part of the mainstream, are they? Certainly they’re not part of some quasi-government agency tasked with fighting crime. In the first film they were just girls hanging out, but here they are almost super-heroes. Worse, they are officially approved super-heroes: Sexy Goth Girls who have the right licenses and papers. It’s all so depressing. As if Marlon Brando had shown up in ‘The Wild Ones’ with his Hells Angels licence stamped and counter-stamped.
It’s odd that someone would make a film with the phrase “Sexy Goth Girls” in the title and aim for the mainstream, but that’s what’s happening here.
And it will just get worse, as we’ll see next time.
Colour
It’s amazing that the Sexy Goth Girls films are so tightly grouped together. Surely the first movie was cult, barely seen on release and in the normal course of things taking some years for the groundswell of support and goodwill for it (or in more brutal commercial terms, to give the impression there were enough suckers out there willing to pay good, hard money to see a sequel) to take the story forward. And yet a year after the original one limped into the cinema on a broken pair of six inch high heels, here was the second part. The Sexy Goth Girls were back and still looking sexy.
How could this be? How could this sequel have come so fast?
Well, firstly it’s still quite cheap. Noticeably the production values are not much higher than they are on the first Sexy Goth Girls movie. Much like ‘The Evil Dead 2’, this is a sequel/remake, but then Sam Rami’s film looked a damn sight better than his cheap original. Here we have the same flaws repeated all over again – the boom shows up in shot, there’s often no real sense as to where to put the camera and the acting has not improved one iota. However in amongst the various returning Sexy Goth Girls, there’s one actor who – while he doesn’t improve the quality of the performances by a single atom – does explain how exactly this film got made.
Step forward the big Q himself, Mr Quentin Tarantino.
I talked in my write-up of the first film of the debt it had to Quentin. Indeed the only thing that stopped it being a fetishists wet-dream (oh, all that naked young flesh, all that leather) was the Tarantino-esque ear for dialogue and love for the minutiae of culture and life. Clearly Quentin thought so too, as here he is in the key role of Mr Lucifer – a friend to the Sexy Goth Girls. It must have been a great thrill for Von De Mille (I’ve hunted online to see whether that is actually his real name, it’s inconclusive so far but my money is on probably not) when Quentin agreed to come on board. It was a blessing, an anointment that the first film did things right. But he’s also the biggest symbol of where this film is going wrong.
The aesthetic of the first movie remains, the whole Russ Meyer look of things. So we get Liddy D’Eath (very much the star here, rather than just one of the ensemble) in tight black shorts and a sheer top covering a studded bra. We get other girls with their cleavages crammed into the kind of leather bodices likely to suffocate, a group of girls bending over a pool table while shooting the breeze (and badly shooting pool), and two girls interrupted entwined together in what looks like a heavy canoodling session (or a money shot). Again it’s all very pervy, all very seedy. But what held together the first film – the very Quentin-ness of it – is more muted here. That’s odd as surely that was the thing Quentin liked and approved of the first time around, but here all that is much more in passing. Instead the murder plot that was an afterthought crammed into the end of the first film, is front and centre and the motor of the thing. As such it becomes a completely different animal, a thriller, with most of the cast in tight clothes and ripped suspenders with the occasional flash of great dialogue. It’s like the presence of the media star Quentin Tarantino (rather than director, Quentin Tarantino) gave Von De Mille the opportunity to aim at the mainstream, and he wasn’t going to pass it up. And the mainstream likes murder plots, not weird little pervy films which nevertheless revel in bizarre but hilarious dialogue.
And ironically there’s no bigger sign of this change of focus than the role Quentin is playing. He is Charlie to their Angels, Mother to their Emma Peel. He’s the one who tells them what’s happening, suggests what they should do, makes sure they have the equipment to do it. But hang on a second, aren’t goths a subculture? They’re not part of the mainstream, are they? Certainly they’re not part of some quasi-government agency tasked with fighting crime. In the first film they were just girls hanging out, but here they are almost super-heroes. Worse, they are officially approved super-heroes: Sexy Goth Girls who have the right licenses and papers. It’s all so depressing. As if Marlon Brando had shown up in ‘The Wild Ones’ with his Hells Angels licence stamped and counter-stamped.
It’s odd that someone would make a film with the phrase “Sexy Goth Girls” in the title and aim for the mainstream, but that’s what’s happening here.
And it will just get worse, as we’ll see next time.
Wednesday, 27 November 2013
Sexy Goth Girls Go “Huh!”(1997)
D.
Otto Von De Mille
Colour
Even at the time it seemed incredibly unlikely that the 1990s was crying out for its own Russ Meyer. That seemed an aesthetic which had been lost to the age of Mondo movies, written up in psychotronic guidebooks, but really not part of a relevant cinema going forward. This was the 1990s after all and feminism had come a long way. Yes, Meyer’s women were strong and feisty independent ladies, but equally they were ludicrously busty sex symbols whom the camera just drooled over. They were soft-porn icons for the more discerning viewer, but still soft porn icons. That whole thing may have been the scene in the late 1960s, but definitely wasn’t the case in the more inclusive 1990s. And yet, the ‘Sexy Goth Girls’ films exist. They only had a limited cinema release, true, but they do have a cult following and I bet there’s a whole generation of people who revere these films but have barely even heard of Russ Meyer. They are loved, these sexy goth girls.
Part of that is down to the influence of another auteur whose fingerprints are as smeared over every frame of these films as Meyer’s grubby and calloused paws – the big Q himself, Quentin Tarantino. That is less surprising. Every independent film of the late 1990s seemed to have sucked hard at Quentin’s teet, trying to drink in the magic which took him from the ultimate cinema geek to a major force of cinema. Probably more than any filmmaker, his style was unmistakably and (for the most part) unashamedly ripped off, copied and homaged in the years after his breakthrough. Even now there are films which barely creep out where you see the love of dialogue about everyday things, the cool pop references and sudden bursts of violence. If the only films you ever watched were indie films that were released straight to the video store, you’d believe that Quentin was everywhere.
So a strange cinematic marriage of Russ Meyer and Quentin Tarantino, but how else could I describe this film? First and foremost it’s a chance to hang out with sexy goth girls, actually it’s an opportunity to hang out with some very sexy goth girls. There are lots of lingering shots of lovely curvaceous ladies spilling out of black and intense looking corsets, of shapely thighs in dark and torn stockings, of full lips plumped up by shiny black lipstick. Arresting, striking, dark and erotic images abound, and let’s be fair many of them are somewhat pervy. It’s hanging out with gorgeous women while they sit virtually in their underwear and don’t mind you trying to look up their (very) short skirts. But that’s where the essence of Quentin saves the day. We are hanging out with these girls and they are chatting away and these conversations are hilarious. The script is genuinely verbose and clever, with a great appreciation of the cadences of the Los Angeles accent, and so it’s a pleasure to listen in to the rhythms of the chat. Particular favourites include the top ten possible reasons as to how some baked beans could have possibly ended up down the back of the couch (none of them involve actually eating baked beans, well not in any traditional sense anyway), why sex shops don’t employ seniors to offer advice and wisdom in the bedroom “those old dudes must have literally seen EVERYTHING” and how supportive a boyfriend Freddy Krueger would actually be. It all crackles, it’s all immensely fun and that makes any watching man feel like he can dispense with the dirty brown raincoat and just enjoy this openly.
It’d be fair to say that since these girls were members of the LA goth scene, rather than actual actresses, the performances are variable. But in Liddy D’Eath (helpfully playing a character named Liddy) a fey blonde with incredibly long legs and the widest grey eyes, we do have what looks like a star in the making. Yes the whole thing is clearly filmed cheaply, and the murder plot that takes over the last half hour comes from nowhere and deserves the response ‘Huh’ – but what could be a very pervy film, becomes a somewhat guilty pleasure that shouldn’t make you feel too seedy.
Colour
Even at the time it seemed incredibly unlikely that the 1990s was crying out for its own Russ Meyer. That seemed an aesthetic which had been lost to the age of Mondo movies, written up in psychotronic guidebooks, but really not part of a relevant cinema going forward. This was the 1990s after all and feminism had come a long way. Yes, Meyer’s women were strong and feisty independent ladies, but equally they were ludicrously busty sex symbols whom the camera just drooled over. They were soft-porn icons for the more discerning viewer, but still soft porn icons. That whole thing may have been the scene in the late 1960s, but definitely wasn’t the case in the more inclusive 1990s. And yet, the ‘Sexy Goth Girls’ films exist. They only had a limited cinema release, true, but they do have a cult following and I bet there’s a whole generation of people who revere these films but have barely even heard of Russ Meyer. They are loved, these sexy goth girls.
Part of that is down to the influence of another auteur whose fingerprints are as smeared over every frame of these films as Meyer’s grubby and calloused paws – the big Q himself, Quentin Tarantino. That is less surprising. Every independent film of the late 1990s seemed to have sucked hard at Quentin’s teet, trying to drink in the magic which took him from the ultimate cinema geek to a major force of cinema. Probably more than any filmmaker, his style was unmistakably and (for the most part) unashamedly ripped off, copied and homaged in the years after his breakthrough. Even now there are films which barely creep out where you see the love of dialogue about everyday things, the cool pop references and sudden bursts of violence. If the only films you ever watched were indie films that were released straight to the video store, you’d believe that Quentin was everywhere.
So a strange cinematic marriage of Russ Meyer and Quentin Tarantino, but how else could I describe this film? First and foremost it’s a chance to hang out with sexy goth girls, actually it’s an opportunity to hang out with some very sexy goth girls. There are lots of lingering shots of lovely curvaceous ladies spilling out of black and intense looking corsets, of shapely thighs in dark and torn stockings, of full lips plumped up by shiny black lipstick. Arresting, striking, dark and erotic images abound, and let’s be fair many of them are somewhat pervy. It’s hanging out with gorgeous women while they sit virtually in their underwear and don’t mind you trying to look up their (very) short skirts. But that’s where the essence of Quentin saves the day. We are hanging out with these girls and they are chatting away and these conversations are hilarious. The script is genuinely verbose and clever, with a great appreciation of the cadences of the Los Angeles accent, and so it’s a pleasure to listen in to the rhythms of the chat. Particular favourites include the top ten possible reasons as to how some baked beans could have possibly ended up down the back of the couch (none of them involve actually eating baked beans, well not in any traditional sense anyway), why sex shops don’t employ seniors to offer advice and wisdom in the bedroom “those old dudes must have literally seen EVERYTHING” and how supportive a boyfriend Freddy Krueger would actually be. It all crackles, it’s all immensely fun and that makes any watching man feel like he can dispense with the dirty brown raincoat and just enjoy this openly.
It’d be fair to say that since these girls were members of the LA goth scene, rather than actual actresses, the performances are variable. But in Liddy D’Eath (helpfully playing a character named Liddy) a fey blonde with incredibly long legs and the widest grey eyes, we do have what looks like a star in the making. Yes the whole thing is clearly filmed cheaply, and the murder plot that takes over the last half hour comes from nowhere and deserves the response ‘Huh’ – but what could be a very pervy film, becomes a somewhat guilty pleasure that shouldn’t make you feel too seedy.
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