#sleazy old male private detective characters like him >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

[addicted-to-the-knife]

are there finally any fellow John Labat enjoyers? please? I'm so down bad for him and feel lonely with it, dhsdhfkjshkfhs </3

[I'm gonna watch MaXXXine tomorrow again. for him. my therapist and social worker said I should, so who am I to not do it, then, dsjfkhsdjf anyway, if I am able to, I'll write some x Reader fics for him. I'll be posting them on my main (@littleoddwriter) when I do! <3]

[watching-pictures-move]

Put on Your Raincoats #29 | Carter Stevens Double Feature

House of Sin opens with a woman's car having broken down. Who shows up and offers to help but our old friend Robert Kerman? (He plays a character named "Marvis", which not only sounds like a typo, but happens to be the name of a toothpaste brand. He dodges the question when asked if it's his first name or last name.) Lucky for her he gladly helps her put her things into his trunk and drives her over to his place where she can stay until her car situation gets sorted out. But given the title, things are not what they seem, as we soon find out. It turns out the Kerman is some sort of evil satanic figure, and the house is full of his disciples who practice some kind of devil worship through fornication. That's about all there is to the plot, and we have to sit through a number of basic variations of sex scenes, most of which end with the participants pledging their loyalty to Kerman (who watches most of the action approvingly alongside the heroine). There's little energy in the execution of most of these, although the loud squealing of the bedsprings had me a little worried about the structural integrity of the beds being used and the potential for injury for the performers. I must note that the scene with Tigr (who was my primary point of interest for this movie; judge not that ye not be judged) has her temporarily upside down. (What's she doing upside down? Because I am a gentleman, I'll let you figure it out.) There's also a BDSM scene at the end involving Phil Prince regulars Mistress Candice and David Christopher, which the heroine watches while making disgusted faces. This is therefore the most interesting sequence. A lame attempt at a mindfuck ending caps off the affair.

I've reached some kind of a shameful low point when I watch a porno and my primary criticism is that it isn't sleazy enough. Let me explain. Director Carter Stevens made this for the Avon theatre chain, which distinguished itself with cheaply made, unpleasant roughies (full of rough sex, BDSM and rape). This is supposed to be evil, satanic sex we're talking about here, but most of what follows is pretty routine stuff, and filmed in the most perfunctory way possible. I contrast this to the films Phil Prince also made for Avon, which aren't necessary more artful, but seem more committed to their depravity. (I do think those movies have an interesting, if crude, aesthetic that results from their meager production values. The ones I watched had a surprising stylistic and tonal consistency given that they were made for purely cynical reasons. They're also intentionally funnier, if usually in a more rancid way.) While I normally like Robert Kerman, he's a little too nice to play the villain here (going back to Prince's work, I think of the demonic energy George Payne brings to his roles there), and the qualities I find most intriguing about Tigr as a performer are absent here. If I can say some nice things about the movie, it's that the soundtrack (mostly punk or hard rock, some atmospheric rumbling, but with some wildly out of place twangs of sitar early on) makes this sound a lot more exciting than it is, and that the extensive print damage on the transfer I watched helped make this feel grimier than the actual direction. There's also some comedic value from the hairdo of Kerman's right hand lady, who sports an unbraided rattail. With the caveat that I actually like lady mullets, who thought this was a good hairdo? Did her stylist play a practical joke on her? These are answers House of Sin refuses to provide.

Much more fun than House of Sin, if still not especially well made, is Punk Rock, which is an attempt to mix punk, noir and porno. The story involves a private detective played by Wade Nichols as he tries to rescue a girl from a sex slavery ring run by an evil punk musician played by Elda Gentile of Elda and the Stilettos. The most notable thing about this movie is that Debbie Harry was at one point a member of the Stilettos and that Stevens originally wanted her for the role. (This seems like wishful thinking to me, as Harry was already conquering the charts with Blondie by the time this movie was made, but one can still dream.) I naturally assumed that the musicians would be nowhere near the porn elements, but nope, a late scene has Elda and her friends hanging around and offering colour commentary during a lesbian scene. Joining the fun are Robert Kerman as a police detective also investigating the case and Bobby Astyr as a low level pimp who runs an establishment called the Polynesian Pleasure Palace. It even has a pinball machine, and at one point we get a pinball montage, which I'm sure the raincoat brigade must have been thrilled to see.

To be honest, this isn't the best made movie, but the mix of elements gives it enough novelty to make it worth checking out. The sex scenes are done in a pretty perfunctory manner, but the movie comes alive during the noir elements, taking relish in the touch guy banter between Nichols and his foils. Nichols, with his chiseled jaw, immaculate mustache and steely gaze, is almost a primal image of a male pornstar, but his streetwise charisma and sarcastic delivery make him a pretty fun noir hero, and has in Kerman and Astyr two sturdy character actors to bounce off of. It helps that the movie has a decent sense of humour, like when he promises Kerman "no rough stuff" and mercilessly beats Astyr in the next scene ("That was for general principles") or when he explains the presence of a spinning dummy ("Just a routine precaution, I happen to be very popular with murderers this season"). Apparently there's a version where the hardcore footage is replaced by musical performances, and while I wouldn't say the Stilettos are all that good (oddly enough for a punk band, they have a saxophonist and two nude dancers, but I guess Blondie wasn't a typical punk band either), I suspect that version plays somewhat better given that the sex scenes are the least interesting thing about this.