This Brother Is Free

Due to the upcoming move from Texas to Minneapolis (actually Richfield), Minnesota, I'm announcing the suspendering of this blog and all related Big Ass blogs until the week of July 30th. Things will resume (though maybe not get back to normal, per se) that week, with new "old" movie reviews, boob-related posts, and podcasts.

Island of the Damned?

Few people can argue that this television show had great international impact on the entire world and far-reaching effects on life as we know it. And...I've watched it for years even though it was already in reruns before I was born.

It's a great show that has dramatically changed my life. However...I still have a few questions...

First, the obvious: for a "three-hour tour", everyone sure brought a lot of crap with them. The Professor brought tons of scientific gizmos, the Howells brought the famous suitcase full of money, and Ginger brought large quantities of makeup, haircare products, and every costume from every movie she ever made. Gilligan and the Skipper brought next to nothing, even though they probably lived on the boat. Mary Ann brought nothing except a pair of shorts...even though some heavy farm machinery would sure have been useful! So, why so many personal effects? Obviously, someone was planning this...but who?!?

The Skipper, a notorious drunk, could certainly read a map or at the very least know not to take the boat out if there was a big-ass storm coming. Was this a suicide attempt?

Gilligan, his "little buddy"...did he only pretend to be an idiot, and is there any truth to those gay rumors?

Thurston Howell III and his nymphomaniac wife Lovey...were they attempting to evade taxes or prosecution for a failed savings-and-loan? Also, Howell was a billionaire, right? You mean he didn't even have his own boat, he had to charter one? Where's the money, Howell?!?

The Professor...what's he doing here? Was he selling secrets to the Red Chinese or something? And, as the only single, staight male on the island, how was he able to resist the hot advances of Ginger and Mary Ann? Ginger--a famous actress who made films with hot Hollywood hunks like Rock Hudson--was she afraid of the upcoming A.I.D.S. crisis? Who tipped her off? Or was she afraid of being murdered by the C.I.A., like her friend Marilyn Monroe? How did Mary Ann secure the funds to take this trip? Did she blow the money from the sale of her parents' farm on this? Was she a teenage runaway? Did she have sufficient motive for sabotage? Why, after years on the island, didn't Ginger let Mary Ann wear any of her clothes? Weren't they supposed to be friends? But wait, there's more.

Almost every other week, someone visited the island but left and never told anyone to rescue the castaways. Were they paid off? If so, by who? And how? And why?

Also, what did the people on that island eat? Just mangos and a pineapple or two? Think they caught some monkeys and fried 'em up? They never explored this possibility...but should have, in my opinion. The Skipper and Gilligan were pretty good at building huts and furniture...ever try building a boat? That might have been useful.

They were on that island for a pretty long time...think they ever fooled around? You know. Did they ever see each other naked? Hey, just wondering--I'm not a pervert or anything. When the Skipper took his hat off and hit Gilligan over the head with it, do you think that was some kind of sign of affection...that maybe they both really enjoyed it in a secret way? I've always had this secret fantasy about Mary Ann and Ginger. Mary Ann seemed so innocent and pure, and Ginger seemed so....trashy. I won't get into it here, but it's a good fantasy. Two words: coconut milk.

You suspend belief a lot with shows like Gilligan's Island. You are asked to turn your brain off for 30 minutes, and just let it happen. And it worked, at least on the original series. They never were rescued, until a couple of TV movies in the late 1970s. And those were the tough ones to take in.

In the first TV movie, the castaways get rescued. No problems there. So, they go back to civilization and decide to have a party to celebrate...on the Skipper's new boat, the Minnow II. But the boat shipwrecks on a deserted island where Gilligan finds a piece of a boat that looks familiar: It says Minnow I on it. That's when the Skipper takes off his hat and hits Gilligan over the head with it and they all laugh and the show ends. But I wouldn't laugh. I'd start swimming like hell because I know the original boat was not even named Minnow I but SS Minnow. I'd swim away, never once looking back...praying for a quick death from the sharks.

Enjoy your alternate dimension, suckers.

Doris, Can I Put My Clothes Back On Now?

Well, kids, today I have a movie review for you. Not just a single movie review, no sir. A double movie review of a true double feature, the kind you might have found in sleazy drive-ins in the 1970s. The kind of movies you just had to go out of your way to see, before there were video stores or even Cinemax. These are the films of the great Chesty Morgan, the Israeli-born sleaze queen who made a sizeable impression on the U.S. movie market in Deadly Weapons and Double Agent 73.

The two films were both made in the early 1970s by Doris Wishman, a maverick female director who had previously made the thought-provoking sci-fi classic Nude On The Moon and the groundbreaking penis-grafting fantasy The Amazing Transplant. Director Wishman keeps her vision faithful to the sleazy, amateurish quality of her previous work. Both are badly edited and almost impossible to follow in any logical fashion. But then again, they're about breasts, right?

Deadly Weapons has Chesty as a good woman in love with a sleazy gangster-type. But when he's murdered by Deep Throat star Harry Reems and some other ruffians, she takes it on herself to settle the score. This means she has to track them down one at a time, and seduce them before getting revenge. Not being handy with guns, Chesty uses the most powerful weapons she has, her 73-inch breasts, to suffocate the killers. It's padded with early-'70s stock shots of Las Vegas, even if it becomes painfully obvious that the movie wasn't really shot there. That being said, this is the better of the two films.

In the next film, Double Agent 73, she's a secret agent. And no ordinary secret agent, either. In the days before sophisticated digital espionage, she has a camera implanted in one of her massive breasts, and uses it to photograph secret documents. Of course, this means there are endless scenes of her removing her bra and squeezing a giant breast at the camera. There comes a point in every movie review where the reader realizes he's not reading a review of Citizen Kane. That is, unless he is reading a review of Citizen Kane.

But on the other hand, these movies are ultimately kooky and harmless. They're very tame in comparison to anything released today, and the focus is really on nudity as opposed to sex. They have a goofball "anything goes" quality that only so-called "drive-in" movies of the 60s and 70s had. Don't get me wrong, they're bad movies. But they're better than the bad movies you get today. The most significant thing about it is that Chesty Morgan was real. Not just her breasts, which appear to be natural (I have no data on this), but she looked like a normal person. Above the neck, she was plain, even average-looking. This made her more accessible to ordinary-looking guys, the bulk of her fan base. This was a woman you could have, if it was at only after buying her drinks all night and she couldn't see straight anymore. That's why she's so fondly remembered over thirty years later.

These movies had no pretensions. They knew what they were, and they wallowed in it and exploited it. There's an almost zen-like, liberating quality about that, and I wish they still made movies this way.