I envied him.

Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau) and Ed Wood (Johnny Depp) are strolling down Hollywood Boulevard on a sunny morning, when the above dialogue takes place. It is the morning after the riotous premiere of BRIDE OF THE MONSTER (1955) in a fleapit cinema, and they’re referring to the moment when one of the wild teenagers runs up to Vampira and grabs her breasts.

The movie is, of course, ED WOOD (1994) by Tim Burton, and Vampira, the TV persona of Maila Nurmi, is played by then Burton’s wife Lisa Marie, a model turned actress that was one of the most beautiful women of the nineties. So strikingly beautiful, in fact, that she was able to turn a non-speaking role in MARS ATTACKS (1996) into an iconic science fiction trope.

The scene above culminates in an impromptu autograph session when some passersby recognize Lugosi who is in a sunny disposition. It is a heart-warming moment. Watching the movie for the first time, one doesn’t realize that in the immediate scene, Ed will be told of Lugosi’s death. When Lugosi mischiviously says to Wood that he envied the kid who took a grab of Vampira’s breasts, he’s not envying him just that fleeting grope. He’s envying him the daring of youth (minutes before, when driving to the cinema, with Lugosi pressed against Vampira in the back seat of the cab, she tells him to watch his hands), the mindless hormonal rush ignited by the movie frenzy that practically tears the theatre down. He’s envying him the promise of a future that he senses he no longer has.

In a way, I guess, Lugosi was enjoying the chaotic walk down the aisle, with the howls of the savage hordes of teenagers reviving in him, for the last time, the long lost sense of success, of being a figure instantly recognizable by any, and all, moviegoers. As he still is, today.

Who really envies the kid (actor Johnny Meyer, I think) for his daring raid on the bountiful breasts of Lisa Marie, is the rest of us, immersed on the dream world of the movies, wondering if the kid understands that he is groping Lisa Marie, playing Maila Nurmi, playing Vampira, in an Escher-like illusion of erotic bliss.  The envy we mere mortals feel towards those like us who get to touch the sublime.

Body Language: The Practical Aspects

Just forget about context. Pretend you don’t know these two… pretend they don’t know each other. Discard the fact it may be a cheesy horror movie and that the spray pistol may be charged with a potentially lethal fluid. Just read the situation. Read their bodies. Did you ever tried to hold someone like that? Do you really think it is easy? Watch the fingers of his left hand. He’s not a lefty. He’s holding the gun in his right hand so he can’t be a lefty. Observe how he compensates the imbalance, leaning onto his left – not ambidextrous either. So, the way he is holding her… it’s just not practical.

Now, consider the girl. She clearly has beautiful, firm, round breasts. If you want to immobilize a girl of such a build it would be natural to grab one of her tits. It would give you purchase, it would hurt if she ever tried to pull away from you.

And suddenly, she seems to sense all this. She looks down. She sees the flaccid muscles on his arm. She knows – she feels it, she sees it – that he’s well aware of the swell of her left breast under is forearm. And yet, his left hand has climbed up her arm onto her shoulder, not down towards her bosom. She must now be thinking, is this guy a faggot?

Or, she asks herself, maybe he really doesn’t mean me any harm.

And that’s when she realizes, to her own surprise, that she could have escaped at any time. And the question is, why? Why didn’t she escape? Why didn’t she break that sissy grip? Am I a natural victim?, she seems to ask the heavens. Should I have watched more horror movies?

Sensory Overload

You couldn’t be a teenager in the mid-80s and not be aware of the Brigitte Nielsen phenomenon. At just 22, she starred as the titular character in RED SONJA (1985) alongside genre-veteran Arnold Schwarzenegger, married his real-life main competitor Sylvester Stallone and went on to star in two of his actioneers, cult-fave ROCKY IV (1985) and macho ego-booster COBRA (1986). In 1987 she broke up with hubby Sly, starred on BEVERLY HILLS COP II and then went under the radar for the target-audience of her films.

I confess I was not a big fan of Mrs, Stallone. She was a sexy presence on-screen – that I can not deny – but somehow her Nordic androgynous looks and clearly enhanced breasts didn’t exert a strong attraction over me. I didn’t particularly enjoy RED SONJA - being a huge fan of the Roy Thomas’s version from the comics I couldn’t sympathize with her portrayal of the iconic character, and the confused politics of the film (that seemed unsure towards what kind of demographics, or what kind of feminist demographics, it wanted to please) didn’t help matters much. I enjoyed her wet t-shirt scene in COBRA and the way her long legs drew the camera when she first appears on-screen on BEVERLY HILLS COP II coming out of her stretch-limo, but it was her portrayal of the icily beautiful Ludmilla in ROCKY IV, sporting a Soviet uniform, that most pleased my feverish adolescent mind.

Not even her nude photos on the French magazine PHOTO (“La Femme Rambo Pose Nue”, January 1988) made me change my mind. Naked, she seemed more awe-inspiring than truly erotic or arousing, and I couldn’t help but think that there was something mannish in her strong, tall, athletic body.

It was only Ivana Massetti’s demented and pretentiously surrealist opus DOMINO (1988) that opened my eyes to the depths of sensuality that Nielsen did harbor. The film is a jumble of vacuous dialogue, with a kind of sub-Zalman King musing on the nature of life and love spurting at every moment from the characters’ mouths, but presents itself in a striking palette of vivid colors, strange tableaux and boner inducing erotic scenes. One such scene burned itself into my mind, never to be forgotten. That’s when young Domino (Nielsen), convinced that she is being spied from a window on the building from across the street, wants to confront the anonymous voyeur that she sees only as a silhouette backlit on the window of the otherwise dark facade. Donning a ravishing but simple white dress with white gloves, and bearing an auburn wig – intimations of a desire for anonymity on her part as well, or just a mask, another persona to help fulfill her empty nights? – she ends up meeting the upstairs blind neighbor (veteran actor David Warbeck) who tells her that the couple that used to live on the now empty apartment where she is sure she saw the peeping tom had passed away on a car accident about a month before.

When we first meet the Blind neighbor (Warbeck) he is cutting a magazine with a pair of scissors. The interior of his darkened apartment is lit with a diffuse blue light whose source is not apparent on-screen, and is cluttered by a hanging forest of wind-chimes, which doesn’t seem very practical for a blind man. But then again, he doesn’t seem like an ordinary blind man – he is something more akin to Matt Murdock or any other of the plethora of blind masters that plagues pulp fiction in general. His movements are measured, slow and deliberate, like those of a spider moving softly over her thread as not to give any intimation of its nature to the eventual prey. Domino, our unsuspecting fly – or is she? – hears on his (fatuous and unctuous) words an echo of her own loneliness. The dialogue is awkward – some would say boring, ridiculous and unreal – and for no reason other than aesthetic, the Blind Man complains about the heat and – easily, with the supernatural ability that’s born out of blind habit – turns on an electric fan, thus raising a storm of sound and paper as the swiftly moving blades send the chimes into a frenetic dance and throws all the confetti-like paper clippings into a frenzy of festive proportions.

Caught in this sensory web, Domino unwittingly uncovers an old standing mirror that draws her in as some kind of window into her personal demons. She looks like a deer caught on the headlights of her own self, as she – and us – see her reflected in the twilight-y umber of the room, the Blind Man explores her face and hair with is fingers, building is own image, an utterly sensorial one… a vision of touch, smell and sound. Only her (and us, the voyeur audience) have sight.

He unzips her dress, send his hands roaming down her sensuous arching back, and it’s only in the mirror that we see them closing like spidery shapes over her breasts, underneath the white – so purely white – dress. It’s a mesmerizing moment, an hypnotic ritual, as we are caught by the erotic dance on the screen, on the mirror, caressed by the wind chimes, a soft tingling rhythm interspersed from time to time with the staccato, final, banging of a door or a window disturbed by the wind.

The storm is internal and external as we are drawn into that fury of sound and image, bereft of touch, another point on the sensorial triangle we close with them. The hands slide under her dress, over her breasts, between her thighs… she arches her back, arms held up in sensual surrender, her own (gloved) hands reaching – not to him – but to her own body. She is the goddess being adored, homage. This is her ritual. Not a fly at all, but the Queen of us all.

Her moaning mingles with the wind, the myriad confetti a caressing creature with a thousand fingers; she moans, she writhes, she orgasms, overpowering the storm. She shatters the barriers; looking into the mirror, she became as much the voyeur as the one she was meaning to confront. And we, the viewers, the voyeurs, are satisfied as well.

I saw few of the movies she starred after this one. I somehow enjoyed her role as corrupt lesbian prison warden in CHAINED HEAT II (1993), but she never got to the sublime heights of this little forgotten scene in the annals of second rate erotic films. So I thank her for the memories, as the song goes.

Home Again

I’ve been away from this house, lately, wandering the dark streets of the night, aimless among the neon pools on the wet asphalt where lost souls go to share their despair. I’ve been pondering the sinister beauty and gleeful joy of decadence and depravity. They say you can get lost on your own thoughts. I almost did.

But it is now time to come back home. What with the amazing Pam Grier Week coming up under the sage auspices of blogmeister Darius Whiteplume? Time to rev up the brain engines, grab the discs from the shelf and force the DVD player into some serious workout. Our chocolate-coloured queen of the 70s awaits our visit in the candy coloured haze of the past.

Besides, if I didn’t get home soon, it was possible I wouldn’t be allowed in. Our sexy neighbour the Sexy Witch was evicted from Blogger on charges of improper conduct. If so sweet abode of beauty and grace could be so branded, what of my humble lair of sin and depravity? I fear the mobs carrying torches.

Truth is, god is once again prowling the dark alleys of the night, harbouring great fear and bigger resentment. He sees sin where is only beauty, and he knows no beauty where there’s no pain.

He pretends to offer solace to those that are lost…

…but as always has been his way, when you offer him one cheek…

…he demands the other as well.

Happy Halloween...

... all you Satan's little helpers.

With the wind blowing crispy leaves over cracked cement, moaning on the limbs of long dead trees, slithering under the pale gaze of the lifeless autumnal moon, open up your heart and let out the devil you have inside.

Have fun...

...grab life with both hands...

...make her hesitate...

...then love it...

...and overflow with joy.

And for one night in the year, play at being evil without being stupid. That's Halloween.

Have fun kids!

The luckiest guy on Earth

Or, at least, on the Buffyverse.

Charisma Carpenter became a worldwide wet dream girl when playing Cordelia Chase, first on Buffy, The Vampire Slayer (1997-1999) and then on Angel (1999-2004). Despite starting out as the vacuous "bimbo" in the first season of Buffy, she quickly won the love of viewers everywhere, smitten by her charisma (pun, obviously intended) and her ample charms... some of which became very prominent whenever she donned a tight shirt. Indeed, as the Playboy photo shoot she did for the June 2004 issue well attested, those wonderfuly round breasts are natural fuel for male fantasies everywhere.

Well, it was on Vincent Kartheiser, who plays Angel's son Connor, that fell the burden of groping Ms. Carpenter's right breast in the episode Slouching Toward Bethlehem (episode 4 of season 4, 2002). The episode marks the return of Cordelia from the "higher plane" where she has been herself slouching for the previous three episodes of the season. Returning with a bout of amnesia, Cordelia takes refuge with Connor, who doesn't waste any time replaying the most complex Oedipus on modern TV. Sensing the presence of intruders from the evil law firm of Wolfram & Heart, and pretending to be warning her not to scream, he takes the chance of palming Cordelia's breast, in a what-the-fuck-were-they-thinking heart-stopping moment.

Lucky bastard...